I was reluctant to join Twitter when it was new. Eventually I did, though. And I got to like it.

Some people bemoan how “people are always looking at their phones” these days, but I can only speak for myself about how having the Internet readily at hand has made me happier. Back before I had a “smartphone” when I was caught out in the world, I didn’t look around with greater appreciation or some other idyllic feeling. My mind was just as chaotic then as it was after I got the phone, I just had to deal with it in different ways. I remember sitting in waiting rooms and just arranging everything on the tables so that they were at right angles to one another. I often used to just throw coins around randomly, like just hucking pennies into the street and such. I did minor graffiti on many occasions. All this was stuff I did just because I didn’t have something better to focus on.

Twitter was never the most important use for my newfangled high-tech phones, but it was high on the list. It would allow me, at any time, to check and see if any of the people I cared to hear about had said anything I might like to read. It was a source of entertainment I could pull out of my pocket when I needed it, and also it kept me feeling like I was connected to society around me. And sometimes I made dumb jokes on there*. And, perhaps most importantly, Twitter confirmed that I am the Pope now:

But it is now past time to leave that particular social media site. For what it’s worth, I have joined Bluesky, an up and coming rival for Twitter’s userbase. It is currently invitation-only but it has enough people on there that I can usually find something entertaining when I crave it (Which is good because Canada doesn’t have pennies anymore). But I will miss what Twitter was when I enjoyed it.

*Making dumb jokes on Twitter was never my favourite usage for it. I know the common belief is that we need to be careful what we say on the Internet because it sticks around forever, but a lot of the time that just ain’t true. I crave permanence and the Internet is an ephemeral place. If I had my way, everything I ever posted on Contains2 (or its Geocities predecessor the Adam West Batcave) would all be accessible on this website, but they just aren’t. This is why I got Marq to make a thing for me so that the things I posted on Twitter would show up on this site too (they also helped keep things visually more appealing here for a couple years), but that program eventually stopped working. Before I fully leave Twitter I am going to go through and find any jokes worth repeating here or turning into Phone Guys strips or whatever. But no matter how much I salvage, I’ll be losing something. That’s the Internet for ya.

If anyone actually visited this site and looked around, they’d see that there has been a “Store” section on here that was completely unused for a long time. Since 2010 or so it has consisted only of the following:

Well the future is now! I have begun a shop on Etsy on which I am selling a little printable colouring an activity book called The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor. I hope to turn that into a series of such books, but hopefully I will have other things on the store as well down the line.

I have opted to keep using the name Bottomless Hippopotamus to maintain a continuity in my attempts to accomplish this. Maybe I only ever sold one or two things on Cafepress (not including the Adventure Dennis mug I still own), but it was still a part of my past that led to this shop here, so the name continues and I can tell myself this is what I’ve been building toward after all these years of failure and stagnation. This is, hopefully, me taking a step in the right direction.

For some reason, I have put a Phone Guys comic on this website every week for ten years. It is one of the weirdest projects I have one the go. I don’t even quite understand why I do it if I’m being honest. I have purposefully gone about it in all the worst ways. Most of them can barely be classified as jokes. I have occasionally caught myself and edited something to make it less of a joke. I created a cast page full of characters that never get mentioned in the actual comic and I created a cast of characters who do get mentioned that aren’t on the cast page. I did that on purpose. One year I created an ongoing plot that ran for a year, but I made sure the strip went back to being as dumb as possible. Every year I add a new set of clothes to the Guys’ wardrobes and as time goes on I try to make no pattern of clothes repeat, except when I want one to repeat to amuse me.

Hell, even behind the scenes I’ve done a lot of work for this dumbest of strips. I’ve made notes on the history of the town that the Phone Guys live in, but I’ve never mentioned the name of that town in the actual comic. I’ve written a character study about Pete for a university class. I did a comic strip in the “Other” section once starring Jeremy’s neighbours. I’ve used online mad-libs-style story generators to write out the kind of things Pete dreams about.

To be clear, I created Phone Guys back in the Contains2 days, so they are older than a decade now by some amount of time I can’t be bothered to work out. And most of the reason I brought them back at all was because I had a punchline I wanted to use (the “veteran Aryan” one) and I didn’t have anywhere else to do it.

Why am I like this? I don’t know. But I am, so maybe we’ll have another ten years of this or maybe I’ll stop halfway through a strip and never explain why. You can never tell what’s coming with Phone Guys because the only thing I know is that it’ll be dumb.

NOTE FROM 2019 PDR: I recently had cause to be playing around on the Wayback Machine site and noticed there was some Contains2 stuff on there. Here is a piece I put on that site Thursday, 27 June, 2002, 11:08 PM:

I realized something recently that sickened me. I’m prejudiced against people who are bigoted, which is ironic or something. In the efforts of making amends with all those bigoted persons who feel I may have wronged them, I am offering them twenty new stereotypes they can use as fuel in their constant battle against whoever else.

1. The Irish love Mountain Dew so much they routinely kill tourists and steal their money to get it.
2. The entire population of South America believe in the Loch Ness Monster.
3. All Americans wear poorly stiched hats that clash with their shirts.
4. All black people spend at least an hour a day practicing Multiplication with Flash Cards.
5. The Italian people have larger nipples than most.
6. All Jewish people dislike A Midsummer’s Night Dream, but they all love MacBeth.
7. Canadians brutally kill anyone who talks about Dan Akroyd in public.
8. All white people drink urine.
9. The Chinese are casually indifferent to kittens.
10. The Australians killed Jesus.
11. French people all ride DeLorians.
12. Gay people are secretly trying to make straight people eat more canned foods.
13. All English people are bad at Tetris.
14. Russians are addicted to pills made from sheep innards called Haggidol.
15. All lesbians are afraid of asteroids destroying the Earth.
16. Catholics all smell like bowels.
17. Japanese people are all poor and spend what money they do get on helicopters.
18. Arab people are terrible at breakdancing.
19. Mexicans are all impotent due to years of working with radiation.
20. Ethiopians won’t admit when they vomit, even if it happened in front of others.

Patrick D Ryall, the D is for Psyche

ANOTHER NOTE FROM 2019 PDR: I bet this thing gets me some site traffic I don’t actually want.

Here’s an old image I drew for Contains2, but I stumbled across it recently and decided to bring it back:

Also, Phone Guys: