Howard Tayler

A product photo. The caption reads "Urine Collection Hats for Toilet."

Apparently there's a device you can put in the toilet to make it easier to collect urine samples, and it's called a "hat" which means the product listing reads "urine collection hat."

The listing makes it sound MUCH more exciting than it really is.

You would tell me I'm not allowed, and I would listen to you because you are wise.

Similarly gobsmacked.

cartoon of Howard Tayler as a Modern Major General. A parchment with lyrics penned by Howard floats in the background My grip may seem quite tenuous upon what's called "reality" And still I strive while yet alive to soon obtain virality In matters of ad revenue and all the clicks that I can get I am the very model of an artist on the internet

Cartoon for @howardtayler.bsky.social on this your 'near as dammit' birthday. (high res sent by email). Wishing you all the best my friend :)

I'd need to nail the spirit of the song (irony w/re expertise, social satire w/re education), the internal and end-of-line rhyming, and the mirror structure ("the modern major general" line opens and closes each stanza,) but why bother? We already have "cartoon individual" and "the elements song."

Gimme a rhyming dictionary and the "Modern Major General" lyrics and yeah, I could filk that entire patter-song with lyrics making it about me.

For the Penzance folks out there, a gift on my not-birthday:

*sings*
My grip may seem quite tenuous upon what's called "reality"
And still I strive while yet alive to soon obtain virality
In matters of ad revenue and all the clicks that I can get
I am the very model of an artist on the internet

For the Penzance folks out there, a gift on my not-birthday:

*sings*
My grip may seem quite tenuous upon what's called "reality"
And still I strive while yet alive to soon obtain virality
In matters of ad revenue and all the clicks that I can get
I am the very model of an artist on the internet

I'm not going to ask you to build one of those since I know your response would be that we're not allowed to build one of those.

Seriously, that's been the family rule for 20 years now. MY day comes when there's a 29th. Kiddo's day comes every year, and he doesn't have to share it.

If they are selling books from those shelves, that booth is *heavy*. It looks like real, honest to Dewey of the Decimals library furniture. I hope they have a truck, a pallet jack, and a crew of strapping young roadies on the payroll.

"But Howard," you exclaim in despair. "It's your birthday, she should be home with you!"

That's sweet, but no. My actual, throw-me-a-party birthday doesn't arrive again until 2028. My legal, increment-the-age-by-one day is tomorrow, but it's the ACTUAL birthday of a kiddo, so he gets the party.

An exhibit hall booth for "Storybounders". It's a walk-in style (no front table) and the entire backdrop is luxuriously appointed bookshelves.

Sandra is running the exhibit hall at Storycon right now. She sent me photos of some of the exhibitors' and vendors' booths and the Storybounders booth is:
a) awesome
b) where I want to live

Whoa-oh, lemon on a pear. (A lemon balanced on a pear, a pun on the Bon Jovi "livin' on a prayer" song lyric.)

I'm 58 this year, so, y'know, I'm halfway there.

A "golden birthday" is when your age matches the day of the month. Mine would have come when I turned 29 on the 60th day of 1997, but since the 60th day of 1997 was March 1st the golden day ceased to exist before I aged into it.

If I live to 116 (29th "real" b-day) y'all better bring the good cake.

Well, now she only has to commemorate "this was a mistake" day every four years, right?

(I'm assuming you told that joke already.)

My response began "dude, I was *there*. February 29th happened that year."

His double-down: "No it didn't. It's every four years, but they skip on the century."

Me: "And then they UN-skip it on centuries divisible by 400."

Trivia for some, but c'mon. It's my birthday. Vested interest, etc.

Today is, according to Google Calendar, my birthday. Weird that they go with Feb 28 (closest February date) rather than March 1 (actual 60th day of the year) but I get it.

My fave Leap-Year Birthday story: that one time a stranger online *insisted* that I didn't get a birthday on Feb 29 of 2000.

Screeching isn't mentioned in the account, so it's possible that them dang NYSDEC po-po got the wrong owl.

A screenshot crop from the Disney Plus home screen. Up top it says "FOR YOU" and down below it says "ATTACK ON IRAN."

I was queuing up some mindless TV to stream while I work, and Disney+ served up this juxatpositional war crime.

Let's be clear. Whatever the attack on Iran may or may not be, it is definitely not "for me," and it's probably not "for you" either.

Article on AP's site.

apnews.com/article/owl-...

A light-brown and white owl, eyes shut, sits on a wooden shelf between a chicken-shaped cookie bowl and an urn.

I can't provie a full timeline cleanse, but here, courtesy of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Associated Press, is an eastern screech owl asleep in an antique store. (The owl was gently, and without incident, removed by NYSDEC and released into nearby woods.)

In full failure-mode, yes. It's there, but it doesn't actually work.

Sometimes a punchline is low-hanging fruit, and other times it's not hanging anymore, the fruit has long since fallen from the tree and it's all wormy and gross.

This particular punchline is just fertilizer with a pit in it.

English culture became infused with the idea that beef was the best food for the best people, and as we (hopefully?) all know, English culture got injected into lots of other cultures, and here we are today eating bazillions of beefs.

I'm not old enough (none of us are) to remember how we ended up with beef in the first place, but I've heard the story.

SIMPLIFIED: The English king liked beef. His meals were marched through town to be slaughtered. Nobility began copying him, and now London could see what the rich folk ate.

It's useful even if you work mostly analog. The panel and panel-cutting tools are super-fast and intuitive, and you can very quickly lay out panels for b/w inkjet printing, and then use the printout as a frame for thumbnails.

One reason I use CSP instead of PS is that it knows how comics work. I can lay out a page full of panels, and all my per-panel layer creation is taken care of.

Another reason: I can do the line art in vectors, which means I can scale up with no pixelation, like for merch or whatever.

A comic illustration done with Clip Studio Paint. It's an impact event seen from orbit.

Clip Studio Paint on the Surface Pro.

It lets me work with vectors, and has MUCH better comics lettering tools, but it doesn't have a robust suite of layer effects.

When he was wheeled out of the office, conscious, he told a joke about a dying man whose family is asking if he has any last wishes. "Something smells delicious," he says, "I just want some of that."

"Dad, pick something else, PLEASE. You're smelling the soup for your wake."

Legendary.