Do people ever ask you who your role models are? I kind of hate that question, mostly because I have no answer, and I feel like I should. Sure, I could say, “Jesus,” but that seems like a cheap cop-out.

Like a lot of people (I imagine), I see qualities in people that I would like to emulate, but I don’t see that person as a role model, really. The qualities I admire or strive for change as I do.

It sounds ridiculous, but one person with a lot of qualities I admire is Ryan North. Yeah, the dinosaur comics guy. Here’s why:

1. He’s an artist, brimming with creativity (although his raw artistic talent is, perhaps, limited)
2. He’s a doer
3. He has an online business
4. He is a linguist (got his masters recently)
5. He is about the same age as me
6. He is hilarious*, and he doesn’t seem to try too hard

Humorous excerpt by Ryan:

November 14th 2005
I am going to the x-ray doctor tomorrow morning to get x-rays applied to my left arm. It is most likely fractured! I hurt it by jumping for a pole that was about 10 feet above the sidewalk. I caught it, but just enough to swing me awkwardly before I fell sideways back onto the ground. There are probably crack marks radiating out in the pavement where I landed. Someone should go and check.

My arm is in so much pain but I am manly about it. The doctor asked me where it hurt, and I said “pfft, a LITTLE in my elbow, I GUESS”. I made it clear that I was only seeing him because it would make some unspecified significant other in my life happy. I stressed that if I wasn’t in his office, I would be out punching holes in walls and flipping five-course steak meals with all the fixins into the dumpster. He understood. I flipped his metal desk over with just my good arm to make sure he understood. It spun twice in the air. Papers went everywhere. He understood. He gets that all the time.

The comics here will be unaffected, but I may fall (a little further) behind on emails for a bit. If you write me and I don’t write back for a while, it’s not because I hate you! PROBABLY!!

*I often think that in American culture, how funny/unfunny a person is to other people plays possibly the deciding factor in how other people feel about him. And that just seems wrong. How many times have you heard, “Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole, but he’s really funny. I like him.” Ryan is always funny in a positive/linguistic way.