Merry Christmas from Some Guy With a Website

Latest comic - click here!

Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting the comic and, well, me in general. And yes, Dad, thank you for the ham.

Some Guy With a Website will return in January. Have a great holiday season and a happy new year!

In closing

Welp, it's that time again. The Christmas comic will go up sometime this evening, so this is the last blog post until next year. Given the frequency of my posts recently you won't notice much of a difference. Moving on.

Look, 2010 sucked. It really did. Politically, personally, and professionally, it was a series of heartbreaks for me right from the start, interspersed with the occasional feint of momentary optimism. I think the year can be best defined for me as "perseverance in the face of temporarily believing something awesome was happening and then having my heart ripped from my chest and pooped upon." And I imagine for many of you, 2010 was a raw deal as well.

I'm not the only one who had some bad breaks. I'm also in the third paragraph now so I'm obligated to get to the part how, yes, I'm still a lot better off than so many people. A former co-worker who endured his own bad breaks this year offered some good advice about that recently, and it's a shame we don't communicate in a way that I can thank him for it without one of us disparaging the other's sexuality. But that's what friendship is often about.

I'm writing all this because the comic that's going to go up is incredibly, incredibly stupid. Even more stupid than usual. But it's also inspired by very true and recent events, and it's a reminder that I truly, truly need to resolve upon myself for 2011: that you should take as much time as you can in your shitty day to reflect on what good things did actually happen to you. For me, it was a hell of a lot of people who kept me sane throughout the year.

I cannot talk enough about the wonderful people, each and every one of them, at Dad's Garage Theatre Company here in Atlanta. These guys have provided me my second job and my second home, and as you'll see in the comic, a handful of the best breakfast buddies a guy could ever have. They have an awards ceremony every year and this time around they told me that I was their best volunteer, which shocked me in that usually when I stay around somewhere this long asking people if they need help I'm asked to leave. I've never been recognized for wanting to hang out where it's fun as often as possible. For all my numerous, numerous social problems, they've made me a better person over the last year both in and outside of the classes where I actually pay them to teach me to act less like an asshole.

I'm thankful for the friends there who supported me in my most dismal period this fall (see previously mentioned heartbreak back in graf two), even when that "support" meant introducing me to "Tiki Tuesday" at the Bookhouse Pub, which features a special of a tropical drink in a ceramic animal-shaped decanter that you can then take home with you. Or in my particular case, take home and name. Or even more specifically, two ceramic decanters, because I was very angry and very drunk and so now I have a ceramic orca whale and a ceramic panda on my kitchen counter who each bear a name that I will not repeat because I am incredibly, incredibly embarrassed at how derogatory they are to the female gender. It was a banner September.

I have occasionally uttered the name "Kellam" on this site; it belongs to a woman who is not as much a friend as she is the closest I'll know to the elf priestess that Kate Blanchett played in that movie about falling asleep in the middle. I have known her for six years despite never having met her because that is how science works now. She helped me achieve one of my dreams and I finally got to meet her in person this year. Instead of accepting an offer of, perhaps even a coffee or whatever, she provided a tour of LucasArts and a photo op with Darth Vader. Because that is how saints roll.

And finally, because no this will not in fact become lame at some point, once again thank you. All of you. Or maybe both of you. I don't do this comic for my health, as the 3:00 AM posting time clearly indicates. I do it because you like it and you tell me. I write books and you buy them. I still can't believe that. But apparently it happens. So I'll keep making more, if you'll have me.

I don't get it

I'm ecstatic that Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed. And I'm very open that it was a promise from Obama that for the last few months I expected to become among the first sacrificial lambs to get other stuff passed. I'm incredibly happy to have been wrong on that.

But I'm also really disturbed by the number of "suck it, Obama haters!" posts from a handful of the usual suspects who seem to think that this somehow invalidates all the complaints about the last year. This is an amazing accomplishment but it doesn't mean ten percent of the country isn't out of a job anymore and it doesn't mean Republicans didn't sweep into power in the House a month ago because the Democratic Party failed utterly at messaging.

If you're a Democrat who is happy that the repeal happened and your first repsonse was to rub it in the faces of angry Democrats who have spent the last six months saying that Obama was going to screw us over on it well then I'm afraid you've missed the forest for the trees here. If you really think that Obama and Reid and Pelosi would have kept up with this without the vocal outrage from the "professional left"* then you're hopeless. This was just as much the result of a lot of angry people being angry and staying angry and demanding it got done as it was the result of Obama's "twelve dimension chess" or whatever analogy you like to make to fluff up him not knowing what the hell he's doing half the time.

I'm already expecting the snotty "oh god nothing's good enough for you" whining for that last statement and if that's your response than I can only roll my eyes and accept that you really just don't get it.

* I'm also throwing in that I think it's time to all get together and acknowledge that "professional left" is now a term that sits next to "politically correct" as a term that is never in any capacity actually used except by people who are sarcastically referencing it to attack a straw man. Or in short, we should all acknowledge that saying "professional left" now is shorthand for "I'm an asshole, let me prove it."