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Depressing Thoughts (Mitigated By Thunder Lizards)

Not the happiest day in comics.

  • Depressing thought number one: a company that you work for is perfectly willing to screw you sideways not because you are bad at your job or lost money, but merely because you didn’t make enough profit for your financial overlord. Case in point: a mess of comics people cut at Marvel, via Heidi Mac.

    That “enough profit” part is after hundreds of colleagues are forced to work in a facility with only one bathroom for each gender and the decision had been made to not carry inventory of books, which means you can’t supply stores that want to give you money for the books. Nobody that ever went to business school has ever said that your employer owes you anything beyond not bouncing your current paycheck, so it’s your own damn fault if you expected things like “dignity”, “the tools to do your job”, or “loyalty earned by all your hard work”. Indy-/webcomics creators may not have the surety of that paycheck not bouncing (for as long as it lasts), but at least you can’t be fired for crap reasons when you work for yourself. Fleen wishes the recently dejobbed Marvel staffers the best of luck.

  • Depressing thought number two: nor did those b-school theorists decide that a company that you pay money should actually have to give you the services that you paid for. Case in point: Jon Rosenberg, whose difficult pregnancy/severely prematurely twin sons have, against all odds, thrived and become happy, normal toddlers¹. The cost of keeping them from dying in those long, horrible months was considerable, but Jon and his family had done the responsible thing and obtained health insurance, knowing that the purpose of health insurance is to pay for circumstances beyond one’s control, thus preventing an accident of fate from bankrupting a faultless family.

    Ha, ha, ha, ha, that was a good one. Actually, the purpose of health insurance is to pay a large amount of money to a company that will employ legions of people to ensure² that they don’t actually pay for the medical expenses that they said they would pay for. The latest evidence of this starts here and continues to make me insanely angry at the entire healthcare system for an hour or so. Jon’s conclusion is as succinct and correct a thing as ever has been said, and a position that I wholeheartedly agree with. I spend a significant amount of my time (approximately 800 hours a year, unpaid) trying to make it so at least one part of the healthcare fiasco doesn’t completely destroy the residents of one small town. It’s a losing battle, and a thought that can put one deep into a depressive funk.

  • As we all recall from younger, more carefree days, the one thing that will make any situation better is dinosuars. They were cool and had teeth like this and horns like that and they went rawr and grrrrr and growf and looked awesome. Also, it is highly unlikely that they invented a system of for-profit healthcare that included business methods like recission. You can remind yourself daily of the magnificence of these creatures by looking overhead for anything with feathers, but the really awesome ones are only around in artistic representations.

    Case in point: Dustin Harbin has produced an astoundingly beautiful print of 27 dinosaurs and similar critters³. Also, there’s a baleful eye glaring at us in the water that doesn’t seem to have a name, so your guess is as good as mine. Order yours here and enjoy the cheer it brings you.

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¹ Despite having a father who trades in human souls.

² So to speak.

³ Sauropterygians and ichthyopterygians ruled the ancient seas, much as pterosaurs were lords of the ancient skies. But none of them were dinosaurs.

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