My love of stinky fish started in early childhood. Every New Year, my grandma would open a can of smoked oysters and put them out beside the fancy cheeses and wide variety of crackers, and you’d pick them up with toothpicks and eat them on a cracker. How on earth she ever got a six year-old to try eating something that looked like some sort of slimy alien organ, I’ll never know, but for whatever reason, I loved them. Couldn’t get enough of them. Ate whole cans by myself, even.

And so now, every time I walk past the canned fish isle, I’m tempted to buy a nice smoked kipper or sardines in brine or even pickled herring. But I always save the canned oysters for New Years…

But good luck getting Layne to give me a New Year’s kiss after I’ve polished off the can.

What is this, Penny Arcade? When did I start doing video game reviews all of a sudden?

Honestly, though. All of the ’squee’ I’ve been holding back while playing Dragon Age didn’t have an outlet because I couldn’t decide which of the many, many jokes to make. (Trust me, though – a Dragon Age strip IS coming.) But, with Assassin’s Creed, I finally got one easy, straightforward joke.

Assassin’s Creed II is a pretty, pretty game, if not for those who are easily given to vertigo. (Actually, if you’re given to vertigo at all – stay far, far away from this game… I’ve got a pretty good stomach for heights, but watching Ezio climb some of those towers makes me feel a little queasy.) I’m not very far into the plot yet, because – yes, you guessed it – I went around and climbed all the viewpoints and collected all the feathers first, just so I could see all the architectural details. Mmm, architectural details…

If I ever actually go to Italy, someone will have to put a harness on me like they do with kindergarten kids so that I don’t get lost simply staring up at the buildings for hours on end. So. Pretty.

Well, we’re back, and so is Moosehead Stew!! Happy New Year, everyone!!

I don’t know if I explained this last time I used the joke, but around here, we call it a ‘hedgehog party’ when the hedgies have royally destroyed their pens, because the aftermath looks like two college students got drunk and trashed their very tiny little houses. Food and litter everywhere, wheels tipped, jingly toys thrown completely out of the pens… If there was a hedgehog equivalent of pizza boxes, they would be stacked in the corner, by the tiny little beer bottles.

And, man… What a smell… One week’s worth of condensed catfood smell & hedgehog droppings, all wafting out at once is not a nice smell…

This is me hosing them down afterwards. They were not happy that I was home again.

First off, I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Secondly, as I’m currently posting this from an unreliable internet connection in a farm house in central Saskatchewan, I’m probably going to be out of touch for a few days. As a result, Moosehead Stew is going to take a break for a few days, until I can a) find a scanner and b) not have to hope that my comic uploads before the internet connection cuts out on me.

I’ll be back as soon as I can manage! Until then, hope you all are having a lovely holiday!

So, this is why you don’t save jokes.

A month or so ago, I had written a bunch of work jokes written as a way to blow off some steam. Obviously, these are pretty irrelevant now, so I was going through the scripts* seeing if there was anything salvageable. This was the only one that really stood out, so I figured I’d still run it.

What strikes me about this script in particular is that I wrote it down pretty much verbatim. It was like I’d suddenly walked into some sort of office sit-com, and for the span of a few seconds, our timing was comedic, our wit scalpel sharp. And then the moment ended, the flashlight was retrieved, and everyone went back to chatting about projects behind schedule and the latest Oilers game.

So, yes. This is the first and the last of the work jokes for the foreseeable future. I’m good with that. The rest of the jokes were suspiciously Dilbert-esque, and besides – work is boring. There’s far better jokes to be had elsewhere!

* ‘Script’ is a pretty generous term. Some of the ideas are full-fledged scripts, sure, but others are things as arcane and obscure as ‘po-tay-ters’ or ‘that thing on the tomato that one time’. Most of the time, by the time I get around to trying to flesh those out, I’ve completely forgotten what I was originally meaning to write. Sometimes, they die as-is, and sometimes, I find new jokes in them. Sort of like a literary squirrel with a cache of nuts…

Yup. I’m out of a job again. But no big deal. I was already planning on being able to do comics full-time by March, so all this means is that we have to move the timeline up a bit. The timing’s a bit crappy, (who fires someone just before Christmas?? I mean, jeez…) but other than that, I’m actually pretty relieved to be on my own again.

For weeks now, I’ve been gritting my teeth and reciting my mantra, ‘you’ll be your own boss soon, you’ll be your own boss soon,’ just to get through the day, so it’s gonna be super awesome not to have to deal with THAT anymore!! And, I can wear my fuzzy slippers to work ALL I WANT now, which is good, cause it’s still about a billion degrees below zero out there…

So, yeah. Silver linings and all that. When you’ve got a job like making comics to fall back on, everything else just doesn’t really hold up.

* * *

Actually, got another funny moment to share. When my boss told me I was fired, I just looked at him for a minute.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Couldn’t you have fired me on Friday?” I asked.

“No. I make it a policy never to fire anyone on a Friday.” He replied.

“Why the crap not?” I said, indignantly. “That’s the best time to fire someone!! They can leave, take the weekend to drink or rant or whatever, and then get it all out of their system just in time for a fresh start on Monday! I could have been warm and comfy in my bed right now!!”

He apologized. Profusely. If anything good comes from this on their end, I hope that I have at least convinced that guy to rethink his stance on Friday firings.