they call me the stray

I have a pretty good vocabulary. English was always my favorite subject aside from art. I love words, for fun I used to read the dictionary and write down interesting words and give myself vocabulary tests. I’m that much of a nerd. I like using the most accurate word instead of the most common. For instance I’ve noticed that I’ll usually say “abhor” instead of “hate”, even though they’re close to the same thing abhor is slightly more accurate (when it comes to how I feel) because it doesn’t connote the same kind of anger or hostility. I love how nuanced words can be, I’m picky about using the right ones.

However, sometimes I dumb it down around some people out of fear of them thinking I’m pretentious, haha. I’ve actually had people roll their eyes at me because I used a “big” word. I’ve also been told I was “trying too hard”. Do I TRY to sound intelligent? Yeah. Why wouldn’t I? Shouldn’t everyone? I mean, to convey that you are intelligent and articulate isn’t a bad thing, right? These people are silly I know, and I know people will say “You shouldn’t care what people think.” and I don’t for the most part really, but I will pull back on the “big” words from time to time just because I know some will be distracted from what I’m trying to say by my weird newfangled words.

Read books ya’ll.

So, I’ve been very flattered by the response Maurice has gotten. I’m always glad when people like the things I do, but Maurice especially because he’s been with me such a long time. I’ve worked on him on and off for roughly a decade. I was newly enrolled in animation school and he was the first cartoon character I came up with after seeing a bush baby on tv. I’d never seen a bush baby cartoon character, and I like to do things that you don’t expect or see a lot of. So I did this sketch:

Sucks right? Haha, I’m not showing it for vanity’s sake. I just think some might be interested in seeing how it began in contrast to what he is now. Cartoony stuff was NOT my thing when I began drawing him, I was always more into just drawing more or less realistic, so I had no idea what I was doing with this. I decided he need to be cuter though, bigger head, smaller body, bigger eyes, etc.

In a lot of early drawings of Maurice he’s smoking. I don’t smoke. I kind of initially imagined him as a kind of surly type of dude who always had something sardonic to say and smoked cigarettes. A typical “edgy” kind of guy. That didn’t last long, over the years who he is has gone through a lot of changes, from surly smoker, to a mischievous punk, to a sarcastic gay guy, I really didn’t know who he was besides a bush baby, so there was nothing really informing his design, I was just throwing stuff to a wall and seeing what stuck. Eventually (inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm) I decided to base Maurice more on myself, loosely, so he lost the cigarettes and became heterosexual.

I dug up all my old sketchbooks, so you’ll be seeing some more of early Maurice stuff in the following days. WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!

Seriously… why are you so funny!?

To compensate for my lack of other qualities ladies find appealing, like confidence, status, or being impressively good-looking. In the absence of those characteristics humor, irreverent honesty, slightly above average intelligence, and passable talents, while not necessarily making me seem like an immediate catch, does at least make me seem worthy of talking to, case in point, a very attractive young lady just did (you). With my foot in the door the laughter and stimulating conversation begins to make them associate me with feeling good, and if the proper amount of sexual tension is generated bingo bango bob’s you’re uncle access granted. In theory at least. That’s why I’m so funny.

SIKE!

Haha, shit I don’t know gurl! I just is aight?

A lot of people like to boastfully proclaim that they’ve done something “LIKE A BOSS!” Personally I like to be more honest with myself so I’ll instead say something like “LIKE A SUPERVISOR!”, or often more accurately “LIKE A LOW LEVEL EMPLOYEE!”.

Sometimes even “LIKE A JOB APPLICANT THAT DIDN’T GET A CALL BACK!”

When I was younger, I want to say about 14 maybe, I was hanging out with my cousin who was about 2 years older, and his 2 friends. They were all on a football team, and we had just come from their game. When I hung out with older kids I pretty much just said nothing unless someone asked me something. It’s just my nature to be very reserved around people who I feel aren’t like myself. These kids cursed, and talked about sex, and violence, and ditching and all kinds of other shenanigans. One of them told a story about how he got kicked out of class for flipping off the teacher. The other two thought this was very great. I thought it was stupid and disrespectful, but I kept that to myself and laughed about it. The point I’m trying to make was that I was a square, a timid square.

Later in that day we were walking around the apartment complex, and we went to go see if this girl they were friends with was home. She was, so we hung out with her, she was their age, or maybe even older it seems. She seemed a lot like them except… considerably more busty. I called them “bagongons” back them… I think I might bring that back, feel free to use it. She had huge bagongons, and if you know anything about teenage boys*, or boys of any age, you will know that they were intense eyeball magnets. They were like those huge U shaped magnets that Wyle E. Cyote used. Very powerful magnets. You try to be as inconspicuous as possible, but girls know. Apparently she didn’t mind at all though and thought it was funny/cute or something, with this mischievous grin on her face she grabbed me by the wrists and started to pull my hands towards her bagongons, I reflexively pulled back. She tried to pull them toward her bagongons again, and I again I resisted. She gave up. I IMMEDIATELY REGRETTED THIS DECISION! I was a kid, I’d never touched bagongons before, and like every boy my age I was obsessed with them, I very much wanted to touch bagongons. I can’t even explain why I resisted, it just seemed weird and it caught me off guard and my cousin and his friends were all looking at me like it was a big joke. They laughed and teased me for being scared, and the day went on, they all talked about random stuff and I just silently tagged along, secretly hoping I’d get another chance to touch those bagongons. It never came, and it’s not exactly like I could go “Hey, I think I’m ready to touch those bagongons now, sorry about earlier, I panicked.”

To this day I’m like “FUCK! JEFF YOU IDIOT!” They’re the bagongons that got away.

*wistful sigh*

Created a 2nd blog for all the stuff I don’t feel like posting to my main blog; random stuff, reblogs, rants, etc. In the interest of keeping this blog focused on original content. If you want to follow it, cool, if you’re content just following this blog, also cool. Everything’s cool, man.

here it be: ROWSDOWER vs MANOS!!!

If you get the reference you’re cool in my book ;)

A few weeks ago I hugged my little brother (who is 7) so tight that when I let go of him he was crying cause I had hurt him. I FELT SO BAD! I had heard him whining while I was hugging him too, but I thought he was just being silly… so I hugged him EVEN TIGHTER and went “RAARRR! I’LL CRUSH YOUR BONES!” argh, I didn’t think I was hurting him, I still feel bad, haha, poor guy, I literally loved him too much! I told him I was sorry a thousand times and gave him kisses on the forehead. I made it up to him with some ice cream.

And that’s how I learned that you can’t give little kids big man hugs, gotta pull back the reigns a little or you might crush them :(