Celebrating 3 Exciting Years with the Same Tagline!

As most of you who read This is Joe's Fault already know, "I'm a me-too product, and I don't care who knows it!" In re-making the look of the site I thought I'd think up a new tagline. But then I got caught up in fiddling around with the tech side and promptly forgot all about it.

Quickly I snapped into Marketing Mode and came up with a proactive new post title that I felt best leveraged the core competencies of the brand, focused on the heritage of the site, and yet was a bit "in your face".

SHA*ZAM!! MAR*KET*IZED!!

Say, speaking of mostly banal ideas, let's talk about web comics! Seems like everybody who's anybody has one these days. And because the best and funniest ones seem so effortless, everyone thinks, "hey, I can do that". Of course I'm not immune to that hypnotizing prospect, so about a year ago I let fly the well-worn battlecry of "me, too!" and I tried my hand at it.

I went to one of those "do-it-yourself web comics" thingies and made three god-forsaken atrocities. Nine-panel "jokes", lots of blank screens to indicate a break in the "action", and inexplicable text bubble problems. In one of them there's an empty bubble, but the joke is over. I have no idea why.

It's hardly worth your while, but if you're so inclined you may check them out at Comicgen. If you want to see mine, you've got to click on "Comicbox" and search for "Alanis". And when you're done looking at one, you've got to repeat the process to see the others.

Look, I told you it was hardly worth your while.

Anyway, as I was saying. There are a lot of web comics out there, a metric tonne of them bad, some of them good, a few of them really good. (I was going to put in references to each here, but I'm sure you've seen many, many of all kinds and can make your own distinctions).

If you've gone and wasted your time and effort looking at my sad things, may I make the personal suggestions of checking out some of my friends' real strips? I promise they're better. spinn, Lore, Zompist, and Agto have very funny, somewhat insular, political, quirky comics that you may get a kick out of. Note: not all of those adjectives apply to each of them.

However, comics is a mite personal, so I make no promises. (And don't be put off by the tiny-headed creature in any of Zomp's comics, it's no one you know. Let's move on.)

The other comic you should check out is Christopher Livingston's Concerned: the half-life and death of Gordon Frohman. It's about some damn video game or something, I'm sure I don't know. But that's the beauty of Chris' work. Temping, video games, blogs. Some of the most mundane things in the world. And still, they're interesting and funny in his hands. I'm looking forward to his next project wherein he takes a chunk of the phonebook and writes about it at length. Talented bastard.

(Incidentally, I've now changed his link on the side to take you to the comic. Not My Desk, while still hilarious, is no longer being updated.)

Again, I can't promise that you'll like Chris' Concerned comic because, really, who can promise something like that? There are people who seriously think Hi and Lois is funny. I can guarantee you there is someone somewhere that has got one cut out and put up on their cubicle wall or fridge in the break room. You just never can tell what people will like. The world is weird and wild, crazy, crazy mess.

Well, on that happy note, I'm off. This working-on-my-blog-more-than-one-hour-at-a-time thing has taken it out of me. I've really got to get back into writing shape.

And now that I've pointed you away in a million different directions, I sure hope you decide to come back.

(Don't make me SHA-ZAM you again!)

Change is Coming

I've got an update for this week, however, I've been feeling a little... same-y lately, so I'm going to look at revamping the old blog.

Now, you know how I am with the technical aspect of the internet, so it might not be the best right out of the box and may take a try or two before I nail it. Do you think I'm just going to hit "New Template" and that'll be that? Do you really think I care so little of you, my loyal and startingly enormous readership? Well, stop thinking that. I care about both of you, dearly.

Anyway. Just thought I'd let you know that the times they are a chaung-ing (you know, I hate how you can't imitate someone in text. If you'd heard Steve Martin's records from the 70s you'd know how that is supposed to sound, dammit. Ah well, c'est la vie!)