From what I can tell, Anita has been practically living at work over the past week. After exchanging a couple short IMs, this is the story I pieced together:

OK, so I might have added a couple few minor details, and Anita’s boss might be a little taller, but otherwise it’s factual.

(Created using strip creator)

Today a friend told me that she was still feeling down after a disappointing Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t offer much helpful advice earlier, but now after seeing this cartoon, I think maybe cupid just made the wrong decision and was held by airport security:

On the other hand, a few men have told me that Valentine’s Day costs them so much that they feel rather depressed until March Madness (College Basketball playoffs for all you non-U.S. readers). This cartoon seemed much more appropriate for them:

Thanks to Joel Esler at Dirtflake for the cartoons!

After a frustrating start to tax season, I’ve decided the IRS needs a simplified process for calculating deductions:

How perfect of a solution would this be? It meets President Bush’s goal of a simplified tax code, remains true to the IRS’s history of creating incredibly baffling instructions, and doesn’t change a thing for the majority of taxpayers!

You know how Staples advertises and sells an “Easy” button? I think the IRS (or at least TurboTax) should follow suit and send a “No!” button along with personal returns … at least I could have some fun as all my deductions are being taken away.

Nothing says “I love democracy” more than your own vinyl bust of Chairman Mao wearing Mickey Mouse ears, right?

Ever watch the Mickey Mouse Club? Replace with Mickey Mao, and the lyrics sound rather perfect for Communist China:

Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-A-O
Hey there! Hi there! Ho there! You’re as welcome as can be, M-I-C-K-E-Y M-A-O
Mickey Mao! Mickey Mao!
Forever let us hold our banner High! High! High! High!

As a special benefit of being a Mickey Mao Club member, you get to fill in the missing beats at the end of M-A-O with your favorite 2 syllables!

For only $199, you can buy one of these and join our Mickey Mao Club too!

As many of you know, I’m a bit of a nerd. I read some nerd books, I like nerd jokes, and used to have a nerdy job. Being a nerd, one of my favorite web comics is XKCD.

Randall Munroe, the genius behind XKCD, calls the site a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. A logical mix indeed! He has a huge array of comics around love, so I’ve been waiting until Valentine’s Day to post my favorites:

Angular Momentum - by far, my favorite XKCD comic:

Useless - Finding a solution to mathematically explain love:

Grownups - if I wasn’t married, this would totally be me:

If you’ve never seen XKCD (and particularly if you like nerd/tech humor), I suggest you visit his site. If he has other romance/love related posts that you like better, let us know!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

When MTV first arrived in my backwoods Pennsylvania hometown, I thought it was the greatest invention ever. To me, this meant the end of bad radio, no more Carpenters on reel-to-reel tapes, and a welcome distraction to block the noise from some of my mother’s piano students.

The first song I saw on MTV was a-ha’s “Take on Me”. This is the catchy video mixing black and white animation with live actors. If you still don’t remember, here’s a screenshot (I’d post the video, but it looks like YouTube will be required to take down all MTV videos very soon):

Still don’t remember? Check out Family Guy’s funny (and quick) rehash of the song:

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Had I seen something else (for example, anything other than the greatest music video ever produced), maybe MTV wouldn’t have seemed nearly as cool. Not that MTV’s coolness factor lasted very long.

Do you remember the first thing you saw on MTV? Or your favorite video before MTV became Real World TV?

After weeks of research, we have finally concluded our quest for the funniest cartoon drawn entirely on Post-It notes. The clear leader in this category (by a beak) is the hilarious Savage Chickens by Doug Savage.

Doug loved to draw cartoons as a kid, but stopped drawing entirely after entering the corporate world. Like all of us, he tried to convince himself and friends that he was fulfilled:

link

Then one day the chickens came to the rescue, and reignited a creative flame in Doug. Thankfully, he began jotting down all his ideas on Post-It notes, and has scanned over 500 cartoons so far. Sometimes fun-loving, sometimes quirky, and sometimes savage, the chickens kept me entertained through two years worth of drawings:

link

Like the cartoons so far? Then go give the Savage Chickens a hug … but don’t squeeze too hard, you never know who they hugged last:

link

News flash: A presumably sleep deprived scientist has created the perfect pick me up: a donut that packs 2 cups worth of caffeine with no bitter aftertaste (via).

The scientist immediately scoffed at suggestions that this concoction was a potential health hazard. To support his case, he presented this evidence to show that “at least 9%” of the donut is healthy:

My question is: would people actually eat these? Would you?

I say we need to combine more seemingly unrelated foods. I’m just waiting for scientists to create Chocolate Hodinky Juice - this is a hot dog, wrapped in a twinkie, fried in corn dog batter, covered in chocolate, infused with caffeine, sprinkled with Reese’s Pieces, then finally dipped in the adult beverage of your choice.

A full day’s worth of edible vices in one food, coming to your local Dunkin Donuts in 2008.

Update: After reading e-mail and comment feedback, I’ve decided to retire my drawing smock - consider yourself spared

For some reason, today I became fixated on trying to draw a funny comic. Given my artistic abilities (up until now, The SpongeBob in this post was among my best drawings ever), I should have known better.

After 5 hours of throwing away good ideas I simply could not draw, I finally settled on this one:

Even this took me 8 or 9 attempts … whew, I gotta get some sleep!

So what do you think?

Sometimes we all make major life decisions far too difficult … but as this flow chart shows, they don’t need to be:

Picture via The Fishbowl, original drawing by Better than your Boyfriend

Looks like I’m going to build that pool in my basement after all