Bad Hawaiian jokes pt.1

This is a common joke out in the country/outer islands. The city kids don't get it at all, because they speak less pidgin/Hawaiian. I tell this one to my summer reading kids every year, and every year they stare at me like I'm speaking gibberish. Which I am. THAT'S WHY IT'S FUNNY. Bah.

Here is the un-funny kau kau joke. ("Kau" is pronounced the same as "cow".) This joke works best out loud. Yell the last two lines at your confused victim.

I'll update this with color soon.

Almost done

Well, this thing is coming along. I have mixed feelings about it. One week left to fill in all the gaps.

Today on the way to school dropoff

A challenge has been issued, boundaries are being tested. I walked right into it.

Gavin vs Pan the cat

My teenager got a smelly butt smashed in his face and asked me to document it for posterity. 

yesterday in my garden - comic

Leif has started filling up scraps of paper with little comics about cats and robots and killer cyborg snowmen, so I got him a proper sketchbook. He sits in the back seat on the way to school, drawing and writing. 

I said to him, "And if anything funny or stupid happens to you during the day, you can draw a short little comic about it. Just like 3 panels or something."

And I realized that I don't even do that. Why don't I do that? I MUST DO THAT.

So I did that. Here is yesterday's gardening incident. 

La Boheme

(Edited again for clarity because I have been in a state of high distraction lately and forget that people don't necessarily know about my laundry situation and driving in Honolulu.)

Everything went off the rails an hour before I was supposed to leave work. One of our regulars - a soft-spoken, polite older guy who likes art and poetry - came stalking into the library, hair wild, shirt untucked, hospital band on his wrist, and proceeded to have a complete ranting meltdown. I got him to calm down enough to explain that he'd been fasting and praying for 30 days - this is bad. One of our library patrons on Maui did this, and it ended with him tying his fiance to a chair and lighting her on fire to purge her of demons (she got away, thankfully). Suddenly he veered off subject, demanding to know where the secret cameras were. We don't actually have security cameras in the library, but I didn't want to tell him that in case he planned to do something violent, so I played dumb and asked what kind of cameras he meant. He got mad and called me brain dead. "Okay," I said, walking away, and he ran outside while we called the police. The police came skipping in - SKIPPING - because it was hot enough outside that an hour hanging out at the library talking to hobos was a nice break in the day. Officer Skippy stood bouncing on the balls of his feet and gesticulating with his elbows while my boss chatted with him and offered him coffee. "Nah man I can't drink coffee, it makes me hyper."

So by the time we wrapped that up and I went skidding to my truck, I was already a bit ruffled.

Here is the (edited for coherence) post I knocked out while flapping through the house in an increasing panic, trying to get ready for the opera in under an hour (but thinking this was plenty of time, so stopping to type about it):
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So much getting ready around here.

I went to three stores looking for panty hose because no sensible person in Hawaii wears these horrors, and forgot to find SHOES. HA. AND HA. I HAVE NO SHOES. You know what I have? Leather boots with Scottish fringe on the toes. We will see how that goes with a flapper dress  in a minute.

update: OH NO I put on so much squeezy underwear that the dress is too big now and my bra is hanging out. You LIED TO ME, magic dress.

update: My fanciest necklace appears to be the one that is just an entire dead dinosaur skeleton. I did not plan any of this at all.

Update: changed undercrackers, ran outside in panty hose to find different bra on the laundry line, stepped in chicken shit in my bare stockings.

Update: the lace on my boots broke.

These are the backup shoes. Seriously. 

At least I found better jewelry - even though it does not MATCH

Drove like madwoman to aunt's house, soothing my nerves with Black Sabbath. I hopped into her car and she drove us into Honolulu to meet my mother at the Blaisdell Center opera theater. We got stuck in traffic because there were THREE events going on at the Blaisdell, so as we were diverted around a back street and came to a standstill I ditched my aunt, bailed from the car, and ran into the parking garage to find my mother, who was texting me with promises of shoes. Seeing me jump out of traffic, doors flung open all up the road, and frantic passengers scrambled out, some of them lugging enormous cello cases, and we all ran in a herd toward the concert center.

My mother was waiting in the parking garage and threw shoes at me the moment I charged into view. I chucked the ugly loafers into her car, then we clicky-clacked in high heels to the booze line and got a beer down each of us just as the lights blinked on and off to signal show time. My aunt managed to park the car and skidded in to join us as the doors opened.

Observe the fancy:

If you only ever listen to one song from La Boheme, let it be this one. In college I had only a couple of albums because I was broke, and the soundtrack to the Midsummer Night's Dream movie was one of them. Pavarotti sang this to me about a thousand times while I was adjusting nodes on my animation rigging. I've long since lost that cd, so when they began singing it I almost started crying up there in the balcony.

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So that was all lovely. And now I am at work early to prepare for a special event, and GUESS WHO IS IN THE PARKING LOT WAITING FOR US? The fasting and praying guy from yesterday, that is who. I am over-using capslock today, because holy shit. He is staring at the building, waiting for us to open. Is he here to apologize for flipping his gourd, or to stab us all to death for calling the cops on him?

Will report. Probably. Unless I'm stabbed. Probably even then, though, to be honest.

update: he hid behind a sign and eventually got chased away by the shirtless knife-sharpening guy who parks on that corner with his whetstone. (He sharpens knives for a small fee, and works out of his car. - when he's not coming into the library to use the toilet and giving me attitude for asking him to put a shirt on.) This exciting librarian life.

Comic color sample

No text here, but I finished some color! And WHOA it takes forever. The big white text bubbles will lend contrast against the neutral background.

Here we see a Very Persuasive Argument in action.

I'm still updating the Inktober post every day. Click or scroll down to see a fat toad and read a terrible anecdote.

End of Week 1

Here is how the inktober project is coming along so far. For daily updates, see the ongoing inktober post.

This has been a good thing to work on. The internet is a shit-show right now, and a body has to pull back, put on some music, and make something with their hands to give their brain a chance to recover from the repeated stabs. Draw something. Build something. Repair something. Strangle something. I'm going to get a sharp knife and julienne a few hundred strips of lime peel with my mother today and come home with jars of marmalade. The kids visit grandma every weekend, and while they are outside playing with the neighbor kids and their cousins, we tell stories over iced tea or Guinness until the stressful bits of the week dry up and fall off. These are the days we will tear a hole through time to get back to some day. I still wonder and wish that things had turned out differently in some ways - that I had been braver or stronger or less foolish - but things are good and fine right now. Especially if I stick to the women in my family and stay industrious.

I haven't posted the comic progress lately, but I'm 60 pages in now, and I love it a lot. I'm making efforts to step out of my comfort bubble and form online connections with other local comic artists so I can join the real-life scene. I'll post something soon.

the dress

One of the things about island living is that when your kid has a sports competition in another county, it involves an airplane, hotel, and $250 that you could have spent on groceries and opera dresses.

So the teenager is going to the Big Island to battle robots, and I have a dress budget of... nothing. I can afford some panty hose, maybe. That's a good look. Very post-modern. I could probably pull it off with a lot of eye makeup and some stark dance poses while I sip my refreshment at intermission.

ANOTHER BUD LIGHT, in your fanciest plastic champagne flute, barkeep

When I explained the dress situation to my mother while visiting last weekend, she said, "Oh, here, I got this at a consignment shop in Indiana last summer," and like some kind of wizard she pulled a garment out of her bag of holding and tossed it at me.

look at the beads on this thing.

all I've got in my bag of holding are some markers, a can of chicken, and a couple of books

And even though we are different sizes, the dress fits both of us - in the manner of some enchanted, possibly haunted artifact. Dean Winchester is probably going to come charging through the crowd to rip it off of me and burn it in a ring of salt before the second act. If he gets past the Librarians and the guys from Warehouse 13. (Great Scott, my references are OLD. Who are the youths watching nowadays for their supernatural artifact disposal needs? I don't have cable anymore.)

SHUT UP, DEAN

So that promises to be an exciting evening.

Now I just need to find a strapless bra that won't slither down around my middle. GLAMOUR.

Inktober

This is a thing I have been eyeballing from outside the circle of cool kids for a few years now. This year I have decided to slide myself in among them and pretend I am cool, also.

Except I immediately did it wrong, because I didn't follow the prompts and just started drawing things in my garden. I figured if I drew 31 little things on one page, at the end of the month I would have something to hang on the kitchen wall. Now I'm committed. Sorry, Inktober, I will do you right next year.

And evidently it's a really good thing I'm doing this, because I've been drawing on a tablet for so long that I have been trying to undo my inkwork by tapping on the page. And I turned the paper by spanning it around with two fingers. It also won't zoom in or out when I pinch it, which is some kind of bullshit. I am somewhat-less-slowly going blind in my mid-thirties and have immediately lost every pair of reading glasses I've pilfered from the unclaimed lost-and-found bin.

So I've been using these old physical-world brain connections, and the realization that they have been withering has alarmed me enough to wildly issue a ban on all electronics in the evening. I am not a popular parental figure at home right now.

Day 1: could only find grey paper and decided I could make it work. Drew Bucky, fighting with paper nearly constantly as it refused to be electronic.

Day 2: added a lilikoi vine. Tried to compensate for grey paper by adding white paint highlights. Ruined everything.

Day 3: found white watercolor paper in bottom of closet. Copied entire design and inked it in more loosely. Added basil. Brain began to accept what was happening.

Day 4: added a gardenia while drinking coffee at 5:30am. Felt pretty good about it.

Day 5: chased the chickens into the coop before work and sat for 10 minutes hastily adding a sprig (branch? stalk? clipping?) of cherry tomatoes.

Day 6: woke up to pee in the bed (not mine. well, my bed, because I sleep with Zenny because HAHA I HAVE INTIMACY ISSUES, but not my pee). Dealt with bedding and confused 3 year-old who did not like being washed with butt wipes at 5:15am. Realized coffee container was empty. So was the milk. Made pancakes, then burned them because the cat tried to barf on my computer and when I chased her down from the table she barfed on my work shoes. Gave up on the day. Became miserable automaton, going through the motions and drinking staff-room coffee. Inktober is on hold because there isn't any belladonna or piles of skulls or text bubbles filled with expletives growing in my garden, and I don't want to fuck the whole thing up with my bad mood. There are rats and toads in the underbrush, though... hmm.

(10 hours later)

Day 7: more chickens. These are two of the pullets, Weasley and Sirius.

Day 8: oregano, which has become a monster taking over the herb garden. I don't even use oregano because I cook mostly asian food. It knows this, and has grown four feet tall up the side of the house.

Day 9: Scorpius the chicken. I think I'm getting the hang of this chicken drawing business. 

Day 10: Pan the chicken-chasing cat. Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, and we're throwing a miniature feast. I know a miniature feast is usually called a meal, but this meal has PIE. And GRAVY. A meal with capslocks. Which the man forgot about and made appointments during, so it'll just be me, the kids, and grandma. Whatever, I'm the Canadian, not him. More pie for us.

October 11th: Last of the 5 chickens. I've been calling this one Chuck. She's adventurous, funny, and just a bit mean, which are qualities that I find endearing in an individual. Except if those qualities are accompanied by peeing in my closet, YOU HEAR ME, CATS?

October 12th: hops. There is a lie in this one - we didn't get any cones this year, because we can't keep the roots cold enough in the winter to activate their... sexiness? I am not a botanist. But I feel you, hops. 

October 13th: creeper vine. I have never looked up what kind of vine this is, but it grows everywhere. After we buried the cats, we didn't want to turn that corner of the garden and see the sad little pile of barren dirt, and when I finally steeled myself to look around the edge of the garden wall I had one of those strange and wondrous into-the-wardrobe moments - the overturned dirt had been completely taken over by vines with tiny yellow flowers. They covered the graves, flowed up the garden wall, and draped themselves over the neighbor's scrawny tree, creating a glowing arbor filled with white butterflies and drifting dust motes. It's still growing there in that discarded little corner behind the garage, an impossible little entryway into some place I'm too old to venture.

Oct 14: A squishy little toad. We have a lot of toads here. Out by the lychee tree, if you rake up leaves there are ripples and flutters as tiny baby toads hustle to safety. Inside every big clay flowerpot is a fat sleepy toad nestled into the dirt. If you like toads, which I do, it's charming to find them like garden gnomes under rocks and behind bushes. But it's sad, too, because after every rain storm the roads are littered with dead toads, smashed by cars as they hop out onto the wet pavement. A few days ago, I walked Leif to school and we crossed a newly-mown field littered with dead and dying toads. I picked up one that was completely broken but still alive and moved it beneath a bush so it wouldn't have to die in the hot sun. I'm still sad for it. So here it is. I'm so sorry I didn't know how to fix a broken toad, little guy.

Oct 15: strawberries. 

Oct 16: Lychees. Up top, overhanging everything, as it does.

Oct 17: night blooming jasmine.

Oct 18: Tiny gecko chasing ladybug and white butterflies. Although if I were striving for accuracy, this garden portrait thing would be just a flapping mass of pigeons and doves. The chickens got into the feed cupboard and pecked open the chicken grain, then spread it all over the porch so that when we got home there were roughly a billionty fucking birds in the yard. THE NEIGHBORS WILL TELL ON US, CHICKENS. I am always telling the kids at the library, be sneakier. If I SEE you eating a damn bag of chips or pro wrestling in the stacks, I have to tell you to take it outside. Figure this out. I don't tolerate bullying, but I'm pretty lenient with what I call "Weasley crimes". Kids are supposed to test authority and get up to mischief, but Fred and George at least TRIED not to get caught, ffs. 

Oct 19: a couple of slugs. These things murdered my eggplant, er, plant. I came out one morning and one of them saw me and went, "oh shit" and tried to run away. It very slowly executed a graceful backflip and lowered itself down to the ground on a string of slime. In slug time, it was probably a stunning feat of athleticism and the slug ran off to tell his friends they should have seen him. In human time, I was standing and watching a slug for ten minutes, because I am super terrible at murdering things/proper gardening. The chickens appreciate this, and I haven't seen any slugs since the pullets went free-range.

October 20: I hate drawing ferns. Ferns hate me drawing them. My kids hate me drawing ferns, too, and they began meowing for milk and brownies and a bath and help using the bathroom as soon as I sat down, so I drew it quickly with someone hanging on my arm. It shows. Bah.

October 21: red-vented bulbul. We've got a lot of these guys hanging out in our tree, trash-talking the chickens.

October 22: gladiolas. I planted some of these last year and killed them, so I was surprised when they came back up this year and flowered into glorious pink blossoms. I have since killed them again.

October 23rd: Mundungus the pigeon, sunning his armpits. I over-inked this one because someone was hanging on my arm again.

October - what day is this? I missed 2 days and then they didn't turn out well because I was texting instead of focusing.

Ugly nasturtiums:

Lettuce that looks like a discarded wig:

October 27: I got derailed and drew a cow joke instead.
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If anyone else is doing this, please link in the comments.

I will add to this post as the month progresses.