Rob Cottingham

Rob Cottingham is a Vancouver-based communicator, comedian and cartoonist.

[savagechickens]

Meeting.

And more meetings.

[myjetpack]

To celebrate #Wordle1000, here is my cartoon about Wordle addiction for the Guardian. Get a print here: www.tomgauld.com/shop

[robcottingham]

[neil-gaiman]

On the list of things ABSOLUTELY NOBODY HAS EVER ASKED ME FOR. Here’s the dialogue from the TV show that the Young family are watching in Episode 3, before Adam heads off for an early night.

[neil-gaiman]

From 2019. I just ran across this on the hard drive looking for something else, and wondered if it had ever been posted anywhere…

[robcottingham]

I can't help it — my subconscious is churning out the backstory, the scenes before and after, the next episode, the series bible. Apparently the show's called Killer Queen and it's set in the mid 1960s and stars Emily Blunt and

[robcottingham]

My guess is that a significant number of people won't get this one, and that the divide will be on generational lines. And as someone who's stared blankly at my share of anime memes, I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

[robcottingham]

Every second ad in my Facebook stream for the past three years.

(Maybe I'm a snob, but I hate these effing things.)

[robcottingham]

If one has only small choices available to them, one must be patient, and canny.

— Translation State, Ann Leckie

[robcottingham]

Just finished the audiobook. It’s a great book, terrific story, wonderful and surprising characters… but what puts it over the top for me as an amazing listen is the spectacular performance by Adjoa Andoh. An absolute tour de force: so many different accents and voices, each tailored to the character and performed with complete conviction.

[robcottingham]

If one has only small choices available to them, one must be patient, and canny.

— Translation State, Ann Leckie

[itswalky]

whatever's happening with john mulaney right now it'd better be important

[robcottingham]

“In a stunning turn of events, Kremlin sources confirmed that it was not Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko but comedian John Mulaney who brokered the agreement that ended Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny.”

[itswalky]

whatever's happening with john mulaney right now it'd better be important

[robcottingham]

Some days you're exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilizations. And other days...

[robcottingham]

"Okay, team, gather round. As you know, nothing in this organization is more important than the health and well-being of the people who work here, okay? Which is why management has decided to launch a new Wellness Portal, going live in three weeks. It’s an ambitious deadline, but that only shows how much we care.

Of course, as the development team, we have to build it. And meeting that deadline will mean all hands on deck, so effective immediately, vacations and days off are canceled. Expect to be in here weekends and stat holidays, too."

Full post at robcottingham.ca/cartoon

[robcottingham]

"A lot of us want to feel that this planet is tangibly improved in some small way for our having been in it. But not all of us. Maybe that’s why companies like Purdue Pharma, Philip Morris and Palantir exist: so that people who are comfortable making the world a vastly more awful place can find meaning too."

There’s something powerful about being part of something larger than yourself, and knowing that the work you do is contributing to some posi

[neil-gaiman]

Mr. Gaiman, a few days ago I watched a movie called ‘The Omen’, from 1977. And I couldn’t stop noticing that it has some similarities to Good Omens — Do you confirm? Or is it just a coincidence?

It's not in your head. Good Omens is parodying The Omen and films like that, which at the time we wrote it, were culturally everywhere. It never occurred to us that one day we would have to explain that.

Fortunately there are lots of places that explain it for us. For example:

All of which brings us to the novel of Good Omens, which first appeared in 1990. Let me stress that date. The book appeared at a time when the Omen films were still fresh in popular memory, so that readers would exactly know the genre Gaiman and Pratchett were satirizing. The book only makes sense as a direct parody of The Omen and its dreadful offspring. The Omen imagines an Antichrist devil-child being born to a powerful US political figure, so he can grow up to be President and initiate the End Times. Good Omens posits an accidental baby swap in which the infant Antichrist ends up in a regular British family and grows up, well, quite nice.

That is what they are satirizing – not the Bible, not Revelation, not Judeo-Christian civilization, but a schlock genre of devil films. It is mocking a dumb genre in popular religious fiction, and what a necessary thing to do.  From The Omen, Good Omens, and Why Neil Gaiman is Not the Antichrist https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2019/06/the-omen-good-omens-and-why-neil-gaiman-is-not-the-antichrist-sorry/

[robcottingham]

As someone who grew up surrounded by all that Antichrist-fanfic dreck, I found Good Omens to be a healing balm, and I'll always be grateful for it.

[robcottingham]

In solidarity with everyone who's locked in the embrace of an overly amorous polar vortex at the moment, I'm thawing Noise to Signal out of its deep freeze for a cartoon or two. We’ll see how things go.

In the meantime, stay warm. (I have vivid Ottawa memories of my dad explaining that -40º was the point where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales converge, and that cross-country skiing was maybe not such a great idea today.) And just a reminder that viciously cold weather doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening — it’s actually one effect of warmer Arctic air weakening the jet stream, and letting polar air wander down to lower latitudes now and then.

[robcottingham]

So I guess this is where I post my Wordle scores now.

[kirknspock]