Arsenic Lullaby Blog- Comic-Con, used luggage and old dirty magazines

San Diego Comic-Con International 2019 has come and gone. It's by far the most important show of the year for A.L. and pretty much the entire rest of the industry ( which is no slight on the other fine shows...but having 160,000 attendees pretty much puts this over the top by any standard) and I'll recap it and give a big "Thank you" to all deserving parties in the next update!

...Mostly because right now the whole things is still a blur and the only pic I have of anything is this sketch I did for someone...

which I seem to have forgotten to sign.

But for today, I gotta tell you about this old pornography I ran across at a rummage sale...

Here’s a life hack for you, never by new luggage. Luggage is one of those things you can get, like new, for pennies on the dollar. People buy it, use it once, then it sits in their closet for a few years until they realize that they will never be going back to the Bahamas and that having kids has taken them down the road of indentured servitude, regret and passive aggression- both dispensed and absorbed. Then they sell it off at a rummage sale, along with the baby clothes their kids wore the last time they enjoyed being a parent.

I had to leave a carry on suitcase behind last summer and needed a replacement. So, I stopped by a rummage sale to get one...it was at this sale that I had an epiphany of sorts...

Say what you want about our culture's unrealistic expectations of beauty and the debilitating and confidence eroding body image issues it has given us all...scorn and chastise that all you want...but at this rummage sale was a box of porno magazines from the early 80's ( porn made BEFORE our era of photoshopping celebrities into images of beauty beyond actual mortal abilities) and let me tell you- what was is those pages was a F*CKING HORROR SHOW.

Patches of pubic hair , just growing every which way like ivy on a brick wall...thick and matted like if cookie monster fell asleep on the left side of his face on a humid night. Bodies that are not just thicker or less toned than we are used to seeing...bodies that are hanging off the skeleton like silly putty on a warm day...like they haven't see any exercise in ten years besides running away from home.

In the pages these pornographers...and I use that term loosely...had the nerve to show couples in, they both had physiques and posture I can best describe as apathetic, like one stack of pancakes tipped over onto another stack of pancakes. Hair that looked like a birds next that was assembled by a bird that procrastinated until the eggs was on the way out and slapped it together as fast as possible while trying to hold it in.

The guys all looked like Burt Reynolds and Robin Williams merged into one extra hairy middle aged wreck with a bad mustache. The cool "porno stache" that the hipsters sport these days...is not what I was looking at. Hey...dumbass, if you're going to trim one side of your mustache, maybe trim the other side too? Perhaps he was too proud of the CRUMBS on the other side, to risk trimming them away. Crumbs, I tell you. They could have been just an affect of the bad lighting.

And people apparently PAID to look at this back then.

Maybe you are insecure about yourself in some way or another...but if you were going to a photoshoot you'd at least wipe the sleep out of your eyes, comb your hair, and not look into the camera like you were about to ask me for spare change, or look at your partner like he/she was a sandwich you ordered without mayonnaise but it came with mayonnaise but you don't feel like sending it back.

Whatever insecurities you have or flaws you see in yourself, take solace and reassurance that you are, thanks to your culture induced neurosis, worlds better looking and maintained than what passed for professional level sexual content a mere three decades ago. You are giving it an honest effort, or at least a half assed effort in that you understand you can't just get off a 6 hour greyhound bus trip, after answering an ad, take your clothes off and expect someone to be turned on...and that matters.

The obscenely unreachable examples of beauty our culture burdens us with have nudged us all just a little extra step forward in trying to match them before giving up. And after we give up we are still that extra step forward.

maybe you aren’t perfect, but none of use are and eventually someone will settle for you, just be happy with yourself as a person have some self confidence...and bide your time until something falls in your lap. It's much like getting a deal on used luggage, it's all about timing and someone else giving up on what they hoped for.

huh...this rant turned out to be kind of an inspirational and "body positive" message, when you really look at it.

Anyways, for obvious reasons I passed on buying the guy's luggage. That would be the one asterix to that life hack- look around at the other stuff at the sale and make sure you’re buying “regret luggage” not luggage that belongs to someone who is aroused by thighs that look like 2 week old bananas. Because who knows what the f*ck that guy had in that luggage.

...that's all for now, the store is ( theoretically) down for maintenance until I get all the gear and what not back from CA and unpack and figure out what is left. Pretty much all the original art and back issues are gone, and a some prints are sold out. I'll figure it out by next time.

Later.

...you can get a whole issue of my comic Arsenic Lullaby on Comixology!

https://www.comixology.com/Arsenic-Lullaby-1/digital-comic/753191?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC90b3BSZXN1bHRzU2xpZGVy

my own website with more of my work is here

https://www.arseniclullabies.com

you can find more of my work on Instagram here

https://www.instagram.com/arsenic_lullaby_official/

also now on webtoons!

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/arsenic-lullaby/list?title_no=316350&page=1

the tags list on Steemit is generated by code...which puts tags up there based on ONLY popularity of use. You will notice that #comics does not exist there...yet. So I ASK THAT YOU USE #comics ON EVERY COMMENT YOU LEAVE ON MY BLOGS