Penny Arcade - PATV - DLC Podcast Show – Paracusia

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Penny Arcade - PATV - DLC Podcast Show – Paracusia

This week Gabe and Tycho create the comic Paracusia. Listen to the podcast here.

Read the full story here

cynnicysm

for the last 10 years i've worked a job that requires, on the one hand, visual comprehension at insane speeds coupled with a duration that borders sadism, and on the other hand long periods of sitting and thinking and twisting the million puzzle pieces you just spent the better part of the day sifting through and making decisions about these things, and then on the third hand (who doesn't have three hands? doesn't everyone have three hands?) short spurts of time, maybe an hour, actively doing what is objectively identifiable as "work". I work for 9 hours each day, during which time I spend maybe, MAYBE 2 hours doing things that a layperson could look into my office and say "oh he's working". The other 7 hours my brain is just spinning around and around until the synovial fluid builds enough friction to ignite and fire some neurons. Outwardly it appears as though I'm staring off into space, or looking at cat videos, or reading comics.

because of the compartmental nature of each day's activity, and by that i mean that each day has a new task that is exactly like the old task in form and function but is different in every other possible way, you have to develop a sort of...forced forgetfulness: when i press ctrl+alt+delete and hit enter to lock my work computer, it also locks the part of my brain designated to "work" and forces that part deep into the recesses of the cavity. only very rarely does something pique me so hard that i let myself ponder it outside of the normal 5:30-3:30. after 3:30 i've got too much other shit to do. like, work on the house, be with my family, eat things, and be creative. that list isn't in order of precedence.

i feel like i can do this because the work is generating from outside of myself. sometimes, the things i create leak into my brain through the blood-brain barrier, from my heart and subconscious, and my options are to suppress the thoughts and potentially lose them, or flesh them out right then and there and make up the time by working later. i can't imagine working when the work is solely of my own creation. being creative seems to be such a spontaneous, frail little wisp of a thing, you almost have to grab it whenever it flutters gently by, or risk losing it. my job is endlessly exhausting, mentally taxing, and regularly causes people to go batshit crazy, and i seem to excel at it....i'm fairly certain that doing what jerry and mike do, i.e. create for money, would cause me to break nearly instantaneously. the pressure to create would either ruin me and drain me of life until my unusable husk solely remained, or it would cripple my existence outside of work and ruin all that is dear to me.

tl:dr, kudos M&J for being able to handle that shit.

GrassHopper

I was about to say 'but they write jokes for a living' then I remembered how much work goes into my stand up act. And I'm not involved with a charity of my own creation, or creating a tabletop game, oh yeah or having to create a new comic strip 3x a week. Also not running my own company while having the burden of employees that rely on that company.

I can easily see how that's a 24 hour day...as I imagine it sometimes creeps into their dreams. Kudos indeed