Rosie Dee

It really tastes much better than you'd think, though.

2008-07-22T08:20:20Z

Back when I was in college, my favorite coffee shop made a drink that was basically a café au lait with your choice of flavored syrup. (As it turns out, the syrup was necessary to cover up the sludgy taste of their sub-par French roast.) I had a tremendous crush on the doofy, bedheaded barista, who recommended cinnamon syrup as his personal favorite.

And now it is my personal favorite. But I guess I am not as compellingly cute as that barista was, because people mostly just make fun of me.

I've never had a tan in my life.

2008-07-15T08:43:14Z

True story!

There exists somewhere, now lost among the internet ether, a photograph of me sitting with three British post docs. I am, by far, the palest of the bunch. Substantially paler than British people, that is how sickly pale I am.

I stick out my tongue when I'm thinking REALLY HARD

2008-07-07T08:26:33Z

I've mostly sat out of these internet-comic-people memes, usually because I don't even notice they're going on until days in, but here! I am in on this one!

beatonna is someone you probably already have on your friends list, but if you don't, you should add her now, because I guess Kate Beaton is real lonely. Also, smart! And funny as hell! And she's put out the call for us to create conversations with our younger selves, which is a theme she does much better than I do. But here! I'll try anyway. Humor me:

Like practically every other kid, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. And I got scarily close, too! But then I took an actual paleontology class in college and GOOD GRAVY was that stuff boring! Is it a coral? Or a sponge? Or a bryozoan? I DON'T KNOW WHERE ARE THE DINOSAURS.

GUESS I'LL GO BACK TO STUDYING THESE VERY EXCITING ROCKS.

The most misanthropic of all my muses!

2008-07-01T07:35:08Z

I've been a bit lax in the comic updates, haven't I? Well, here you go:

Public service announcement: If you let strangers fix your computer, they will judge you and make fun of your taste in music. But you probably deserve it, you slob.

And then the wheels fell off!

2008-06-18T11:51:33Z

I have had many roommates over the years. None have made me laugh so hard as my college roommate, Jake.

...
So apparently, my mom has been showing off my comics to quite a lot of people, some of whom might be related to me. (Hello!)

I think most of these people know me as a bookish, quiet sort — I was an especially awkward, angsty teenager, for sure — and so I feel kind of obligated to say that my mama raised me right and things didn't really go downhill until I got a geology degree. (No geology department will confer a degree upon you until they feel pretty comfortable with your ability to use filthy language and drink a lot of beer, preferably beside a campfire in the mountains.) Apparently, this is also how my mom explains her daughter to others. It's okay, you guys! She has a geology degree!

And oh, hey! There's that generation gap I've been looking for!

My physics doppelgänger?

2008-06-05T09:24:47Z

A few weeks ago, my mom asked me if I'd send her a copy of my minicomic, as a sort of belated mother's day gift. Such a modest request could hardly be denied, although I did worry a bit about what my mom might think of me, since much of the humor of my comics often comes from my poor decision-making skills. But she called me when it arrived and told me for an hour how proud she was of me, which, let's face it, is totally awesome. I made a comic book instead of striving for grad school success, and my mom thinks it's the best thing ever. Also, now my mom reads my blog! ("Just draw me cute," she says.) Hi, Mom!

Anyway, my mom is a real nice lady, much nicer and more polite than I am, and she has apparently been proudly showing my comics to her friends, who I bet are also real nice ladies. My mom is also a proper, upstanding woman who frowns at me when I swear and probably figures I got that from my dad, too, so I feel obligated to warn you: This comic contains A BAD WORD. Sorry, Mom!

You guys, the history of hot air ballooning is just absolutely, hilariously nuts and I will probably have to draw some comics about it. Some unknown German artist was apparently one step ahead of me with an engraving that cheerfully depicts the last flight of dear old Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier:

Joe's terrible dolphin joke: First in a series

2008-05-22T07:09:22Z

bostonsteamer emailed me awhile back and asked if I'd be interested in illustrating a joke of his, as sort of a joint venture. He admitted it was the sort of joke that some people might perceive as being, oh, unfunny. (I might be in that camp, dude.) But it was still fun to draw a comic that was not all about ME ME ME, and I can't come up with non-autobiographical content on my own. Also, dolphins. Behold!

Yeah. bostonsteamer has more terrible jokes for me, by which I guess I mean to say: Prepare thyself.

Maybe I have rabies.

2008-05-14T08:05:56Z

Today, I've had a headache so severe that it actually burst the tiny blood vessels around my eyes. How does that even happen? Anyway:

A few days after the opossum run-in, I turned a corner to walk home down a dark side street late at night and spotted a raccoon a half-block up the street, jogging merrily toward me as though I wasn't even there. All I could think about (while turning to walk very quickly back to the well-lit main street) was that story on "This American Life" about the rabid raccoon. Ah, nature. Sometimes you get a little too close for comfort. And sometimes you have rabies.

AOEU HTNS

2008-05-06T07:42:33Z

I think my favorite among the things I picked up at Stumptown was probably Alec Longstreth's Dvorak Zine. Oh, yes. In my efforts to be your nerdiest, dorkiest, lamest friend, I am learning to type in Dvorak. And it isn't going terribly well, either. See here:

...

...
If you ordered a minicomic from me,

a) thank you very much, I am seriously flattered by how much demand outpaced expectations, however small those expectations were, and

b) it's somewhere in the postal system already! It's gonna be a good week for you.

(But of course, let me know if you do not receive a minicomic from me in the next week or so, and we will figure out what has gone so horribly wrong. Last time I sent out a minicomic, a mangled few fell victim to aggressive machine sorters, and now I worry.)

If you didn't order one but still want to, that is cool — I made more!

Commerce makes me kind of uncomfortable, but here we go:

2008-05-01T07:11:07Z

I did go to Stumptown Comics Fest last weekend, if only for the last ninety minutes or so that it was open. It was so nice in Portland on Saturday that Aaron and I went hiking instead, and on Sunday, I overslept and then spent several frantic hours putting these together:

Minicomic #2: THIS IS NOT A THESIS

My second minicomic is twenty-eight pages long, and includes a few comics never before seen on rosiedee! Some of them have been occupying my sketchbook since 2005, as it turns out. Also, I'll admit that I don't do an especially great job of scanning my comics, and I have to say, they look pretty sweet when they're printed up on paper. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Would you like one of your very own? I bet you probably would. You could click on the button above, or paypal four dollars* to: rosiedeecomics at gmail dot com, and then I would happily send one to you.

(Four dollars includes the cost of postage, although if you are in a country that is not the U.S. or Canada, maybe you could tack on an extra dollar and we'd call it good.) Stumptown also taught me the thrill of trading, and so if you have your own minicomic that you would like to trade, I welcome you to email me and we will work that out instead. I don't know, email me with other questions, I guess?

*Man, the price of postage has gone up a bit since the last time I did this. I will probably print future minicomics on slightly smaller paper, which will fit into slightly smaller envelopes, and then fall into a different, more reasonable postage category. I am not making any money off of these or anything.

And as it turns out, there was a mistake in the layout when I printed these for Stumptown, but that mistake has now been fixed and I am appropriately mortified that a few people have the incorrect version in their possession.

Special thanks to Aaron, who manned the papercutter in Kinko's at 1 a.m. without complaint, and who also recently asked me, "Have you ever wanted to have a lightbox?" (yes), and then pulled one out of his closet for me!

Fast-forwarding nine years to the drunken present.

2008-04-24T08:23:08Z

This announcement applies to maybe, like, three people:
Are you going to be at Stumptown this weekend? I might also be hanging out at Stumptown this weekend maybe! (I am not 100% on this idea quite yet.) Maybe you could email me and let me know, and we could meet up and exchange comics or something, and then I could get all nervous and refuse to talk to you because I was so nervous, and then you would forever remember me as being totally lame. That sounds kind of nice, doesn't it? (Or maybe I will just stay home, I don't know.)

...

And now for a comic:

So now that Ben and I both live in Seattle, we hang out all the time. Ben works just down the street from my house, and so sometimes he comes over for dinner after work, and then we wait until it is late enough to start drinking respectably (when it gets dark) and head up to the neighborhood dive bar, which is conveniently located next to Ben's bus stop. "Just one or two beers," we say to each other! "A nice, quiet evening, and then we'll go home!"

HA.

Then the bar closes and the bartender kicks us out!

Sometimes we occupy the same corner booth for seven or eight hours. It is like this one bar has cast an especially insidious spell on all of its patrons, because we are mostly well-behaved everywhere else we frequent. And other people report a similar effect, so it ain't just us.

Metal Ted wants to wish you a happy birthday IN HELL

2008-04-09T08:02:35Z

My friend Ben occasionally complains that I never draw comics about him, even though I hang out with him more than anyone else. Which, I guess, is a fair criticism. Plus, Ben has fixed thousands of dollars' worth of computer problems for me and asked only for beer (and now, well, comics) in return. So I guess I owe him.

Too bad he hasn't done anything funny in NINE YEARS.

Happy birthday, Ben! Here is a comic that is ostensibly about you but actually turns out to be about me anyway!

There is no photographic evidence on hand to accompany this post, nor would I tell you if there was. But I can tell you that I sat drawing in the coffee shop for awhile, and then erased the pencil lines out from under the ink, horrified to discover that my Portrait of the Artist at Fifteen is a truly alarming likeness, almost as though my tenth grade school picture flitted right out of my pen and onto the page.

Conveniently left out: the part where I date Ben's best friend for a year and a half, the part where I break up with Ben's best friend, the part where we don't talk for two years, the part where we all end up in Seattle in some kind of cosmic joke.

rosiedee @ 2008-04-03T02:35:00

2008-04-03T09:35:07Z

Lately, whenever I drink too much, all I want to talk about is my comics. It's like some awful, dark secret that I feel the need to expose to the world, but only after I've drunk enough to work up the courage. (Very few of my non-LJ friends know about this shameful habit of mine, although, you know. Significantly more, lately.)

So I inked this comic while drunk. Enjoy! Yaaay.

Aaron is not actually very short at all. I just happen to be quite tall.

(He isn't very gay, either, for that matter.)

You can play these songs with claws

2008-03-27T07:27:12Z

More comics about video games! Man, I am really low on inspiration lately.

...

Public service announcement for residents of Seattle,
specifically those residents who hail from the Midwest,
specifically those Midwestern natives from Minnesota/Wisconsin:
Did you know about this place? Leinie's! And Grain Belt Premium! I read about it in The Stranger while my Minnesota-native self was on the bus to visit my Wisconsin-native friend, and I was so excited I almost started jumping up and down in my seat. (Don't want anyone sitting within a five-foot radius of you on public transportation? Ask me how!)

Of course, I haven't been there yet, and it's gotten kind of middling reviews — what, exactly, is "Minnesota-style" pizza? — but it's from the people who brought us Bauhaus and Top Pot! And now: deep-fried cheese curds! Just thought you should know.

Comics about video games? My popularity is ASSURED!

2008-03-19T08:17:42Z

Guitar Hero! You think you're too good for it, but you're not!

It's been a rough week; please share your own embarrassing-yet-charming stories.

2008-03-13T09:41:46Z

"Your most embarrassing moment" is one of my least favorite prompts ever. I think I'm about as easily embarrassed as most people are, but then again, within a week, I'm mining my embarrassing moments for stories to tell at parties. Or to draw comics about, whatever. And so really, what does it mean for something to be embarrassing if you're willing to draw pictures of it for the internet?

But even worse is when one is asked to tell about a most embarrassing moment at work. It takes a fair amount of finesse to come up with a story that is funny and charming, embarrassing but not really embarrassing, and work-appropriate.

This is not such a story.*

*I do have one, though. I was once in an elevator with the president of the university I attended, and I was holding an article he'd written about the future of higher education. He asked me what I thought of the article, I didn't realize he was the president of the university (he'd grown a beard), and I proceeded to tell him I thought the whole thing was a bunch of mealy-mouthed bullshit that utterly failed to take a stand on behalf of students, which it was, but you know. Oops.

Basically, I think the lesson we can all learn from the things I've been posting lately is: meet me in person and inside of twenty-four hours, I will make an absolute fool of myself. And you will like it.

For years, agentjohnny referred to my chocolate chip cookies as bitch cookies

2008-02-27T08:33:25Z

Things I obviously inherited from my mother: my generally friendly demeanor, my ability to get my way with above-average baked goods.

Things my mother insists must have come from my father: my dark hair, my disdain for Valentine's Day, that smart-alecky mouth.

The weirdest thing that ever happened to me: finally completed.

2008-02-14T10:23:06Z

As promised, the conclusion to the story of the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. (It happened last winter, for the record.)

It was supposed to be two or three pages long, and then things just spiraled out of control. I cannot remember a time when I was not working on this comic, the comic that would not be finished.

Page one should look familiar:

Okay, I admit I took some dramatic license with the storytelling, in order to portray the events as I like to remember them. (Me: overly caffeinated, overly tired, overly nervous. Evan: unsuspectingly trapped next to me for four hours.) As a result, I fear that the comic version of Evan comes off as much colder and more easily irritated than Actual Evan, but then again, Comic Evan doesn't look much like Actual Evan anyway. For the record: evan is one of the nicest people I've met through LJ, which is really saying quite a lot, and he still calls me to hang out when he's in Seattle.

GEOLOGY: Where subduction always leads to orogeny!

2008-01-22T08:12:46Z

Whatever you majored in, I am pretty sure it was at least 90% less fun than geology.

I live in Panel F.

2008-01-10T10:49:01Z

My brother has been staying with me all week, which means I have been doing a lot of drinking and not so much drawing. Instead, I leave you with perhaps my favorite comic of all time, a structural geological experiment expressed in six panels of so much pathos:

Figure 6.107 THE FAMOUS BEER CAN EXPERIMENT:

SEE THE FAMOUS BEER CAN EXPERIMENT FOR YOURSELF:
Hubbert and Rubey (1959) demonstrated the fundamentals of the fluid pressure model in their now-famous beer can experiment. Sample preparation consists of drinking two beers, preferably out of nonaluminum cans (Figure 6.107A). Place one of the empties in the freezer (Figure 6.107B), and remove a window from your house or apartment or lab (Figure 6.107C). Clean the glass with detergent, rinse, and leave it wet with a thin film of water. Place the can that is not in the freezer, top down, on the pane of glass. Now lift one end of the glass to form an inclined plane, and, with protractor in hand, measure the angle at which the beer can commences movement down the plane (Figure 6.107D). Hubbert and Rubey report typical angles of about 17° corresponding to a coefficient of sliding friction of metal on wet glass of 0.3. After the can in the freezer has been chilled, quickly pull it out and perform the same exercise (Figure 6.107E). This time the beer can begins to move down the inclined plane at negligible angles of slope (~1°). It moves easily not because the glass is wet; rather it moves because a fluid pressure derived from expansion of the warming air inside the can offsets the normal stress exerted by the can on the glass. Hours can be spent enjoying experiments on the role of fluid pressure in overthrusting (Figure 6.107F).

From: Structural Geology of Rocks and Regions, 2nd Edition, by George H. Davis and Stephen J. Reynolds.

My perfect life includes adequate heating.

2008-01-02T14:00:41Z

Sorry about the lack of updates — I didn't realize my parents actually did have a scanner at their house until I'd already committed to doing absolutely nothing worthwhile for two whole weeks.

My mom always demands a Christmas list from me, but actively asking for gifts makes me feel so guilty that I just ask her for practical things I would end up buying on my own anyway. My mother, in her heartfelt attempt to spoil me, counteracts this strategy by buying me the biggest, best, most expensive version of whatever it is I say that I want.

This year, one of the things on my list was a hot water bottle, because we keep our house in Seattle so cold during the winter that sometimes my feet turn a rather deathly shade of gray. So my mom bought me the biggest, best, most expensive hot water bottle she could find — a hot water bottle enema kit.

Oh, mom. You really, really shouldn't have.

Stories about airplanes, part three.

2007-12-13T14:07:23Z

Here's the set-up for a story about the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. The rest will be a lot less melancholy, I promise.

I now have a series of announcements that I will present in the form of a numbered list!

1. Minneapolis people: I arrive in your fair city next Monday evening. I have yet to work out with either of my parents exactly what it is I'm up to, but I am leaning toward spending a few days around Minneapolis before going up north. Are you around? What are you up to? I miss you.

2. I made a chocolate cream pie last week, as directed by breelupia. It was awesome. I recommend that you make one for yourself and anyone you might be angling to marry. (Incidentally, Seattle people: who would like to form a Pie Club?)

3. You guys, I joined Facebook a few weeks ago. It was late at night, no one was awake, I got lonely, I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't really intend to do anything with it, but then people started finding me. I like to think that people just searched for me over and over for months, and then I finally signed up and made them so happy! Anyway, if that's what your life has been missing, there I am.

Stories about airplanes, part two.

2007-12-05T16:12:04Z

This one scanned a bit strangely, but I am sure you can figure it out.

That is pretty much exactly how things went.

Gate Agent: Climb aboard our flying tin can!
Disembodied Voice of Authority: DEATH APPROACHES.
Gate Agent: All aboard, now!

But then the take-off was eerily calm, and we fell asleep to wake up to clear skies, and we watched the Northern lights all the way across Montana.

Stories about airplanes, part one.

2007-11-29T18:00:08Z

I used to be kind of neurotic about flying until I discovered the soothing calm of a pre-flight martini at the airport bar.

Also, it sort of slipped my mind until after I'd finished drawing, but this whole scenario took place on my 23rd birthday. EVERYTHING WAS ADDING UP. How to tell the unsuspecting passengers that we were about to go down in flames and sharks and it was all my fault, without seeming totally insane? HMM.

According to the internet doctor, it means I probably have late-stage cancer

2007-11-20T13:05:38Z

Way back last fall, when I was looking for a new place to live in Seattle, I met a really, really nice dentist guy who regularly flies on a bush plane up into Alaska and spends a week in each of the most remote outposts, doing all the dental work the villagers need until he comes back the next year. He exuded such warm, happy niceness that I thought perhaps he was the dentist who could finally help me overcome my intense fear of dentistry. (My childhood dentist didn't use novocaine on my first cavity, to teach me a lesson!) Nice Dentist Guy wasn't licensed in the state of Washington, so he recommended his (presumably also very nice) buddy to me.

Nice Dentist Guy's Buddy, now my regular dentist, is not nearly so nice as Nice Dentist Guy. He has a very low tolerance for whining and baseless anxiety. It turns out that he is exactly what I needed. Also, he uses litmus paper as a diagnostic tool! SCIENCE!

I have the most acidic saliva my dentist has ever seen! Yes! I always knew I would discover my superpower/secret weapon!