Tetris Awana Colors

 
I have posted this in the past with pencil shading but this time I did bright colors to show the progress of the image. I am a bit busy currently (at scheduling) so this week is just going to be variations on this. 

No text, just progressing tetris blocks.

Local Children

 

Ending on a local note :) There are towns named Laurel, Glen Burnie, and Arbutus in Maryland. Only two of those are normal names (and the one is usually spelled Glenn). "Arbutus" is pronounced "Are-byoot-us" not "Are-butt-us" but I usually pick the latter because... it's immature. The lady's hairstyle is called a beehive and for some reason the wiki article doesn't mention Baltimore - it is prominently connected with that Maryland city. See HonFest. And the "O" is orange and cursive because the Orioles do that (local baseball team). And in Baltimorese, you call people "hon." 

Text:
B: Are those your kids over there?
C: Yep, that's Laurel, Glen B., and little Arbutus.
B: O my, I didn't realize you're a local, hon.

Dirty Kids

 Terra is the Latin word for earth or ground, Adam means ground or earth per the Hebrew word 'adamah', and Clay is a well-known type of dirt, commonly used to make pottery. But all are also people names! And kids are quite expensive I hear. And also quite dirty - have you worked with children? Everything is sticky and you don't want to know why. And what does dirt poor even mean? Apparently rich people had real flooring but poor people had dirt floors, per this site with tons of phrases. I might find some new comic material in there. 

But seriously kids are rewarding and worth it I hear so don't be discouraged by my comic, it is meant to be funny. Having nieces and nephews is pretty fun too. 

Text:
A: Kids are so expensive - they'll make you dirt poor!
B: Have you met my kids? They're over there - Terra, Adam, and Clay. 

Shrinking or Shrieking Violet

 

Several of my friends are expecting and I am taking this week to focus on excellent baby names and puns! I have done this before, should find a way to group them all together so they can be perused when a name needs selecting.

The real pun is that pansy and violet are interchangeable names for the same flower, and shy people are called shrinking violets. I don't think shrieking violets is a common term, but it should be with some kids...

Text:
A: Little Pansy only has two modes - painfully shy or painfully loud.
B: Ah, she's either a shrinking violet or a shrieking violet. 

Database Seeder

 

This was an actual conversation between my husband and I, where I was just finding all the synonyms to 'seeder'. Database seeders are quite helpful in multiple ways, he was talking about using them for tests so you know what they are running against (which is helpful with predicting proper test outcomes). 

Text: 
M: So I'm working with a database seeder-
L: Oh, a Jewish meal?
M: No, that's Seder.
L: Oh, a half-goat man?
M: No, that's a satyr.
L: Oh, -
M: IT'S a THING that SEEDS the DATABASE with data. 

Convoluted Bicycle

 

I wrote this one a while ago when I was doing more wordy comics and experimenting with typing as that's the only way to get this many words on a comic, but I think I made this one too wordy because it took me a few read-throughs to get what I was saying. The car like the Flintstones was moved with the passengers' feet walking on the ground, paddle-boats have peddles so you aren't just kicking in the water, and usually commuting vehicles are smaller since it could just be one person. 

Text:
A: What if you had a car like the Flintstones but more like a paddle-boat on wheels so you don't walk on the ground while driving and also for commuting so just for yourself?

B: That's called a bicycle.

Pocket Items

 

Yes, that is a reference to a poem, a reference to a book, and lastly a reference to the current state of affairs in the world. I remember memorizing that poem as a kid - it must have been in the Abeka elementary curriculum. I watched the Hobbit trilogy as it came out and I think it's time to rewatch the regular trilogy, specifically the Fellowship of the Ring since I haven't seen that one in quite some time. We might have it, but all of our DVDs are packed up for the move so we can't quite access them. 

Text:
Teacher: Class, name something you keep in your pocket.

A: a poem

B: a ring?

C: a politician! 

Playing the House

When playing against the house, you know who's going to win. But maybe the house is only good at playing poker, and they don't seem to be playing poker (it was too busy to add a tennis net into the frame). Maybe the house has a saying for all games. I was going to say sports, then remembered that poker isn't a sport, but you can play competitively and there are championships so.... maybe the definition of "sport" needs to be revisited. 

When I was a kid, we would play tennis against the barn - bouncing back and forth. I guess the house does always win like that. Unless you break a hole in the barn, but then you still lose when your parents find out. But that never happened so all is well :)

Speaking of houses, we should be closing on the selling of our house and the buying of our new house today, so that's why the house is in the comic today. It has a busy day ahead. But I am scheduling this post a few weeks in advance so I hope nothing slips coming up to this date. I would like to be done with the whole buying and selling a house thing. It's kinda exhausting. I want my stuff unpacked. But I'm very grateful for my amazing husband handling all the things with this. 

Text:
A: You don't have a chance again him.

B: *about to serve against the house*

Oh Deer

So sports.... are they still happening with all that's going on in the world? I hear they are, but there's less of them. Will there be just as much talk about them? Will there be less of a demand for them and maybe that industry will shrink a bit? Should you put baseball caps on woodland critters? Probably a no to that last one, but the others are debatable. 

I do not have an O's cap - I just have an R cap from back home. I found it on the side of the road when leaving the mall with my mom and I washed it twice and I'm not sure if I've ever worn it - it just hangs out in my vehicle. But I do have an O's shirt which is quite comfy when the weather gets a bit cooler. 

Text:
M: Oh, deer.

*Deer wearing an Oriole's cap*

Weigh Anchor

I have had this comic around a while so I don't recall the origin, but I feel it was a sermon where the speaker mentioned something nautical off-hand and this comic happened. Which weighs more, fifty kilograms or half a ton? I would have to look it up. Oh, about 900 kilograms in a US ton. So those two estimates in the comic are quite different. The more you know.... 

I feel like I looked this up way back when I wrote the comic and tried to make them similar but failed. Maybe I meant to write 500 kilograms vs half a ton - that would be much closer than 50 kilograms vs half a ton. 

Text:
C: It's time to go. Weigh anchor!

F: I'd say it's about 50 kilograms.

S: No way, it's gotta be like half a ton. 

Let us Discus Shot Put

My college had Field Day once a year and it was all the classic Olympic track and field events like long jump and sprints and such. One year I signed up for it because while I'm not the most athletic (I really don't like running so my two P.E. classes were ice skating and broom hockey), I figured shot put and discus should be fine because what are the odds that any current college student would know how to do this? The odds were very high for non-American students apparently. But some Tongans were very friendly and showed me how to throw the surprisingly solid ball and disc and I totally failed but that is expected when trying something for the first time against people who know what they're doing. But it was fun! I would do it again and probably fail just as badly. 

My college did not have all the track and field events; I think there was a very good reason we did not do the hammer throw. That just seems like a bad plan to do with minimal training. 

The pun here is that to talk about something is to discuss it - if you wish to throw a disc in an Olympic event, that's a discus. 

Text:
A: What are we doing for fun this weekend?

B: We can discus tonight?

A: I'd prefer shot put. 

Dragging Lizard

This interaction happened at my in-laws. It took the onlookers a moment to get the pun. Haha, 'dragging' sounds like 'dragon' and that's cooler than a lizard. But seriously, this heat wave is just sucking the energy out of everybody except those people who actually like the summer and better be enjoying this because I am not. I totally prefer winter. Or autumn. Or even spring. Just not summer. But I am very grateful for fans and air conditioning and a cool basement which is where my home office is so I can stay cool and calm and collected. 

Text:
N: I'm dragging tonight.

L: Better than being a lizard?

Giggle Pickles

Welcome to August! Is it still super hot out there? Probably. 

You know you want to try this out at a phone store. I realize the Apple employees have blue shirts and that lanyard thing and not a visor but I have simple drawing skills and some things like lanyards don't look right on my stick figures so I improvised. 

Giggle Pickles is a reference to gigapixels, which is a measurement for high-resolution images, and phones have cameras which take photos, and that's the link. You want at least two barrels of them :) 

Text:

Banner: Apple Store

A: How many giggle pickles are in this phone?

B: ... a barrel?