This Week's Sneak Peek

To say I had some issues with this week's cartoon risks understatement.

I was working on ideas for a cartoon about one topic when news broke that meant those ideas would have to wait.

I came up with something about the breaking news that I felt had relevance to the LGBTQ+ readership, drew it, let the ink dry, scanned it, and started making the Photoshop edits.

I had finished the grayscale version and sent it off to my editors, then started work on the color version. I was nearly finished when the power went out. 

The weather was nice — perfect Chamber of Commerce weather, in fact — so I hadn't been making saves along the way. The power failure, we're told, was due to a vehicle-vs.-power pole collision a couple miles away.

Weenergies restored power to my area a bit more than an hour later, and I had to start coloring the cartoon all over again. After dealing with an upset computer, of course. And all the digital clocks around the house.

But all's well that ends well, and everything's colored and sent off to Ann Arbor.

As for the Blogger issue that came up last week, I'm making this post on the same computer as last week, using the incognito mode of the Chrome browser. I couldn't upload files that way last week, but it's working today. Instead of the Sign In Again window, Blogger/Google put up a Please Allow Cookies Or Else window. 

Once I've posted this, I'll try using the regular browser and see how that works.

✍

Update: It doesn't.

I May Have to Leave This Blog

Google has made some change to uploading images to this blog that make it impossible to do so.

Here's what happens: I click on the upload image icon. A pop-up window appears telling me that I have to sign in to Google to access the content. (I have already signed in to Google to work on the blog, but okay. Let's be safe and secure here.)

When I click on the sign-in button, instead of asking me for my ID and password, a new upload window opens. There is an icon of a cloud, and a choice to Browse or Drag-and-Drop.

Whichever of those two choices I make, a blue progress bar tells me it's uploading. But when it's done, where is my file? Lost in the clouds, apparently. It certainly hasn't appeared in my blog post. It hasn't shown up in the Blogger folders.

I'm not happy, Google. Not at all.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Someone left a comment on one of my old posts, saying that editorial cartoonist Robert Carter was his great-grandfather, and including a little more family information. I was going to reply something to the effect of "Interesting!"

But even though I was already signed in to Blogger to approve his comment for publication, it wanted me to sign in again with a Google ID in order to reply. 

Does everybody who wants to make a comment here have to sign in with a Google ID first?

It doesn't seem to bother the bots who leave comments advertising quack HIV treatments or voodoo enhancements for your love life, most of whom seem to originate in Asia and Oceana. 

Well, anyway, did you know that Robert Carter was married to Countess Hildegard van Walterskirchen of Austria? I didn't. I do know that you can find out plenty more about Robert Carter at Allan Holtz's Stripper's Guide.

And I'm not ignoring you, Ted Carter. Google doesn't like my browser configurations.

Ditto for "Dotard"

A year and a half ago, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai why you get a bunch of pictures of Donald Trump when you google "idiot."

It still works.

To be fair, most of these link to news stories and blog posts about how you get a bunch of pictures of Donald Trump when you google "idiot."

But shush. Don't bother the President now. He's busy tweeting.

Toon: The Eyes Have It

I considered two possible cartoons for syndication this week, and this one is the one I didn't go with.

I like it better, but I'm worried that only comic enthusiasts will get it. But if you have to ask...

Not As Fun As Ex-Gay Birds

Gay 'cures'? There shouldn't be an app for that. But there's a new one called "Setting Captives Free," available in ... Google Play stores, meant to teach you how to stop being gay.
It's a 60-day course that tells gay people they are not "born this way" and offers to help them find "freedom from the bondage of homosexuality." 

-- AllOut.org 

The app had also been available from Apple's iTunes, but no longer.

By the way, hasn't anybody else wondered why the aliens in Close Encounters go to such great lengths to abduct little Barry Guiler in Indiana only to send him trotting back to his mother when their spaceship lands a week or so later in Wyoming? Why are we so sure that's really little Barry?

Online Public Yellow Pages

While the primary focus of my blog is editorial cartooning, I occasionally feel compelled to offer public service to my fellow consumers. Online Public Yellow Pages is a firm with a mailing address in Mooers Forks, New York. Another one of the myriad on-line phone listing knock-offs, they offer to improve the Google ranking of businesses, schools, religious institutions, and whatever other gullible customers they can snag through their phone solicitations -- a service for which they charge upwards of $599.99 per year.

If they had any talent at improving the Google ranking of their customers, would the first page of a Google search of their own name look like this?

P.S.: See also "Fraudulent Yellow Pages Scam: Beware It's Back!" by Denise Richardson.

This Week's Cartoon: Rick S_nt_r_m

Hmmm... if you google "Frothy Mix," is the first link the official web site of Rick Santorum?

Santorum, in case you didn't know it had anything to do with a real person, is the former Senator and soon-to-be former presidential candidate from Pennsylvania, famous for equating marriage rights with man-on-dog sex.

And while you're googling, look up schadenfreude.