The Den

Culture Club

March 11th, 2021

I don’t believe in “Cancel Culture.”

I’m not saying there aren’t people out there who want things removed or ended because of their subjective views. I’m saying I don’t believe in the phrase “Cancel Culture.”

It’s made up.

Used by a group of people to further seed divide in a world that, last I checked, is already doing a darn good job of dividing itself on its own.

People have actually been cancelling things since the beginning of time. Jesus got cancelled hard, if I remember that correctly. Christian groups themselves have been boycotting people, groups, brands and companies for decades. As a huge fan of Kevin Smith, I suggest you ask him what the overall response to his film Dogma was back when it was released.

Spoiler alert: people boycotted it.

And it might surprise you to learn this: fictional cancel culture has absolutely nothing to do the current Mr. Seuss and Potato Person and Horny Skunk uproars.

These were all business decisions solely made by the companies involved. And I have another surprising theory for you: they did it because it makes *financial* sense.

How can that be? Because young people live longer than old people. And young people have made it abundantly clear that they have had enough of old people, and their racism, sexism, and outdated and offensive beliefs.

So if companies make decisions *now* to appeal to young people and their worldviews, they have a chance to gain customers for life.

So while 80-year-old Barb might be livid that one of the Dr. Seuss books that nobody liked anyway isn’t getting printed again, 18-year-old Anna might think it’s really cool they made that decision, and the Seuss estate might start seeing revenue from Anna for decades, while Barb and her ancient, primordial anger will soon be dead and gone.

I don’t believe in cancel culture — but I do fully believe in consequence culture and action culture. I think we have to be accountable, all of us, and I think that is the real threat that has people trying to invent labels.

Found in Space

March 9th, 2021

More and more lately, I find myself in space.

I’ve been feeling the everyday plaque of stress and anxiety building up faster and more frequently; I know it’s due to a complex constellation of reasons. Not that understanding it helps.

To find myself out, I have to place myself outside. Way outside.

I imagine that I’m looking at me, exactly where I’m standing right now, from a far off vantage point in space. In fact, I’m far enough away from Earth that I can barely see me at all. But that’s the point.

I’m so in awe of everything else between me and me that it puts the small stuff in perspective.

It’s only an exercise, so I have to practice it like one.

The phenomenon of déjà vu is easily explainable. It generally happens when you’re tired, and the result is your brain lags, giving you the feeling that you’re living through an experience twice.

Sometimes, when I’m not okay, I like to think that there’s a version of me who already exists who is okay. I’m just lagging right behind him, and I’ll be there soon.

I hope you’re doing okay today.

And if you’re not, I hope you catch up soon.

Two Become One

March 5th, 2021

What if you’re not really a person?

What if you’re actually just two concepts?

Two ideas with frequently oppositional magnetic poles.

Imagine two circles. I label one “Your Ideal Self,” and the other “Your Actual Self.”

Now imagine that from birth to death, all you do is push and pull these two circles together, creating a Venn diagram of varying degrees, though your ultimate goal is to unify your two circles into one. To make your actual self and ideal self the same damn self.

This is probably why so many of us are so tired all the time.

We want to be good, we want to be badass, we want to be strong, we want to be kind, we want to be productive, we want to relax, we want to be wealthy, we want to be generous — we have an ideal self that we’re constantly pursuing through trial and error, and despite our thoughts and intentions, the only results are our actual words and actions, which rarely present as perfect.

But something to consider is our idea of ideal.

Instead of forcing two different polarities to overlap and merge, maybe we just need to demagnetize entirely.

Embrace the idea that maybe your reality — the one that you inhabit right here, right now — is the ideal one.

That no matter where you were yesterday or where you’re heading tomorrow, you are where you essentially need to be today.

So you might be a person. You might also be two concepts.

But you are, without a doubt, alive, which means you are still exactly where you are supposed to be.

Apples to WAP

March 4th, 2021

A teacher is explaining to her young student how to properly compare things in order to increase understanding.

“What is WAP?” she asks the child.

“WAP is an explicit hip-hop song whose target demographic is a mature, adult audience who appreciates both the genre and the subject matter,” the young man repilies.

“Good,” the teacher says. “Now, what is a Dr. Seuss book?”

The student seems confused.

“A Dr. Seuss book is… a book. Written for and marketed to children, who are just starting to learn about the world and are easily impressionable.”

“Okay,” the teacher says. “So, is a Dr. Seuss book a song?”

“No,” the student answers.

“Is a Dr. Seuss book explicitly intented for an adult audience?” she asks.

“No,” the student answers.

“Looking at these very basic facts, are WAP and a Dr. Seuss book two good things to compare?”

“Well, no,” the child says. “That would just be a silly exercise in unnecessarily tearing down a thing I don’t like in favor of another thing I do like.”

“Very good,” the teacher says. “Class dismissed.”

new lights

March 4th, 2021

People like to say they appreciate good weather.

In my experience, most people only remember to appreciate it when it threatens to change.

Late-fall patio guests braving near-freezing temperatures. Grown men wearing short shorts in February.

Anything to get just one more day in.

When I was driving towards home on the freeway late tonight the lights of the city, for a reason I can’t explain, looked completely new to me. Like they did when I was a little kid.

And I remember long car rides home, falling asleep in the back seat. My head would shift from one side to the other, my eyes sliding open for a moment. I’d catch a glimpse of the lights, stunning, promising, and then go back to sleep, certain there would be more time to come back and see them again.

We tell children that what they experience as new, we’ve seen before, because we’re jealous of the feelings that they feel.

So often we treat our days like we have countless more to come. It’s rare to appreciate the people and moments in your life before you know it’s rapidly ending.

You Never Forget Your First (Unless You Actually Sort-Of Do)

March 1st, 2021

I read a lot of interviews with creative types. I can’t help but compare everything I do to everything everyone else does (and I don’t recommend it, especially when the stuff you make is as weird as mine).

My brain is always blown when people can recall the exact issue of the first comic they ever picked up. Not because it’s not a mind-blowing moment; it is. But because for most of my life, all I could ever remember were the covers.

I knew they were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and X-Men books. I had no idea when they were released, or who wrote or drew them. But I knew exactly what they looked like.

If you read my writing regularly, you know how often I talk about nostalgia. I love going to thrift and antique stores; the one in Burnsville is legendary. It’s like walking through a museum that sells the dinosaurs.

I was there last Monday, looking for nothing in particular, when TMNT Adventures #16 (bottom left) slapped me right in the face. OMG. That was one of the covers. I bought it and then ran home to scour eBay, finding the other cover I knew (#14). I learned that X-Men Adventures (a comic based on a cartoon that was based on a comic) existed, leading me to yet another cover I remembered.

I wanted these because I wanted to be able to say the first comic I ever picked up was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #14, which came out in September 1990 when I was 5 years old. I got it at the local drug store on a spinner rack when I lived in Minneapolis.

I wanted these because I wanted to know what my earliest artistic influences were. What shaped me as a kid and gave me such a love that I obsess over these stories, characters and medium to this day.

Speaking of which: my Mind’s Eye t-shirt arrived, too. The comic I picked up when I was 5 put me on a path to make my own comics and have relationships with the comic community and shops like the one on this tee.

Some love fades away — and some love just never dies.

Multiversal Recalibration

February 26th, 2021

We have this thing where we think we’re the center until we can see the whole.

A few months after my mom died, I got three plastic tubs full of stuff from the time I was born until the late 2000’s. She kept a lot of me and for that I’ll be forever grateful; if there is ever a me museum, it will be entirely too thorough.

For a long time, human beings thought Earth was the center of the universe. (I’m sure there are people who still do and I just can’t even right now.) It wasn’t until we pulled back to see the bigger picture that we found we were wrong.

I think the same goes for our sense of self. We start by knowing only ourselves and, as far as we can tell, we are the most important part of our own everyday existence.

For weeks I’ve been going through this stuff, reconstructing my own timeline, and it’s helping to see the actual orbits of my entire life.

Like the Earth itself, once self-actualized, we get to recognize the awesome system that we’ve been a part of all along.

Jupiter pulls in debris before it can reach Earth. We have people who speak dearly of and defend us when we’re not around. Other planets and stars make themselves visible regularly, shining bright. Those people share our orbit — they’re our cheerleaders, our moral support, who remind us that they’re always around. We all have our constellations of acquaintances, and some of those burn out. We each find our own suns to rotate around.

And just as you’re accepting that you’re Earth, you make the realization that you’re also one of these other heavenly bodies to every other person you know. You’re a moon. You’re the sun. You’re a dangerous comet. You’re a shooting star.

I don’t know what I did to deserve the universe I got, but I do know that seeing my place in it from this vantage point has made me appreciative beyond belief.

There was once a scientist who spent his entire life trying to explain why our planet is 93 million miles away from the Sun.

The moment you figure out why that was a waste of time is when you accept and embrace your celestial roles in the infinite multiverse to which you belong.

Permission to Breathe

February 23rd, 2021

Despite everything, there is something magical about that first inhale of near-spring air after a seemingly infinite span of bitter cold.

I’m not a person who believes that suffering makes a human better. I think that I will always struggle to varying degrees from the pain that I’ve been through and the pain that I’ve inflicted; I feel like a lot of people who have been through any kind of trauma can attest to that. What doesn’t kill you could have, and it’s hard to forget that.

We’ve been through a deep freeze as of late. Only over the past day or two have we been able to remember a temperature that isn’t actively trying to kill us.

When I took Marvel out today, she gulped the air through her big, wet nose like she had never smelled sweet oxygen before. We smiled together, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, there is absolutely something special about being able to breathe fresh air after surviving a winter.

More than just a season, the last year has felt like that isolated cold. Staring out the window, counting uncertainties.

Learning to breathe again — cautiously, optimistically — is the lesson that I needed today. And my dog, aware that I am helpless without her, is the teacher who shows me how.

Boldly, With Love

February 20th, 2021

There is something about a direct kind of love that is irreplaceable.

Last winter, I bought this long-sleeve shirt.

One of the first times I wore it was at a convention in Hastings, the very last one my mom came to.

She looked at my shirt and told me how beautiful she thought the rose was on it.

As far as I know, my mom was not a fan of anime. (That’s an assumption, but she had never expressed any love of Japanese cinema to me.) She had no idea what a Cowboy Bebop was and didn’t really have an interest in finding out.

But she really loved that rose.

And she always made a point to point out the things that she loved.

It made her a remarkable kind of joy to be around.

Among so many other things, I got my love for America’s Funniest Home Videos from her. (I named the first chapter of my first book after that very show.) It is one of the first things I remember watching with her and it was one of the last.

Like her, it lacked pretense. It clearly communicated what it was all about. It was fun and it was direct.

I miss that directness a whole lot right now.

We so frequently bend the frequency of our words in order to get to what we mean in roundabout ways. So many of us revel and wallow in irony, sarcasm, and outdated social contracts.

We need to tell each other how much we love those roses.

Boldly, fearlessly, directly with love.