JPG Clog

ClintonKaine.com Media Bender Is Capped Off With NPR "Morning Edition" Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 17:33:00 +0000

This man bought https://t.co/rTxm5wY0tN in 2011 for $8. Now, he wants $90,000 for it: https://t.co/3hPLJfE82A
— Morning Express (@MorningExp) July 27, 2016

I've had stories profiling me in dozens of news sources, including:
CNN (twice),
HLN,
CNBC,
Vox,
DCist (three times),
NBC News,
NY Daily News,
Glenn Beck,
the Verge,
Refinery29,
Mic.com,
Bustle,
Above The Law;
and many other blogs, countless local news affiliates, and several foreign news sources,

The site itself has also been featured on Rachel Maddow, the Boston Globe, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Dot, and other places.

Rachel Maddow discusses my Hillary Potter fanfiction on July 22, 2016, the day Clinton chose Kaine as her running mate.

JPG Legal Begins

This windfall from my quirky domain name escapade was the spur I needed to finally get myself out of that situation and strike out on my own.

I'm happy with how this segment turned out on NPR's Morning Edition:

They could have framed me as an amoral ball of slime, but like most sources, they saw it as a fun little story. We started out talking about the Hillary Potter fanfiction on the site and how I came to buy the site, and then I debuted the news of my sale of the site for $15,000! And in a great twist, after Clinton's digital director passed on the domain, the buyer ended up being Trump's digital director!

Ezra Klein and Glenn Beck write about my ClintonKaine.com "Hillary Potter" website.

Behind The Strip: "Out Of The Frying Pan"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 21:20:00 +0000

Finally, another strip with the comic's supposed title character, Feldman. So far she's been in maybe one out of every five strips. Hopefully she'll show up more frequently.

Here's an earlier iteration of the second panel:

What do you think? Did I screw up by getting rid of the color and putting a box around it?

Update: Wow, I liked the earlier version so much that I ended up adding the color back into it. Here's the colorless version, for reference:

The Current List of Relevant Political Domain Names I Own

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 15:22:00 +0000

So far, I've sold two political domains for the 2016 cycle: Cruz2016.com ($1500) and BidenWarren.com ($1500).

Most of the candidates are gone now, so only a handful of my domain names are still potentially valuable. I've turned the three most valuable domains into Harry Potter "shipping" fanfiction sites.

Here is the list in descending order of estimated value:

Hillary Potter sites:

ClintonKaine.com
ClintonBooker.com
ClintonBiden.com

Other domains:

ClintonPatrick.com
ClintonWarner.com
ClintonNapolitano.com
ClintonWebb.com
ClintonOMalley.com
ClintonNelson.com
ClintonVanHollen.com
ClintonGabbard.com
Pawlenty.net
~~TrumpFortuno.com~~

Regardless of whom Hillary picks next week, I've had fun.

Texas NPR Station Interviews Me About My Political Cybersquatting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 May 2016 16:25:00 +0000

I was interviewed for a great 2016 serial political podcast called The Ticket. The interview also got picked up by another Texas podcast called Texas Standard.

Ultimately the interview ended up playing on actual NPR radio stations throughout Texas. I'm glad I got a chance, in the extended version of the interview, to rail on Julian Castro for how bad a choice he would be for Clinton's running mate. My part of the segment starts at 2:30.

Keep an eye out for my upcoming Harry Potter "shipping" fan fiction sites ClintonKaine.com, ClintonBooker.com, and ClintonWarner.com! Unlike my interviewer's imagining of the concept, the shipping on my sites will actually involve Clinton and her potential VPs in the roles of Harry and Hermione.

Drafting Table Modifications

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 03:06:00 +0000

I have a Studio Designs Futura Tower that I draw on. I keep it tilted at around a 15 degree angle. Out of the box, it had two problems that I wanted to fix:

1. The Tower has a "pencil ledge" that catches pens, pencils, and sheets of paper that slide down the desk when it's inclined. It's too useful to remove, but it sticks up in a way that hurts the wrists of anybody trying to draw or lean on the desk. So I went to the hardware store and picked up some Frost King self-adhesive weather-strip tape to put there:

Here's how my desk looks now after cutting out a strip of the weatherseal and putting it against the pencil ledge, which I was then able to lower:

It's very comfortable for my wrist now!

The other problem was that I didn't have a flat surface to put non-drawing things on anymore. But I grabbed a foldable Walmart TV table and put it partially under the desk, creating an uncannily natural-looking extension to the desk. The picture below also includes the pencil ledge before I put the weatherseal in.

So if you have a Futura Tower, a Futura Craft Station, or any other kind of tilted drafting table, consider modifications like these to improve your drawing experience.

I Got A Solid Tourette's Mention In A Globe And Mail Article

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 01:49:00 +0000

This piece about insomnia habits by Adriana Barton in the Globe and Mail, Canada's second-largest circulation newspaper, mentions my Tourette's and my habits when I have trouble sleeping. It appeared both online and in the print edition:

Jeremy Peter Green, a lawyer in Washington, has not tried CBT-I, but he makes a habit of going for long walks or drawing cartoons when he can’t sleep. Green has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition that makes him restless several nights a week. When his muscles start to contract and his eyes blink involuntarily, “it just becomes impossible to even think about sleeping.”

As a student, he would walk to the law school after midnight and draw cartoon animals on the whiteboards for his classmates to see in the morning. He graduated two years ago, and now publishes his cartoons at FeldmanTheCat.com. With more nights of practice, he said, “hopefully, the artwork will catch up with the word play.”

January 2016 Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 22:32:00 +0000

Sold another political domain name last week to somebody you may have heard of!

Also working on a new comic. Here are a couple of pictures of it in process:

One of the inked panels, before scanning, with notes on the side about what to fix in Photoshop.

Screenshot of the editing process in Photoshop.

MurderEgg.com Is My Most Popular Domain Right Now

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 18:06:00 +0000

No, I don't know why MurderEgg.com has been getting so much unsolicited traffic. I'm not really sure what somebody would use the name for, but it seemed like a good domain to grab. Now I have it listed for $950, which is less than any of my good political domain names are listed for.

ClintonWebb.com and ClintonKaine.com somehow aren't even in the top 13.

2016 Political Domain Squatting Update

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 17:23:00 +0000

Domains I've sold so far this year:

Cruz2016.com -- $1500;
BidenWarren.com -- $1500 (sold to Florida orthodontist and conservative activist Larry Kawa).

I still have many great political domains left, including ClintonBooker.com, ClintonBiden.com, ClintonOMalley.com, ClintonKaine.com, ClintonPatrick.com, ClintonWebb.com, ClintonWarner.com, and SandersBiden.com on the Dem side; RubioCruz.com, CruzChristie.com, ChristieAyotte.com, and Christie-2016.com on the GOP side, and many others on both sides. Buy them!

RT Journalist Abby Martin Brings Attention To My Tourettic Sign At A Freddie Gray Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 May 2015 18:21:00 +0000

Former RT America host Abby Martin, now of Media Roots, took a picture of me with my sign at a rally for Freddie Gray in DC.

The Offensive AIDS Joke Made By Bill Maher That Nobody Knows About

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 20:53:00 +0000

A lot of people on the left hate Bill Maher these days for things he's said. Still, this particularly off-color joke he made back in 1993 near the beginning of the very first episode of his old show Politically Incorrect--with Jerry Seinfeld among that episode's guests--seems relevant to Trevor Noah's recent scandal and the conversation people are having about political correctness and public shamings in reaction to tasteless and offensive jokes.

Here is the relevant text from the transcription of his monologue (emphasis mine):

"Mankind has a long history of branding evildoers, starting with God marking Cain after the death of Abel, right through to Colonial New England, where they slapped a scarlet letter on your chest if you were guilty of illicit sex. Of course, nowadays if you have dangerous sex, they put on AIDS ribbon on your chest and you get to go to the Oscars."

I know this was 1993, when most people in the United States were first starting to learn about HIV/AIDS, but even back then this was not an acceptable thing for a left-leaning celebrity to say. HIV/AIDS shaming like this--whether done in 1993 or 2015--is fallacious victim blaming that also has obvious homophobic, racist, and sexist connotations. And in the video clip, most of the audience seems to be taken aback.

I've found nothing on the internet referencing the joke. If he had said this in more recent years on Real Time--particularly in the pilot episode--or in a tweet, many people would have written think-pieces about it in online publications like Salon and Mother Jones. Here's the clip, with the monologue starting at 2:57:

NPR Podcast "TLDR" Interviews Me About My Political Cyber-Squatting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:31:00 +0000

TLDR, On The Media's entertaining, internet-focused podcast series, interviewed me about my political cybersquatting. I start talking around 1:28 and my part lasts about two minutes. We talk about my Santorum food blog as well, which was the #1 Google result for "Santorum 2012" for most of the 2012 primary season.

Here's the full list of Clinton domain names I own. Besides those, I own around 165 other 2016-related political domain names:

CLINTONBIDEN.COM

CLINTONCUOMO.COM

CLINTONFITZGERALD.COM

CLINTONGRIMES.COM

CLINTONKAINE.COM

CLINTONLANDRIEU.COM

CLINTONNAPOLITANO.COM

CLINTONOMALLEY.COM

CLINTONPATRICK.COM

CLINTONSCHWARTZ.COM

CLINTONVANHOLLEN.COM

CLINTONWARNER.COM

CLINTONWEBB.COM

Email me at jeremypgreen@gmail.com if you want to buy any (or all) of my domains. It's pretty early in the cycle, things are uncertain, and I don't have much money, so I'm willing to sell them fairly cheap.

Scanning, Editing, and Coloring a Hand-Drawn Webcomic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 20:30:00 +0000

First, if you care about whether the gag is spoiled, look at the full cartoon before you read this post.

A lot went into making this cartoon. That's mostly because I'm just not a good comics artist yet. I started teaching myself almost exactly three years ago during law school, sitting down and practicing about once a month since then. If you look at the crap I was drawing then, you'll see that I've come a long way for somebody with such a terrible work ethic.

As I get better, I'll start drawing full pages and scanning them in, rather doing the different parts of the cartoons piecemeal, spread out onto several pages, the way I have with most of the cartoons I've posted.

However, I still believe this walkthrough of my editing process will be helpful to cartoonists interested in digitally coloring and editing their hand-drawn webcomics.

Scanned linework of a plane before editing it into the final cartoon. Tools used include the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and Pigma Micron 03 and 05 markers.

This most recent F-The-Cat post involved maybe eight to ten scanned pages for what amounted to a page-long gag cartoon. Everything was arranged and colored afterward in Photoshop.

A scanned page with an early version of Rick the baseball player, floating miserably in the upper left corner.

While hopefully I won't be tweaking my cartoons so much on my computer as I get better, I'll still be scanning them in black-and-white mode (rather than grayscale or color) and then coloring them in Photoshop, like most people who hand-draw their webcomics.

This involves a lot of layers.

As shown above, even though most of the foreground objects in this cartoon were black-and-white, I still had to use the magic wand tool to get rid of all the non-black parts of the cartoon scans, and then color everything in using a "coloring" layer below the ink drawing.

Additionally, if any of my line-work didn't scan perfectly, or was weakened by erasing before I scanned it, I'll fill that in with black as well:

Shown above: Glaring white speck in Rick's hat.

The single biggest change I made to the cartoon, however, was removing the other baseball player. That's right, there was a second baseball player in the cartoon, telling Rick he should lay off the steroids. Ultimately I decided it would be better for a reporter to ask about steroids, which makes Rick's defensive reaction more realistic.

That other baseball player was cool with his cigarette and all, but I had to cut him from the team in order to make my "Not Another Baseball Metaphor" strip a home run.

For this cartoon, I decided to keep the foreground almost completely black-and-white and have the colors be behind the characters. The color blobs in the background were all painted with the brush tool on layers that are beneath the foreground layers.

One thing you may not have noticed is the lack of pure black in most of the foreground objects. To make the linework and blackspace of the drawings go better with the colored backgrounds, I made duplicates of the line-work layers, colored each foreground figure a shade of purple that I felt looked good with its corresponding background color, and then set the opacity of these colored duplicate layers to about 30%, in order to give the linework and blackspace a subtle purple tinge. I did not make copies of the whitespace, which I left pure white.

As far as I can remember, I didn't apply any special properties to the layers like "multiply," so you don't have to worry about that.

Oh God, the lettering. I wrote most of the words out by hand several times and then painstakingly Frankensteined everything together in Photoshop. Again, as I get better at lettering--using an Ames Lettering Guide the way professional comics letterers do--I'll actually draw the words on the same pages as the corresponding pictures, and scan everything together, rather than having to combine everything later.

I'm not going to get into what specific tools or what kind of paper I use before I scan things here, as those things require their own posts. Hopefully this post was helpful to some people. Stay tuned to Feldman the Cat as my work habits improve and I start churning out comics at a regular rate.

Follow me on Twitter or email me if you have any questions.

DC's Insider Newspaper Wrote A Piece About Me And My Political Domain Squatting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 20:48:00 +0000

Judy Kurtz of The Hill wrote a piece about me, in her column called "In The Know," that talks about my political domain squatting activities for a while, mentioning a few other things about me as well. The Hill is DC's "insider" newspaper and it focuses on federal political news. She interviewed me on the phone first and she was very nice. I'm glad I don't look like a total piece of shit in the piece. She also later went on DC's Fox affiliate and talked about my domain squatting for a few minutes on the local version of Good Morning America.

Here's are some excerpts from the piece:

"Jeremy Peter Green shelled out thousands of dollars to amass his collection of 180 domain names. The 26-year-old recent law school graduate says proudly, "As far as I know, I have a better 2016 collection than anyone else out there."

. . .

The Maryland native started focusing on 2016 well before the previous presidential showdown was decided, buying up domains shortly after finishing college in 2010. The domain name guessing game seemed like a natural fit for the self-professed political junkie, who worked as an autograph dealer in college to earn extra spending money.

. . .

Green, who works at a labor law firm, says he knows not everyone approves of his domain name buying spree.

. . .

Green says he has a game plan if his domain names prove to be a tough sell: “I will use them. I’ll make fun of the politicians if I’m unable to sell them.” That’s what Green, a Democrat, did in 2012, turning a domain name based on Rick Santorum into a blog poking fun of the former GOP presidential candidate. "

One funny result of this piece is that I got former Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuño's name in the conversation; he hasn't been talked about much. I imagine a staffer of his getting a Google News alert about the piece and thinking "Who the fuck is this Jeremy Peter Green guy?" Maybe some DC insiders will read this piece and the buzz for his name will grow, as it should.

You should really read it yourself though; I was surprised by how much of it ended up being about me. A lot of my former law school classmates got a kick out of it.

I Live In DC Now, Again

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:15:00 +0000

I'm back. I live near the NoMa stop on the Red Line in a basement with Matt Bruenig. I'm working at a law firm despite what I said about law firms in my last post. This law firm works for labor unions against bigger, uglier law firms. The firm is aware of my interest in possibly leaving the legal field and they're okay with it.

More updates on Skinny Squares soon. Wait, I haven't said anything about Skinny Squares yet. I will soon though, once they're being manufactured and everything!

More cartoons soon and more writing. Still making music, still haven't started singing over it yet.

Here's me on the right with my best friend Andrew at H Street Festival, wearing somebody else's sunglasses:

My Political Domains Are Better Than This Guy's

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:25:00 +0000

This guy squats domains: http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/political-cybersquatter-strikes-again-20130709

But the domains I have for 2016 are better. I have some really good ones. Boy, I wish I could tell you what they are!

UPDATE: Okay, I'll tell you what they are. They include ClintonBiden.com, ClintonCuomo.com, ClintonOMalley.com, ClintonPatrick.com, BidenPatrick.com, Biden-Clinton.com, and, BidenBooker.com, among about 200 others. I have several more good Clinton ones, Biden ones, and ones for dozens of other Democrats and Republicans. If you want to buy one, or buy several of them as a package, email me at jeremypgreen@gmail.com.

HERE IS THE FULL LIST OF 2016-RELEVANT POLITICAL DOMAINS I OWN:

ANDREW2016.COM
AYOTTECHRISTIE.COM
AYOTTECUCCINELLI.COM
BIDEN-CLINTON.COM
BIDENBOOKER.COM
BIDENCLINTON.INFO
BIDENCLINTON.NET
BIDENCUOMO.COM
BIDENFITZGERALD.COM
BIDENKAINE.COM
BIDENNAPOLITANO.COM
BIDENOMALLEY.COM
BIDENPATRICK.COM
BIDENVANHOLLEN.COM
BIDENWARREN.COM
BIDENWEBB.COM
BLOOMBURG2016.COM
BOOKERCASTRO.COM
BOOKERCLINTON.COM
BOOKERCRIST.COM
BOOKERCUOMO.COM
BOOKEROMALLEY.COM
BOOKERWARREN.COM
BOOKERWEBB.COM
BUSHAYOTTE.COM
BUSHCRUZ.COM
BUSHCUCCINELLI.COM
BUSHFORTUNO.COM
BUSHJINDAL.COM
BUSHMCDONNELL.COM
BUSHTHUNE.COM
CHRISTIE-2016.COM
CHRISTIEAYOTTE.COM
CHRISTIECRIST.COM
CHRISTIECUCCINELLI.COM
CHRISTIEFORTUNO.COM
CHRISTIEHUCKABEE.COM
CHRISTIEHUNTSMAN.COM
CHRISTIETHUNE.COM
CLINTONBIDEN.COM
CLINTONCUOMO.COM
CLINTONFITZGERALD.COM
CLINTONKAINE.COM
CLINTONNAPOLITANO.COM
CLINTONOMALLEY.COM
CLINTONPATRICK.COM
CLINTONVANHOLLEN.COM
CLINTONWARNER.COM
CLINTONWEBB.COM
CRISTCHRISTIE.COM
CRUZ2016.COM
CRUZAYOTTE.COM
CRUZCHRISTIE.COM
CRUZDANIELS.COM
CRUZFORTUNO.COM
CRUZJINDAL.COM
CRUZMCDONNELL.COM
CUCCINELLIAYOTTE.COM
CUCCINELLICRUZ.COM
CUCCINELLIDANIELS.COM
CUCCINELLIHALEY.COM
CUCCINELLIHUNTSMAN.COM
CUCCINELLIMARTINEZ.COM
CUCCINELLIPAWLENTY.COM
CUCCINELLIRUBIO.COM
CUOMOBIDEN.COM
CUOMOCLINTON.COM
CUOMOCRIST.COM
DANIELSAYOTTE.COM
DANIELSBUSH.COM
DANIELSFORTUNO.COM
DANIELSHUNTSMAN.COM
DANIELSJINDAL.COM
DANIELSMARTINEZ.COM
DANIELSTHUNE.COM
HALEYBUSH.COM
HALEYCHRISTIE.COM
HALEYCUCCINELLI.COM
HALEYPAWLENTY.COM
HALEYRUBIO.COM
HUNTSMANAYOTTE.COM
HUNTSMANBUSH.COM
HUNTSMANCHRISTIE.COM
HUNTSMANCRUZ.COM
HUNTSMANCUCCINELLI.COM
HUNTSMANDANIELS.COM
HUNTSMANFORTUNO.COM
HUNTSMANJINDAL.COM
HUNTSMANMARTINEZ.COM
HUNTSMANNAPOLITANO.COM
HUNTSMANRUBIO.COM
HUNTSMANTHUNE.COM
JINDALCHRISTIE.COM
JINDALCRUZ.COM
JINDALCUCCINELLI.COM
JINDALFORTUNO.COM
JINDALMCDONNELL.COM
JINDALRUBIO.COM
JINDALRYAN.COM
JINDALTHUNE.COM
JOE2016.COM
KAINEBOOKER.COM
KAINECASTRO.COM
KAINECLINTON.COM
KAINECUOMO.COM
KAINEOMALLEY.COM
KAINEWARREN.COM
KUCINICH2016.COM
MARTIN2016.COM
MARTINEZBUSH.COM
MARTINEZCHRISTIE.COM
MARTINEZCUCCINELLI.COM
MARTINEZHALEY.COM
MARTINEZHUNTSMAN.COM
MARTINEZMCDONNELL.COM
MARTINEZRUBIO.COM
MARTINEZTHUNE.COM
MCDONNELLBUSH.COM
MCDONNELLCHRISTIE.COM
MCDONNELLCRUZ.COM
MCDONNELLDANIELS.COM
MCDONNELLJINDAL.COM
MCDONNELLMARTINEZ.COM
NADER2016.COM
NAPOLITANOBIDEN.COM
NAPOLITANOBOOKER.COM
NAPOLITANOCRIST.COM
NAPOLITANOCUOMO.COM
NAPOLITANOPATRICK.COM
NAPOLITANOWARNER.COM
OMALLEYBIDEN.COM
OMALLEYCASTRO.COM
OMALLEYCLINTON.COM
OMALLEYCRIST.COM
OMALLEYNAPOLITANO.COM
OMALLEYVANHOLLEN.COM
OMALLEYWARREN.COM
OMALLEYWEBB.COM
PATRICKBIDEN.COM
PATRICKCRIST.COM
PATRICKCUOMO.COM
PAWLENTY.NET
PAWLENTYBUSH.COM
PAWLENTYCRUZ.COM
PAWLENTYCUCCINELLI.COM
PAWLENTYHALEY.COM
PENCEBUSH.COM
PENCEDANIELS.COM
PENCEHUCKABEE.COM
PENCERYAN.COM
PENCETHUNE.COM
PERRYBUSH.COM
PERRYTHUNE.COM
POLITIFAT.NET
RUBIOCRUZ.COM
RUBIOCUCCINELLI.COM
RUBIOFORTUNO.COM
RUBIOHUNTSMAN.COM
RYANCUCCINELLI.COM
RYANFORTUNO.COM
RYANJINDAL.COM
RYANPAWLENTY.COM
RYANTHUNE.COM
SEIZESEPUEDE.COM
THUNECUCCINELLI.COM
THUNEDANIELS.COM
THUNEPAWLENTY.COM
VANHOLLENCASTRO.COM
VANHOLLENKAINE.COM
WARNERCASTRO.COM
WARNERCLINTON.COM
WARNERCRIST.COM
WARRENBIDEN.COM
WARRENBOOKER.COM
WARRENCUOMO.COM
WARRENKAINE.COM
WARRENOMALLEY.COM

Unfortunately, I'm probably going to keep them a secret this time. But man, I have some great ones. It's too bad articles like this don't realize that search engine optimization is likely to play a role in the domain squatting field for 2016. Remember, my site Santorum-2012.com was the first Google result for "Santorum 2012" throughout the whole primaries season of 2012. I got to attached to the site to try to sell it though, unfortunately.

Rick Santorum with me a few years ago.

My Line Work And Inking Technique Are Getting Better

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:53:00 +0000

As you can see from this cell phone picture, I'm working on a new Swan F. Kennedy cartoon. The proportions are slightly off because of the angle of the photograph.

My insurance company has finally decided that they need to send me money to replace my broken computer, and even though I think they sent it to the wrong address, I've ordered the replacement laptop anyway and it's on its way. This means I'll be able to work on Feldman the Cat as well as Moodstring again.

Feldman the Cat

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:47:00 +0000

Hi, guys! I'm taking a law school exam right now, but I thought I'd take a break to link you to my webcomic, Feldman the Cat. http://feldmanthecat.com/ is the main address, but http://FTheCat.com also works.

There are only about five cartoons up, but you should probably bookmark and Facebook-like the site. I mean, the cartoon on the front page right now is a pretty clever commentary about butts. I hope the metaphors aren't too hard for you to parse!

Here, have an image of me digesting on the floor today. I do this a lot at my friend Kelley's apartment. I was seriously so full.

Kaiser Wilhen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Here, have a chicken character I drew. It actually began as a fake clip art drawing I made for my part of an Animal Law group presentation about the conditions of egg-laying hens and what different labels for eggs mean.

My portion of the project was to compare the U.S.'s minimum standards for the treatment of hens and requirements for labels to the E.U.'s. The gist is that the E.U. is ahead of us in every conceivable way in this area.

If you're eating eggs in the E.U., the hens are treated pretty well. If you're eating eggs in the United States, there's around a 90% chance that they're treated horribly, even if it has some promising label on it like "American Human Society certified". It's depressing. There are only a couple of labels in the United States that actually indicate that the hens are being treated well.

The past couple of weeks have been pretty rough. My sleeping has been bad and exams are coming up. I've also been working on side projects and doing things for friends of mine.

Last Saturday I woke up around 7AM to get to the courthouse down in the Loop so I could be my classmate's defendant in a mock trial for his Intro to Trial Advocacy class. After that ended around 1 and we got lunch, then I walked with him to SAIC's MFA art show, which was humongous. Then I went to a fundraiser theater production being held by Northwestern's med school, then went to a bar nearby with some friends after that, then went to another bar on Kinsey where several classmates were having a big birthday party, then went to the end of a pop country concert at a bar up at North and Clybourn, then ran into some LLM students I know and hung out with them until about six. I think I slept pretty late on Sunday, but I don't remember right now.

I Make Pun, Reddit Likes Pun

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:24:00 +0000

I'm not a big Reddit user at all. But for a little while I really liked a subreddit called Fifth World Problems because it gave me an opportunity to think of and post puns. It's not primarily meant for wordplay; it's supposed to be a forum for complaining about problems that don't make sense in a world with our known rules of physics.

Anyway, I made this pun and people liked it (screenshot was edited to fit on this blog):

Re-percussions, see? Heh heh.

That was by far my most popular pun on there, and it's rare for a post to get that many upvotes on such a small subreddit. I still have yet to get on the actual front page of Reddit though.

My two week spring break starts at the end of this week and I'm not going anywhere, so if you want to meet me for some reason, hit me up and we can get booze or something when I'm not at Horseshoe Casino down in Indiana trying to make money at the poker tables.

You're Being An Idiot If You Think Joe Salazar Is Going To Be Our Todd Akin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:32:00 +0000

Conservatives have a superficial understanding of bigotry and women's issues. This whole situation with Joe Salazar reminds me of a time when in third grade, I said somebody was a sexist, and a girl in my class told me she didn't like me anymore because I said "sex".

Republicans are latching onto something said by a Democratic state representative who was arguing for banning concealed carry on a college campus. They're making it out to be insensitive about rape, and anti-woman or something. They're trying to elevate it to the level of Todd Akin's scandal, which I became a minor part of. Here's what Salazar said:

"It's why we have call boxes. It's why we have safe zones. That's why we have the whistles, because you just don't know who you're going to be shooting at. And you don't know if you feel like you're going to be raped, or if you feel like someone's been following you around or if you feel like you're in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop... pop a round at somebody."

Whether the feared crime is rape or murder, he wants fewer innocent black men like Trayvon Martin, and innocent people in general, getting shot by scared people with guns. You have to distort his comments a lot before you get something like pundits are claiming he said.

It's disheartening how little control he has over how people are interpreting and distorting his statement, even with the truth on his side. So now he's had to go into damage control mode in order to try to keep the non-scandal from being elevated even more, and to avoid being dumped by the Democratic Party.

Here's something conservative media and politicians don't seem to understand: Acknowledging that we live in a society where rape is a real, everyday fear for women and that walking around at night and passing by a man when nobody else is around is scary, is not bigotry.

Conservatives can't even begin to grasp these issues, so any time a non-minority says something that acknowledges how bigoted our society is, they immediately try to call him racist for it. They think the "race card" is a real thing that explains every call of racism from progressives, and that conservatives are just evening things out by playing the race card back against the Democrats.

When Joe Biden says something awkward that is essentially about how our racist country is only willing to accept a black candidate who fits their narrow criteria, Republicans immediately start saying "See?! He's racist too!! He called Obama clean and articulate!" They don't care what he actually meant. They have a superficial understanding of the idea that those words are inappropriate to use to describe black people, and they have no interest in going beyond that in the discussion of racism.

And finally, Salazar's just a state senator. In the past week I've read maybe eight stories about various conservative state senators who've said absurd things about abortion and other issues. Todd Akin was a U.S. congressman who was a major party's nominee for Senate. If we really gave a shit what state legislators said, all these stories about absurd bills being proposed by crazy Republican state legislators wouldn't just be small blips on politicalwire.com. Just today there was a story about a Republican introducing a bill that would make it a felony for a legislator to introduce any kind of gun control bill.

Norman Amaker Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 23:19:00 +0000

I just got back from Loyola Chicago Law School's Norman Amaker Public Interest Law and Social Justice Retreat upstate in Woodstock, IL. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the speakers and made many friends. I wish I could make all of my classmates go because it's almost impossible to listen to these speakers talking about poor people, ethnic minorities, LGTBQ people, tenants, etc. being completely screwed in the United States without wanting to do something about it, or at least be angry.

And to my liberal friends who think they're above current events and domestic day-to-day politics because they only want to have fun philosophizing about "big picture" issues, I wish I could make them listen to Joel Rogers talk about how important state and local laws and government are for changing the country, and how conservatives, with their organization ALEC, have made excellent use of it to destroy the progressive movement in the United States. Here's one thing he wrote that overlaps with his presentation to us, about his new answer to ALEC called ALICE.

I would talk about how amazing Norman Amaker was, but that would take up several more paragraphs. To be brief, he was the only non-white person in his classes at Amherst University and Columbia Law, he worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and smuggled out the famous letter he wrote from jail in Alabama, and he worked as an NAACP lawyer doing amazing things there, among other accomplishments. He died when he was 65 in 2000 and I wish I could have met him and talked to him. He also really should have a Wikipedia entry, geez.

Anyway, I'll have more interesting things up here soon, including the launch of my webcomic on a separate site.

I Did It, Fewer People Are Applying To Law School

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:58:00 +0000

People have finally started listening to me, and law school applications are down 38% from the attending-in-fall-2010 cycle. Fall 2010 was the hardest cycle there has ever been, and it was actually my cycle--my scholarship was deferred a year. I feel validated! This post is braggy, but it's my blog, it's not like it's Facebook. If I can't talk about difficult things that I've done on my own private blog, then I guess the only acceptable places to do it are on book jacket covers and news site bio pages.

This post is so smug that I actually drew this cartoon for it.

I was absurdly lucky to get a full scholarship at a T14 (Top 14, one of the many, many designations for various tiers of law schools that we legal people use because we're terrible and empty prestige whores) that year. I also graduated from college during one of the worst years to do that, in 2010. The Year of the Dragon got screwed.

I'm also very lucky to have grown up as a white male with an economically comfortable living situation. If I had been born under the circumstances of 80% of the world, or about half of America, I wouldn't be in such a fortunate position today. But there was also the Tourette's, which poisons every moment of my life. I lost a significant chunk of time while taking the LSAT, where the time limit is brutal, just to deal with my Tourette's. Anyway, the point is that I really don't have sympathy for other white males who were raised in middle class households who falsely complain about things being stacked against them. If you're finding it harder to get into a certain school than you would have in your father's generation because now people who aren't white men are being given a modest portion of the pie now, then stop complaining and just do a better job.

The smug Mallard Fillmore I drew up there is actually for the parody I'm working on though, mentioned in the post before this one.

Mallard Fillmore

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:43:00 +0000

My line work and inking technique is getting better, steadier. This cell phone picture version is bigger than the actual drawing, but I wanted to zoom in.

I'm getting my ducks in order for a single strip parody I want to make of Mallard Fillmore by Bruce Tinsley called "Swan F. Kennedy by Goose Tinsley". I chose that name over several other options, like Andrew Quackson, Swan Quincy Adams, Quackery Taylor... There's more to my idea for this strip than just the name though, obviously.

The duck is saying "I'M GAY" because that's one of my most cathartic tics, from the Tourette's.

Preston Blair And His Amazing Animation Book

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 20:44:00 +0000

I recently got Preston Blair's seminal book on animation. John K, creator of Ren and Stimpy, swears by this book. Here's a post on his blog about how important this book was to him as a kid. So I bought it for myself and it's been pretty freaking useful.

However, while I do want to learn to animate, I mainly plan only to draw static cartoons. Blair's instructions about character construction are still extremely useful for this, but now I have to teach myself how to reconcile these techniques with my current drawing style, combining them to make characters that are specifically suited for what I want to accomplish with my cartoons.

Blair's techniques are meant for groups of animators to be able to reproduce characters from various angles with very little room for error. This means that the characters are fairly simple, and follow certain formulas that make them relatively easy to reproduce over and over again, at a fast pace.

That's why cartooning for animation and cartooning for comics are two different disciplines. They certainly overlap a lot, and people can switch between the two, but when you're drawing a static character, you don't need such simplicity.

Some of the features I like drawing most in my cartoons wouldn't work for animation, but I want to hold onto them. So now I have to absorb all the knowledge of this book, reading it multiple times and doing the practice drawings it prescribes until I have it all down. This is a big deal for me because I practice drawing pretty infrequently, and even on the days when I do practice, I don't do it for long. After I've done this, I'll make sure the book influences and improves my drawing technique without completely supplanting it.