Goodbye Bush!

So I FINALLY got rid of the Bush-themed banner at the top of this site--it only took me over a year to get around to it! Not only did it feature an ex-president, it also showed me with the flaming red hair that, truth be told, actually came out of a bottle, and I stopped dying my hair in 2007.

I realize I don't look particularly angry in the above image, but that's only because I clipped it from an illustration I did of a vintage dress pattern I'm sewing. But trust me, I'm still SEETHING with RAGE, even in my fabulous orange floral silk maternity dress.

Here's the retired banner:

Here's the image I pulled the new banner from:

Big News

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Notice any differences between this picture and this one taken just a month ago (besides the lack of googly eyes)?

Anyway, this is why I have been under the weather so much lately. I've discovered it's quite a bit more difficult to blog/draw/whatever when you're uncontrollably nauseous all the time.

Cartoon: Bloggers Without Book Deals

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Even though I mock the concept, I've found myself reading and enjoying quite a few of these "one-year blog project" blogs—even the ones with book deals. Such as:

• Julie Powell's The Julie/Julia Project, which became Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and eventually Julie & Julia: The Movie. If you haven't heard of this one you've been under a rock, and I admit to picking up the edition of Julie & Julia with Amy Adams on the cover and the edition of My Life in France with Meryl Streep on the cover (I was at a train station news stand, ok?). I have to admit the movie half about Julie Powell's blog project left out most of the fun bits—her self-deprecating humor, her friends' romantic mishaps, her rants against Republicanism, the flies and maggots. But whatever, I generally enjoyed the movie and there were no celebrations of high-heeled shoes to be found. I even made cassoulet before going to see it.
  
• Colin Beavan's No Impact Man blog, about to be launched as a book ("No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet...") and a documentary. It's about a New York family who tries to reduce their carbon footprint to as close to zero as possible, even eschewing public transportation, elevators, toilet paper and packaged goods from the farmer's market. It's educational and inspiring, but I worry that the focus is too much on individuals choosing to reduce. Still, at least he rejects green consumerism and silly half-measures and I love the anti-consumption message.
  
• Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Another inspirational tale about a family, in this case a family on a small farm in Virginia, attempting to eat as locally as possible for a year (including growing and preserving their own produce and raising chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat). Just a book and website, not so much a blog, but it's a similar type of project, and quite eye-opening. I even ordered the 30-minute mozzarella cheese-making kit she mentions. My only gripe was the random rant against vegetarianism, which seemed odd coming from someone who rejects CAFO meats. Even Michael Pollan (guilty of a similar weird treatment of vegetarianism in The Omnivore's Dilemma) has come to the conclusion that it's not enough help to the environment to just eat free-range meat—Americans need to eat WAY fewer meat and dairy products.
  

P.S. I have nothing against tripe or offal (if you're going to eat meat—which I do—might as well make use of every bit) though I doubt they would be palatable in cereal form.

P.P.S. I am quite myopic and did once (accidentally) get the wrong glasses prescription. I went around with what Kurt Vonnegut would call a "whanging headache" all day, bumping into all sorts of fun walls and whatnot. No fun! But not particularly blog-worthy.

P.P.P.S. I got so caught up I forgot to mention the other reasons I loved Kingsolver's book--my grandparents had a farm in Maine, and when I was a kid, my family had a huge vegetable garden and fruit trees and kept ducks and chickens. We had fresh duck eggs for breakfast on weekends and made homemade applesauce, peanut butter, pickles, canned stews, the works.

Vice President Reid!

I've been nominated as the only candidate for Vice President (and very likely future President-Elect and President) of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists! This is an honor/exciting/terrifying.

P.S. Also, I may have mentioned this before, but I'm on Twitter. You could have gotten that news live from the nomination meeting!

Back from Europe!

Just got back from a 2-week+ trip to the UK, France and the Netherlands (a "short holiday" by the standards of the guy at passport control, a very long holiday by my sad American standards!) Will be at MOCCA this weekend with Masheka. Was horrified to return to awful news of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

Sugary new heights of giggle

The cartoon I'm drawing about antigay weddings is actually making me giggle out loud. Especially the line "soar to sugary new heights of one man, one woman love."

This is a refreshing change from my usual expression while drawing--the sleep-deprived squint.

Two Left Feet: A (Mostly) True Story

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The true part is that I rebroke my foot recently while Masheka was still in his left foot cast. The not-true part is that it was intentional--having a broken foot SUCKS. And HURTS!

Note: I rarely use photo references when drawing myself, but I needed them here--these are quite accurate recreations of how I broke my foot, the giant stack of pillows (complete with cats) I used to keep it elevated, etc. I even donned a wool coat in 80ish degree heat to pose for panel three!

P.S. Yes my foot is all blue and nasty under the cast--or it was last time. I'm sure it will be again when they remove the current cast.

My brother's burning house

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Not at all comics-related, but I love these pictures. My brother and his wife bought a piece of land in Maine that had an incredibly decrepit unlivable old house on it, so the fire department burnt it down as a training exercise. Photo by my mother Beryl Reid.

Here's the final result:

Detroit SPJ Journalism Award

Just found out I came in third place for editorial cartooning in the Detroit SPJ Excellence in Journalism Awards for 2009 (after Henry Payne and Mike Thompson) for my cartoons for the Metro Times. (PDF with complete list of winners here.) The judges comments were: "Welcome breath of fresh air with great promise for the future."

Cool!

Update: More here.

I broke my foot. Again.

I broke my foot AGAIN. For real. Same left foot. Different spot. And Masheka has a cast on his left foot now for a tendon problem. WTF?

More cartoons soon, by the way. About torture.

Update on My Hacked and Delisted Website

After some diligent headscratching and web directory searching, I found three suspicious directories on my website that I had never created which seemed to be part of the attack on my website that Google notified me about earlier: "yptkl", "kjkpb" and "uiojc." They were created over the course of a few weeks, so I'm worried this attack is still active.

I asked Google to relist me, but that might take a while. And I'm not sure how to prevent the attacks happening again. So now a web search for my name comes up first with the MySpace page about my cartoons that I do not check or update. Blech. How exactly do I prevent this crap from happening going forward?

Google says I've been hacked--and they're delisting me? Help!

I got the following message today, and I followed all their instructions but I honestly have no idea where these hidden keywords are lurking on my site or how to find and remove--Google's documentation is really confusing and seems to assume I'm some paid fancy webmistress instead of a blogging cartoonist. Any help or suggestions are appreciated--I don't need to be any more obscure than I already am!

By the way, I did check to make sure this wasn't a spam email--I have a webmaster account on Google and it really is from them.

Dear site owner or webmaster of mikhaela.net,

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

The following is some example hidden text we found at http://mikhaela.net/:

# # fathers # ub # comunity # mambo # seam # denied # resellers # racial # knight

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from mikhaela.net are scheduled to be removed temporarily from our search results for at least 30 days.

We would prefer to keep your pages in Google's index. If you wish to be reconsidered, please correct or remove all pages (may not be limited to the examples provided) that are outside our quality guidelines. One potential remedy is to contact your web host technical support for assistance. For more information about security for webmasters, see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-sites-been-hacked-now-what.html. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en to learn more and submit your site for reconsideration.

Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team

This sucks and I am royally confused.

Now on Twitter, though not sure why, exactly

I'm m1khaela on Twitter, and here's my Twitter feed, but I'm not exactly sure what the point is, really.

About that out-dated Bush-crushing banner...

By the way, a couple of folks (actually, mostly just Masheka) have needled me about the out-datedness of the banner on this here website (and the illo on my business card), being that it features an ex-president. I totally plan to change it at some point soon, I swear.

Me, Interviewed on InTheseTimes.com

InTheseTimes.com has an interview with me for their "20 Questions" feature. Apparently I am prone to overuse of the word "awesome" and over-name-checking of "Doctor Who" and "Dykes to Watch Out For."

Happy New Year!

I spent the day in the ER waiting for X-rays. I broke my foot while trying to pull on my winter boots on at around 11 p.m. on New Year's Eve (I tripped and fell on my foot in a funny way, and it made a not-so-funny crunching noise). Only I thought I had just stubbed my toe, so I limped to a really good party anyway. It wasn't until I could barely wiggle the toes on my swollen black and blue foot this morning that I was sure it was actually busted. Also--since I have RSI problems with my wrists and elbows, using crutches is nearly or equally as painful as just stepping on my poor mushed-up excuse for a foot.

What a great start to 2009!

you know what makes me mad?

Sarah Palin. And you know what makes me even more mad? Women who say they will vote for McCain because of her. Never mind the fact that if McCain dies we will have a president that doesn't believe in evolution, doesn't support the right to abortion even in cases of rape incest or to preserve the health of the woman (only to save the life of a woman -- maybe), has made it her mission to deny same-sex partners health benefits, doesn't believe global warming is caused by humans... but hey it's okay! It's cute! She's a mommy! An abstinence only "education" promoting mommy who would appoint Roe-overturning justices in a heartbeat, but an adorable mommy just the same!

And yes, I still have the RSI and it's driving me up the wall. And my voice is getting really hoarse from using the voice dictation software. Also, I have not read a blog or an online newspaper in three weeks. That is really weird! I've actually been reading the honest-to-goodness print newspaper edition of the New York Times.

P.S. Don't get me wrong -- it's not like McCain is some big moderate like he pretends to be. He's anti-choice too, and wants us to stay in Iraq for a gazillion years, among other things. He doesn't have to die and leave Palin in charge to bring us a horrible Bush-esque presidency!

Mikhaela's K Chronicles Quasi-Cameo!

Another thing I've been meaning to blog for a while. I was getting my weekly Keith Knight fix on Salon and I realized I was IN THE K CHRONICLES CARTOON about "Love Is..." for April 9. Well, part of me was--Keef drew his fridge, and his fridge was adorned Save the Date! magnet from my wedding last year, so if you look closely at the top of the first panel, you can see the lower half of my face and neck and one of my trademark big round bead necklaces.

Speaking of Keef, have you heard that he's now doing a hilarious DAILY comic strip called The Knight Life? Tell your local newspaper so you don't have to go through any more Keef withdrawal EVER AGAIN.

I also think I should have more cameos from my friends and family in my cartoons. I've drawn my dad into my cartoon twice but my mom deserves to be a star too!

Why draw cartoons: A letter

My pal Warren Bernard had this very kind thing to say regarding my "Why Draw Alternative Political Cartoons?" post:

MR,

Hey, well, I was disappointed in your list of reasons to keep doing cartoons. You missed three reasons that should be at the top of the list:

1. Disappointing all your fans if you stop.
2. You would cause my moral compass to point to supporting McCain, listening to Limbaugh and joining the American Enterprise Institute.
3. If you stop, it would mean The Man has gotten to you. You cannot let the sexist barriers he has set up to prevent women from becoming political cartoonists stop you.

Oh, please spare me that dastardly Right Wing fate and continue cranking out those cartoons. I really do not wanna be a Republican...

Here is virtual hug of lefty support,

Me

Why draw alternative political cartoons?

No, really: why draw alternative political cartoons?

Dear readers, forgive your cartoonist for having an existential crisis, but I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, and you may have noticed this blog and the email list have been relatively quiet as a result. I've been drawing the cartoons as usual, but have been slow to post or email them due to aforesaid existential cartooning funk.

Some arguments FOR drawing weekly political cartoons:

• To make a difference. I don't have any illusions that political cartoons will change the world or end the war or have a huge mind-blowing impact, but I really love the awesome fan mail, especially in regards to my cartoons on LGBT issues and transgender issues. Clearly my cartoons are making a lot of people happy. I'm just not sure how happy they're making me!
• To vent my personal anger and outrage and to have an outlet for my views/voice. This was the main reason I started drawing The Boiling Point, as the name implies. It's still a pretty good damn reason, as I'm a pretty damn angry cartoonist. I'm a passionate person and I need an outlet.
• Because drawing is cool/fun. Well, sometimes it is. Still, I could draw a lot of more fun things than George W. Bush. Like really adorable kittens.
• Because being a cartoonist and hanging out with other cartoonists is awesome. This is a really, really good reason. I love hanging out with my fellow Cartoonists With Attitude, and I've made some of my best friends in the world via cartooning.
• To make money. Just kidding! If I drew a sci-fi webcomic featuring snarky hipster video game romance in space*, maybe I could sell some T-shirts and figurines and live off that. But there's little to no money in alt-weekly cartoons unless you've got a slew of papers. Many papers pay as little as $5/week. NOT JOKING. (See this depressing comments thread on the Daily Cartoonist for more on this topic--the basic conclusion is that there's no money in online editorial cartooning).
• It builds an audience... that could later support me should I pursue other projects I care about, like a graphic novel or children's book or what-have-you.

Some arguments AGAINST drawing weekly political cartoons:

• It's a lot of work for very little pay/reward. This is my main beef. I'm a big believer in the "less work, less stuff, more of what matters" philosophy espoused by Juliet Schor and Your Money or Your Life. I believe Americans work too much and have too little quality leisure time. I believe Americans spend too much, save too little and own too much stuff. And I believe in fair wages.

  SO WHY DO I SPEND SO MANY HOURS SITTING ALONE BEHIND A DRAWING BOARD OR AT THE COMPUTER FOR WHAT AMOUNTS TO LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE WHEN I COULD BE OUT RIDING MY BIKE OR SPENDING TIME WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY OR DOING ACTIVIST WORK? (I work an awesome full-time job in addition to cartooning, in case you're wondering). Where's the light at the end of the tunnel? Sorry for E-shouting, but I ask myself that question a lot. I feel like such a hypocrite sometimes--my life philosophy is in direct opposition to my life reality.

• It's damned depressing. War, genocide, injustice, bigotry, hatred, bombings, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, power struggles, Dick Cheney, repeat, repeat, repeat. Following the news so closely and being engaged with it so deeply while feeling I'm having so little practical impact is incredibly demoralizing.
• It has no future and nothing to look forward to. Newspapers are in trouble and slashing budgets left and right, and editorial cartoons and editorial cartoonists get no respect. Graphic novels and animation seem to be where it's at right now.

OK, end whiny rant. And no, I'm not quitting, just venting. But I sure could use some supportive comments! I promise to have a bunch of cartoons and other cool stuff up for you all soon.

*This is not a slur on sci-fi webcomics. Science fiction is my favorite genre (I love you Octavia Butler and Battlestar Galactica). I'm only bummed because it seems like pretty much everything is more "monetizable" than political cartoons. Also, I hate the word "monetizable."

Email bankruptcy!

Things have been busy over here at the Boiling Point in the past few months. you may have emailed me, and wondered why you never heard back. I've removed myself from every possible marketing list and email list and list serv and whatnot, and installed spam filters, but the email onslaught continues unabated. So I'm afraid I've just had to delete 3,000 unread emails from my inbox. If you desperately needed to reach me, please try again.

Still trying to learn Flash animation...

Here's my first attempt at a walk cycle... And here's a failed but educational attempt to make it walk funnier and slower, with arms: I'm still a little ways off from an animated talking sperm, but I'm getting closer...

Where do I sign up for the cartoonists and bloggers union?

Creators deserve to be paid for the use of their content online, whether they're TV writers or bloggers--or cartoonists. Ted has a great column (When Media Content is Free, It's Worth Every Cent) on this subject, the first in a three-part series. Here's one key bit:

The Huffington Post, capitalized to the tune of $10 million, employs 43 full-time employees, all of whom presumably receive actual cash money, and health benefits, and maybe even a 401(k), for their efforts. But, USA Today reports, "it has no plans to begin paying bloggers. Ever." Ken Lerer, company co-founder, former Time Warner executive, and probably himself in it for the money, says: "That's not our financial model. We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company."

It's hypocritical for moneyed and supposedly progressive outlets like HuffPo asking writers to opine on subjects such as labor issues for no money whatsoever. (Smaller blogs run by unpaid editors are another matter). What would Arianna Huffington say if she heard about a factory in which workers were paid in internet exposure? Some other choice points:

Hardly a day passes without finding a pitch from some wannabe freeloader in my e-mail. "Our magazine doesn't have a budget for content, but we'd love to use your cartoon about…" "We can't offer a salary per se, but you would get amazing exposure to thousands of discrete users if…" Content is still king. Online leeches just don't want to pay the kingmakers.

I can relate to this 100%. Outlets seem shocked that I don't want to work for free--after all, don't I want exposure FOR MY CARTOON ABOUT OPPRESSED WORKERS?
Finally, Ted tries an experiment:

I called the bank that holds my mortgage. "I don't have a budget to pay you per se," I cooed. "But think of the awesome prestige your corporation receives just by being associated with a cartoonist and columnist whose work is literally read by millions of--" Click. Citibank (Bangalore), Ltd., signing out. Back to work!

The only reason this website doesn't lose money is my Google Ads. I did have hopes when I first put out Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela! that all that magical exposure I've been getting would help me sell enough books to make up for the work I put into designing it, but so far, I haven't quite broken even. Hint, hint...

Trying to learn Flash...

Here's my first random awful little attempt at animation. If I can figure out how to do this better and faster, I may do some animated political cartoons soonish. Click to view:

Yeah, yeah, I'm still drawing...

Cut me some slack folks, it's a crazy summer--my younger brother is getting married today (I'm sure I'm going to bawl my eyes out!) and Masheka and I are getting hitched in a few short weeks. CRAZY CRAZY. Anyway, I'm still drawing every week, just been to busy to post them here. I have tons more AAEC pix too, but those are also a lower priority than tying the knot and stuff.

Our Newly Rescued Orange Manx Kitty: Octavia

Rescued Orange Manx Kitty: Octavia
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Masheka and I are off to Washington, DC for the 50th Anniversary Convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. We'll be hanging out with the Cartoonists With Attitude crew (AAEC Vice President Ted Rall, plus Keith Knight, Jen Sorensen, Matt Bors, Brian McFadden, Stephanie McMillan, Ruben Bolling, August Pollak, Ben Smith) and a huge convention of famous-type editorial cartoonists (Tom Toles, Joel Pett, Clay Bennett, Signe Wilkinson, Rob Rogers and many many more!) plus special guests like Tom Tomorrow, Duncan Black and the Comics Curmudgeon. I may even bring a laptop and blog about some of the panels.

In our absence, I leave you with this photo of our newly rescued cat, Octavia, kneading me with her claws as I try to finish up the Cartoonists With Attitude Slideshow for our event this Saturday.

We've felt for a while that our other cat Riley was lonely and just too friendly and social and playful to stay home by himself while we're at work. A rescue group in our neighborhood saved this little orange fuzzball from the euthanasia queue at Animal Care and Control. We barely had her home for a few hours before she decided she had to sit in one of our laps 24/7.

We named her Octavia to (a) pay tribute to the late great science fiction writer Octavia Butler and because (b) she seems like one of the weird alien creatures from Ms. Butler's books, with her giant orange eyes, her taillessness (she's a Manx cat, and apparently this is how many of them are born) and her weird bunny-style gait.

Her political affiliations are yet to become clear, but hopefully she'll be more progressive than our other cat.

I must add that lazy and unapologetic as other other cat is, he'd never have pardoned Scooter Libby.

Spam-tastic embarassment

So an acquaintance of mine sent me an email from some ridiculous site called Tagged, which I will not link to. It seemed to be a legit MySpace/Flickr-type social networking site, so innocently enough I decided to use the feature of checking my gmail address book on the site to see if any friends had profiles.

Well, the site AUTOMATICALLY EMAILED AN OBNOXIOUS "Mikhaela has tagged you ;)" email to EVERYONE I HAVE EVER EMAILED EVER via Gmail, including important editors of magazines and newspapers, journalists, my bank, my website host, all my friends and relatives, coworkers, ex-coworkers, managers, you name it. I feel embarassed, gauche, spam-tastic, awful, and worried that important journalistic and editorial contacts will now find me incredibly obnoxious and add me to their spam blockers.

This SUCKS. If you receive emails from this site IGNORE THEM or FACE THE PERIL.

Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela Official Release Date Pushback to August 6

So I haven't had time to submit Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela to any reviewers or distributors yet, which means that although you can buy direct from the printer via Lulu.com and go to my early book tour events, the official release and distribution date is now August 6. I know this is confusing, but I've been advised by folks in the know that no one will review it unless I delay distribution until after I send out review copies. Good thing I haven't sent out my press releases yet!

The Cartoonists With Attitude DC event on 7/7/07 will be my last book event for a while, as Masheka and I are planning our wedding. The tour will restart in Boston in September.

Defend your cartoonist!

The Boiling Point launched on GoComics.com three weeks ago, but so far the only readers who have seen fit to leave comments are not exactly fans. Why not put in your two cents?

Meta: About those Google ads for Ann Coulter...

I installed Google AdSense a while back to see if I could pay for my webhosting and domain costs. But I was horrified the other day to click on my cartoons page and see that my little Google text ads had merged into a big Ann Coulter ad. I'm assuming that Google thought that because the words "Ann Coulter" were in one of my cartoon captions, my readers might be interested to read her hate-filled screeds. Google also seems to think you folks like John McCain.

Despite my annoyance and inability to target the ads (is there some way to do that?), I think I'll keep them around. I get a little bit of money every time someone clicks on an ad (I'm not allowed to click on my own ads, for obvious reasons). So far I'm making a measly 70 cents a day on average, and there's been a few days where the site actually earned a whole $4. Which means I'm on target to not actually lose money on the site, barely.

Update: Turns out that although I can't specify that I want liberal or progressive ads, I can block ads from specific website. I've just blocked the Ann Coulter ad so hopefully it won't show up again.

apologies for the silence, I've got the flu

I know today was supposed to be the big launch of my book, but I've been bedridden for the last three days with a horrible flu (I got it for my birthday on Friday and initially thought it was just a result of too much birthday karaoke). you can buy my book already, though (and Masheka's too). more cartoons and posting when I get better!

Update: over four days of yuck now and not feeling any better. Went to my doctor and looks like it's strep throat or something. Penicillin time! Hopefully I'll be better by Thursday in time for our book tour kick-off in Detroit Saturday. You can read last week's cartoon on GoComics.com, where I debuted on Monday. Back to bed!

Update your blog bookmarks to mikhaela.net

It's long overdue--I got rid of my splash page, and moved this blog over to plain old www.mikhaela.net. Please update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly!

Testing new blog look/title--thoughts?

I'm trying to do a redesign of this whole site in preparation for my book launch (which will probably happen sometime in June...) so I'm testing a new look and name for the blog. It used to be "Mikhaela's News Blog", then it became "Boiling Over", but that didn't make much sense unless you knew my comic strip was called "The Boiling Point." So I may just give it the same name as the strip. Thoughts?

My current annoyance is that the image now up top of this blog is awfully large, file-size-wise, and takes time to load. I'm going to work on slicing it up or reducing it somehow.

Also, I'm pondering a switch from Blogger to WordPress. I briefly tried to do the Expression Engine thing a while ago, but I don't have time to code from scratch and there really aren't nearly as many templates and plugins for EE as there are for WordPress, plus WordPress is free.