Tom The Dancing Bug Blog

THANKS...

Thanks to a reader and member of Team Dancing Bug, I just got Patton Oswalt's new book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, off my Wish List.

 

 

 

Comment of the week

From "ncinerate," on the Boing Boing comments:

 

"My wife is a teacher, and I gave up a successful career in advertising to become one as well.

Arizona recently killed tenure and allowed schools to get rid of all those "evil" bad teachers who are sucking the system dry and doing a bad job teaching. Guess which teachers were -immediately- let go in mass firings? Experienced ones. GOOD ones. Teachers who had climbed to the higher levels of the payscale (aka, they were making 50k-60k instead of 30-40k). As an example, when Mesa let go of hundreds upon hundreds of teachers, not a -single- one of the layoffs was a teacher with under 5 years of experience. Are you telling me there's not a single bad teacher among the lower paid set? Are you telling me every single 20+ year teacher in Mesa that was fired is a bad teacher?

No. It was not a "getting rid of bad teachers" decision, it was a monetary decision. Those positions didn't "go away". Mesa hired for almost every single position they had just vacated - filling them with new young teachers or even hiring older experienced teachers (who coming into AZ can't bring all their years to the payscale - meaning they start considerably lower on the payscale despite their experience). Tenure used to protect these teachers from being universally fired without cause. Now, teachers are simply disposable. Why keep paying a GOOD teacher a slightly higher wage when you can simply hire a new graduate right out of college instead.

Schools hide the negative effects of this on education by gaming the system on national testing under NCLB as well. My wife's school, for example, has a -massive- number of their english as a second language students classified as "learning disabled" - this essentially takes them out of the equation when AIMS testing comes up yearly, allowing the school to appear to be performing in the face of a TERRIBLE decline in quality of education. It's a total farce against the system, but nobody opens their mouths because saying -anything- about this means you won't be getting a contract next year.

My wife's average class size is over 35 students. Next year it's set to rise to above 40 because the school district she teaches in is closing two schools as they cut education funding to help meet the state budget. She doesn't even have 40 chairs or places at lab stations to put 40 students (her classroom was designed for 25 students or so).

But yeah, it's all these evil teachers and their evil unions and tenure and bad teaching and high pay and pensions and benefits and summers off.

Bleah."

 

Come See Me!

Good news for those of you who like the sound of my voice and live in the Waukesha / New York City corridor:  I've got two virtually consecutive speaking engagements coming up.

 

On April 7, I'll be making my first-ever appearance in the Milwaukee area, speaking at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha at 7:00.  If you're in the area, please join the fun.  I'll be discussing my career, comics and creativity, and I'll be announcing my new religion.  Details here.

 

And then, consistent with the glamorous whirlwind of Important Engagements that is my life, on April 9, I'll be participating in a panel at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in New York City at 4:30, with the dapper Tim "The Pain" Kreider and the cranky Ted "Ted Rall" Rall.  Prior to the panel, from 3:30-4:30, I'll be signing/sketching to raise funds for the museum at the MoCCA Sketch Table; please come by to say Hi.  Details on the festival here.

 

At both events, I'll have Tom the Dancing Bug books to sell and sign.

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug). 

 

Personal note...

I think I owe a drawing to someone who sent me something from the Wish List.  If you sent me something and didn't receive a drawing, please let me know.

And thank you for your support.

-RB

Did you forget to buy a t-shirt?

Dinkle shirts!  Lucky Ducky shirts!  And much, much, much more!*

 

 

 

__________

*Actually, not that much more.

Battle of the Sexes

I mentioned that Scott Adams, of Dilbert, featured one of my comics on his website.  Well, I've gotten a bit of blowback from various people informing me that Scott wrote some anti-female things on his blog recently (he took the post down due to the controversy).

 

I read the piece (even though he took it down, others have re-posted it on the web), and I didn't think it was particularly heinous.  The gist of it seemed to be:  Yes, some things are unfair to men, but other things are unfair to women, so suck it up, dudes.  The most controversial thing he wrote was an unflattering, inflammatory analogy (intended to be humorous), which he carefully explained in the piece, and he later published a post admitting that "analogies are fighting words."

 

Personally, I'm a pretty staunch supporter of women's rights, but I know entering into this particular fray can be a minefield.  I drew the below comic years ago, and feared a massive controversy.  I got nothing (and I was a bit disappointed).

 

My point was that supporters of equal treatment for women in the world of commerce, like me, should find some level of hypocrisy in the concept of separate men's and women's sports.   But I think the comic was way too complicated, and many readers either missed the point or gave up on the comic before they could glean it.  I liked the idea, though, and it's a shame I didn't come up with a simpler way to express it.

 

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

 

THIS WEEK'S COMIC

SUPER-FUN-PAK COMICALITY

 

 

Featuring:

 

RECAP MAN;

 

THREE-ACT SCREENPLAY STRUCTURE FUNNIES;

 

GHOST OF JAMES CAAN;

 

FABULOUS GUY, IN A MOMENT OF REFLECTION;

 

PERCIVAL DUNWOODY;

 

THE WHOOPEE WHOOPI; AND

 

MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MORE*

 

_______________________________________

*Actually, no more.

 

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

 

Tom the Dancing Bugbert

Hey, my comic on Risk Management (starring "Nate") is featured on Dilbert's homepage.  Scott Adams is smiling as though he paused from drawing his comic strip to reflect on mine, and was amused.

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

THIS WEEK'S COMIC

SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE PHANTOM BOND VIGILANTE!  Man, did I have fun drawing this one; one of my childhood dreams was to work on Scooby-Doo.

 

Apologies to Hanna-Barbera-Krugman.

 

 

As a side note, due to an error on my part, this comic not only was published on Boing Boing a day too early, it also shut down any new posts on Boing Boing for about an hour, until the error could be fixed.

 

I've got to say:  I've had many, diverse jobs in my life, and within those jobs, countless tasks, but I've never been incompetent at any of them until it became my weekly duty a couple of months ago to upload and post my comic to the Boing Boing website.  I'm like the janitor whose broom handle knocks into the "off" switch at the power plant.  And then the next week spills mop water on the main server.

 

BUT I WILL PREVAIL!

 

To comment, please use facebook or twitter (#tomthedancingbug).

 

Wear Tom the Dancing Bug!

Feast your eyes on the brand new Dinkle shirt!

 

 

And!  Back by unpopular demand (that is, demanded by unpopular people): the Lucky Ducky shirt!

 

 

 

Support your friendly neighborhood cartoonist!  Buy today, or don't.  

 

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