Today is Take Your Pants for a Walk Day. (Of course, you know that if you've printed out the the July 2009 calendar from the FREE page at QlownTown.com.)

I don't know who comes up with these holidays. I may have to start one of my own. Maybe March 6th should be QlownTown Day. After all, that's the day QlownTown debuted, and it's in a month when people tend to be depressed and tired of winter (at least here in the Northeast), so a ridiculous holiday would fit well there. I don't know if I just announce it and it becomes so, or if there's a Holiday Clearing Board somewhere. I may just put it on the 2010 calendar and proclaim it to be official. The worst that could happen is that someone proclaims it Not QlownTown Day, but then that would imply that every other day was QlownTown Day, so it would work to my advantage anyway, wouldn't it?

I sent all the rest of the 2009 calendar months to my web guy to place on the FREE page of QlownTown. The 2010 calendar has been bumped to September (I'd planned to start printing it in August). The 2010 won't be free. The 2009 calendar has been, because the site, which was supposed to launch in late October 2008, was delayed by the bonehead who put the site together for me, and by the time it appeared, no one was looking to buy a 2009 calendar. I'd already laid out the pages, so I've been posting them for free. That was three or four full days of work down the tubes in terms of earning money off the calendar, but at least the response to the free pages has been positive--and maybe it'll push sales of next year's calendars. (Not-so-subtle plug)

If you have any suggestions for which cartoons should appear on the 2010 calendar (or suggestions for original cartoon ideas), send 'em to me at dsmith-weiss@qlowntown.com.

Now I'm going to walk my pants into the kitchen. It's lunchtime. It's always best to eat lunch with your pants on--especially if it's a hot lunch.

Power of subscription

It occurred to me today that I can use the extra forum of the message that accompanies the daily cartoon email that I send to members (subscribers) to explain potentially confusing comics. Tomorrow's cartoon features a reference to a Rolling Stones song that not everyone may pick up on. People who just check out the site might not get the joke, but if you have signed up for a (FREE!!!) membership, you'll get instructions on how to figure it out. I've learned that some people don't realize that one can sign up for free and it'll get them the cartoon every day via email. I'm in the process of learning how to edit the site myself, and when I'm proficient at that, there'll be some changes to tell people they can sign up for free, with no strings, no need to tell us your age, shoe size, hobby proclivities or birth date (although if you include your birthday when you sign up, you may get a birthday wish at some point). I originally conceived of the site as bursting forth full grown at the beginning, with maybe a major overhaul every few years, but now I'd like to make small tweaks on a pretty regular basis. This does, of course, run counter to my original plan of just drawing cartoons and shipping merchandise with as little other work as possible, but hey! things change.

I like doing cartoons that not everyone may get sometimes. I did one a few months ago about two seagulls meeting in a bar which featured a post-punchline in French. I didn't translate it for anyone. One person said that a woman in her office spoke French, so they all enjoyed it. Another person looked it up online (the internet can make almost any reference decipherable, unless it's just a bad cartoon). The joke worked fine without knowing what the gull said, but her French was kind of an extra gift for those who cared or wanted to figure it out.

Speaking of bad comics, there's a website, www.comicsidontunderstand.com, that deals with those cartoons that one or another person just doesn't get. I look forward to appearing on the site--not because I hope to do a strip that can't be understood, but because it's free advertising. Feel free to submit any QlownTown strips that you find confusing--I won't mind. There's also an "Ewww!" award for icky cartoons at Comics I Don't Understand, and I suppose my "muscle shirt made of real muscles" cartoon could've been submitted for that.

By the way, anyone who downloaded the July calendar from the FREE page on the QlownTown website may have noticed that yesterday was Hammock Day. Hope you took some time to hang around in one.

Rain

This is the first blog in over a month. When I first decided to do a blog, I figured I'd be writing four to six a week. I mean, I have plenty of opinions on the things I read, encounter or hear about in my day-to-day. But once the blog had been established, I was so wrapped up in frustration over the shabby work that my former web guy was doing, the blogs became more rants, so I waited till I had a new guy. By that time, I'd lost the flow of writing.

What inspired me to write again was an odd, delightful and unexpected experience with my cat and my computer. We have two large dogs living with us temporarily, and the cats have been pretty much hermits in the master bedroom or outdoors for a month or so, with the exception of daily visits to my office from Lucy, the friendly one. Midge, the other cat, only appears every couple of days.

Last night, Lucy finally came into the living room and sat down and allowed herself to be patted just a few feet from one of the dogs. This was a breakthrough. (The dogs are locked in their room upstairs during the day, so this is when Lucy has been showing up on my desk. )

Just now, she came in from the rain and brushed against the computer screen in her latest attempt to distract me from my work and demand attention. This left about two dozen droplets of water on the screen, which glow like multicolored crystals from the light of the screen behind them. On an overcast day, following many previous overcast days, this was cause for rejoicing, a bright and tiny show of beauty in the midst of cabin fever and boredom!

And now, as I write this, the final drop has dried out, and my screen is again a flat slab of words and formatted graphics. But now I know that I can carefully apply several drops of water to the screen and enjoy my own little light show. I hesitate to suggest this for anyone else, because the electrons on the screen might react with a wet fingertip and cause, if not major damage, some small discomfort or electronic failure. (I don't know this stuff. That's why I draw cartoons instead of programming space shuttles.)

But it's nice to know, as the rain pours down in a metaphorical cloud of misery, that there are little miracles of light waiting on a wet cat.