Is there a cure for the Cure? Asking for a friend. Thanks!
—bzap
You know what, bzap? I came to terms with The Cure a few years ago, but didn’t tell anybody about it.
It happened in the drive-thru at Mr. Honchito, that gyoza place down off highway 45. Used to be a Taco Bell? Anyho...
2024-07-03 15:16:59 +0000 UTC View Post
I read a very small amount about sigils while researching the Dark Arts for this series of interconnected follies. I read slightly more about the life of Richard Scarry, creator of Lowly Worm, Huckle Cat, and so many more cherished squiggles. For example, did you know that Scarry was medically discharged from the military after they asked him to...
2024-06-28 19:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Outtakes and unused panels from this strip will post at noon in the In-Universe and Author's tiers!
Three men you know surprise you by appearing in your securely-locked garage late one evening. They are dressed as a Lost Egyptian Math Rock band. You have recently denied them funding for what you thought was a pretty terrib...
2024-06-28 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
The house down by Dekum Street, which I signed away yesterday in a title company office so bland I could not even visualize it on the escalator back down, was a haunted box to which I should never have returned after the divorce.
Tom Waits, in Whistle Down the Wind, sways and gasps through the line, "...and a dog is tied to a wag...
2024-06-26 16:12:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray, I'm really struggling with self-esteem lately. I know that I'm at least a 6.5/10 guy in terms of appearance, my hygiene is above-average to excellent, I dress moderately well, and I am at least as respectful, interesting, and articulate in conversation as the next guy, but I can't shake the feeling that everyone finds me creepy...
2024-06-25 15:49:04 +0000 UTC View Post
We seem to have a new storyline in the works. It was time. I have an idea which requires multiple installments to properly demonstrate. Enjoy the ride, as this one will get both (a) terrifying, and (b) quite silly.
2024-06-21 19:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Clearly the insults heaped upon Nice Pete's think tank's output could not stand. It appears that Pete is so steamed he is penning a manifesto, which is usually not a good sign for anyone named therein. Will the old debts and deeds keep them from killing each other? Or is it a new day — has the blade cut too deep?
Extras at ...
2024-06-21 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Please do not share any of the photos from this post anywhere. I don't think it would prick any of these actors' dander-sheathing, but I worry nonetheless. If my experience in television taught me anything (jury's out), it's that studios specialize in sweeping litigation first, and entertainment a distant second. But only if the litigation h...
2024-06-17 23:19:50 +0000 UTC View PostIt occurred to me that you, who signed up for all the rigmarole and jay-pegs of my studio, might actually want to see a bit more of my debut novel. I mean, it's right there in the name of the tier.
So, here it is. Enjoy a bit of light weekend reading! The document is attached. Please do not share it around, unless you are on a tic...
2024-06-14 22:04:40 +0000 UTC View Post
When they put their heads together, Todd, Lyle, and Nice Pete are almost perfect at misidentifying the needs of the consumer marketplace.
2024-06-14 19:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Ray knows what it's like to get blasted in the face by an odor coming out of a freshly-cracked car window or door. He doesn't remember if the life-altering incident was a laundromat parking lot or Dollar Tree visit when he was very small; the chances are that it was Beef's mom's car and Beef's grandma's trailer, and he has done the...
2024-06-14 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
(Don't worry, there will still be the weekly strip at 10am Pacific today, and the bloopers strip at noon)
Some people are like, "Oh, I don't make a big deal out of my birthday. I don't want anything. I don't even tell people it's my birthday. It's not a big deal."
I am like, "In this landscape of expanding a...
2024-06-14 13:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
May I ask you a small favor, as a member of Achewood's inner-est of inner sanctums?
I'm hoping to gather testimonials that persuade non-members of the Achewood Patreon that they will be happy spending their hard-won spondulicks on a subscription here.
If you believe in this message, could you please offer a membership-drivi...
2024-06-10 18:26:23 +0000 UTC View Post
(Sorry this posted late — I had made a simple clerical error.)
Noticing that we behave poorly on the Internet is hardly groundbreaking, but I have been freshly upset by it lately, and just wanted to put this reminder out there that online discourse is a terrible use of the Finite Life Resource. Most of my angst came from reading...
2024-06-07 22:32:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Outtakes at noon in the In-Universe and Author's Tiers!
I once considered installing Reddit on my phone and creating a burner account, which I would use to express the most impulsive and greedily reckless fetal kicks from my id. But then I worried I'd carry that mindset over into the real world, which is exactly what would...
2024-06-07 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Speaking of rocks, the most memorable feature of my visit to Wisconsin, and indeed of the last ten years of my life, was the extraordinary House on the Rock. It is little known outside of Wisconsin, and for that, all people everywhere should be ashamed. There should be a ten-lane highway to this thing.
Even if you and I were to...
2024-06-05 15:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey Ray! Nothing shits up a night like bad tunes. What’s the Ray Way to ensure you’re the DJ guiding the party action and not your friends who insist on the same “This Is Paul Simon” playlist no matter the situation? —Aaron
Paul Simon? What, are you guys sittin’ around discussin’ barefoot shoes and New...
2024-06-03 02:49:52 +0000 UTC View Post
My grandfather used to steal from our country. That is to say, on fishing trips he would fill the bottom of his boat with flagstone and any other boulders he found interesting, bring them home, and build rock gardens, rain gardens, paths, streams, and other water features around his big hillside property. As a seventeen year old Marine during WW...
2024-06-03 02:21:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Like water slowly pooling unseen beneath the floorboards of your home, here and there offering clues of itself that just barely seep across the borders of perception — an unusual humidity on the first warm day of Spring, or a whiff of cave on a cold day, when the air is shifting just so inside the envelope of those four cozy walls — a c...
2024-05-31 20:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Again, not a lot of extra trim this week. It's the big strips that go to four or more rows where I am on my knees, begging for closure (or to understand what the point of the strip even is at that point), that yield the best harvest of lines that must be sacrificed. Unfortunately, I keep thinking up completed strips as I walk from my bed to the ...
2024-05-31 19:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Outtakes at noon, in Author's Tier / In-Universe Tier!
I'd been trying to write this idea — the idea that growing up without much money creates various pathologies around the reality of eventually having money — from a completely different angle, but then this strip fell into my lap while I was walking from the pi...
2024-05-31 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
In this unedited, unreleased transcript of Man Why You Even Got To Do A Thing's interview with Nice Pete, some news about Pete's new band project provokes an unfortunate response from Roast Beef.
2024-05-28 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
There were no outtakes this week; I wrote the script for 0066 on my phone pretty much as-is shortly after waking up last Sunday, and the layout came together in about three hours. So, here's the gesture library I created for piecing the strip together (including the original tableau of dejected, soul-searching Lyle at the riverbank), and a full-...
2024-05-24 19:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Outtakes at noon in Author's and In-Universe tiers.
The sky is blue because the Earth's atmosphere scatters the shorter blue wavelengths of sunlight more than the other colors. If that answer isn't satisfying, just remember that everything is vibrations, which don't exist, because they are just energy, and if you're wonder...
2024-05-24 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
1. Several people at P's and Q's market/cafe got up to take pictures of this dog as its owner ran inside for takeout. I was sitting there with a pretty nice breakfast burrito (it even had a McDonald's-style hashbrown patty in it) and immediately knew this was a moment that would draw all humans together. It felt very special in the room, like we...
2024-05-23 01:05:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Ray, How can we face the inevitable decay of our bodies through the slow acidic river of time while still finding meaning? Can Marijuana help? Tom P.
Dear Tom P,
Lotion, doggie! Guys, lotion is the main life hack of our time. Couple years ago I rubbed a blob of SPF 50 on my nose and my pinna and I guess th...
2024-05-20 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
https://www.redfin.com/OR/Portland/6725-NE-25th-Ave-97211/home/25852977
After fifteen years of ownership (that originally autocorrected to “perversion,” which felt like a judgement from the heavens) and five months of nonstop...
2024-05-18 15:34:24 +0000 UTC View Post
PART TWO: FIRST CONTACT: KWIK TRIP.
We drove into Wisconsin after landing in Minneapolis and meeting a friend for coffee. The coffee shop was, inexplicably, one of those smug little boutiques which had air plants instead of dairy products, so I was even more eager to get to Old Wisco, where at least the bullshit came from cows. ...
2024-05-18 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
At the appointed time, at the appointed place. Unlike so may Craigslist experiences. This could have been its own graphic novel, and should be, but not tonight, for I am so very tired, and still need to sell a semi-functional two-stroke gas augur and also a mountain bike I had to clipper out of a bunch of ivy.
2024-05-17 19:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
As usual, bloopers strip at noon in In-Universe/Author's Tiers, etc.
These last twelve months, in the course of moving out of one house, and into another, and thoroughly restoring both in the process, I have become compoundingly familiar with the Craigslist Experience. From maddening land-chuds who can't keep an app...
2024-05-17 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post