I went to the doctor today for a mole-check. I used to sunbathe like a madman back when I was young, stupid, and living in Florida. I’ve had more body-spanning sunburns than most people have had haircuts. As I grow older, I’m noticing more moles, and I’m acutely aware that I’m in the high-risk group for skin cancer.

These aren’t massive, hairy, old-man moles, mind you. These are just ordinary moles. But they’re NEW, and I figure it can’t hurt to check ’em out. Also, I had a couple of mole-ish lumps they call “skin tags” I figured we’d have looked at as well.

All is well. The doctor had a look at things, and said that none of my many discolored speckles were anything to be worried about, but that it WAS a good idea for me to come in from time to time, especially if something new cropped up. He checked out the skin tags, and said they were just a cosmetic matter. Slave to vanity that I am, I said I’d like to have them removed anyway, so he rolled in his mole-zapping machine.

I really, really, REALLY wish these things had been on my belly, or my knee, or someplace OTHER than my back so that I could have seen what was going on. See, after anesthetizing the spot (THAT hurt) he stuck a needle in and electrified it so that sparks jumped through the skin tag burning it up. When he started on the second of them I realized I could smell burning hair. At least, it smelled like burning hair, and I was stupidly surprised to discover that burning skin smells the same way. I expected burnt me to smell somehow.. ‘wetter.’ More like a barbecue, and less like unsuccessfully stepping away after lighting the grill.

Anyway, that was today’s adventure. I got bandaids!

–Howard

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