Archive for the 'Comics' Category

I came up with this basic idea while staring at a huge number of “the Tao of XYZ” books at a Barnes and Noble. I grabbed all of the book titles in the first panel off of an Amazon search for “The Tao of” (all of them are real, by the way). The quote in the second panel is from chapter 56 of the Tao Te Ching as translated by Stephen Mitchell. I may have had to look it up, but I definitely knew the gist–that book is very important to me. This was a rare comic where I had the basic idea mapped out and then did research to fill in the pieces, rather than using research on random topics as a way to stimulate the comedy brain.

It’s also worth pointing out that I have a very severe love/hate relationship with the book The Tao of Pooh. On the one hand, Benjamin Hoff does a pretty good job of explaining the concepts of the Taoist masters. On the other hand, he pushes a lot of his own ideologies that in my mind run counter to the spirit of the Tao Te Ching as if they were a self-evident extension of the words of that book. Parts of his work I read as downright hateful, which is about the last word I’d use to describe the Tao Te Ching

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I’m pretty sure that this one started with me just thinking about what a book review by the Rice Cooker would work like and the comic evolved naturally from that into a joke lifted from an early Dilbert, when Dogbert marketed a newspaper that you can read every day. I like to think my version is a little more character-oriented rather than based on an odd bit of social commentary, but I know I thought of that Dilbert when I was throwing this one together.

In fairness to books, I think that the rice cooker thinks of basically everything as charming (or not-so-charming) distractions from the tedium of everyday life. It’s probably obvious, but this comic is a place where the opinions of myself and my creation diverge considerably. Books were my first love, and they remain a central part of my life.

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This is a basic joke idea that I’d been tooling around with for years in real life and modified to make an Angriest Rice Cooker. When people have suggested that this isn’t really a comic at all, just jokes on a .png, I’ve pointed out that while we can argue whether or not the comics are funny at all, they’re certainly not funny if you try to tell them. Sadly, that was true of the times that I’ve tried to make in person jokes that later became Rice Cooker comics. One particularly rough attempt to make the basic idea funny was the one time that I was talking about it to what I didn’t realize at the time was an actual male college cheerleader. That was kind of awkward.

Let’s just say that there’s a reason that my main humor medium is the internet.

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One of the common modern gripes that I find silly and exasperating to hear are complaints about the supposed lunacy in our court system, supposedly evident from warning labels on products and lawsuits that seem to defy common sense–when they are described in thirty seconds. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of problems with the legal system. But the last one I worry about is large corporations getting hit with lawsuits. Believe me, big corporations have got good defenders. And there’s a reason why we have trials rather than common sense decisions based on thirty second summaries–cases are often a lot more complicated than they appear. That’s not to say that the system is infallible, but it’s less arbitrary than snap judgments based on personal prejudices.

Even the infamous hot coffee spilling lawsuit is a little more complicated, and rational, than you might have heard. And all of this matters far more than simply bugging me–these kinds of things are pointed to by big corporations as a way to promote major changes to our legal system. While there is a case to be made for tort reform (not an entirely convincing one if you ask me, but there you go). Sound bites about “crazy lawsuits” are not a part of that rational case.

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I always hated Hot Topic when I was a young’n, couldn’t stand to even be in one for more than a few minutes at a time when I was accompanying gothier acquaintances. And it certainly bugged me when they picked up stuff that I was actually into to make ironically cool (like a year after the fact, of course). But my friend once made the wonderful point that Hot Topic is a good force, because it shows white kids what it’s like to have their culture appropriated.  I never felt this more than when they started putting in Napoleon Dynamite stuff. Again, this was like six months after everyone kind of got over that movie, but I’m from Idaho, and while I’m not from the small town Eastern Idaho places like Preston, where the movie takes place, I definitely knew people like that. Dorky Idaho kid is my culture and they appropriated the fuck out of it. But in the long run, I guess I’ve come around to the Rice Cooker’s way of thinking about it. Hating Hot Topic is about as passe as, well, Hot Topic.

One other thing about this comic is that you can see me getting a little bit more confident about using the placement of the words in the panels in order to simulate a kind of speech pattern and intonation, even though it’s a rice cooker. You’ll see me play with this a little more a few comics later

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This basic joke had been bouncing around my head for years before I actually made this comic. Sadly, anti-drug messages have moved on from “my anti-drug” so it’s kind of dated. I say sadly because I’m actually really happy with how this comic turned out. I really like how the rice cooker looks on the black background, and I like how the My Anti-drug logo turned out. I made that by going to the “my anti-drug” website, finding a real one with the right number of letter spaces, and then copying and pasting the individual letters from other ones. I think this was the most work I put into the visual aspect of any comic except for the first one–which admittedly wasn’t a lot. Still, I like it.

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This one originated when I was looking at a bunch of LiveJournal interest pages and noticed like five in a row that all had philosophy on them–and I was pretty sure that none of those people were exactly philosophy students. Of course, this is a little bit of a glass houses situation–my own LiveJoural info page has philosophy listed as well and, well, lets just say that basically everything I know about philosophy was at some point a part of an Angriest Rice Cooker. But my interests were actually determined by the subjects of all the comics (since the LiveJournal was originally created to be exclusively a notes page for the comic) that existed to that time, and philosophy was certainly one of the things discussed in the comic. I consider this a simultaneous joke about people who think they are deep and are interested in philosophy even though they’re not (this was totally me in junior high, by the way) and at the idea that a community run by philosophers would actually be great. I don’t think there’s any historical basis for that claim–and some fairly compelling counterevidence.

The name smittenedkitten13 isn’t actually a LiveJournal–in fact, it’s two characters too long to be one (ever wondered why my LJ name is angryricecooker rather than angriestricecooker? Now You Know!). This was a little in-joke to myself. In the first week or so that I was writing Angriest Rice Cooker comics, I considered making a topical one about this news story in which a dead 80-year-old (or so) woman was sued by the RIAA for file sharing in spite of the fact that she apparently didn’t even know how to use a computer. Smittenedkitten13 was her alleged username. I thought it was such a funny username that even though I never actually used that comic, it stayed in my mind. There was an added bonus that the name reminded me of a livejournal user I won’t name who was kind of bitchy to me one time and so I considered the comic a very very private dig at her (him? I’m actually not sure). That’s why you should never make me angry. I’ll make a joke nobody (including you) would even realize is directed at you in a comic you don’t read anyway. Fear my wrath!!!

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Here’s another one that’s based on a piece of information that I’m not entirely sure is…um…true. I think that this is based on something that I heard on NPR years ago when they were talking about the old laugh track machine, which was recorded out of laughs from I Love Lucy and such. I don’t think that they actually use that machine anymore, although it’s entirely possible that they still use some of the same laughs. And I guess that quite a few of the people who were in the audience for I Love Lucy are probably dead now (if not “long” dead as this comic argues). But I just love the concept of laughter living on forever and being dredged up by some sit com necromancer so much that It doesn’t bug me that much if it’s not entirely factually true.

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I like this one as an example of a non-political comic inspired by something political. Even though the comic references George W. Bush (and makes a far-from-timely reference about him), I don’t think you could determine from this any particular political viewpoint. I kind of like that.

I think part of the origin of this one comes from when I was in high school and the “axis of evil” thing was a lot more timely. All of my friends worked on the school newspaper and came up with funny stuff for the paper. When the “axis of evil” was in the news, they came up with an idea of “The Original Axis of Evil,” which became a brilliant cartoon/illustration in the paper. I don’t quite remember all of the characters they came up with, but I remember the list included Moby Dick, Caligula, Hitler’s Ghost, Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, and Bizarro Mother Teresa. Anyway, that was probably buried somewhere in the ol’ subconscious when I came up with this one.

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Not too much to say about this one. I was just at work at my soul-crushing call center job thinking about how lame a slogan “I’m lovin’ it” really is, and I came up with this one. The original version of this contained an embarrassing spelling error.

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