The Bell, The Bell

Field Guns speak out

The Long Con

I've got a box of money. Doesn't do it justice to call it a box, more like a shipping container. Full of money. I know a lot of it's hundreds, but if it were ones it'd still set anyone up for life. And their kids.

There's just one little snag: the money was supposed to be destroyed. They take money out of circulation, sometimes because it's worn, sometimes just as part of a large-cap market initiative. In this case, this money was pulled because it didn't have certain security features new money has. Sill perfectly good legal tender, just that Treasury didn't want it around.

So they dyed it. Dyed it pitch black. Company that sold them the dye told them it was permanent, more fool-proof than shredding and more environmentally friendly than burning (do you know how much plastic a greenback contains? It's not like Australia, but still you wouldn't want to smell it burning).

They soak it in dye, they ship it to a dump in Kentucky. Once it's loaded, nobody knows anything about it. It's paper, it's black, dump it. That's all anybody knows. A friend of mine, he works... you know what it's better you don't know where he works, but he puts it together. We get another friend of mine calling other chemical companies, turns out they're not so confident that this dye won't come out. Turns out there's a chemical, a special chemical that can take it out, melt it off like sand in a river.

Now me, I've been seen at the dump, in Kentucky, using a backhoe to load the paper so supposedly I can recycle it, grind it up for mulch at my sugarbeet farm. If I turn up with all these greenbacks, the story won't hold. You though. Nobody knows you. You've got nothing to do with any of this. Nobody in this bar knows me, nobody is gonna notice us talking, and this'll be the last time we meet in person.

That is, if you're interested in a box car full of money.

Write a list down

That's the only way to make it through sometimes. I think you'll probably have to click through to read this.

Ben Franklin was the only one who got dressed.

It is hard to find a good picture of Ben. The best I found was a statue, which looked pretty good. I have questions, though, like was he really such a dandy in real life. Once you start drawing a picture of him based on the statue, you realize he had a lot of layers and textures in there

documentation from real life

hmm

What is my cat thinking?

I've decided to start titling all of my comics with common questions, as I get a lot of hits off of it, and I love confused people.

Some background:
My cat is also named Toby, though over time he came to be called Kitty Toby as I got irritated when Sara said it was dinner time and then THERE WAS NO DINNER FOR HUMAN TOBY.

Stormare

I'm thinkin' about Peter Stormare a lot. I have no Big Lebowski quote for you. Also it is on Netflix Streaming right now.

Waiting

On the show carrier they spend all that time sending bombers to fly over Iraq, but they never actually get to drop a single bomb. After a while it's all they talk about, whether or not they're going to get to drop.

Jon Baker

Jon Baker and I were in history class together. I was doing this series of art workshops where I taught block printing or bookbinding or whatever. Jon came and taught spray stenciling. He was great at it, and produced beautiful stuff. After we got done he showed me how he'd like to teach another workshop on how you can use a walkman, a bic pen, and a guitar string to make a tattoo gun. He'd already used one to give himself an inkless tattoo of Bob Ross.

For whatever reason I have trouble forgetting about Jon.

The sound of brakes engaging

A couple of people have been mis-directed to one of my old comics, 'Scritch', by mis-spelling the name of Screech and searching for 'Saved By The Bell' cast pictures. I decided that these visitors deserved to actually get to see that guy.

Here he is for your pleasure.