Cronyism is the Secret to Success

There is something to be said for trying, but luck has a lot to do with where you wind up. I had a thought the other day, if you took a group of equally qualified and skilled college graduates from 30 years ago, and started tracking their progress, what percent would of excelled to the higher ranks of corporate or business success. Obviously not many, I conclude, since the percent of population that are in those slots is small. But what I would want to do is take it one step further, and look at those individual that came in contact with the successful ones, both laterally and vertically. See who they came into contact and where they wound up also. My hypothesis is there is some connection and at some level, call it cronyism, a result of being sucked up into success or pulled. One thing I've noticed in business is the ones a the top aren't the smartest, most charismatic or hardest workers, they all seem to have the trait of following. I saw an episode of Mad Men recently, and this one women was looking to hire someone, but was told by a male co-worker to not hire the best, hire mediocre so as to avoid eventually having that individual pass her by to become her boss. And it dawned on me, if they wrote about it, there must be some degree of truth to it.

So basically as a tree cast about a thousand seeds, all the same, only a few become thriving trees themselves, it is purely luck of where they landed. For example just look at your own life. If you are successful, how many around you are successful? and visa versa. Sadly I can't name one person I've known or know that is a super star. Which is quite amazing to me since I moved every 5 years and went to many different schools, so I came into contract with a lot of people. But then I hear stories of 2 or 3 people who all came from the same high school; actors, business, and sports...how the fuck can that be?
Words to the wise: Don't rock the boat, Be a Yes Man, Don't Ever Answer the Question from management,"How can I help you?" your reply should be "What do you want me to do."

Is This The First Trimester?

My doodles seem to be more of the same "individuals" and less of random things. I'm wondering if its a sign that it is time to start focusing on producing finished, or at least sequential drawings, as in rough out some of the many strip ideas I have? It's as if the doodles are screaming from the ultra sound screen..."okay, we got the sperm and the egg together, we've started to divide, we are pregnant now, you better start painting the baby room, cause we are coming, like it or not."

I made a change to the header, as you can tell, but I'm not completely satisfied with the roughness, although I was trying to capture the sketch book theme. It's just the scan quality after reduction sucks.

The Boon Store

Hello Mommy! Mother's Day is Sunday

Twenty Years Later:

I just couldn't help myself on this one. I don't care, to each his own. It's just not my cup of...well, MILK. Maybe in the future the titty bars will be real Titty Bars...see 'um and dispense a drink. White Russians will be the drink craze.

Dreams of Being a Super Hero, An Avenger

Wouldn't it be nice to have super hero powers. The old drunken, late night college question of which super powers would you want comes to mind. There are some pretty cool ones, and some that you'd have to be strategic to employ them, and others you could imagine. But in real, everyday life most would be useless.

Through the qualifier of "everyday" life your best powers would be reading minds, and time travel. Mind reading, oh, yea, do you know how many business deals you could close by knowing what the counter party was thinking. That would be sweet. Time travel, well obviously this is cool, so any time you screw something up, you could time travel back and re-do it. Just for the pure fun of it invisibility...I'll let you noodle the value of that one.

For any of you that are regular readers, you'll recognize this character from previous post. And as I've shared before, he actually, is the same super hero I've drawn since at least 6th - 7th grade, Super Slob. Here I've just put a twist on it, with Earl dreaming or imagining himself as possessing super powers. I'm sure some gags will evolve out of this fantasy, mostly I'm sure his ineptness to manifest any power with better use than to conquer household chores, evade his wife, or make a client do what he wants.

Drinking on the Job Increases Creativity

There are just some days where a good stiff belt is needed. One of the benefits of working at home, you don't have to hide the bottle in your desk drawer (unless you work in an office like those guys from MadMen who keep their decanters out). And think how productive it is, you don't have to leave the office for a bar, it is cheaper and could even help with overcoming any anxieties you have about doing something. Creativity always seems to increase also.

This didn't start out to be a strip. It started out with me narrowing the drawing field to shorter heights, to force me to draw to a better scale. Then I drew our intrepid hero, Earl?, making his way through the house in his usual way...nothing particularly in mind. Then drew the pencil pal, looking at his watch, then the alien looking at his watch. They sat there for a day and some reason I felt compelled to add text, which lead to having to come up with something marginally humorous. And Wah-Lah, a strip appeared. The colors are meaningless...It was supposed to be scanned in BW, but since I doodle in blue, the scanner was not picking up the blue with the darker tone, so I scanned in color.

This poor sap can't help but catch grief about his early morning adrenaline boast.

Time is Limited

For whatever reason, I've not done much doodling. I've had about 15 seconds at a time, which I've been using to try to perfect the look of this character, that I'd like to introduce as a counter balance to the comic strip idea I'm incubating. My thought is he is that guy who no matter what he wears or does he can pull it off. Things if the average guy tried to pull off would look or seem like a complete dork. I created a new product for the Boon Cartoons store CLICK HERE It is "Why Aren't I Retired Yet? - Oh Yea! My Boat. I'm sure there are plenty of boaters that can identify with this sentiment. We'll see I guess. Nice tan huh?