Happy Dailies Day AND Strike Day! (Patreon)

Hello my dears, and welcome to Friday, Official Daily Comics Day (official only in this household, extending to the household of Patreon, terms and conditions apply)!

It's also a day that people are striking in solidarity with Minneapolis, so I'll be posting all of these originals for sale TOMORROW. I'll send out a quick notification when they're up!

Now, on to important business:

Sopwith Camel's a bit of a deep cut, and not quite the right name for the pose, but if you're a Snoopy fan, you know what I'm talking about.

I'd be remiss to not include photo evidence. Here's a collage of my weird sleeper.

I've said this about a billion times to people when discussing Shepherdstown, so bear with me if you've heard me yap about this before:

We don't have residential delivery here, so we ALL have to go to the post office for our mail. We all complain about it at some point, but I think it's part of what binds us as a community.

This made me think... what if Ai's main purpose was to detect online arguments, and force both people into a ten-minute-minumum phonecall before they're allowed to continue commenting? I don't even like talking on the phone, but I think it'd solve some problems. (Better if it were done in person, but that would use up a LOT more natural resources than Ai already does!)

Yesterday was the first day I completed my Ten Pushups resolution in one go! For the prior three weeks, I'd been breaking them up into two sets of five. My arms are noodles. This is why I'm doing it.

Regardless, this resolution is not without its flaws...

I highly recommend you adopt this resolution. It's not too late.

Here's an annoying thing that has been happening to me! (Caveat: read the text below the comic.)

So... I assumed that I'd been targeted by someone who didn't like the (mild, imo) gun-related comic I made a couple weeks ago. I posted it here on Patreon, which is my safe home, but I also posted it on Instagram, shortly after which the fraudulent orders began.

But, correlation vs. causation and all that; Ryan found a Reddit post that makes more sense:

“Usually bots making orders with stolen card details, checking which cards work and which don't. My experience is that it usually affects low value digital products like gift cards ... It can be problematic not just in the sense you get flooded with orders over a short time but your payment processor can (and will) just shut you out of your account. Stripe for example are impossible to talk to and will suspend the account for weeks while they "investigate".”"

All of the fraud orders have been my lowest-dollar item: $1 bookplates for PATRONS ONLY (hi, if you didn't know, I offer almost-free bookplates to you for your GWS books!). Since I cross-check each customer with Patreon anyway, it's been easy to suss out the fake ones. It's still annoying and I've exhausted Big Cartel and Stripe's customer service trying to filter out the fraud orders; Stripe's catching 99% of them (the "blocked" ones - about a dozen per hour every hour of every day). I just need to cancel and refund every fake order that isn't blocked for... ever? I guess?

Moving on!

I woke up at 6 am the other day (not mentioned here: I spilled oat milk EVERYWHERE after this happened)...

I'M SORRY PIP I WANT IT FIXED TOO.

Has anyone else been having an infestation like this one lately?

I put out raisins and honey but I think I'm just making them suffer longer. Why tf are they coming out during THE COLDEST days of the year?? Is there an entomologist in the house??

Like I said, I'll make the original art for these available for purchase tomorrow (Saturday) and let you know when they're up!

This isn't a comic, but I've been mindlessly making these watercolor triangle pages at Art Night lately because it's something I can do while I talk to friends. And, I dunno, while we're all steeping in the ugly chaos of the world, it feels nice to look at some pretty chaos.

I'm attaching* the file here in case you want to use it as a phone background or print it out; you have my blessing. :) (My rule for anything I share on Patreon is: don't sell it, but feel free to keep it or give it.)

*forgot to attach it on the first publish; it should be here now!

A few last notes! TL;DR: HCD is on Feb 8th and my Patreon memberships are on sale til Sunday!

Hourly Comics Day! ⬅️ link to the HCD site if you don't know what that is!This year the date has changed to February 8th to so as not to steal attention from the kickoff of Black History Month, which I think is a great idea, but the date change notice was super late and a lot of us made plans to do it on the 1st as usual! So I'm going to do it sometime in between. I'll share them quietly here next week, and share them publicly on the 8th along with everybody else.

15% off my Patreon! Tomorrow is the LAST DAY for my 15% off sale! If you know someone who'd probably like to join - or if you're a monthly subscriber who'd like to switch to annual - take advantage of the sale by doing it before Sunday! (An annual subscription at 15% off means you'll get 2 months free btw, haaaaay.)

Today I'm finally leaving my house for the first time since it snowed, driving to Gettysburg to teach Girl Scouts how to make comics, as I do every year around this time. The event is called Chill Out - a lock-in for middle and high school Scouts in the Nation's Capital council, where they get to pick activities and classes to take during the weekend. I used to do it back when I was a teen, so it's cute and fun to be involved with it on the other side now. :)

All of which is to say, wish me luck getting over the icy mountain to Pennsylvania! And uhh hopefully I'll see you when I'm back over said mountain! (This old daily comic was definitely inspired by the drive to Chill Out every year.) Hope you snowed-in folks are keeping cozy out there!