I’ve been ruminating on the U.S. political scene for some time now. Most of you at least suspect that I’ll be voting to support the incumbent in a continuation of aggressive military policies. I’ll allow you to continue in this perception, because there’s not much point in my trying to convince you of what I REALLY think. Besides, the above is close enough for the sort of sweeping generalizations bloggers subsist upon.

My ruminations have little to do with the actual policies that I expect Kerry or Bush to promote if elected. Mostly I’m concerned about the way this election is tearing people up inside.

I’ve said it before: the policies of the sitting president have absolutely nothing to do with how you treat your neighbor. Deep down inside, all of us (except the genuinely sick or truly evil) want the same things. We yearn for meaningful companionship. We strive for a measure of material security. We feel pain at the pain of others. We want to have fun. Politicians will come and go, but these basics stay the same.

Politicians play these basics in their platforms. It’s not just a head-game, either. It’s not that one party or another doesn’t understand your needs. It’s that the people IN those parties have differing ideas about how to best MEET those needs (unless they’re anarchic libertarians, in which case they figure you’ll meet those needs on your own ANYWAY, so who needs government?). Let’s face it, though. The policies of a governing body can have only an impersonal, artificial impact on the basic desires of real people. A $200 tax credit? That’s little more than a momentary thrill, and certainly won’t bail anybody out of a decent string of bad luck.

The impact we individuals WANT is from each other. When a politician kisses a baby it’s a photo opportunity. When a mother kisses a baby it’s something else entirely.

Regardless of who wins, regardless of how close the election is, regardless of whether or not you think so-and-so “stole the election,” you’re still going to have neighbors on November 3rd. Be nice to them. Vote your conscience on the 2nd, and then be conscientious for the rest of the week.

Or (hey, why NOT?) maybe the rest of the year.

Oh, and be nice to each other in the comments below. Think of it as a dry run.

This makes me giggle joyfully. Summary: the judge was so happy to finally have the defendent back in his courtroom, he threw a party for him.

Ahh, justice is served, with a super-sized order of irony on the side.

–Howard

The Schlock buffer has slid below 10 again… clear down to 7, in fact, but I’ve actually made some critical progress. See, over the weekend my usual image editor, LView Pro, went wonky on me. The brush tool would no longer paint. While I’m relatively sure this is the sort of thing that can be resolved with a simple re-install, the discs weren’t handy, and I figured I was pretty close to knowing Photoshop well enough to be able to do Schlock coloring with it.

So I killed several hours on the learning curve, and finally reached the point where I could do everything in Photoshop I used to do in LView pro. Then I cranked out a week’s worth of updates, and Monday’s comic is the first of those.

Photoshop is not only more powerful (I knew this), but it’s also more fun to use. Time permitting, you’ll start seeing some slightly fancier coloring in future strips. But not on Monday’s strip. Or Tuesday’s. In fact, I don’t think you’ll see much special until, oh, Saturday.

That said, LView pro appears to be a better tool for reducing the images for the web. I’m not sure why this is, but after going through all the bicubic and bilinear reduction options in Photoshop, I couldn’t get small Schlock strips as readable or as clean as I could with LView Pro. That’s okay. The wonkyness is in the brush, not the resizing of images.

Schlocktoberfest is completely colored now. I’m glad to have it behind me, and I’m ready to charge ahead with the next chapter in the story.

–Howard

My Kimmel tape arrived from jmaynard. I would have watched it last night, but I was still plowing through the Season Four CSI DVDs I borrowed from chalain.

If it weren’t for my friends, I don’t think I’d get any entertainment at all.

Speaking of free entertainment, some of you may recall my railing at Pete a while back. Whether or not MY griping had anything to do with it (and I’m suspecting “not”), Sluggy has been wonderful lately. It’s been updating regularly, and the updates have been BIG. Verrry nice. Okay, there was filler yesterday, and that bugged me as much as ever, but with all the griping I did before I figured it was only fair for me to say how much happier I’ve been.

Keep it up, Pete.

–Howard