[Posted by E&C on 22 Aug 2010 01:45 pm]

I'm about to rant. I am. I can feel it bubbling in my fingertips like Pepsi poured over rage-flavored Pop Rocks. And before I do that and subsequently lose you all, I want to take a moment and offer my praise to J.P. Manzanares who has given us the art for today's strip. When we first began this experiment of running the comic depending almost entirely on the kindness of strangers, one problem I never foresaw was trying to properly express my gratitude and awe to the many, many kind men and women who would offer to us their gifts. The problem isn't expressing it so much as doing so in such a way that each artist realizes that I am not simply copy/pasting my thanks. Doing so in such a way that they each know they are a unique morsel of fineness. That Chuck Palahniuk was wrong. That they are all snowflakes.

Each piece that comes in is a thing of wonder, and when wonder becomes commonplace we are well and truly fucked.

So thank you, J.P. You have shared yourself and your talent with us, you have moved me and done so entirely selflessly. And for that, to you and to all of your brothers and sisters who have and will appear on this site I offer my profound and inspired thanks.

To see more of J.P.'s work, please visit his site here. Please support each of our contributors as they support us. With kindness and grace.

For those still here:

Someone recently told me that we remember what's important. My childhood, then, must not be terribly important. Girls are important. Not all girls, not even many girls but some girls are for sure. Some girls, I can describe to you at length that would bore Tolstoy, at funeral-speeds and in detail that would make Larry Flynt blush, and then ask me to repeat it all.

But my childhood, especially those parts that involved school are a blur. A Monet, maybe. Looking at it from a distance I've got a decent idea of the scene and the meaning, but as I step closer, it's just kind of a mess of ghosts and water.

When I do try to focus on middle school, honestly, what I remember most is how I felt mistreated. Not by my classmates; despite my tiny size I was never picked on or bullied, a result, I feel, of a combination of making them laugh and the fear that if they were mean to me, I might stop letting them cheat off of my papers. Also, even then, I'm sure they all thought it would be a sin to mess up this face.

But many of my teachers treated me, and all of us, like idiot-children. And there is a difference, I'm near-certain, between children and idiot-children.

One, you see, is a double whammy.

Many of my teachers in my primary years were openly hateful but the ones I still despise when I think of them--and I hadn't thought of any of them in over a decade until I sat down to write this thing so thanks for this, C!--but the ones I still despise are the ones who were dismissive and snarky. The ones who who turned their fat asses and crooked noses toward the air and seemed to deem us all simply not worth their time. The ones for whom any question beyond the scope of their last sentence was heresy and met with disdain and flippancy.

And while I hate children and am often guilty of treating them as children (for example, I rarely take them to strip clubs or ask them for a light of my smoke) I try not to treat them as though they are stupid and less-than.

And, let me reiterate: I HATE kids. So if I hate kids but still treat them with a modicum of respect, the majority of my middle school teachers must have been, like, one bad cup of coffee from kiddie-genocide.

Teaching is a hard job. It is a hero's job. And much the same way Bob Barker has no business swinging from rooftops or stepping in to save the city from Doc Ock, it is a job best left to those who have a capacity for it.

I'm told that almost all of the teachers I hated growing up have retired or moved on to other work, now. If any of them are reading this: I want to thank you for that. I take it as a kindness.

I didn't do well with authority when I was tiny, and I don't abide it any better in my twenties. I'm actually angry when I think that these people were given power over me, just as I was angry then. I'm angry that I didn't have the perspective or the vocabulary to tell them to go fuck themselves at that time and in that place. I'm angry that I was punished for my autonomy and curiosity. I am, quite simply, angry. Middle school sucks. But stick with it, kids. If you make it to high school and college, you get to learn about things worth remembering. You get to learn about girls.

Get a beverage of your choice and remain exceptional, even in the face of adolescence,

E