Permyz

Commerce, Art and Freedom

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:59:55 +0000

I started Permyz because I had stories to tell and I figured people would rather encounter them in silly drawings than in footnoted novels. Having self-published software and a book, I at first thought of Permyz in business terms. It would earn its keep, by golly, with a regular update schedule, advertising, and a store-front.

There was just one problem: I’m also leaving the extractive economy as much as I can. Doing so takes big blocks of time: finding land, putting together a permy garden plan, etc. Since I’m not a former Disney animator, the drawing goes very slowly. Thus I have trouble meeting schedule, let alone marketing. So Permyz would appear not to be commercial.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Commercialization can compromise art, even sketchy cartoons. I’ve already had a suggestion to run product placements in the strip itself. But offering influence for hire would compromise a strip about regenerative living. OK, so I kept the Amazon storefront. Purists will be glad to know that no one has actually bought anything there. Hopefully people are finding interesting books, but reading copies they got from friends, local libraries or used book stores.

So, bottom line, I no longer expect Permyz to pay its way. At least not for a long time. It will continue, just without ads and without a set schedule. I think that keeps it fresh and free.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you’ll come back soon.

–Kev

67. Earth Gave Birth?

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:18:10 +0000

I just wish I could see the faces of my former astronomy/geology colleagues when they read about pregnant planets. Fiction is so fun!

Homesteading in Ohio

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:12:56 +0000

Kimberly and I are in the throes of buying a property in Ohio. It’s a pretty piece, mostly forested, with a much smaller house (OK, a trailer!) than the one we live in now. About an acre remains cleared from long ago, and that’s where we’ll put an orchard and market garden. I look forward to using the land’s many cozy vistas for drawing practice. Speaking of which, Permyz will probably continue to limp along quality-wise for another month or so, and it may post a little late now and then. Somewhere in the midst of buying, selling and moving, I draw when I can, sometimes on a couch before dawn with a cat on my lap.

–Kev

66. Amma’s Retirement

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:20:52 +0000

There was no strip Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Please check back later this week (hopefully Wednesday) for the next strip and a brief blog post about freedom, art, commerce and permaculture.

65. Forever Diet

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:04:49 +0000

64. Ancient Graffiti

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 04:00:31 +0000

63. Hobbes vs Archeology

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 04:00:22 +0000

“Redwoods the size of Saturn rockets…their butts blackened by fire.” (National Geographic, November 2009, p. 39)

How could I resist such a bizarre image, especially for this storyline?

62. Golden Age

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:00:09 +0000

And we’re back! Amma may be ultra fictional, but archeological evidence points to a long, peaceful human prehistory.

What Happened to Permyz? (a novel)

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:20:53 +0000

Sorry Permyz froze up for a couple months. Commitments at home and an invention idea sidelined the strip for awhile. However, before I could post to let you know what was going on, my ancient laptop began exploring a new career as a door stop.

I’d seen the warning signs for a couple years. First the sound card quit. Then the mouse driver. Now the file system had developed Alzheimer’s.

What would you do with a 7-year-old laptop? Trash it? Replace it with something twice as fast and 3 times cheaper?

Not if you’re a permaculturist. The hardware still worked fine, but latest software updates had abandoned it. Time for an Ubuntu-ectomy.

After some searching among the hundreds of Linux distributions, I found a lean one called Puppy. Booting it from the live CD-ROM brought everything back to life again. The track pad worked! YouTube didn’t freeze up and I could even hear music again! Puppy lives in RAM, so everything launched and ran several times faster. GIMP (which I use to tweak scans) just flew!

Now I boot Puppy from a flash drive, so I don’t even need a working hard disk or CD-ROM. This way, who knows? Maybe I won’t need another computer for 7 years or more. And when the time comes, I might even dumpster-dive for it like Eddie Buckeye.

Anyway, Permyz will resume, right where we left off, on January 6.
–Kev

P.S.: Happy New Year!

61. So Liberated

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:44:55 +0000

Brooke, Connie and Liza are taking the news rather well, aren’t they?

Sorry to leave you hanging, but some personal travel will interrupt Permyz for a few days. I actually had a nice buffer going, but it ran out after a prior bout of travel followed by the lengthy process of introducing the new cast page and Amma and watercolor with a bad cold during extremely wet weather (which causes ink to bleed). Anyway, please check back on Friday, October 23 for more Permyz adventure.

-Kev

60. E.T. Detector

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:21:28 +0000

59. Meet Amma

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:30:27 +0000

58. Ethical Transit

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:00:20 +0000

Awhile back, Les pointed out the enormous advantages of bicycles over cars. Buses and ride sharing also reduce environmental harm.

57. Take me!

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:00:13 +0000

I once shared a house with several massage therapists, one of whom introduced me to permaculture. Another was a huge UFO fan. We got along great, partly because, in my pre-teen years before I got into science, I read every U.F.O. book and article I could get my hands on. Eventually the science lore won out: it just hangs together better, and you can do things with it. As for the UFOs, well, it’s fun to wonder, isn’t it?