Meet the Parshalls

Earlier this month an opportunity to meet radio warrior Janet Parshall was nixed due to an imprudently timed snowstorm, but this evening success! as not only Janet but her husband Craig appeared at a forum in Arden Hills. I'm sure this will thrill Stacy Harp who first suggested I doddle a few toons about their work (Stacy also has a link to the AFA site where you can send an email to HBO and Time Warner concerning Mr. Maher.)

The Parshalls were both very impressive at the debate and were also good enough to sign a number of items including my kneecap and my car. I'll post more on this tomorrow after I fetch the photos from Walgreens.

Archbishop Flynn and Bill Maher

The Bill Maher toon (in response to his recent comments on Scarborough Country) is posted. The good news is that there must be thousands of Christian neurologists in the world ready and able to treat not only themselves but sufferers of all faiths. Secularists, heal thyselves!

No new cartoons for the weekend, but I will be reworking the perhaps too ambitious Archbishop Flynn toon from yesterday, in addition to sweeping out the the site(s) of errant pixels.

Discovery of the Tomb of Saint Paul

Archaeologists in Rome may very well have discovered the tomb of Saint Paul. The tomb was well hidden behind a plaque which read ' Saint Paul' -a place no one had thought to look for the past millennium or two. Sounds silly until you consider that, like Israel, Italy has more unexcavated sites of archeological interest than American Idol has contestants.
The story inspired me to quickly put together this collage from two photographs I took at the Basilica of Saint Paul, site of the discovery. The angle of the pics are somewhat at odds with one another, and the column in the center is a bogus device which I've used to stitch the scene together, but it gives the impression nonetheless.
The space inside the church is absolutely huge. I misplaced Chris there for about twenty minutes, which also helps to explain the recent discovery. It's just a great place to lose things.

P.S. - Consider this: the author who wrote most of the books of the New Testament (the epistles or letters) was also a staunch persecutor of the new faith before his conversion. Funny how these things happen....

The Religious Liberties Amendment

This past December I drew a number of toons highlighting the expanding assault against religious expression in our public school system. I capped the series with the image below-

The cartoon was inspired by a similar proposal written by Bruce Walker which I discovered in a Dec 12, 2004 article at Men's News Daily, where faithmouse can also be seen on page two bracketed by RSS feeds from other Minnesota nice sites Powerline and Captain's Quarters.
Yesterday, Delegate Charles W. Carrico, R - 5th District of Virginia proposed Bill HJ 537 as an amendment to the Virginia constitution. Lo and behold, the bill is being referred to as The Religious Liberties Amendment. Good idea, eh?
The wording of Bill's bill is a little more complicated than mine, but the spirit is the same. It simply restates the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment as they regard religious freedoms. Such an amendment enacted on a federal level would be religious America's 13th amendment. People of faith should no longer be slaves to the biased and intolerant secularism imposed upon us for the past fifty years as the results of a disastrous series of Supreme Court decisions. Boo lions, I say! Yay-Christians!
So far I'm one-for-one in proposed amendments to constitutions. The ACLU has already come out squarely against the bill, which pretty much validates the proposal as worthy of the general public's support. Let's hope like faithmouses' hanglider the amendment benefits from the natural lift of current events as well.

Happy B-day, George

Today's Washington's Birthday cartoon is a revision of yesterday's President's Day toon, which I've been mercilessly banging away at on the cartoon anvil. Thank goodness George the first (our George) made his mark or I'd be short a new toon for today. It's a hopelessly eclectic and failed cartoon, but so strange I almost like it.

Suicide is the fruit of the greatest despondency. All politics aside, we certainly pray for Hunter Thompson's friends and family and wish them comfort during their time of grief, which, because of the traumatizing nature of the act they may never completely see an end to in this life. Those debating the cost of a similar exit should pause and consider the legacy of guilt and suffering their actions would leave to others, especially surviving children.

Brave bloggers follow explorer Muir into conservative High Sierras

After recently viewing a wickedly funny and very un-PC toon on the front page of Men's News Daily, I emailed the author to offer encouragement and was flattered that he took a moment to email back a very kind reply.
No more evidence is necessary that the MSM is losing the media battle than the ever present fact that Chris Muir's graceful and always brilliant Day by Day remains unsyndicated.


While faithmouse keeps her eye fixed on a distant horizon, Zed, Jan, Sam and Damon (pictured left to right above) bask effortlessly in their fab modern existence. Chris shared with me his feeling that continuing attrition in the newspaper world isn't favoring his chances to see print, but I think he's wrong.
Quality and especially truth tend to win in the end.

Every which way but good

After three tries, I've thrown in my ink stained hat on the Million Dollar Baby toon. Enough already.
"Do you think your funny, punk?"
No!
"Go ahead, make my day. Try to draw me just one more time. "
No!

No Foaming Agents

If you've arrived here via one of the links related to the illustrious Northern Alliance or the somewhat noteable Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, of which I am a shiny pink newbie, greetings! This blog is composed primarily of relocated daily commentary from the HTML site (where the toons are; much more entertaining than this dry well) a number of original diatribes, and a repeat blogroll of most of the 275 or so sites which currently link and/or show my absolutely outrageous! Christian conservative toon 'faithmouse' (online since 1998.) Some of these sites you may recognize such as Newsmax and Intellectual Conservative; many are individual fans of the toon who aren't regular bloggers but who have placed a link to faithmouse or the code for the regularly updating toon itself on their site. The remainder are regular bloggers like myself, who, like myself, can't stop talking about themselves. Good luck with me.

Now that a few visitors are popping by this locale first instead of the HTML site I'll be changing my comment posting procedure. I plan to comment here first and then syndicate to the cartoon site. I'll let you know when the procedure is complete (if and when I can figure it out.)

Much of the past commentary here may not make sense unless you can view the cartoons they reference. Many of the older toons though are still accessible on various pages at the cartoon site or on Pookie18's Today's Toon thread at Free Republic (search 'Today's Toons'.)

Comments from February 13 through 17

Thursday-
I'm working on a revised version of the 'Million Dollar Baby' toon, which I'll post this evening sometime before those irritating claymation sheep return to haunt my dreams.

Proud I am to be a new member of the MOB (Minnesota Organization of Bloggers.) Thanks, St. Paul!
I've received some great photos this morning from Christpilot, our helicopter correspondent who has just arrived in Iraq (much more about this soon.) Please pray for him and his family, and all of our Service members.

Wednesday-
Oh boy, well, today's toon certainly took longer than a few hours to finish. You can view the previous version of the same toon here.

I'd like thank two God inspired women: Becki of The Question Fairy for the soul strengthening email, as well as the magical Stacy Harp of MediaSoul for successfully smuggling cartoon contraband into the NRB. Thirdly I'd like to thank the original faithmouse herself for the wondrous Valentine's Day dinner and especially dessert, which was extra sweet. Hubba.


While Howard Dean and other Democrats scramble to discover what makes people of faith tick (without expressing intentions to change position on any actual issue) I believe, unlike many on my side of the aisle who have been critical of this wholly politically motivated DNC epiphany, that only good can come out of the effort. The secret for which these strategists search is to simply live the personal life with Christ as the reference point for everything. Fellow travelers who also search for Christ will judge over the long run whether the efforts are sincere or not. Democrats should act confidently in faith, and any accusations of hypocrisy should generally be ignored, as it's usually impossible to discern the accuser from the accusee, you betcha. As far as Christianity is discerned, those who equate all faiths as being somehow equal in merit (as if such a revelation could be worth the price of God's sacrifice) or who are personally offended by the concepts of sin and redemption, are deserving of suspect status from any demographic which gave George Bush the edge in the last election, which would be just about all.

Pros in the shipping business would tell you that it's imperative to hustle those packages closest to the door. One of the most promising fields of evangelization amongst the Christian conservative community are conservatives themselves. While many pure political types are appreciative of religious nuts such as I who seemingly (but not provingly) gave The Right the edge in the last election and promise similar conquests in the future, some regard Christ only as an unproven but powerful piece to play. Christians who use their own lives as an example of the honesty and practicality of the integrated life with all it's bruises and inconsistencies may be employing the best strategy for evangelization, lest the proselytizing which The Left as a long dull mantra accuses The Right of but now steels itself to wield with desperate abandon. After all, we need those doorways free for the George Soroses and Howard Deans who are doing the good work of inadvertently producing the next wave of the faithful. -Dan

Tuesday-
I'll post the rework of Captain Wash's toon in a few hours. Also, I'll be updating the galleries below. -Dan

Look! I'm famous, but I slept through the whole thing. Your cartoonist and Hugh Hewitt in Minneapolis on Thursday. Hugh holds a copy of Pookie18's Today's Toons; I clutch a copy of Hugh's Blog to keep from falling over.

Monday-

Today's toon was a request by Stacy Harp of MediaSoul and E-Involved. With some luck she'll be able to present the toon to Craig Parshall at the National Religious Broadcasters conference going on now until Tuesday in Anaheim, California.
Stacy describes Craig's work thusly-
The series is about Will Chambers, former ACLU attorney who finds Christ and solves really hard cases. It's a 5 book series and the final book is coming out this month. It's called The Last Judgment.
So there. Now you know why Judge StarMole is freaking out in the last panel. Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Craig's better half Janet has been kind enough to feature a recent faithmouse cartoon in her online newsletter and is allowing a few items with said design to be offered for the benefit of her fans in our CafePress shop. Thanks, Janet!

Pookie18 has posted a thread on the Hugh Hewitt/Today's Toons connection with some photos I took at the recent Hewitt/Beinart debate. Your host can be viewed in the pics in all his overworked glory.

I've come to the conclusion that you can't have an in depth discussion with an ardent leftist without somehow ending up psychoanalyzed (by the leftist.) Comparing the merits of Hillary Clinton versus Condoleeza Rice descend at some point into accusations against conservatives of being dearthly afraid of old school feminism. Owning a large car is obviously a case of compensating for much smaller physical attributes (um-height, for example.) Defending one's country (which means defending one's family and the defenseless, which Christ doesn't ask for us to leave to the mercy of wolves) is just a violent acting out of feelings of inadequacy, fear, jealousy, guilt, prissiness, what have you. Deconstructing all matters down to the personal for the purpose of revelation is a technique best left to Christ. Fellow fallible sapiens, don't try this at home! -Dan

Comments from the week of February 6, 2005

We know he's skinny: when faith was pink-circa 2003

Saturday-
The 'tsunami series' is on temporary hiatus while I attend to a few notions and commitments.




I'm sorry to report that Jim Ownbey's Bushcountry has closed shop after a five year presence on the net. Let's hope that Jim returns in similar form as did Wayne Lutz (of the Tocquevillian)
as a revitalized and refanged blogger.

I have a pretty nifty picture of Hugh Hewitt holding a copy of Free Republic's Today's Toons collection, but I'm letting Pookie18 post it as an independent thread with kudos to Hugh and Fraters (thanks 'St. Paul' for the kind regards on Fraters to the original faithmouse. She is a lovely wife.)

I posted an old Rush cartoon (old toon not Rush) at the end of a freeper thread on Wednesday which Pookie repeated on Friday, which I've again reposted here in all it's dated glory. It's from olden days when I referred to faithmouse as 'the cartoon of the Christian Right' a tag line still powerful enough to make cyberleftists implode, although I've relegated this wildly inflammatory tag line to the back shelf of the history arsenal for now. Other tag lines currently in use include 'a Christian editorial cartoon called faithmouse' and 'faithmouse: surreal fantasy of a funky dweeb.'

Hey, St. Valentine's Day cartoon tomorrow, as well as a toon later in the day saluting Craig Parshall.

Thursday-
Welcome to our new toon affiliate Into The Word Magazine.

Loads of fun at the Hugh Hewitt/Peter Beinart debate last night. Chris glassed over a few times during the evening (to her credit, politics isn't her strong suit) but she did get to meet one of her
favorite writers James Lileks, and Mr. Hewitt (one of only two people I met at the event besides St. Paul of Fraters Libertas who knew of the cartoon-nice to be obscure) was good enough to pose with Wednesday's collection of Pookie18's 'Today's Toons' (69 pages!) from Free Republic, which I presented to him as airplane reading material. I'll drop the film at Walgreens later today and post the photos this evening. It's a great day to be a freeper.


The 14 year old George Bush impersonator at our debate table we learned is also a cartoonist and Flash whiz who operates a webtoon called Peabodies. Please don't call Tom an amateur because his work is quite adept (he works with the vector based Adobe Illustrator, while I continue to grind out pixels in Photoshop.)

As you can see I have Chaplain Walsh's cartoon posted, but it obviously needs a little more work. Not a bad start, though....

Wednesday-
Well...there's one. This toon is an addition to an earlier part of the timeline. 'Helo' is navy slang for helicopter. Chris and I will be attending the Hugh Hewitt Peter Beinart debate in Minneapolis tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be able to snap a photo of Hugh with a collection of toons I'm giving him from Pookie18's Today's Toons collection on Free Republic.

There's a story linked on Drudge right now about cable to begin broadcasting The Pentagon Channel..but here in the upper Midwest I've been watching TPN on local Dish Network for the last week or so. Because TPC is categorized as a public interest channel it resides only a few clicks away from the anti-military Free Speech Network. TPN is a great education tool, focusing not only on the who, what, where and why's of the U.S. presence in various parts of the world, but also on the feelings and motivations of our soldiers. Highly recommended! -Dan

Tuesday-
Progress is pretty darn slow on two cartoons I'll have online later today. One of the toons is from photos supplied by Chaplain Steve Walsh of the 42nd Police Brigade in Baghdad, who is pictured below. If you would like to send Chaplain Steve your well wishes, please email me and I'll be happy to pass them along. -Dan

Ramblings for Monday Part Deux-

Not only haven't I finished today's cartoon, I lost in my category at the EU blog awards! The winner is Rantings of a Lord of The Rings Fanatic by Handsome Tom. The adjective which best describes Tom's site is 'goofy.' Also to his credit are nice quotes on his homepage by Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill. To all who took the time to vote for faithmouse-thanks! A list of all of the winner's can be found here.

Ramblings for Monday-

Voting is on now until Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Blog Awards. You can visit EU to cast your vote or send an email from here directly to Eric with a note which simply says 'faithmouse.'

Please welcome Carla's Reflections of the Times to our blogroll. Carla was a finalist in the same category as faithmouse until the second round. I think she has a great blog - it's certainly worth a visit!

Today's toon is an addition to the storyline already presented. I'm also working on a redo of the 'lamaze' cartoon from a few days ago (part of a set of two.)

A fan of the cartoon who is also a chaplain in Baghdad has sent me a few photos which I'll be using as reference for tomorrow's toon.
-Dan

Ramblings for Sunday-

Faithmouse has made it to Round Two of the EPA, which is a big honor. I don't think I'll win as 'Best Evangelical Blog-Humor' but it's great to be nominated (a lot of the blame can go to Eric at EU who's a fan of the cartoon, but I'll accept the kudos regardless.)

A recap of the current 'Tsunami' series so far...

The South Asian tsunami catches a vacationing Ms. StarMole and her chihuahua Petri off guard as they are vacationing at Khlao Lak, Thailand. Faithmouse, Timothy A. Bear and Augustine
the Cat, hearing of the disaster, head to the area in a Nighthawk helicopter loaded with relief supplies. They pluck Ms. StarMole from the ocean (after she refuses a lift from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln) and fly to Indonesia, where they are shot at by Government soldiers posing as hostile guerrillas, causing them to return to Thailand instead. In the meantime, medical officer Gaybear, having recently earned a certificate in Lamaze coaching, heads to the Indian Ocean aboard the hospital ship U.S.N. Mercy, which will take thirty days to reach the disaster area. A secondary subplot (which is the actual focus of the entire series) should make it's debut this week as well.

Faithmouse became a continuous storyline startling with the widely criticized 'Gaia' cartoon shown at the very end of last year. It's a direction I had considered for some time, after experimenting last year with a few similar series. Previous to this series, faithmouse has been primarily a single issue cartoon with a continuing roster of characters. Faithmouse could continue as a single panel issue cartoon (when I come up with a popular one it's pretty widely circulated) and none of the affiliates would complain...but I felt that it was time for the cartoon to grow. Faithmouse in it's current form can be challenging, and can serve almost as an impetus against gaining new affiliates (um, Dan..if you have a point you're sure taking your sweet time getting there) but, like a good novel I hope it will grow on you in time. Currently I'm working on backtracking and adding to the plot thus presented.

If the story line so far seems cold hearted, please keep in mind that I'm staging the adventure on a very broad pallet and that we haven't even arrived at the heart of the tragedy. In the spirit of the many Christian relief agencies long at work in this and similar theaters of human need, the series keeps a 'chin up' attitude in the face of danger and challenges. Hundreds of thousands have perished in this disaster, but the task of the living is to improve the lives both physically and spiritually of the millions of survivors, most of them children. So, that's what I'm trying to reflect with the cartoon.

If the cartoon is good for anything other than entertainment value it's to help point the way to who Christ is and just as importantly who Christ is not, and to encourage those who aim to do good in Christ to continue in faith. If you don't care for what I'm saying, primarily that I have political viewpoint as well as a theological one and that I put them both on the line, God bless you! If you share my understanding that the Christian experience is a personal and passionate journey, where Christ can make use of every part of our lives (like the root of a plant makes use of every bit of it's pot) then-God double bless you!-Dan

Notice: Regardless of the current claim of the CafePress ad further below on this page, we have no thongs for sale in our faithmouse store.

Comments from the week of Jan 30, 2005

Ramblings for Thursday-
I've put together a panorama from photos I took in 2000 of the roof of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. It's a rather large download (nearly two minutes on a 56k modem). I'll keep the file on the cartoon site for at least a few days (but on the adjunct blog indefinitely.) If you're game, click on the image below.

I'll post the completed toon for today ('Gaybear' onboard the hospital ship Mercy, still in route on it's thirty day long voyage to South Asia) sometime later this evening.

Ramblings for Wednesday-
Today's cartoon fought me tooth and nail but I think I won the battle. I'll fix Ms. StarMole's 'transparent hand' during my next late night excursion into Photoshop. I'm going to run just a cartoon or two on the homepage for a while (instead of the usual four or five.) Perhaps visitors will appreciate the quicker loading versus the wealth of toons, which can still be viewed here (current series) and here (archive of two months of toons before the current series.)

Ramblings for Tuesday-

I'm working on a quick gallery of some photographs Chris and I took at the Vatican during the Jubilee Year. The thumbnail photo above is of a video screen set up during John Paul's Wednesday audience, seen here below the statue of Charlemagne. I have quite a few of these photos, including a number I've always intended to scan and compose into panoramas. Considering the Pope's hospitalization, this seems like a proper time to present them.

Comments for the week of January 23, 2005

Ramblings for Monday-
As is our habit I'll be relocating these comments to our adjunct blogmentary this evening. A new cartoon will also be posted later today.

Faithmouse continues it's modus operandi of 2005 as a continuous story line. Thank goodness as events warrant that my characters are able to stop and pray about any particular situation, no matter the geographical location of their current adventure (Thailand.) Events on Sunday in Iraq rightly delayed the arrival of Professor Ferret. I'll be backtracking a bit this week and adding a few panels to the story line already presented. Also, a rather nice placard for the series is in the works.
Pookie18 has posted an especially large toon collection for today on Free Republic.

Ramblings for Sunday-
Faithmouse has been nominated in the category of Best Evangelical Blog-Humor at the 1st Annual Evangelical Blog Awards at Evangelical Underground. The awards have been generating a lot of good publicity by way of sites such as Captain's Quarters, Evangelical Outpost, La Shawn Barber, The Roth Report, etc. It's nice to be nominated. Thanks, Eric!

Ramblings for Saturday-
A hearty welcome to our new affiliate Damascus Road. Today's cartoon (in progress) is by special request of faithmouse fan Joseph Volpendesta.

Ramblings for Friday-
Hats off to Kevin Lauer for reminding me what year it is. What, it's 2004 already?

Ramblings for Thursday-
I would love to talk to the long time visitor to this site from Turin, Italy (a city Chris and I visited during the Jubilee Year to view the Shroud of Turin.) Please email me sometime! Deciding to move away from hand lettering on the cartoons (in order to save more time for the artwork) has made me realize how much I detest font lettering. I officially retract my pledge
not to hand letter. Forget I ever said it! I was whacked out on hot chocolate at the time.
Today's cartoon is a reworking of yesterday's toon. The only part I could salvage was the center panel.

Ramblings for Wednesday-
Former faithmouse affiliate DebateUSA.com is for sale, due to a serious illness in owner's Jamie Walker's family. It's a great domain name, and the purchase would go to a good cause. Click logo for more information.

'St. Paul' at Fraters Libertas posted a nice link to the toon, after I emailed him and the other folks at Fraters after reading an article about fellow Minnesota
bloggers in the Pioneer Press during a Culver's run with Chris. Atomizer has a good post there about Madonna Clinton's recent show of empathy towards the never-born; yet another rhetorical feeler meant to check the temp of her own supporters as she begins to pump the gas on her four year long 'Reinvention Tour.'

Democrat lawmaker wants tiny boxing gloves on Roosters inspired me to post this moment of epiphany via Colonel Kurtz at Free Republic.

After having stood down from the cartoon for the past few days I'm cracking open the windows to let in some cool air. Today I'm doodling some character spec for Professor Ferret Nietzsche. Chris and I have moved our cross country gear a little closer to the front of the garage, in anticipation of another convenient round of fluffy stuff sometime during the next month or two. In the meantime I'm nesting and full exploring what must be a mid-life crisis by researching everything I can find about the fascinating Agnetha Fältskog.