#this comic was also an excuse to draw Jeff once again

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny gets her sleepy FNAF guys mixed up,,

[zoocross0vers]

HERE WE…GOOO!!!!🦔💨

Sorry for not posting this sooner, I had some problems with scanning and lighting but I’m glad that is finally done. Here are some doodles of Sonic/Zootopia crossover from my 2 favourite movies. Those two movies are complimenting each other. Remember when I told you how Tom👦 and Maddie👩🏾 (these are names of those characters from Sonic movie) remind me a lot of Nick🦊 and Judy🐰? Well, after I watched the movie (10 times in cinema, 15 times at home after pandemy, don’t judge me!), it turns out that they have lot in common indeed that I thought. Those are my favourite moments from movie with Nick and Judy as Tom and Maddie and so does other characters from Zootopia (I really enjoy also that scene akward conversation about shooting Sonic with tranq-gun, that is hilarious for me). Wish I could include more but unfortunately after I drew I realized that my paper is not big enough, dang it! Thankfully I was able for example including at least 3 important moments like Sonic looking at happy couple behind window wishing been part of company, because of fear of him all alone forever, which it saddening him (😢 „sniff“ can someone please give that kid a hug?!😭), Ozzy licking Sonic’s face (awwwwww :3) and of course “THE FINAL BATTLE WITH ROBOTNIK” (at least the confrontation). The only thing I didn’t include was Longclaw and echidna tribe, since they had small screen and I small space (dang it!). Which is bummer because I really like Longclaw, she is really interesting character and wish we could see more. There were only two scenes of her, the one from begging of the movie and the deleted where she end up in earth with Sonic for some time but died from s-sicknes-ss “sniff”😢 (I’m sorry for that but this moment always makes cry every-time I watching it😭, it’s just really personal for me for certain reasons.). I guess you questioning the Ozzy licking Sonic’s face scene considering there are no domestic animal, including dogs and Zootopia is world of anthromorphic mammals, so I thought I would use Yoshi as Ozzy as a cameo from Mario (you know because of friendly rivalry between Sonic and Mario) and also as a gift for Yoshifan, especially after seen many pictures of Nick and Yoshi who’s calling him “Mama Nick” and I found it pretty funny. After I started drawing I realized there are some obstacles that would be problem like (aside from Ozzy) raccoons, bear-head from Piston Pit, chilli-dogs (considering what meat they put on these things if, IF it is a meat), the Sonic’s shoes (the old and new ones) and of course Robotnik himself considering I don’t want to change him into some mammal. Like I said before Robotnik works better as human and he doesn’t need to change to an animal considering he put animals from Sonic’s world, anthromorphic and normal, always in danger or abuse (like making them into badniks, or robotized them). So, how are gonna fix it you ask? Well I have some idea. Like I said before for Ozzy I choose Yoshi for that role (and honestly I don’t have any other options, heheh. BUT you must admit that it is adorable 🥰), raccoons were a challenge so I came multiple ideas for example:

Instead of raccoons we use gerbil jerks from Zistopia concept art

Raccoons will be anthromorphic teens who like mess with Nick while eating from trashcans (like Mr. Big said, evolved but deep down still animals)

Since mammals are sentient how about use non-mammal “trash pandas”(lol, I like that nickname) like birds as ravens, crows or pigeons (pigeons are also known as “flying rats” – thank you Spies in Disguise)

Those are mine options, if you have other in mind I’m listening.

Then there’s taxidermy bear-head. Considering that pouching would classified as not just illegal but also as psycho (still not get over that taxidermy Moose-head from Sly 2. Yeah I know that was part of mission to blend in to not rise a suspicion but seriously, WHY those Moose have that head, did they just-…you know what let’s not think about it😖) I came up with idea instead of taxidermy bear-head how about some mask of unusual mascot like the manticore from Onward, eh eehh? (Or it can some dino but I rather prefer manticore). As for those motorbike gang at first I want to suggest those Ranger Scouts. That would be delightful punishing them that way (evil chuckle😈). But then I remembered the trash gang from Zootopia comic “A hard day’s work” and to be honest those characters are ideal for those roles: wildebeest could the black cowboy, elephant as the belly guy (oh come on, like you didn’t think same nickname after seen Sonic sprung out of his belly) and hyena with green Mohawk as of course the Bear-head jerk. But if you want combine them be my guest.😁

As for chilli-dogs since are Sonic’s favourite we cannot left them behind. Thankfully I was watching on YouTube where there mentioned Tails been vegetarian and one comment that said “Chilli-dog: Am I joke to you?” that made conversation about mobians been vegetarians. So in that case since Zootopia is filled birds (and sometimes bugs), and synthetic meat, proteins, probably tofu, we can assume that there are Chilli-dogs made especially in Zootopia universe (and honestly we do not really know, what exactly hot-dogs are truly made of).🌭

👟The shoes were honestly a very hard obstacle for me considering mammals don’t wear shoes since they are still animals, like our directors said, BUT that doesn’t mean they don’t exist in Zootopia.

Evidence 1: Gazelle – she’s wearing high heels from Preyda

Evidence 2: Poster of (parody) movie Cinderellephant, with elephant-size glass slipper

Evidence 3: Judy Hopps – she wears half-sockets in her police uniform (that still does count as a foot-wear)

So I came with headcanon that only celebrities and patients with sensitive feet wear shoes as a luxury or medical protection (I mean we have a lot of animals that can’t live on different area with their conditions, come on have someone of you seen a polar bear live in Sahara Square?) and in this case it’s the latter (plus there is in this story a human character that needs his own footwear) since Sonic is wearing his running shoes considering that his speed is high enough to burn his feet (ouch🤕).

And finally with Robotnik, we use that orphan idea and certain headcanon from Sonic X about planets that once were one until they divided and made their own time and space alterations, prof. Gerald Robotnik (Eggman’s grand-father) could study Mobius for finding cure for Maria, creating Shadow, G.U.N. etc. It could be three worlds (Sonic’s world/Mobius, Robotnik’s world/our world, and Zootopian’s world) or just two (Mobius and Zootopia), what works better.

As you can see there are some characters I included in in certain scene (aside from Yoshi), I present to you Judy’s niece named Cotton and one of Judy’s (many) sisters Violet Hopps. No, those are not an OC from any fandom, those are official characters from Zootopia universe. You already actually know Cotton but for those who don’t know who is Violet, she was introduced in Zootopia Graphic Novel in comic named “Brothers & Sisters” and considering how she is very overprotective of Judy (like any other Hopps) I thought she would fit perfectly for Rachel role (I don’t think she’s Cotton’s mother so don’t ask), and also she’s the only official Hopps sibling with name we know. I wanted also include another characters into this doodles but I like I said before I didn’t have enough space on one paper. So here are my character ideas: Clawhauser as Wade, Bogo as Major Bennington, Mayor Lionheart as Commander Walters (no surprise). For others like Crazy Carl and Agent Stone I had some problems.

For Crazy Carl I first thought about who would fit perfectly and I came up with a lot of ideas: first I thought about Duke Weaselton, since he has face for that crazyness but then I declined since he doesn’t fit on the character, then I thought about Pop-Pop Hopps but that was questionable considering in movie he had a huge aversion of foxes (red as devil) and comic he’s not biased but then I thought who could describe Crazy Carl better than well-known concept crazy theorist Honey Badger am I right?

As for agent Stone I had no idea what to do with him. I could let him stay as but that would make questions of humans and I didn’t want to put Bellwether into this position. If she was unhappy of been unappreciated and humiliated by predators then I don’t think she would really want to work with someone who is full of himself more than her and only see humanity as an excuse of stupidity and “herd of useless sheep (get it?)” and only relay on machines. And characters from Zootopia Crimes was not an option and Jack Savage was out of question no in my point. Not saying that Jack Savage could be a great option but I don’t think fans would appreciate another bad guy role for Jack and I already have something different for him in my mind. Then it came another that would fit for Stone and that is a certain platypus Dr. Starline from Sonic The Hedgehog IDW comics. He admires Eggman and his evil genius (questionable) and in comics he’s working as partner/assistant for him. But since he is mobian as Sonic we could use idea that government knows about it (partially) but does not tell and he thinks that he is an unusual zootopian platypus (after all he does wear clothes and looks “more” normal unlike Sonic) and we could do the same with Robotnik considering his past about grand-father and project Shadow if Jeff Fowler would follow some headcanons (I wouldn’t surprised if some government keeping some secrets even from employers). But then again we could use also Tony, a bunny from Zootopia Crime Files since he is shady and bland at once and already wear a suit, like agent Stone (great, now I don’t know which one to choose again).

You know what, I’ll give you an option who would fit for role of Agent Stone:

1. Dr. Starline, a platypus from Sonic The Hedgehog IDW comics

2. Tony, a bunny from Zootopia Crime Files

3. Jack Savage, a jackrabbit from Zootopia concept art/Savage Seas (you don’t have to take that third one too seriously, but just in case)

DONE (pass out from exhaustion). Haahhh so much work, editing fixing hands, oohh boyyy. You have no idea how hard this was for me to finally made it. I wish I could do more. But for now I’m so glad that I was able to draw at least some of my favourite moments because I feel they’re important for storytelling: first the introduction of main characters, their struggles, interactions and how they greatly compliment to each other (both Sonic and Zootopia). I mean you can’t just see Judy call Nick and Sonic cute and not imagine that, or there was also moment where Sonic dry like dog so his fur and quills(?) go puffy and Nick would look mesmerized by fluffiness. Come to think of it Sonic has lot in common with Nick and Judy that he would actually fit for the role as their son. You’re not believe? Well here are some examples.

Similarities between Sonic and-

-Judy🐰:

1. heroes in blue (get it?)🌀

2. pretty fast (Sonic more faster than Judy but still…)

3. impatient😤

4. first act then think (always put themselves into danger)

5. thing for get into trouble

6. sense for justice

7. never give up

8. preys but not rodents (that’s right hedgehogs are not rodents)

9. became a friend with fox (their natural predator, that was bullied in past, huh strange, just as strange as hedgehog be taken care of by owl that is also his natural predator)

-Nick🦊:

1. sly smile😏

2. mischievous trickster

3. green eyes

4. omnivores (hedgehogs eat melons, watermelons(what’s the difference?), berries (blueberries headcanon!) and insects, snails, frogs snakes🤢- uhhh I think chilli-dogs works better thank you)

5. cringy sense of humor😒

6. thing for nicknames (by Nick: Carrots, Buffalo Butt, Yakity yak, Flash Hundred Yard Dash, by Sonic: Donut Lord, Pretzel Lady, Eggman, Knucklehead, Super Observant Carl)

7. loyalty (they never left their friends behind)

8. never let them see they get to you (despite suffering a lot of emotional damage, thanks a lot SEGA)

9. smooth talker with heart of gold

-both🐰 🦊:

1. traumatic past

2. sacrifices for others

3. fight for what is right

See they had a lot in common. Anyway I am still glad I was finally able to finish this. It wasn’t easy but it was worth it.

But I guess, that I made it hard for you with those moments so how about this we use the final moments like in your fanfic Carcass Bride: FINAL BOSS BATTLE SONIC VS. ROBOTNIK because honestly this moment is epic (wish I could make it bigger), it would start Sonic running from Robotnik, like we’ve seen in beginning of the movie, get shot retelling in short whole story, like in movie only less detailed and faster the confrontation between Nick and Robotnik (Sonic would unconscious but still hear them and had a self-doubt like Naruto in first chapter/episode if you what mean until he hear the important words that’ll give him boost), the final battle and then epilogue (Sonic with his new family) with open ending (you know the Eggman in Mushroom planet and then Tails’s introuction). As for what kind of universe all of them would be I have another suggestions:

1. Sonic movie universe in Zootopia (but still happening in Green Hills only Zootopia would be San Francisco and Transamerica could be Palm Hotel like in Zistopia storyboard) and Night Howler Case never happened.

2. Night Howler case happened Nick and Judy are still cops, but later decided to live in Green Hills

3. Night Howler case happened but was solved instead of Judy and Nick by Jack and Skye who later became agents and don’t like Robotnik for his ego:

a) Nick come from Green Hills (Wachowskis live as police in GH for 50 years), but suffered from Ranger Scouts move to Zootopia became “shifty fox” until he’s saved by childhood friend Judy from Bunnyburrow (from wrong decision and targeting to become savage) and the return to Green Hills become sheriff along with his new wife.

b) Both Nick and Judy just heard about it in Green Hills.

I guess the first and third are more interesting.

Okaayy now I realized that this became more ambitious that I planned but I guess that happens when you try balancing two franchises so it can make sense (enough for headcanons). But I’m not saying that I’m proud of myself. So I’ll leave you the rest (the options and writing) so I can’t wait for one-shot fanfic good luck. And also (even though it’s late but still better than never) Happy birthday Sonic, this is for you! GOTTA GO FAST!🐰🦊🦔💨

#GottaGoFast🦔💨

#LongLiveWildeHopps🦊🐰

#StaySafe😷

#AlwaysRemember (this is for late actreesses that they will alway be remembered and in our hearts❤️)

....

Oh wow! This is really great! You put a lot of scenes from the film, this is awesome!I also see that you gave Yoshi a cameo, lol! @yoshifan30​ will definitely love that, lol! I like the collage look you gave the whole thing. Also, I just realized, is that supposed to be Cotton? Judy’s niece? Thank you so much for this! I will reblog this soon so I can read it more thoroughly and discuss anything I may have missed :) And once again, this...is...INCREDIBLE!!! <3 Fantastic Job Guest! You’re really talented! :D

[bynkii]

Everyone should try doing standup

It’s amazing what trying to be funny on stage can teach you

First, this isn’t a “yeah, and then you’d see how hard it is” post. I think that most reasonable people can intuit that being funny on stage in front of strangers is really hard. Since I assume people are reasonable, I’m not going to explain that part.

What I am going to talk about is what doing local amateur (okay, I got paid once, but I don’t think I’m really a “professional” comedian yet) standup can do in terms of helping you communicate better in all sorts of settings that have nothing to do with standup.

Know Your Material

If any of you have been to a local open mic night, (and if you haven’t you should, they’re really cool), you’ve seen the person who’s not done a lot, if any comedy before and figured they’d wing it. It is rare that it works out well for them. Being able to just walk on stage and riff off of whatever pops into your head and be funny to a group of random people, especially if you’re a n00b is hard. Like “Never played guitar before doing the solo from “My Sharona” perfectly” hard.

What you learn, and what I’ve learned is that the folks who are the funniest work the hardest. They think about their material. Not just the basic joke, but the arc of it. Should it be a short ‘in and out’, should it be part of a longer story? What about this is the funny bit? Is it a formal punchline? Is it the entire story? How do I end this? I’ve had stories that are funny in the middle, but the ending just sucks, because they don’t really end as much as I move on to something else. The person I think is the funniest in my local standup scene is also the hardest-working person in the room. That’s not coincidence.

You have to think about what you’re going to say, why you’re going to use this instead of that. I imagine everyone reading this can think of a dozen meetings or presentations where you wish to $DEITY that the person had thought about what they’re saying and why a lot more. Or at all.

In any situation, be it a presentation at a conference, or talking in an office, or in a bar, thinking about what you’re saying, and why you’re saying it is critical. What’s the point? What are you trying to say? How will the person you’re talking to take it…which brings us to:

Just because it makes sense to you…

One of the hardest things about standup is that you’re trying to read minds. Literally. You’re trying to figure out what a random group of strangers is going to find funny. It absolutely forces you to step outside yourself and (brutally) evaluate what you’re saying and how you’re saying it because it has to be funny to people who aren’t you, who may be nothing like you. There’s no second chances on stage. You’ve either figured that out correctly, or you suck.

Again, if we look at some of the more spectacular public comedy flameouts, you can see what happens when you guess wrong, or forget that it’s not just you and that asshole of a heckler, it’s the entire room. Or world. (Thanks YouTube!) You have to think about all the aspects of your material including places where it crosses the line from being humor to being asshole.

One of the best examples here is something that is incredibly hard to pull off, but something that far too many people try for: The Funny Rape Joke, aka TFRJ. TFRJ is like a postdoc in terms of comedy. There’s very, very few ways it works, and sooooo many ways it fails. I’ve now seen…5–6(?) locals try it. I’ve seen one person, maybe two hit it well. A couple that have the potential of a legit funny joke in there, but keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because they aren’t thinking hard enough about it.

I’ll also say right now that I agree completely with George Carlin on one thing: anything can be funny. The potential for offense is not, in and of itself a reason to not do a joke, or at least not the sole reason. But just like wearing a speedo or a thong, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. One bit that I’ve done that works because I don’t actually cross any line is one that starts with “I’m no racist, but…” and turns into a diatribe on how we should just admit the “white people in charge” experiment is a complete failure, already. Riiiiight up to the edge, but then turn 90º at the last second.

If you’re going to stray into certain sensitive areas, like rape, race, etc., you have to be very, very sure about what you’re doing. Just because it’s funny in your head does not mean that room full of people is going to agree. If you’re not sure, maybe consider another joke.

Note: just because you are a part of the group you are making the joke about does not mean you get a free pass. I’ve seen black comedians fail when it comes to racial comedy almost as much as white comedians. Like TFRJ, racial comedy is postdoc-level stuff. Approach with care.

I see this in my ‘professional’ life all the time. Someone is talking and then you can see the moment the wrong part of their brain fires and they say something that’s just so…stupid. A great example was the kid at MacIT a few years ago. I’m standing there with my friend, N. Now, N. is one of the smartest people I know, degrees in Math and CompSci, decades of experience in the industry. She is smart as fuck. We were standing outside her employer’s booth in the little showcase area, and two teenaged boys come up and start talking.

At first, because dumb and a bit of sexist, they start assuming she’s a graphic designer. Sigh. She explains no, she’s a researcher, she does math and programming things all day long and can’t draw a stick figure. Dumbo’s friend goes “Oh, wow, that’s kind of cool”, and maybe won’t make assumptions based on gender again. Possible win! Dumbo however will not be dissuaded. For almost a half-hour he insists that she’s a designer. He is literally telling a grown adult, which he is not, what she does for a living, that she doesn’t even know how she earns her paycheck. That’s not even mansplaining, that’s just asssplaining.

And I am quite sure that in his head, all of his assery made sense. But to everyone else….not so much.

Note: This relentless refusal to accept reality is something that teenaged boys, in my experience, just do. I watched my son do this as a teenager over things that had nothing to do with gender, such as: the completely wrong way to mop a floor, why he was so cleaning the catbox correctly, planes do not work that way, and a remarkable attempt to justify not brushing his teeth for a week…teenaged boys don’t just back themselves into corners, they slam into the corner at high speeds and their legs keep working because there’s a part of the corner they haven’t managed to wedge themselves into. It could have been a lifetime of being raised in background sexism. It could have also been that teenaged boys are just mind-bogglingly dumb and unable to back down ever. Both are equally likely and not mutually exclusive.

Thinking outside your own head, your own experience is vital in this world, and Standup teaches you that both brutally and quickly. Don’t be the guy who keeps trying to pull off the PTSD/Rape Victim joke. Sarah Silverman? Sure. You? Not so much. Which is another lead-in to…

Know your limitations

There are jokes I know I can do reasonably well, and jokes that I couldn’t hit if I had a joke-hitting machine. You don’t see Jeff Foxworthy trying to be the second coming of Pryor, nor do you see Sarah Silverman doing gentle jokes about “oh that husband of mine”. Any good comedian figures out, pretty quick, where their sweet spot is, and rarely move out of that. You didn’t see Carlin doing a lot of slapstick. I’ve seen folks doing jokes and material that would be hilarious…with someone else on stage. It’s kind of painful to watch.

Know what you’re good at. Know where your expertise ends. I’m probably a pretty good person to talk about a wide range of sysadmin issues. I’ve a wide breadth of experience in that field. But there’s no way you’re going to get me to talk about Agile Programming, or really, any kind of programming at all, because I’m not even vaguely qualified to speak on programming as a programming expert.

That doesn’t make me dumb, it makes me someone who is good at these things, but not those things, which is everybody. (Okay, everybody who is not Isaac Newton. That motherfucker was good at everything.) Knowing what you should not talk about is really, really important on stage, in the office, at the bar…well, everywhere. The old “if someone thinks you’re an idiot, don’t open your mouth and prove them right” saying applies here. Be more than willing to admit you’re out of your depth. It’ll make you look a lot smarter than you may think.

HOW you say it…

Successful standup, at times, has less to do with the actual material and more to do with the metadata. A good comic could read you the recipe for upside-down cake, and you’d be pissing yourself from laughing so hard, while a bad one could have The Perfect Joke™ handed to them by $DEITY and it would still suck.

Timing, inflection, pacing, volume, do I stand still or pace or jump, energy level (Not always high. Steven Wright had a rather successful run with an almost negative energy level), everything about how you are doing your thing. Standup almost completely inverts “the end justifies the means”. With standup, the means are everything, the end is almost unimportant. George Carlin had me howling just talking about refrigerator behavior.

After Richard Pryor literally almost killed himself via self-immolation due to his drug habit, (is there anything less funny than someone being severely burned?) he turned it into fantastically funny comedy. Ponder that. He took a moment of what has to be unbelievable pain, mental, emotional, and physical, and turned it into something that made people laugh until tears flowed. One of my favorite lines by Elaine Boosler centers on the dangers women face from sexual assault and rape: “Excuse me? I’m sorry, no, we can’t just walk around New York at 2am, I have a vagina.”

The true masters of standup can take mundane or horrifying things and make them funny to a room, sometimes a huge room of strangers, and they do it not because the content is inherently funny, but because everything else about what they are saying is funny. Watch any top-flight comedian as a guest on a talk show. Even when they’re not doing standup, they kind of are. They’re still using the pacing, the timing, the facial expressions to make a story about parenting funny.

Again, when you’re talking to people or writing, think about how you are saying it, and this includes writing. Because that will enhance or totally destroy your point. How many times do you see someone say something on twitter that gets them raked over the coals, or has their lives completely fucked with, but when they have a little more space to talk about it, you think, “Oh. Well, that wasn’t anything like how it looked.”?

When you are using a medium like Twitter, where you have no space for anything really, you cannot afford to ignore how you are saying something or what this might look like to someone who isn’t you or doesn’t know you well. Unless you lock down your account, the entire planet can see what you are saying, and guess what? Most of them aren’t you.

You’ll note throughout this post, and indeed most of my posts period, I make somewhat liberal use of italics and other styling features. That’s not an affectation. I know that text, even long-form text, is sparse. You don’t hear the tone of things, you don’t hear where I’m putting the stress, you can’t see facial expressions and timing just doesn’t exist. I don’t have any of that, but what I do have are italics and block quotes and other thing that let me call more attention to this word or that phrase. It doesn’t guarantee success, but using those, and other tools, gives me a much better chance of success.

Twitter is even more sparse, your toolset is even more limited, and yet, we (literally) continually see people saying shit that comes across as mind-bogglingly stupid, and when that is pointed out to them, they immediately blame twitter. Look, once or twice, sure, maybe you’re new to Twitter, (more common than people think), or whatever. Everyone should get a mulligan or two. But after the fifth or sixth time? Come fucking-on.

Richard Dawkins is an exemplar of this. He continuously says things that simply do not translate well to the forced near-haiku simplicity of twitter, and yet, like someone with no short-term memory at all, keep pushing on that door, because one day, that “pull” will change to a “push” and it will work. That’s not insanity, that’s just dumb. Dawkins knows he talks about a lot of things that are often subtle and need space, and rather than admitting Twitter is not good for that and that he does not have the skills to use Twitter well, he just keeps ramming into that wall. I hope he lives near a good chemist.

It is nice to assume that everyone will be so blown away by our amazing point that any problems or defects with how we articulate it will be ignored, overlooked, or forgiven. I have a question for the people who do this:

Are you really that fucking stupid?

Because there is nothing about the world, now, or really at any time in history, (and I’m going back past Gutenberg here) where that’s been true. How you say something, the techniques you use, the context in which you are saying it (for every value of “say”) are so hugely important, and we see this reality reinforced every day that I cannot believe anyone who does not live in a sealed, underground box with no link to the rest of humanity would think that way. Even a Skinner Box doesn’t teach you that level of ignorance.

Notice Things

If you really analyze the majority of comedians, they aren’t talking about anything you haven’t seen or done a hundred times before. They are all talking about the stuff that makes up our lives. What they do that we don’t is notice the details of life. The absurdity of our daily routine, the mental gymnastics we use to get through the day without going insane, the lies we tell ourselves to justify our beliefs.

They hold up a mirror, but they do so in a way that allows us to not just feel stupid, but to laugh at our own stupidity. The laughter removes the defensive walls and allows them to worm inside our heads in ways no amount of stentorian lecture can. They look at all the little rituals and habits we have, and say “You know, this is all kind of stupid.”

They let us know that yes, we all do have that background commentary track in our heads saying the things we can’t, because you know, fired, divorced, arrested.

Pay attention to things. Notice things. One of the reasons I like live conferences over conference calls or videoconferencing is that in person, I can notice things that you won’t see in those other mediums. Even on Skype, people know they’re being watched, so their behavior changes. But live, in person, that part of our brain that lies to us and says “YOU’RE INVISIBLE TO EVERYONE!” (you know, the one that tells that CEO in the Rolls-Royce that their windows have a special “antipoorperson” tint, so the guy in the ’96 Camry can’t see them picking their nose) kicks in and you can see when someone doesn’t seem to be getting something, or has a really urgent question that their sense of ettiquette won’t let them ask or, or, or.

If you want another viewpoint, what is most of what Sherlock Holmes does? He notices things.

No, really, I promise, I’m done

If you’ve hung on this long, good job! (Also, you may want to get off the toilet, your legs are probably going numb. ) It’s wordy, but so am I.

Standup can be terrifying, it is regularly brutal, and possesses little gentility. But, it can, if you let it, teach you a lot of things that are surprisingly useful.

…and every so often, you might make a roomful of strangers laugh. That is not the worst feeling in the world.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael learns of Jeff’s pizza from FNAF Into the pit