The Darkness is one of the best bands EVER. Real life Spinal Tap with lyrics that make me almost laugh all over myself? Guy with falsetto? OH HECK YES:

The band broke up after their lead singer, Justin Hawkins had some trouble with drugs and alcohol. Justin formed the band Hot Leg. This actually kicks ass:

The rest of the guys formed Stone Gods. This also actually kicks ass:

Now The Darkness is back together and playing reunion shows in the UK. A 3rd album will be out at an undisclosed date.

THAT kicks ass.

It’s Friday, you guys! Time for DOUBLE DREAM HANDS!!!!

I have been buying MAC Cosmetics since the 90s. They probably were the first company to really get highly-pigmented cosmetics right and market them to people who would use them. I think almost every goth or alternative person I knew used them. MAC has (or had) a really great recycling program called Back to MAC. You’d collect up 6 old plastic containers and bring them back to the store. In return you’d get a free lipstick. If you took them to the Pro store you could choose between a lipstick, lipgloss, or eyeshadow. The justification I heard for this program from MAC employees was that they did this instead of giving a “free gift” like other similarly priced companies do. Very cool! You get to customize your free thing!

Err…well, it WAS very cool. Some background:

MAC invaded the internet early and fast. There are a lot of bloggers working for marketing companies (ostensibly hired by MAC) who support this. A big thing is teaching people advanced tips, like how to “depot”. Depotting is when you remove the eyeshadow from the annoying container and place it in your own palette to save space. The policy used to be that these containers would still be accepted, but recently a lot of counters have decided to interpret the policy whichever way they want and not accept them. My understanding from my contact with MAC employee friends is that they are supposed to not reinterpret policies, but they do it anyway and MAC corporate doesn’t enforce it.

So here I am – a customer who has spent a lot of money on high end cosmetics thinking I’d eventually get my free thing – but I was denied at 2 counters now because I had depotted them.

Yes, I know it’s stupid. It’s just a free small thing, but when you invest in high end stuff, you expect to not get shafted like this – and a MAC lipstick isn’t exactly drugstore cheap. We all know it doesn’t cost much at all to make most of these things and that its nearly all markup. You are paying mostly for the brand and the service. One could say that “Of course MAC won’t take the container back without the metal pan inside”, but if that’s how they want to interpret the policy now, then they had better write it down and and make a cohesive policy that ALL counters follow consistently. MAC knows there is a big culture on the internet around depotting and never said it would void the Back to MAC. You can’t get a straight answer from them no matter how often you email them, either. Perhaps this is in their best interest? A quick google reveals that some people have no trouble returning depotted packaging and others (like me) get turned away. It’s a crapshoot.

And this was the little push I needed to switch from MAC to NARS Cosmetics. I don’t mind policy changes, but sloppy articulation and inconsistent application of it makes me feel like I’m just at the mercy of someone’s good or bad mood. It feels a bit like being lied to. Just tell me what I can and can’t do, kay?

The hilarious thing is that my understanding is that if you mail your packaging to corporate they will give you your free thing no problem. I’m just going to do that and be off to NARS.

I am converting the recently posted Stupid and Insane comics back to digital and proceeding with updating that once a week and updating My Annoying Life once a week.

The reasons for this might surprise you. (Or not. I don’t know.)

I originally decided to hand draw the comics because I frankly like drawing by hand. It’s how I learned and the most natural way to do it. There was a deeper, stupider reason for this, though. I do feel that there is a bias against people who make comics digitally. Even I succumbed to the desire of fitting into the comics scene – which I have never felt like I fit into very well to be honest. There is some sort of idea of who a comic artist should be and the style that they should draw in. It’s not me, and I have come to the conclusion that this will never be me.

I don’t fit a mold. I do whatever I want. I don’t follow trends. I created my own style without trying to copy anyone else’s. Perhaps I am an asshole in that way, but that is who I am. In my early career, I just wanted to fit in because I imagined that somehow that if I were a “real artist” it would make things easier for me. Guess what? It didn’t.

There are 3 reasons for this:

1. I’m already a “real artist”.

2. No amount of changing who you are will make anyone accept you. If they are too much of a dickwad to accept who you really are, it won’t ever work. I know this. I knew this. I let my self doubt shit in my own face.

3. I do more work than the average comic artist. I work a dayjob as a Project Manager. I put together, oversaw, and did all of the marketing and sponsorship and staffing and program design and most of everything else for Intervention. I also maintain this blog, my NJ.com blog, and update 2 comics which each have their own accompanying blog and write tutorials and try desperately to make it to the supermarket or sleep at least once in awhile. I also work with companies to generate revenue for my work – something which I don’t think most other webcomics have figured out how to do yet even though I am constantly sharing my secrets to try and prevent more people from starving to death. Telling a corporation who wants to contract me that I can’t attend a conference call because I’m inking a drawing with a new brush pen that came out of a magical yak’s ass just isn’t a smart idea in my case.

Drawing by hand took longer, so my art quality suffered as I tried to rush it. When I’m “on” and not bombarded with more work than the average corporation has, my traditional art is similar to my digital. So why on earth was I dicking around longer for arbitrarily no reason on little details that were detracting from my ability to make revenue off of the very same property?

I’ll still do things by hand and maintain a sketchbook of course, but the art pieces I release will be special content.

In this field, people get angry when you so much as miss an update. If that is the priority, why on earth was I fretting over how the sausage was getting made when I should have been concentrating on meeting my deadlines and generating revenue with more accuracy. THAT’S how you survive in comics.

Give me some time to catch up with the digitization of the ones I did by hand and I’ll be back on schedule. Thanks for reading, guys. These are the growing pains I’m facing as my business gets bigger.

Thanks to Pink Gumii Bear for sending this in – there is a haunted house called Ghost Ship that happens on a real boat in California. This haunt is different from the Ghost Ship at Morey’s Piers in NJ.

There will be 3 levels of haunts at the California Ghost Ship. The boat will actually depart for sail. The middle level is a cocktail lounge themed after the 1930s. No part of the ship is off limits.

If you live near this haunt and can review it for me, please contact me. I live in NJ and can’t get to the west coast this year…even though I REALLY want to.