Why couldn't they have taken Rush Limbaugh instead?

You might have seen the dozens of celebrities, including Michelle Obama, that have tweeted pictures of themselves holding up a #BringBackOurGirls sign, in support of the 300 or so Nigerian school girls that were kidnapped by radical Islamist and terrorist group Boko Haram.

Of course, holding signs isn't going to bring a happy ending about on its own, but it helps raise awareness and might help build a critical mass of people who actually give a shit. Once this critical mass of shit-givers is achieved, maybe the Nigerian government (which has been doing a horrible job of handling the situation) will actually get its ass in gear and go after the dirt bags.

Speaking of dirt bags, Rush Limbaugh (naturally) felt it was more important to find something to criticize Michelle Obama over than to be an actual human being, and made fun of the First lady's hashtag picture saying, "look how sad and pathetic she looks." Well, Rush, I think you'd look pretty sad and pathetic if it had been you that had been kidnapped. Unfortunately we weren't that lucky.

If you're like me, you watch The Daily Show as often as possible and, if so, you probably saw the episode where John Stewart goes after Rush for being such a dick. He came up with the hashtag #FuckYouRush, and I intend to help get as many people using that tag as possible... by making a comic about it.

Even though we still have to put up with you, Rush, while innocent school girls are being held captive, at least I can make myself feel a little better about it by imagining what that stupid, pathetic face of yours would look like if you had been kidnapped, and then drawing it.

#FuckYouRush

Introducing "In Honolulu" 001: Golf Corrupts

This is the first strip I'm classifying as an "In Honolulu" strip. Unlike TSASOTM, In Honolulu will not generally feature consistent characters or any semblance of plot progression. It will simply be.

The name is derived from my online magazine INhonolulu which, together with my work for The Hawaii Independent will form the backbone of my idea-mining (idamining).

In fact, this first strip was created along side a story I wrote for the Independent about ethics violations among city employees. The strip also appears as the accompanying image for the story post, which can be viewed here. What I found most interesting is that there were around 40 city employees that took "gifts" of free food, drinks and golf from a company here in Honolulu, many of which reimbursed the company immediately, thus avoiding penalty. But there were a few who didn't. But this Ethics Commission report singled out the employee who used a sick day to play golf as the one who deserved suspension. Because the other gift-recipients used vacation time, they still got to play on the naked pizza trampoline.

And yes, there really is a Cheese-rolling Festival in Gloucestershire, though I (unfortunately) have never attended. It involves chasing wheels of cheese down a rather steep hill. Each year there are several broken bones, ruptured organs and putting-out of eyes. You win if you catch the cheese and your prize, naturally, is more cheese.

The primary goal of In Honolulu will be to highlight the absurdities of what goes on in this city, vis a vis politics, news, nightlife and lifestyle. The artistic style has also changed from a moderately realistic, comic book/manga feel to a straight-up-and-down web-comic look, clearly influenced by my favorite web comic, Penny Arcade.

Other comic-related news is that I will be sending some editorial cartoons to Civil Beat for a trial run at becoming their new in-house cartoonist to replace John Pritchett, who's work--in my opinion--has really gone down hill in the past 3-4 years.

There will be more... something.