Post #17,873
11/12/01 11:15:59 AM
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I'm getting SO FREAKING TIRED of Help Desk
It's a terrible thing... but I'm just getting tired of doing that damned strip. I'm not tired of the idea of it, and I like having a forum where I can vent about things I think are horribly wrong about the computer industry at large, but it's just become a real chore to do day in and day out.
Bleah. Burnout, or something. At the same time, I don't really want to stop, I just want to get over disliking it. *sigh* Oh well.
"We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?"
- Edward Young
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Post #17,875
11/12/01 11:29:01 AM
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I'm not...but then again...I don't have to draw it...
...only read it and laugh!
You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! Laurie Anderson
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #17,880
11/12/01 11:33:04 AM
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New characters? Different sides of existing characters?
It has to be a challenge to keep the strip fresh and interesting for yourself.
It seems to me that most strips evolve over time. Bloom County introduced new characters over the years. Etc.
Help Desk is a wonderful strip. I'm sure you're very proud of it.
But if it gets to be annoying, take a different tack. Try introducing a new story line or characters. Have someone go on vacation or sabbatical for a while. Follow someone to their local big box retailer. What's The Boss's wife like? Who's being groomed to succeed The Boss? Where did The Boss go to school? Have them go to training for something. What's the Y-Box going to do to Ubersoft? Shouldn't Alex be going to night school?
My sister-in-law's boss is a Princeton graduate. He only likes to hire Princeton graduates. He's not to kind to people who work for him who aren't Princeton graduates....
Best of luck. Hang in there...
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #17,894
11/12/01 12:12:04 PM
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Y-BOX!
Good idea!
Maybe something about the [link|http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/news/news.pl?y=2001&m=10&nid=22-159.db|crashing] systems? ([link|http://www.evilavatar.com/EA/News/M34018/6983.jpg|screen capture])
I loved this Slashdot comment: Joking aside, the crash screen for XBox isn't the BSOD - it's a stylish green-tinted display which has obviously had a lot of work put into it, almost as if they expected it to be seen quite a lot...
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #17,882
11/12/01 11:33:45 AM
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My advice to you .....
.... is to start drinking heavily.
How to mangle the truth;
Have it reported by any major U.S. media outlet.
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Post #17,889
11/12/01 11:54:30 AM
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LOL
Then I could be an umemployed alcoholic cartoonist. That would be a switch.
"We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?"
- Edward Young
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Post #17,890
11/12/01 11:56:46 AM
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When in doubt
The answers to all questions can be found in Animal House. Usually spoken by Bluto.
:-)
How to mangle the truth;
Have it reported by any major U.S. media outlet.
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Post #17,898
11/12/01 12:27:08 PM
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Got an idea, listen to a radio show
called Phil Hendry. It is syndicated so look at your local listings. If it is on try it for 1 hr. You will laugh yer ass off and get some ideas.
Howsza about Tud? Tud is a 28yo 350 rave freak who also knows his way aroud nifty doorways. His personal habits from hair coloring to hygene bother our hero who is too polite to be blunt.
thanx,
bill
tshirt front "born to die before I get old"
thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"
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Post #17,907
11/12/01 1:24:24 PM
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Does it have to be a daily strip?
Will you get into trouble or anything if you change to a weekly schedule?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #17,908
11/12/01 1:28:03 PM
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well...
they want it at least three times a week. and if I'm doing three a week, I might as well do 5. There's not as much work going from 3 to 5 as there is 1 to 3...
"We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?"
- Edward Young
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Post #17,984
11/12/01 10:13:29 PM
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Then stop, unless it's economically important to you
and I'd think real hard about the economically important part.
When something like that gets to be a burden, turn it off.
Look, I love the strip and look forward to seeing it. But if you're burned out, and don't want to do it any more, it will fall down of its own weight -- and you'll be going out failing. This is not good for you or your readers.
As alternatives -- the guy who does Sluggy Freelance takes time off once in a while, with reruns or trivially simple stuff as fillins. Would something like that help you? A couple weeks, or a month, of "Help Desk Reruns" while you decompress?
OTOH if it's vital to your continuing to eat, I have no advice; I've something of a similar problem myself.
Regards,
Ric
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Post #17,994
11/12/01 11:37:06 PM
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Take a sabbatical
You just had something like a 15-in-a-row marathon? Do you need to produce stuff every day or every other day for Keenspot? Take a sabbatical. More stuff will come up, I'm sure. Such as the help desk guy without knowledge of C who tries to take a class requiring at least a conversant knowledge of C.
(There are obvious reasons I want to be an alternate rather than my "real" person.)
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Post #18,032
11/13/01 9:44:00 AM
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Seconded
even [link|http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/|Bill Watterson] took sabaticals.
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #18,108
11/13/01 4:05:44 PM
11/13/01 4:15:59 PM
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Built-in problem with this topic, too..
Any sane person, surveying the scope and banality of the machinations of this Muricam Taleban - even to lampoon that tawdry shit - has to suffer from..
Induced hopelessness, especially as these suppurating self-besotted babies skate right past all those Murican BS-Ideals (honored more by the breach than the sanctimonious recitations of the words).
This is, I believe - cumulative (emotionally). Every day that Billy n'Bally remain out of incarceration (while someone's cousin got 40-to-life for possessing maybe 3 weeks' supply of fav mind-altering substance) -- only rubs in the precipitous decline of *all* fantasies of there being justice:
Right Where One Lives!
Yet.. as the malodorous pile of new offenses grows, plans of as-yet unheard of hubris and: virtual gloating over their triumph over the grazing sheep -- anger is bound to surface more often + impotence (no?).. wondering if any But the converted -- will even see particularly brilliant skewering du jour(?).
It doesn't help that we simultaneously have an Ashcroft busily engaged in creating a Safe-fascist state (from the depths of His Orderly Mind\ufffd) .. but with great patriotic songs and lots of new flags, to console us mourners.
Take break, let subconscious rearrange stuff as it always does: I believe that IS exactly how -ever- we get good ideas; never 'intentionally' as on deadline. You're in good company - HLMencken, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal, Kurt V, Geo Carlin -- and the ghosts of Laugh-In and Smothers Bros + *Monty Python* GIANTS all !!!
(One Smothers Bro lives nearby me; and Goldie Hawn Lives! - to give you some extra-sensory support in the \ufffdther ;-)
Remember: We Shall Win in the end. As (Rainer Maria) Rilke wisely deduced, Always choose the difficult.. Such a policy guarantees mental superiority over the banality of all Evul - because that is the course of the EZ-slogan and the mindless going-along: ever downwards (as every plumber knows: shit goes downhill).
Cheers,
Ashton
PS - maybe mull about? - the beginnings of maturity in our fav headsetted-geek... the sloughing-off of years of vegetating and regurgitating: culminating in a real Epiphany! [now That will be hard for any author in words/pix]
Chance to contrive some truly excoriating 'FACE-time' with the BOSS; recall the melting of the Wicked-Witch - from just plain water (cleansing..?). etc. Enormous possibilities in the Final Countdown...
Dissection of the BOSS' innards, after: slain by Pure Revealed Truth! finding of an entire Giga-turd of slogans, a Kill-O-liter of 190 proof distilled Greed-elixir (\ufffd by several Corps - techno- spleen-exchange agreements though).
Some hermeticall sealed exactly-Identical McD frenchfries? A Nike-shoe filled with childrens' fingers? Imagine what you might find in the chest cavity, where hearts normally are found? And which substance coursing through 'blood' stream, turned him Greeni$h.. Our Myths == Use Them! Abuse Them.. Do Bizness With Them -- it is Sooo Murican Too !!
Just imagine: the scrofulous (verbal descriptions) you could daily enumerate of ~ the internal construction of, such as The Boss: the infinite pin-sticking as you analyze the palpable [Contents] of the mentation of a Boss of a place run by juvenile escapees from The Lord of the Flies
An endless gazeteer of Mordor - *personified* as a er Familiar Corporate Policy re [Piggy!] == the grazing sheep they exist to exploit. (Sympathetic portrayal of sheep / Inverse for the Taleban). Go Get Em <----\ufffd
Metaphor - don't leave the Pineal gland without it!
A.
Ranged.. not De-
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