My spam has been really boring lately – all lists of drugs and linkorrhea. I cannot illustrate these things. C’mon, jerks, be more funny when you’re leaving your little droppings on a person’s website.

The original comment. (Click to embiggen.)

The artistic interpretation.

I’m working on a couple of short stories for the anthology my cartooning group is putting out this summer. I’m not saying much, but I will give you this hint:

Helpful, no? It’s a nice break from Furlough. I’ve never purposefully wrote one- or two-page stories before, and it’s making me concentrate more on being deliberate and slow. I’m drawing larger for the first time – the book will be 5.5×8.5, a la Furlough, but my layout is 8.25×12.75. Got that? I’m also drawing clean inks onto a sheet of Bristol, using a lightbox so that I can see my pencils. It all looks very arcane when I do it, and it has led to me closing the blinds on some very nice, sunny days lately. The things I do for art.

The original comment (click for actual legibility).

The artistic interpretation.

I’m going to leave this one without comment except to say that this is probably one of the stranger things I’ve drawn, and therefore I like it very much.

The original comment.

The artistic interpretation.

Aw, it’s so cute – who knew that a ridiculously prized and overpriced luxury item, fetishized in song and print, would be capable of such adorable devotion? This particular item is one of my most fervent admirers. I believe I helped it with a college thesis!

This person does spam illustrations too, but he works mainly in the medium of email subject lines. I love these. Can’t you just picture them in embroidery?

This is a comment I’ve received five times so far, each one shilling different stuff I won’t describe in this here highly Googleable text. (Please to be clicking these – they’re on the wide side and I reduced them a little in this here post so that my site’s layout wouldn’t get all pissed.)

The original comment.

The artistic interpretation.

I’m currently at a coffee shop (very Seattle, no?). I just finished eviscerating my existing script for Furlough three and four. I was afraid I’d read it and go, “Yeah, that’s fine,” and just limply draw it, because I’ve been looking at it for so long. But no, I have new ideas and strong feelings about things and several new scenes to write. Every page has something on it, and some of them are buried pretty deep under my scrawl. The back page has a bulleted list of things I need to do or keep in mind.

I’d meant to wait a bit, maybe a month, to let my field lay fallow for a bit before I got back into this big project of mine, but… I don’t want to. I want to keep going, I want to get it done. I’m in a time of pretty damn major transition in my life right now, and I think this is just about the most reassuring thing I can imagine experiencing right now.

The original comment.

The artistic interpretation.

I had to do a little Google image search for this one, which I’m proud of for some reason. My bag of choice is made out of recycled bike tire tubes and seat belt strap.

There is indeed another site that’s done something similar before, and it is hilarious and utterly worth looking at. (Give yourself some time, there’s a lot, even if it hasn’t been updated in years.) It is called… Spamusement.

I’ve waded through my 544 spam comments and filtered out the interesting ones (aka the ones that are not lists of word salad links or prescription drug names). If life gives you spam, make… spamanade? Spamwiches? Right.

The original comment.

The artistic interpretation

I’ve actually seen electronic cigarettes in action (my friend Jinny has used one, and it helped her quit regular smoking entirely). It doesn’t matter. I still think they’re hilarious.