“Professional Doodler”

One of the sports writers at the local paper lives in my neighborhood and, because this is Utah County we’re talking about, attends the same church I do. He asked if he could interview me for their annual “Progress Edition,” and I agreed.

All told it’s a nice little article. A couple of the factoids are a little confusing, or inaccurate, but that’s the newspaper business.

I know that at least one person read it. A real-estate agent here in Utah County emailed me and said that he graduated a couple of years ago in graphic arts, and could I please tell him what was meant by “corporate clients?” I guess the job market for artists was kind of soft in 2003.

Heh. Who am I kidding? This job market will ALWAYS be soft. What my college professors said about musicians probably applies to the visual arts too: “Musicians who have a Plan B end up going with Plan B.” In my case, Novell for ten years. In this guy’s case, real estate.

–Howard

16 thoughts on ““Professional Doodler””

  1. It’s funny, people at work see my photographs and the stuff I doodle and they ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing instead of photography or art – I point out I like to be able to eat 😉

  2. Sweet! Howard’s famous! (Sort of.) And I love that quote at the end.

    Though I would have picked a different specific comic for the example; there are so many others that stand alone on their humor so much better.

    1. If being in the Daily Herald means you’re famous, I’m famous too. I’m pretty sure that’s where I ended up when I was in Orem for a couple of weeks with school. (SUCH a PITY I didn’t read Schlock back then!) Personally, I’d say having 20000 readers makes you more famous. 😉

      Um, anyway, yes, I had the same thought – why in the world that comic? Unless you’ve been following Schlock it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, does it? 😛

      1. I don’t think Howard got to select the comic that got printed. They just grabbed the comic from the day the interview was done. But the existence of the comic is an eye-catcher and makes it much more likely that folks will pay attention to a small bio-article.

        1. Ooh! It’s Sandra herself! *fangirlish sigh* 😉

          Jus’ to make sure, I never thought Howard picked it, I was thinking the person who wrote the article did. Pity really, there’s so many great strips that would’ve worked on their own… Ah well.

          Still a nice little article.

  3. Not to hijack the thread….

    In today’s open letter you say:

    “In other news, I still owe you a Penguicon report. Blame Canaca… I would have written it today had I not been wrestling with the negligence and inaptitude of my former webhost.”

    First off the (unintentional?) South Park reference made me laugh out loud. This caused my girlfriend to look at me like I’d lost my mind. Yay.

    Secondly, should it be ineptitude? Or is my spelling really that bad?

    1. Re: Not to hijack the thread….

      Both words are extreemly simular. My take on it is that…

      ineptitude – is unskillfulness resulting from a lack of training
      inaptitude – is a lack of inherent ability

      So if you are inept you can be taught, if you are inapt there is no hope.
      If that’s the case, Howard got it right. But don’t ask me, I’m NOT an English major.

      1. Re: Not to hijack the thread….

        Dictionary.com to the rescue!

        in·ap·ti·tude

        1. Lack of talent or ability.
        2. The quality or state of being inappropriate.

        in·ep·ti·tude

        1. The quality of being inept; ineptness.
        2. An inept act or remark.

        It looks like either word would have been appropriate in this case. 😛

        Yay! I learned a new word!

        1. Re: Not to hijack the thread….

          *sigh* You know, one of these days I’ll remember I can’t edit my posts here. One last dictionary treat:

          inept:

          1. Displaying a lack of judgment, sense, or reason; foolish: an inept remark.
          2. Bungling or clumsy; incompetent: inept handling of the account.

          Canaca seems like they were DEFINATELY inept.

          (And congrats on the article Howard. Yay for free publicity! ;))

    2. Re: Not to hijack the thread….

      Oh dear. I sense a filk coming on… (Which wouldn’t work if “canaca” isn’t pronounced the same as “canada”, but…)

      Bandwith’s changed!
      Connection’s getting worse!
      The servers aren’t responding,
      tech support’s just point and curse!

      Shouldn’t we blame the users?
      Or blame the php?
      Or should we blame the facility’s OC3?

      No! Blame canaca…

      I’ll stop now.

  4. Very nice article. Mine was bigger, but in a paper with much lower circulation. 🙂

    You can expect a call from the folks at In the News, a company that makes those fancy laminated plaques you see sometimes. I got one of my article, and I’m very happy with it.

    The article is available online, though without the pictures.

    1. Yup. No grey hair in the beard, wearing Marica’s jean jacket w/ Winnie The Pooh pin, and smirking because I’m a cool guy who works for Novell AND owns a record production company.

      SOMEBODY needs a new head shot.

Comments are closed.