This is a signal amplification.

Doc Nickel is taking preorders on the printed book version of the last two years of The Whiteboard, which is a storyline involving mysterious safes, haunted houses, messages from the past, and accidental time travel. Plus the usual Whiteboard mayhem.

https://www.the-whiteboard.com/book.....reorder25.html

The artwork is first rate and the story is engrossing. I must confess that my husband Scott and I had a minor part in helping Doc plot out this story in our "writers' workshop", so I'm eager to see how he brings it to a conclusion.

If you're not familiar with The Whiteboard, which is a long-running webcomic about mad science, airsmithing, and a grumpy polar bear living in Alaska, here's the link to the start of the current storyline.

https://www.the-whiteboard.com/autotwb3666.html

When I first got on the Web, at the urging of a friend of mine who offered me hosting on his server, I got the URL that was a sub-let of his--hirezfox.com/km.

While I am grateful to Mako for this--I probably would never have started publishing my cartoons without his help--over the years, it became a bit clumsy to tell people where to find my work. ("km" stood for "Kate's Mountain," one of the early series.)

Another friend got the domain name for "carryoncomics" and held it for me for several years, until we finally were able to transfer ownership and, now, yet another friend (who has assumed day-to-day management of hirezfox) has gotten all the parts together and made the new domain name function.

So--you might want to add this to your bookmarks:

https://carryoncomic.com/km/

...okay, so it still has the "km" in it. But it says "Carry On Comics!"

Don't panic! The old URL continues to work, too.

Thanks to Mako, Jamie, Doc, and Neo for putting it all together!

I want to give a bit of a signal boost to a good friend of mine, "Sleepy John" Reynolds. He's got one of the cleverest senses of humor I know. I met him years ago on The Nice Forum, and warned him that, with such a wit, if he ever learned to draw, he'd be dangerous to us cartoonists.

Well, he didn't exactly learn to draw, but he's a master of stick figure body language.

He began creating "The NEOCTC" in 2007 when the comic collaboration "The CrossTime Cafe" was running, and although that comic strip has shuttered its doors, Sleepy John's weekly strip keeps the characters going in a slightly off-kilter parallel universe sort of way. The title, incidentally, comes from the stick figures reminding us of cave drawings.

You don't really need to be familiar with the source characters to get the humor, because Sleepy John has made them his own. However, you could consider this a "fan art" effort, as the main characters come from Freefall, Freighter Tails, 21st Century Fox, Carry On, and characters and situations that appeared in "The CrossTime Cafe." Sleepy has the blessing and encouragement of all the artists who were involved with the creation of that strip. We don't just encourage him, we aid and abet him.

So if you're looking for something...different...in a comic strip, amble on over to the NEOCTC.

I think you'll "stick" around.

https://www.hirezfox.com/neoctc/

A couple of years ago when I started my Patreon, they wanted a banner and gave me parameters, which I tried to use to create a masthead for the page. Half of the title got cropped off. Oh well.

I'd been meaning to customize my page banner here for a while with a "Carry On" title card, but it wasn't a high priority. Tonight I decided to see what would happen if I loaded that Patreon banner.

Their parameters are wildly different, 1850px wide by 300px high compared to the 700 px wide for Patreon. I stuck it on a black base as wide as required, and I had the 300px, and it still cuts off the upper part of the title with the tool bar.

I'll probably have to go back to square one and create something specifically for the FA parameters. I realize this isn't rocket science, but it is pretty frustrating that I can't seem to manage such a basic bit of graphic design.

We just watched the inaugural running of "The Weiner 500," a pre-race entertainment for the Indy 500.

In case you haven't heard about it, all six Oscar Mayer WeinerMobiles ran a two-lap race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They received new livery to represent the six regions of the US--New York Dog for the Northeast, Chi Dog for the Midwest, Slaw Dog for the Southeast, ChiliDog for the South, the Sonoran Dog for the Southwest, and the Seattle Dog for the Northwest. Each vehicle is named for the iconic hot dog from each area.

It was hilarious, and mostly because the announcers, drivers, and everyone else involved played it perfectly straight, through all the hot dog buns--er, puns. They had a guy who sang the Oscar Mayer song at the start of the race.

I was actually excited when #3 SlawDog won--I was rooting for them, being from the Southeast.

I know the race was probably carefully choreographed, including when the Sonoran Dog's engine overheated and began to smoke after pacesetting in the blistering first lap at 40 MPH, but it was a huge ball of fun, of the goofiest sort. I was giggling the whole time.

And that's what we desperately need these days. Goofy fun stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHFKFJN4zUc

We're having Oscar Mayer weiners for supper. With chili and slaw.

Thanks go out to Jamie B. and Mako and NeoTravis and Carl Foxmarten and Luxie of the CrossTime Cafe for getting Hirezfox back up and working again! :D

While my main comic site is down, I will upload the comics for Monday and Wednesday here, and then post the full page of the week's comics on Friday, as I have been doing.

I appreciate your patience and support while my web jockeys try to sort out this problem.

I still have no ETA for when the Hirezfox site will be back up.

I appreciate the concern of all the readers who have been contacting me over the last few days regarding my main comic site giving a 403 error message.

I am personally very low on the chain of command; all I can do is upload my comic strips to a folder that gets picked up by the web site. I have no ability to troubleshoot it myself.

I contacted the two people who run the server early yesterday morning, and was told they'd look into the matter.

Two other people who do have access to certain parts of the web site have reported that the site itself is still up and functioning, it's just that the permissions seem to have been switched from public to private.

I'm afraid that's about as much information as I have to relate right now.

Hopefully the matter will be resolved soon.

Congratulations to all the winners! And thanks to everyone who took the time to vote!

https://ursamajorawards.org/

I was reading through Fender's journal about the outage here at FA, and it was mentioned that clearing one's notifications would be a big help to the team migrating the data from the old server to the new system. The archived notifications take up a lot of space.

I confess I'm not sure what this entails. I assume it's the information about how many faves and comments one gets.

I've been afraid to delete anything, lest it erase the actual comments.

Last night I "nuked" the notifications on my "faves" list, since that doesn't involve any comments from viewers.

I see I still have a tally of some 20,000 faves, but the entire category is now gone. I hope I didn't do something monumentally stupid.

Can somebody do me a favor? Pick one of my cartoons and "fave" it, just so I can see if the thing still works?

Although, I'm not sure that you can do that in the Read Only Mode right now.

Thanks!

For the duration of the Fur Affinity outage, you can follow the misadventures of Kathy and Fred and the whole gang on my web site:

http://www.hirezfox.com/km/co/index.html

I've been struggling with an ethical dilemma for the past several weeks, and I could use some advice.

A few weeks ago, I was in the forum of someone I consider my friend, engaging in a rather peaceful discussion of a subject some folks consider a hot-button issue. The conversation was going along just fine for several pages, until a new voice entered the discussion, told me I had to shut my stupid mouth because I didn't know what I was talking about, and I should stop talking now.

I ignored this person, and continued the conversation.

My friend, however, began to lean toward the opinion of the new poster.

A few days later, the abrasive poster reappeared, and put up an all-caps diatribe in offensive language calling me an idiot for not understanding the subject.

So I went to the board moderator to ask him to tell this person that abusive language toward forumites is not tolerated. I did not ask him to be blocked or removed, because he is entitled to his opinion--it was the manner in which he chose to express himself that I wanted addressed.

My friend got annoyed that I went over his head instead of asking him to moderate his own forum. I was just following policy, and anyway, he shouldn't have had to be asked to tell the guy that such language was not permitted.

The board admin looked into it, and the thread was locked.

Now my friend is no longer speaking to me. After several days of radio silence, I messaged him to ask how long he was going to stay mad at me.

He replied, "until you apologize to So-and-so for antagonizing him."

At that point, I responded, "Have a nice life, then."

Now, I did not intentionally antagonize that person. I wasn't even talking to him. To me, this is like someone overhearing a conversation and then verbally attacking someone for holding an opinion that offends him.

To insist that I apologize to the person who used abusive language to insult me, is telling the victim to apologize to the perpetrator.

My dilemma is that I feel badly that my friend is shutting me out. But I refuse to apologize to someone who attacked me.

My husband thinks that if this friend of mine puts more stock on a random web poster than he does on our friendship, then I ought to realize what kind of a person he really is, and enjoy the silence. And I confess that this guy and I have often been at odds over things.

Thing is, I respect and admire my friend's talent, and I did enjoy conversing with him. I miss that.

But I will not capitulate. If he asked me to apologize to him for going over his head, I could deal with that. But I won't apologize for something I did not intend to do. I don't attack people, I don't troll people, and I don't use abusive language to people. If I do give offense, it's usually inadvertent, because I tend to concentrate on my own narrow field of view, without considering the wider picture.

I realize that the Internet is filled with people who routinely cuss each other out and make threats and call each other names. This is why that particular forum insists on civil discourse, to be a refuge from that sort of thing.

I suppose I'm not actually asking "What should I do?" but more just getting this off my chest. I hate losing friends.

Thanks for listening.

If I said I actually like the "new look" FA's donned for today, would people slap me? :D

Just a heads-up--I might not be able to post the comic here on Friday. My Internet-capable computer is in the shop getting an upgrade to its guts so we can put Win 11 on it (Please don't ask me any computer questions; I am so illiterate that when asked "What kind of computer do you have?" I reply, "A...black one?")

Anyway, the base page I use to create the comic is on that unit. I do have the individual cartoons on a data key, and could probably recreate the base page's aspect ratio (it's a little over 800 px wide but I forgot how high...) and put it together on my other desktop that runs Photoshop, which hasn't been connected to the internet for about ten years (it still runs XP.)

We were expecting to get the computer back today, but when we plugged it in, it did not come on. At all. Even after fiddling with it for ten minutes.

By that time the repair shop had closed, so I need to call them in the morning.

I'm hoping it's just something simple to fix, like the tech forgot to attach a wire when he put the guts back into the case.

In any event, if we can't get it up and working, the comic won't be able to go up on Friday.

I apologize in advance.

EDIT: Well, duh me--I clicked on last week's page here and got the page size (800x999.) So maybe I can do the page after all!

The voting period for the 2024 Ursa Major Awards is now open, and will run through April 19.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped put my husband's comic strip, 21st Century Fox, on the ballot! :) And also I'd like to send out a big "thank you" for helping nominate Carry On for "Best Comic strip" again! :D

Please make sure you check out the nominees, and cast your votes for your favorite furry art and artists!

It's fun, it's painless, and it can make some folks very happy! I'll even provide a link!


https://ursamajorawards.org/

Some people bite off more than they can chew.

We should thank God for those people.

They are the visionaries, the innovators, the people who drive our society forward.

They may fail--and some may fail spectacularly--but without them, our whole species would fail.

I opined in my last journal about not feeling creative enough to come up with artistic extras--that all my brain power was being devoted to writing and drawing my comic strip, and how even that was running on empty.

That made me wonder...what to people really want, by way of "extras?"

I mean, is the comic enough? Do folks really want things like stickers or pins or calendars or coffee mugs? I mean, I may be tying myself in knots over stuff nobody really is interested in.

I did T-shirts years ago, and it was a bad experience. I still have a few mediums left because I should have ordered nothing but XL size. The need to purchase a wide selection of sizes turns me into a T-shirt shop. I then tried printing transfers, and the quality was not very good. So I'm not too keen on doing T-shirts.

Some folks have expressed a desire for hard-copy books. I'm afraid that's cost-prohibitive for me, considering the length of the story, and even if I did pre-orders, I'm not sure where I'd be able to get good-quality comic books printed up. And then there's the mailing costs involved...

I had thought to make the archive available on CDs, but then I was told that CDs are "so last-century technology." I went to make up zip files of the archive, and unfortunately the size of the first attempt utterly choked my email provider. So I need to re-do that.

It was suggested I send out the archive on thumb drives, which I guess is do-able, if I can get a good enough deal on bulk thumb drives.

I'd love to have figurines 3D printed, but that is $pendy.

The bottom line is that I am both poor and cheap. If I can get away with stuff that doesn't cost me hundreds of dollars to get produced and then mailed, I'd be happy. I sent calendars out to my higher-tier Patreon supporters. Do you know it costs $30 to mail a calendar to the UK?

I don't go to conventions with stuff to sell. On top of designing and buying stock, there's the fees for the table (if you can get into the Dealers' Den at all), travel expenses, hotel expenses, food on the road...and in my unique case, finding and hiring a farm sitter. I'd probably never break even.

The other thing about "moichendize" is that I have to collect tax, and make sure I keep up with the book-keeping on it. I don't want to go to Club Fed.

Although if I did, I might be able to concentrate on writing and drawing...

Twenty-five years ago, I was writing two novel series, drawing two comic strips, and making paintings in acrylics, while running a farm single-handed, and doing yard work for people. And I was making porcelain dolls and sewing their costumes, too.

Over the years I've added comic series, written other novels, short stories, and done a lot of world-building.

Today, I can barely keep myself focused on creating Carry On. I should be way ahead on the comic, and I should be drawing extra art for my Patreon sponsors as well, but I just can't think of things to do. I lack inspiration.

I'm worried that I've just burnt out my creativity. Either that, or being in "survival mode" to get through the lambing season and winter with a dicey supply of hay is putting my artistic side on hold while I just cope with getting through the day.

I tried to explain it to my husband this evening, and he said I was tired and needed more sleep. He also reminded me that I tend to get depressed every winter, for the same reasons--farming is hard, and winter is cruel. But it's more than that.

I just can't think of any creative ideas. It took me months to decide on a design for the mugs I had made up for Patreon. I'd like to have figurines of my characters printed in 3D and found a guy who could do it for me, but it's been months since I met him and I never got back to him with designs for them. I was going to have Hyena Brigade buttons printed up in metal by a fellow I met at Anthrocon two years ago--like the ones on Fred's tunic, with a HB shield on them--and never followed through on that, either.

I was thinking of stickers, but can't come up with any designs at all, much less designs I like. Other artists do this stuff all the time and have no trouble with it. The only thing I've been drawing, is a blank.

In the comic strip, I'm approaching a very critical part of the story, and I should be plunging ahead with it, but I haven't put pen to paper since Christmas. First I got sick, then I had the lambs start arriving. Fortunately I have a buffer through the end of this month, but that's rapidly emptying. I have a lot of art-heavy plot ahead of me and it would have been nice to approach it with leisure time, but now I'm going to have to dive into it and struggle to stay ahead of it.

So that may be part of my malaise, too--a lack of enthusiasm to tackle my own story.

Really, I've been depressed for most of the past year, when you come right down to it. I know I'm not alone, 2024 was a tough year all over the place. But it just seems like I'm not having fun any more.

I don't know what other artists do to reignite the "spark," or if they're just gifted, or younger and have more brain cells to devote to thinking about art. Or maybe it's that when you're in survival mode, you just don't have the leisure to think of anything except getting through the day. Art is a luxury item.

May 2025 be better than 2024.

That's a mighty low bar.

At least let's hope it doesn't hit bottom and start to dig.

Some friends of mine and I were discussing what people look for in a webcomic. One of the friends seems to lean more toward superhero-type stories with grand gestures and big adventure, while I find character development a lot more fascinating.

So I thought I'd put the question out there--what do you look for when you read a webcomic? What keeps you coming back?

On the flip side, what turns you off, or makes you decide to stop reading?

And if you've stopped reading, do you ever check in to see if the story is interesting again?

I was on my way to our farm in the southern part of the state this morning, when I came around a series of curves in the road and ran into a deer. It seemed to appear out of nowhere directly in front of me--I didn't see it until I had hit it. I stepped on the brakes, hit it amidships, and it went up the hood, the windscreen, and disappeared over the roof of the car.

Because there were no shoulders on that stretch of road, I had to drive about 3/4 of a mile further before I could pull off safely to inspect the damage.

The car still runs fine. The lights were undamaged. The windscreen held. But the hood is crumpled, and the left wing mirror is shattered.

I did not shut the car off when I got out, and I tried to open the hood but could not. I was unhurt, and not even rattled--just pissed off and feeling sorry for the deer.

I could not continue my journey, which was still a further 150 miles, so I turned around to go home. I am disappointed that I did not get to go check the property. I have not been back there in nearly a year, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is not having "reliable" long-distance cars.

This was our "long-distance" car. Even though it has some weirdness going on with the thermostat--it will suddenly display a dramatic increase in temperature randomly, then drop back down. We replaced two thermostats, the radiator cap, the radiator, and the entire engine block, and it STILL does this. We think it's an air bubble in the line causing a fault, because I've seen the needle rise and fall just making a hard left turn.

Our other car has an issue with grease getting onto the engine block and smoking. Can scare the hell out of you to be stopped in traffic and smoke starts pouring from under the hood. So we'd rather keep that one for local trips. It stopped doing it for a while, so I guess that glob burned off, but I noticed smoke coming from the wheel well the other day after a shopping trip to town.

So I can't go check the farm. I was going to go last Friday, but on Thursday, the shoulder I'd injured tripping and falling into a fence (my right hand drawing arm) started to ache so badly that I knew I'd never be able to drive the ten-hour round trip with it. I put the trip off til today.

And now, with the car going to be in the shop, the weather and light turning to winter, and the lambing season fast approaching, I doubt I'll be able to go anytime soon.

I'm also not sure how we're going to pay for the repairs. We have insurance, but the cars are 20+ years old so we don't have comprehensive coverage. We've had a rotten summer with unbudgeted big-ticket expenditures (new freezer, tractor repair, set of four tires, multiple large vet bills) and I was just digging out from under all that, when this literally hits me from out of the blue.

And I didn't even get any venison out of the deal.

Well, tomorrow's Election Day here in the States.

I'm afraid that, whatever happens, it's going to be four years of hell.

It's been a beautiful October here. Despite the long, hot, dry summer, the trees have put on a nice display of color, thanks to some late-summer rains.

It occurred to me that the Canadians have it right--Thanksgiving should be in October, when the weather is nice, the landscape is gorgeous, and the harvest is ripe and ready to bring in and celebrate.

Halloween ought to come in November, when the trees reach their bare, witchy fingers toward the frosty moon, and dry leaves hiss and cackle in the death-cold wind.

I have been watching with horror the scenes of unimaginable destruction coming out of the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, and parts of Georgia and Virginia.

Eight years ago, in 2016, on our wedding anniversary, it was my county that was struck by a flash flood from a rainstorm so heavy that creeks became raging torrents that tore up bridges and swept away houses.

But that was nothing compared with what Hurricane Helene wrought.

When Greenbrier and Monroe Counties were flooded, we put boots, rakes, and shovels in donation boxes, along with cases of bottled water and other necessary items, to be sent down to help our neighbors in need.

Today, I feel so helpless. The level of devastation seems far beyond the ability of mere humans to undo. Buildings--towns--are not damaged, they're GONE. People there have nothing left but the clothes they were wearing when they fled through floodwaters that rose feet in a matter of minutes. Some are still stranded in their once-bucolic hollers, while others wander the streets filled with the debris of the towns from upstream, with no place to go because even the shelters were destroyed. Some folks have not had food or clean water in days. And over 200 people are dead.

It is heartbreaking.

But mountain people watch over each other. Convoys of relief supplies, organized by volunteers, are flowing into the area. People who get their power back run extension cords out to little kiosks on their lawns as free charging stations for cell phones. Folks on horseback and with teams of mules are searching along impassible roads for survivors, and bringing food and water in where they can. Restaurant owners cooked up food that would have gone bad and handed it out free to all comers.

Today I was set up at the farmer's market next to a couple of bakers who have kin in North Carolina. I overheard them discussing making a run down there with their church group and a truckload of supplies. At last, I could do something to help. I knew them, and I know the church they belong to--it's the one we can hear on Sundays from the Ranch, because they have an outdoor service rain or shine, and their soloist has quite a set of pipes. It's a mile and a half away through the woods.

I gave them a check for $100 to help buy supplies. Not that we could spare it, not after the summer we've had, but it was something I had to do. I can't go down and help, I have nothing to offer except a cash donation. A hundred bucks won't get much, especially if you have nothing at all, but every little bit helps.

They're going down Tuesday and will drop off their load and return Thursday. She said she might bake some things to take, too. They're concentrating on toiletries, gloves, flashlights, food that can be popped open, and other stuff like that.

I still feel useless to help, but at least I'm slightly less useless tonight.

Well, the aggravating hijacking of Fur Affinity aside, I won't be able to post my comics pages on Wednesdays for a while, as I've had to drop back to publishing just one cartoon an update day due to a series of overwhelming real-life events.

It's been a tough two months. The heat was brutal here, exacerbating the drought we're enduring. We did get two inches of rain a couple of weeks ago, which encouraged the grass in the pasture to start growing, but it's not enough to feed the sheep, and now it's drying up again.

My tractor, which was born the same year I was, needed new spindle bearings in its front right wheel, which had fallen over into the spindle column so that it could not move. Without a tractor I could not put out rolls of hay for the sheep, which meant I had to buy square bales, which was vastly more expensive--almost $300 to feed them for just ten days. We did finally coordinate with the mechanic to get the tractor repaired, and that cost us $940, plus a towing bill of $125.

Prior to this, my husband blew a tire on his car, and we then had to replace all four tires because they were worn. Another $350. Plus $90 for the emergency tire change on a dark road in the wee hours of the morning when he was heading in to work.

Then our freezer died. I didn't realize it at first because I still heard the motor running and the light came on, but the compressor had literally flamed out. It's a lucky thing the garage did not catch fire. Although I had smelled smoke that morning, I only realized what had happened when I got a popsicle out and it bent over.

So we had to find and buy a new freezer, for another $1000, and get the old one hauled off. Luckily my husband got one the next day, so we didn't lose anything in the old freezer (which we kept closed.)

And during these two months, in the heat wave, we lost five sheep. Out oldest ewe, Fawn, fell over dead, and I had to take her to be cremated ($90). Two sheep could not stand up, so we called the vet. Eventually the older ewe, Romana, was able to walk again, but the younger ewe, Bonnie, never got up, and we had her euthanized. We lost one young lamb to a bizarre accident where he got a foot stuck in an old set of steel bedsprings next to the fence, and pitched forward, pinning his neck under his body and suffocating himself. A second lamb wasn't looking so good, so we took him to the vet's (an emergency call on a Sunday afternoon) and despite much effort, it was clear by the next day he was not going to make it, so we took him back and had him euthanized, and autopsied, as well as had his head sent in for rabies testing (it was negative, thank God.)

The third lamb--ironically, the twin brother of the one that died on the bed springs--was found a few days later next to the water trough, dead. I had his fecal sample tested for worms. He had barberpole worms, but I think he died due to enterotoxemia, even though I'd just vaccinated the lambs for it a few days earlier. He probably was already succumbing to it when I vaccinated him.

So the bill for all the vet work came to $1700.

And I had to get our new Pyrenees pup her second set of vaccinations. At $275.

When I sent the eight late spring lambs I'd held back to market, they only brought $900 because the market was down due to the drought, and so many 4H fair lambs hitting the market now, flooding it. I was hoping to get around $1500 for them.

That much unexpected expense has really hit our finances hard. I had to swallow my pride and ask my Patreon supporters for help. Some increased their monthly pledges, others purchased commissions from me, and I am very grateful to them for their support.

And then on Saturday, I was changing the water filter in the crawlspace under our house, and the filter cup was on so tight, that in struggling to get it undone, I managed to crack one of the elbow joints upstairs in the pump closet because I was shaking the plastic pipe. Which required an emergency call to a plumber for repair, at $440. At least he was able to come out within two hours and get our water running again.

On a parallel note, I had to extract honey from my beehives in order to give them drawn, open comb to use to put brood and more honey into, and that process took a bit longer than I had anticipated. I had to stop in the middle of the extraction to wash and sterilize jars because my honey pail was full, and then filter and bottle up that honey so I could continue.

I'm telling you this because I've been under a lot of stress, which has affected my ability to work on the comic. I've had trouble figuring out which of the many plot threads I should follow next, and how I need to weave all the plot threads together to make a coherent story. That caused me to delay working on the strip until I was down to a single comic in my buffer, and without any time to work on refilling it.

So instead of going into another hiatus, I decided to cut back on the number of strips I publish in a week. And I'm still struggling to get my story sorted out and scripted, along with completing the commissions. I've actually gotten most of those completed and out the door. :)

Anyway, with everything that's been going on, on top of my regular chores (and watering the outdoor plants for an elderly neighbor who had a stroke a few weeks ago), I feel like I'm drowning.

I know you guys will say "It's OK, real life comes first, you take all the time you need" and I'm grateful for that support.

I just felt like I owed you all an explanation. And I needed to do a little more venting, after Saturday's plumbing mishap. That one felt like someone tossed me an anchor, just as I started to swim to shore.