Color, right?

Working on this webcomic is turning out to be a full time job!  One with no pay or benefits, and no PCC grocery store across the street.  I’m starving! 

I’m trying to improve something about the comic every day, which ends up taking longer than I expect every time.  Messing around making old posts look better means I’m not drawing anything new.  Am I procrastinating from doing my hobby that is really procrastinating from doing housework?  Is “procrastinating from” the correct phrase?  These are important questions.

Many Pack Rats adore pancakes due to their convenient stackability.

The Kiwi depicted in Day 28’s comic is in reality very lovely, not at all hideous as shown.  Also, it wasn’t too terribly awkward, really.   You guys are the best!

I’m not just saying that so I can come back and get more Skillet Street Food with y’all.  Really.

Wow!  My friend Brian of Trendesigns posted a super cool plug for PR Issues on his blog Out On A Limb.  Brian is an awesome artist and designer, and I’m so grateful for his support for my comic.  Brian is definitely someone you want in your corner.  Even if he did reveal my secret identity as a unicorn.  Argh!

While we’re waiting for content to magically plant itself in my brain (or pencil, or wherever it goes), please enjoy this pack rat from a few years back.  I posted it on a previous blog dedicated to decluttering and packratism.  Here’s the blog entry that went with it:

OK, check this out. I was on the bus this morning reading Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You — and What to Do About It by Cindy Glovinsky when this idea hit me. It involves rewarding yourself for completing tasks, like putting away your clothes. Only you use M&Ms as the reward. You have a bowl of them sitting there, tempting you… And all you have to do is get up and clean/sort/put away/file/fix one thing, or maybe one group of things, and the M&M is yours. Who can eat just one M&M?? You’d be flying all over the house dejunking so you can get more tiny bits of precious chocolate. Plus, the flurry of activity will burn off those tiny M&M calories and fat.

Should I give this method a name, or just skip ahead and call it Failed Plan #27?

Mmmm…. chocolate… 

I really wanted to make this “NETworking” thing work, but I couldn’t decide which of the options I’m posting was the least unacceptable.  I need your help!  It’s easy: Just comment on the comic to voice your opinion — Do you like #1, #2, #3, #4, or have your own hilarious suggestion?  If someone leaves a suggestion that makes me fall out of my chair laughing, then all votes are out the window and I’ll go with whatever is most awesome. 

I’ll post the favorite version on Friday, February 20th, around noon Pacific time.  That’s tomorrow, so vote quick!  Please note that your comment may not show up immediately if you have not commented before.  Don’t panic!  Just vote!  Thankees!

UPDATE:  Voting is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who voted in the recent dialog contest!  I had hoped to publish some of the suggestions in a blog entry, but I’m having a bit of trouble with WordPress displaying the images.  I don’t know why they’ll show up as regular comics but not along with blog text.  Grr!  So some of the runners up may appear as the main comic someday instead, we’ll see.

Sorry the text in today’s strip “Dreamy” is a little hard to read.  I’ll try to pretty it up tomorrow.   I need to find a font I like so I don’t have to keep showing off my unsightly lettering.

Like many of you out there, I love NBC’s 30 Rock.  But this Thursday’s episode freaked me out a little.  Someone on the writing staff has the bizarre fascination with storage containers that is so dangerous to pack rats.  I know, I know, they were poking fun, but there was a kernel of truth, a touch of the secret awe that I am all too familiar with when it comes to mass produced organizational tools.  The weirdly specific “decorganization” products Liz Lemon picked up were not only shiny and conveniently interlocking, but color-coordinated for either practical decorating, color coding, or dare I say it:  both.  I could almost smell the sickly plastic aroma of those translucent, lavender-pink stackable containers.  Ahh, that smell of hope, change, and mildly toxic plastic fumes.  Smells like the distant possibility of victory just over the next couple of hills if I’m reading this compass right.  Yes!  There is nothing like buying more stuff to contain your overflowing collection of stuff, especially when you know darn well you’ll never get around to the actual organizing phase.  And someone writing for that show knows it.  Who is it?  Tina Fey herself?  I knew I loved her for a reason.

Ooh, I just discovered this open letter to the Container Store that says it better than I can.

I was further freaked out when the episode touched on some other ideas I’d had for a PR Issues story arc, something I was considering for waaay down the line.  (I choose to remain mysterious here, but no, it’s not the Funcooker.)  LIZ LEMON, GET OUTTA MY HEAD!  Seriously, it’s really disorganized in there and you’ll never find your way around.  Though I would give you my compass if I could find it.

-L