My Literary Criticism Of Atlas Shrugged Got Published In Extremely Prestigious News Blog The Huffington Post

I'm on a roll. My Quora answer got popular enough (125 votes up so far) that it came to the attention of Quora's publishing board. They then posted it on Quora's Huffington Post blog.

The post is an apolitical criticism of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, ripping it apart for being written so badly. Hopefully you'll find it entertaining.

In other news, please give me a job for next summer, seriously.

More cartoons to come soon. I bought a new drawing tablet, as well as hand-drawn animation supplies including animation paper and a ruler for my light box. I'm going to try to make some entertaining cartoons using a combination of these two animation methods. Sort of a cross between Don Hertzfeldt and Shmorky. I love the work of both of these artists.

One Of The Fun Things About Having Something Go Viral

Edit/Update: My definition was also posted on The Daily Beast's tumblr, and tweeted by a few legitimate political reporters. The Washington Post printing is still the coolest mention though.

Looking through the tweets about something you made is a lot of fun, especially when new ones keep coming. According to Twitter's share button programming, my Urban Dictionary definition has been linked to on Twitter 183 times. And that's just the direct links, of course. I like seeing what they have to say about it, as shown in these two links: https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.urbandictionary.com%2Fdefine.php%3Fterm%3DLegitimate%2520Rape%26defid%3D6722495
and
https://twitter.com/#!/search/legitimate%20rape%20urban.

The Urban Dictionary direct link also has thousands of Facebook likes. That's around ten times as many as I ever got for Santorum-2012.com and Gingrich-2012.net (directly). And about 800 Facebook shares, which is hard to wrap my head around. But Santorum 2012's Twitter mentions and Buzzfeed reactions were probably the most fun to look through.

OCI Is Really Tiring And Here I'll Show You How

Here's a pre-enactment of all my interviews at Northwestern Law's On-Campus Interviews (OCI) that I cut from an old episode of Nickelodeon Arcade:




And here's a quick sketch I did of myself:

The Washington Post Printed My Definition Of "Legitimate Rape"

I feel honored. I'm a real part of this national scandal now. This was actually printed in the physical version of the Post, as well as online.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rep-akins-comments-just-the-latest-attempt-to-define-rape--and-women/2012/08/21/de8151a0-ebca-11e1-a80b-9f898562d010_story.html

My definition has also been used in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Arizona Daily Star, and a few other news sources.

The Definition Of "Legitimate Rape" I Made Up Has Gone Viral

9/12/2012 Update: I'm going to turn this post into a catch-all post for places this definition has been used.

I submitted an entry for "legitimate rape" last night on Urban Dictionary and it was their Urban Word of the Day today. About 4000 thumbs up so far, and many dozens of tweets linking to that definition. Urban Dictionary's first of two Facebook status posts that link to the entry has over 2000 likes and hundreds of comments. About 800 people have shared UD's two status updates about my definition.

I did this in reference to Rep. Todd Akin's recent remarks, of course.

I'm now the leading authority on Legitimate Rape. How do I develop this into a legal paper?

Update: Popular legal culture blog Above the Law did a little profile of me because of this. They even suggest that people hire me. Seriously, please hire me.

Update 2: Mentioned in the Washington Post! Not bad!

Update 3: My definition has now been used in a few other news sources. A Mother Jones article about the history of men defining rape even closes with my definition. This article has been tweeted about almost 2000 times and liked on Facebook 2400 times. These numbers indicate that hundreds of thousands of people have read this article, which is very cool. Thousands of years of men defining rape, and now I'm the latest! That kind of makes me uncomfortable, but as long as Republicans don't start actually adopting my definition, I'm proud that it caught on. The hundreds of posts on various forums about my definition are fun for me to read too. It's cool to think about thousands of people, which is just a portion of the hundreds of thousands of people who've read my definition, choosing to "like" something I wrote.

I'm part of the zeitgeist now. Decades from now, when people read about this scandal as a minor historical episode, my definition will be mentioned as one of the major cultural responses. I'm glad that I've made this revealing episode for the Republican Party that much more memorable and I hope it keeps biting them.

Recent Doodles

Boy Who Can't Comprehend Things

Try not to get overwhelmed. I know there's a lot of stuff in this update. But read everything! I'm debating separating each character into its own cropped image-with-caption in a later post so that this is easier to take in.

The pencil I used was pretty crummy. The photos were taken with my cell phone as usual.

Upper left: Bear
Lower right: Stern Bear

Condescending Monkey

Clockwise from upper left: 1. Guy Who Just Realized MTV Reality Show "Bully Beatdown" Is Completely Scripted 2.  Baby Who Is Prematurely Learning That She Lives In An Unjust World 3. Depressing Guy Who Languishes In The Corner Cubicle And Is Given No Substantial Work By Employer Until He Dies 4. Guy Whose Eyes Are Just A Little More Intense By Default Than Is Socially Acceptable 5. Terrifying Specter Of Your Disappointed Ancestors 6. Guy Deciding Whether Or Not He Should Run To Get His Metro Train 7. Somebody's Stupid Uncle

Clockwise from left: 1. Saucy Robot Who Is Understood By The Other Characters In The Movie But Not The Audience 2. Determined Pellet-Shaped Candy Mascot 3. Guy Having An Epiphany About Something In His Cubicle 4. Mountain Lion Who Can See When He Is Going To Die

First row: 1. Unfinished 2. Tiny Genial Robot Who Is The Life Of The Party

Second row: 3. Person Who Is Surprised When Somebody Tells Him His Ears Are Big 4.  Creepy Temp With Receding Chin Among Other Problems 5. Kid Who Gets Bullied Frequently And Experts Don't Understand Why 6. Guy Who Would Be Wearing A Leisure Suit If This Were The 1970s

Third row: 7. Unfinished 8. Man Whose Windswept Combover Only Temporarily Distracts People From His Grossly Asymmetrical Eyes

Fourth row: 9. Cat You Feel Guilty About Neglecting 10. Man Waking Up From Brain Surgery Slightly Stupider Than Before 11. Guy Who Believes In Gay Marriage In Theory But Is Still Perceptibly Uncomfortable Around Homosexuals

Clockwise from top: 1. Quadrapus 2. Adorable Kitten Who Idolizes Quadrapus 3. Intelligent Dog With Stupid Face 4. Boy 5. A spaceship 6. Neopolitan Man

And here are a couple extras below. Click the thumbnails to see the full images if you want.

Flying back to Chicago tomorrow for law school. It's going to be really nice to be back home, which is what I consider Chicago now.