We Lost

Congratulations, .eduGuru! You deserved to win!

Technical Difficulties

Like everything else in TFRL, this just happened.

I made the cartoons bigger and better, but when I uploaded them to Blogger, it shrunk them back down. I'm going to have to host the images elsewhere if I want them to be bigger. PITA.

So, while I figure out what to do about that, "please stand by". Feel free to sit if it's more comfortable. We will return to our regularly scheduled program shortly. Your call is important to us. Please remain on the line and the next available operator will take your call.

Oh, and if I hear 'do more with less' one more time, There. Will. Be. Cartoons.

Road to Nowhere

I was going to write a post about how fickle you folks are when it comes to commenting on this blog. But I figured that would sound needy, so I'll save that post with it's bar chart and stats for another day.

I hope you're not bored with budget woes, because I got a million cartoons about that. This one hasn't happened yet, but it will. When it does I'm sure I'll get in trouble in retrospect.



But what a long second it is...

I Don't Like Where This is Going

So... this probably isn't all that funny if you don't work in California, and it isn't funny in any way whatsoever if you do work in California, but it's our reality (and trust me, it'll be coming to a reality near you soon enough).

The first three panels are actually verbatim quotes from emails that our union has sent out concerning furloughs and layoffs over the past few weeks. The change in tone regarding layoffs did not escaped my attention.

The last panel is where this is all inexorably going.

I have 47 union seniority points. Just sayin'.

The Price of Victory

OK, so last winter we had a 'discussion' about how much time was going to be spent doing information architecture and how much was going to be spent doing design.

This post pretty much sums up the conversation. (read before continuing)

However, using my superior powers of persuasion (known to laymen as 'procrastination'), I was able to get an additional three months to complete the IA. w00t!!

Victory was sweet, if short-lived.

Fast forward to last week...


Oh, and no disclaimers this time. This one really happened.

With These Kinds of Savings, We Won't Need Furloughs

I wrote this cartoon Wednesday night. Thursday morning, our designer tells me about a meeting she had on Wednesday with our web governance committee that was pretty much exactly this cartoon.

I can't win for losing.

I had no foreknowledge of this meeting or its contents, and I attest that this cartoon has nothing to do with any meeting or meetings that may or may not have actually taken place on this or any other university, community college, high school, primary, secondary or private school in this or any other country on this or any other planet in this or any other alternate universe.

I think that I'll include that as a general disclaimer in all my cartoons.

This Will End in Tears

After a lot of unhappiness about TFRL and shutting it down, I've decided to try and give it another shot. I know that certain people were offended before, and I can't promise that people who want to be offended won't be offended again, but TFRL has never been about specific people; it's always been a commentary on the process of higher education.

And anyone who thinks that the way higher ed works isn't humorous... well, I don't know what to say to you. It's either funny or depressing, and I will always side with the happy, laughing people rather than the depressed people. I hope you will too.

I am concerned and unhappy that there are some who feel that they can't share 'safely' because of a fear that what they say may end up in TFRL. That was never my intent, and I understand and accept your concern. Real life is (and must be) an inspiration for TFRL, but I don't want anyone to feel that they are fodder for TFRL. I promise that nothing you say will be directly used or mocked in this cartoon... Well, I make an exception for 'generic' high-level administrators, the Governor, and the state legislature (state legislators should be burned at the stake - just sayin').

In the end, my hope for TFRL is that it is real, that it is funny, but that no one feels that it is about them, targets them, or ridicules them personally (see the exceptions above... did I mention burning state legislators?).

And for those of you who don't think that budget crises don't apply to you... just wait until California collapses and we all leave California for your state. This budget stuff won't seem so trivial then.