UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

4 thoughts on “Issue 22 Cover”

  1. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Ooohhh … He looks – desperate.

  2. Zombatar

    No hat. He lost his hat. Which had a lot of his personality. Alert! Alert! We have a Lost Hat emergency! This is Not a Drill! Alert! Alert!

  3. Scarsdale

    Hang in there, I’m a retired fireman, and those pictures/videos have me sweating… The closest thing to a forest fire I ever fought was when a stupid tried to burn raked leaves on a windy day. 4 houses! Mostly grass and bush fires but, yeah.

  4. Clint

    Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It’s been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.

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Issue 22 Cover
Posted on January 8, 2025 by Dawn

Traditional post-issue comic cover! Episode 23 is currently TBA but we're hoping to have the first page out on January 22nd so as to not leave y'all hanging from the proverbial cliff for too long.

[1/9/2025 NOTICE: Some of you may know we live in the Greater L.A. Area and if you've heard about the wildfires here: yep, we're currently evacuated from our home and still unsure as to its fate. We grabbed our computers and backup drives so whatever happens we still have our files, but definitely expect some delays and cross your fingers that the worst we're going to end up having to do is throw food out of the fridge due to power loss.]

[1/11/2025 UPDATE: Good news, we are back at home and there was a home to return to. It's been a crazy week and a serious near miss seeing as several other homes on our block burned. Terrible stuff but the Ranch persists.]

Virtually spotless…

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Clint
“Virtually spotless” was how the dish detergent brand Cascade described its cleaning power on glassware. If you’re pausing right now and thinking that’s a functionally meaningless claim to make, congratulations, you have recognized the advertising trick known as the weasel word. Weasel words make statements sound great without leaving an advertiser on the hook legally when someone finds their wine glasses still have some spots on them. Similar statements like “helps,” for instance “helps prevent cavities” on a mouthwash or toothpaste might also render a claim suspect. We grow up surrounded by a lot of bullshit and it helps to keep that in mind. You like Froot Loops? Cool, but don’t fool yourself that it’s good for you. “Part of this complete breakfast”? — I mean sure, once you add in the toast, milk, juice, actual fruit, peanut butter… matter of fact, at that point you could just pull the cereal right out of the mix and still have a complete breakfast, couldn’t you? It’s part of your complete breakfast the way parsley is part of your steak dinner. But they’re not lying. That’s the trick, you know. If they could get away with outright lying to you, they would, as evidenced by the fact that labeling meat as Kobe Beef is a restricted thing in Japan but remains largely unregulated in the U.S.A., so there’s a lot of chicanery involved with basically presenting beef to a consumer that’s got a premium price for nothing more than a four-letter word. Most of the time though there are laws cramping an advertiser’s style and so it’s time for the weaseling or other techniques preying on a buyer’s ignorance. Ever heard the term “parity product”? That’s something that has no real difference to it no matter who’s selling it to you, and one of the most famous examples is gasoline. Don’t get me wrong, octane ratings are a real thing, but if the octane is the same then it really doesn’t matter and you should be looking for the cheapest available. Yet millions are spent convincing you that you should go to this particular station and pay a dollar or more extra per gallon because their gas helps clean your engine. Which is true, gasoline is a natural solvent. All gasoline. This technique is sometimes called “water is wet!” because an advertiser is basically saying they have something special going even though it’s just a common feature. It’s trying to get you really excited because their brand of pen contains ink. Or as a recent example, there are packs of beef jerky proudly advertised as “gluten free!” Which, yes, that does tend to be a feature of meat. Anyhow, the phrase caveat emptor has been around for thousands of years for a reason. Buyer beware, indeed.