Hmmmm,

Sometimes I have nothing to say.  For those who were strangers to me when I was young that would come as no surprise.  A conversation between me and a stranger when I was, say, 8 years old would go something like this.  “Hi there little feller.”  That’s it.  I always thought I was a hardcore introvert.  Now I just don’t care if I’m introverted or not.  I might be.

I thought about rambling on about how I’ve got nothing to ramble on about but that would be one of the more lame things I’ve done recently so I won’t.

Good 11:11 pm,

That reminds me, when I got my first watch as a youngster I used to make a point of witnessing it roll over 11:11:11 every morning.  It got to the point where I would get an unexplainable urge to look at my watch in the morning and lo and behold it would be 15 seconds to the big moment.  Nov. 11 was a big day for me and my watch.  That was an embarrassment of riches of ‘1’s to look upon.  I always felt like it was kind of a ripoff that 22:22:22 didn’t have a similar matching day of the year.  Never once in the history of humanity has it been 22:22:22 on the 22nd day of the 22nd month of any year.  It’s really sad when you think about it.

Anyway, now it is 11:19 pm and I’m going to bed.  I would just like to add two things to this message.  I, personally, love tomatoes.  I would eat a whole fresh garden grown raw tomato every day if I had them available.  Also, there’s more.  Part 2, “The Most Unhealthy Thing”, coming next time whenever I get around to sending it.

Good evening,

Wow!  The year of the dragon is finally here.  This is so exciting.

I have never experienced this before and that is because until less than 12 years ago I never realized that the Chinese labeled any part of the time continuum that we all share, with animal names.

Anyway…

China and Europe discuss what to call Europe’s first year.  The Chinese have been having years for many years already of course.  This is complete nonsense by the way so if you aren’t into that kind of thing feel free to skip the rest of this.

The Chinese: Hey Europe.  What do you think we should call it?

The Europeans: I don’t know.  How about 1?

C: 1.  You want to call it the number 1?  Be creative.  Why not call it 0?

E: Ha ha.  Zero.  That’s a funny sounding word….zero…ha. What is that anyway? Some kind of vegetable?

C: Never mind.  If it helps, we are calling this one the year of the Monkey.

E: How primitive.  You are right about one thing though.  It is too early for the year 1.  This wonderful year of new beginnings will officially be known henceforth as the year of our lord Minus 1. (Trumpets)

Did he or didn’t he?  I guess we’ll never know.

Letter #1:

Dear gay people,

And by that of course I mean you readers of The Schtick who have just read today’s comic and are currently feeling gay (synonym: happy) as a result.  I worry a little bit about every one of my comics; that it is going to fall flat on its face.  Today’s is definitely no exception.  I’ve redrawn it 4 times (so 5 times total).  I almost never redraw a comic at all and actually never redraw any comic more than one time.  That sounded like a rule but it isn’t a rule.  It just hasn’t happened before.  The joke in this one makes me chuckle every time I think about it but on paper it just seemed to die right out.  I tried writing a lot more text to explain it.  I tried a lot more squares with nothing going on.  I tried throwing in extra unrelated action.  Nothing created more than a strained half smile in any of my forced reader tests.  Nobody has seen this final version before though.  At one point in time I thought it was perfect, as I do of all my comics.  Now though I’m right back to where I am with every other comic, worrying a little bit, which probably means its going to be ok.  I’ll get some positive response and I’ll get some negative response and both will surprise me a little bit because of their oppositeness.  (That’s a word isn’t it?  My spell checker doesn’t think so.)  That is all for today.  🙂

Looks (synonym: regards),

Ben

Letter #2:

Dear gay people,

And by that I mean people who may or may not have been offended by today’s comic (synonym for those people: panzies).  Please don’t be offended for a second time.  My wife thinks you might have been offended once.  She doesn’t know about the second time yet.  I think you probably weren’t offended the first time but might have been offended the second time when I called you a panzy. How should I know though?  I didn’t mean any offense.  I never do.  If you were offended, however, it may surprise you to know that I’m not sorry.  Life is too short to worry about such things.  And as my subconscious mind used to always say silently to itself so nobody could hear, “being offended every once in a while builds character.”  That’s not to say of course that if I had known ahead of time that you would for sure be offended that I would still have created this comic and posted it.  I wouldn’t have.  I never offend on purpose as those who know me can attest to.  I hope that makes you feel better.  It probably won’t though.  That line of reasoning never works on my wife and I’ve tried it more than once for various offenses.  If it doesn’t work on her it stands to reason that it probably won’t work on those of you who, like her, are attracted to men, or on those of you who, like her, are actually women.

Hole complete.  And looking very nice too, if I do say so myself.  (I like to finish things once I’ve started.)

Sincerely,

B Boyd

Intentionally making my online presence known,

Apparently that is what a greeting is according to Wikipedia.  I’ve paraphrased slightly.  My next greeting will be in Swahili.

As regards the following, a few of you tried.  I appreciate that.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Now it seems like a cheap trick and it looks stupid but I’m stuck with it: If anybody can figure out what this sentence is going to say before I finish writing it next time I’ll not finish writing it.  You made me do it.

You’ll notice that the second picture of Nixon is a reversed copy of the first.  If you thought I was a purist who drew everything with a pencil and didn’t mess with it electronically, you are mistaken.  I’m not a purist.  I have no rules.  I do whatever I feel like doing.  In this case I felt like not redrawing Nixon.

Darling Readers,

Before you start a letter in the future with “Dear” anybody, you should be aware of a few common synonyms that might be unwittingly substituted for the word by your reader, assuming those words to be interchangeable since they are synonyms.  Whenever anyone addresses a letter to me in that fashion I immediately start subbing in synonyms at random for common words throughout the piece just to get a little broader meaning out of the message.  It makes the letter that much more personal/startling/confusing; just the way I like it.

You may have noticed a recent lack of holiday specific material.  That is the way this comic rolls.  In my real life I may celebrate a holiday while as a comic writer I may completely ignore it.  However, don’t be surprised if you see Thanksgiving material in June or Easter stuff in October.  Valentine’s day may pop up any time of the year in the schtick world.

If anybody can figure out what this sentence is going to say before I finish writing it next time I’ll…

Deer Readers,

I know that there are female weather people out there but I am not going to take that into consideration while I write the rest of this email.  I hope you don’t mind.

I often wonder how much interpretation the weatherman has to do when relaying the output of the weather models to the public.  If the weather model says there will be 29″ of snow does he curb it down a bit to hedge his bets?

“I couldn’t possibly predict 29″ of snow.  They’ll laugh at me when we only get 12-16″ of snow.  On the other hand, 29″ of snow would make a great story.  Everyone will hang on my every word.  What to do, what to do!  Eeek.”

I’ve often thought that more of our weather than we’d like to know comes from a weatherman’s “good feeling” about something based on the data he gets.

Now, of course this is all pretty much nonsense since I virtually never, nay, literally never watch a weather report on purpose.  If it comes up on the radio it goes in one ear and out the other.  0 retention.  I couldn’t possibly care any more about the weather than I do about carpet.  (carpet was the most boring thing I could think of just now)  In reality this comic is based completely on what I hear other people say about weather reports and my own deep seeded personal wish to just once hear a weatherman predict a small herd of dinosaurs.  That would totally make my day.  I’m so happy just thinking about it.  Aaaah…small herd of dinosaurs, ha…

(a few minutes pass)

Don’t mind me.  I’m just enjoying the moment.