Brandon Sallee

Mark Trail, 5/3/12

“Oh, man, why is Josh focusing so much attention on this Mark Trail storyline when there’s other things happening in the comics pages,” said absolutely nobody because this Mark Trail storyline is the greatest achievement in storytelling since the invention of writing. Today we have a classic Mark Trail trope in action, which is Just Leave The Bad Guys Tied Up. Ha ha, look at those guys, stone cold defeated by a good smack to the head/vicious dog attack, there’s literally no way they could wriggle out of those ropes (Ranger Tom was surely a Boy Scout) and definitely no way that they had any kind of accomplices helping them run the massive grow operation that Ranger Tom now realizes exists all over the forest he’s supposed to kind of be in charge of. Nope, they’ll be there when the “clean-up crew” arrives, and I’m just starting to consider that maybe the “clean-up crew” are not so much “trained marijuana disposal experts” as “guys I know who aren’t afraid to kill some drug growers execution-style and bury them in shallow forest graves, since any legal proceedings might bring to light evidence of neglect that would negatively reflect on my job performance.” But, better to not be there for that unpleasantness, blood stains are hard to get out of khaki, let’s just go back to Lost Forest and have some late-night pancakes instead. Mmmm, pancakes!

Hi and Lois, 5/3/12

Is it weird that I find this incredibly creepy? Lois has left her eyes all over the house … watching … ALWAYS WATCHING.

Get your hands on all four full-color, 96 page Yehuda Moon books – free shipping to U.S. mailing addresses during the month of May.

Last week, we hosted a webinar on marketing attribution. We had a lively discussion about our recent attribution whitepaper, and we looked at Google’s solutions for attribution — including Search Funnels in AdWords and Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics, and the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics Premium. During the webinar, many of you wrote in with great questions, and we’ve provided answers below to some of the top questions.

If you weren’t able to join us last week, you can view a recording of the webinar here.

Questions & Answers:
Q: How can I learn more about getting started with attribution using Google’s tools?
A:This webinar was the first in a series on attribution — please watch the blog for updates and registration information for our next webinar, “Building Blocks of Digital Attribution.” In the meantime, read on for some more tips.

Q: Where can I learn more about setting up conversions?
A: Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics is one of the most valuable things you can do to make your reports actionable and meaningful, and getting these set up properly will allow you to use Google’s attribution solutions. There are resources available in the help center to help you set up goals and ecommerce tracking. You can also view the recording of our recent “Reaching your goals with Google Analytics” webinar.

Q: When should I use AdWords Search Funnels compared to Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels? 
A: Both tools can give you insight into how your customers ultimately end up converting on your site. If you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking today, Search Funnels is available without any additional configuration. You can see the interactions your customers have with your search ads leading up to conversion, including both clicks and impressions. However, you can only see these interactions for paid search on Google AdWords.

Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics allows you to analyze traffic sources beyond search, including display, social, email, referrals, affiliates and more – putting your conversion path data in a broader context. Using these reports requires installing Google Analytics tracking code on your site, and setting up goals and/or ecommerce tracking (see links above) — once these are set up, Multi-Channel Funnels reports work automatically. Note that you  are not able to analyze search ad impressions in Multi-Channel Funnels.

Watch this blog for updates on future webinars in our attribution series that will provide more details on Search Funnels and Multi-Channel Funnels.

Q: How much of an impact does the use of multiple devices have in skewing the numbers we see in these reports? 
A: Mobile and other devices are becoming increasingly important. Multi-Channel Funnels will report on conversion paths that take place on a single device, but not across devices. For example, if a user visited your site on a mobile phone, and then completed a purchase in a desktop browser, those interactions would not be included in the same conversion path.

Q: Can I report on both AdWords Keyword and Matched Search Queries in Google Analytics?
A: You have the option to view either the AdWords Keyword or the Matched Search Query by choosing these dimensions in the data table. Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling support a wide range of AdWords and non-AdWords dimensions for reporting and creating attribution modeling rules.

Q: Can you add your own models to the Attribution Modeling Tool or they are all built in? 
A: You can create and save custom models in the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics Premium. Custom models allow you to create rules that adjust credit based on attributes like the traffic source (e.g. search vs. direct), position (first, middle, last) the level of engagement driven (time on site and page depth), and timing (how much time prior to conversion).

Q: How do advertisers take action on attribution data?
A: Attribution data can help advertisers identify marketing efforts that may be undervalued or overvalued under models such as the last click, so they can adjust their marketing programs. For example, a general keyword like “shoes” may show fewer conversions compared to a more specific, branded term for a type of shoe on a last click basis. However, applying a model that gives some credit for searches prior to the last click may show that “shoes” is credited with more conversion value. When making optimization decisions around which keywords to invest in or cut, advertisers can look at multiple models, and then experiment with investing in keywords that show higher value under alternative models. Similar methods apply to channels like display, social, email, and affiliates. This can help identify areas of opportunity that are missed when using only the last click.

Happy Analyzing!

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager for Attribution, Google Analytics team

Judge Parker, 5/2/12

Just to keep you Judge Parker non-obsessives in the loop, Katherine is actually Randy’s stepmom, a sexy lady (because this is Judge Parker, natch) who appears to be roughly Randy’s age but who nevertheless does in fact consider him to be her beloved son, so her momzilla intervention in his upcoming nuptials are sure to be super creepy on a number of levels. But, while I am always here to keep you up to date the quasi-Oedipal goings on in the continuity strips, I can’t offer any coherent explanation as to why Randy has chosen to decorate his judge’s chambers with an enormous bust of Homer. I mean, I’m not a miracle worker.

Mark Trail, 5/2/12

“It was these drug plants that got me excited!” Ha ha, some days this blog just writes itself. I’ll bet the drug-destroying team is going to be super-excited too!

Apartment 3-G, 5/2/12

Hey, if you ever find yourself working in the Pentagon’s PR department and need to write a press release that says something along the lines of “We had to destroy that village in order to save it,” why not try “As usual, our kindness was totally misunderstood”?

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled six open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July 2012, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP),
Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera), and
Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board.

A friend of mine makes awesome stuff and you should go buy lots of it.

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The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations:

• Web Workers, which defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism.
• HTML5 Web Messaging, which defines two mechanisms for communicating between browsing contexts in HTML documents.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The SPARQL Working Group published three Last Call Working Drafts today:

• SPARQL 1.1 Overview, which provides an introduction to a set of W3C specifications that facilitate querying and manipulating RDF graph content on the Web or in an RDF store.
• SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store HTTP Protocol, which describes the use of HTTP operations for the purpose of managing a collection of RDF graphs in the REST architectural style.
• SPARQL 1.1 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats, which describes the use of
  CSV(comma separated values) and TSV (tab separated values) for expressing SPARQL query results from SELECT queries.

Comments are welcome through 01 June.

The group is further planning to shortly release a 2nd Last Call working draft of the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language, after which we plan to advance all Recommendation track drafts in the next iteration to Proposed Recommendation directly. To this end, the group is currently gathering implementation reports and would appreciate reports from the community of implementations of any of the SPARQL1.1 specifications. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3. CSS Writing Modes Level 3 defines CSS features to support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts). Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Internationalization Core Working Group has published a Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization. This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference on the use of normalization of text and string identity matching on the Web. The goal of this specification is to improve interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/1/12

You know, I’ve been reading Hagar the Horrible for most of my literate life, and like most people, I had always assumed that the recurring strips where Hagar and Lucky Eddie crack wise on a tiny desert island just served as a place for desert-island gags rejected by the New Yorker. It’s only at this moment — as Hagar wistfully thinks about his wife, who’s thousands of miles away, who has no idea where he is, who he’ll probably never see again — that it occurred to me to try to fit these scenes into the larger narrative of the strip. Now that this conceptual shift has taken place, here’s my first question: what happened to the rest of the crew? Did Hagar and Eddie eat them?

Six Chix, 5/1/12

When I first scanned this strip I thought it was some miracle of life nonsense, but seeing the exhausted expression on momma bird and the frankly terrified look on papa bird, my guess is the real point is that spring made these birds horny and so they had some bird-sex and forgot to use birth control. Or should that be … BIRDTH CONTROL?? Because they’re birds, you see! Ha ha! Anyway, long story short, they have a bunch of children they don’t want now.

Spider-Man, 5/1/12

Oh, man, I don’t know why I’m surprised, but MJ’s supposedly funny play is terrible. Unless maybe the quote marks around all the dialogue indicate that the cast is in on the joke about how terrible the play is, and are playing the entire thing for meta-comedic laughs at the meta-awfulness of it all? That sounds like something that would play in Brooklyn rather than on Broadway, and anyway it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that nobody in the Spider-Man newspaper strip is even a tiny bit self-aware, because if they were they would immediately stalk away in disgust.

Mark Trail, 5/1/12

Just wanted to keep you up to date with the Mark Trail action. Today’s action: a bad guy lets loose with a WHAT TH’, which is always awesome. Also, apparently Andy’s kill switch is hard to turn off! Man, look at that slavering maw in panel two! He’s got a taste for human flesh now!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/12

“He used to joke about it, but it’s not a joke anymore. It’s completely true! My father can’t feel any human emotion or grasp ordinary, everyday experience unless it’s mediated through a recording device of some kind. In this way, he has become the archetype of a 21st century human being.”

Beetle Bailey, 5/1/12

Hey, remember back in the ’90s when Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC made a big deal about sending General Halftrack to sensitivity training, because of his constant, actionable sexual harassment of his secretary? Well, it didn’t take

Here is something that you might not know, because I haven’t really publicized it much on this blog: 18 months ago, after almost ten years of freelancing, I took a full-time job as associate online news editor at ITworld, a very nice site where I got to work with great people covering technology. Four weeks ago, I quit. My last day was Friday.

I didn’t quit because the job was bad (it wasn’t, and if you live near Boston or San Francisco and would like to apply for it, you can). But I was burned out on the process of coming up with quick reactions to news all the time. And what I really wanted to do — what I’ve wanted to do ever since this blog started connecting with a large audience, years ago now — was be funny, full time.

You can read all my process-y feelings about it over on my jfruh.com blog, but the short version is that I’ve quit my job to try to do full-time writing, mostly funny. This is completely bonkers, obviously. I couldn’t do it without my wife supporting me (in more ways than one) in this decision, but it’s still pretty terrifying. Of course I shall continue to mock Mary Worth over here; but I hope you all will come along with me as I try out other stuff as well. I have several projects in the works, some of which will never see the light of day, some of which will hopefully blow your minds. The best way to follow all the stuff I’m doing is to follow my Twitter or Facebook or Google+ or Tumblr (which is also just a regular blog that has an RSS feed and everything). And of course I’ll announce the big stuff here.

Oh, and if you’re a professionally funny person who’s always thought, “Gee, I’d sure like to collaborate with Josh Fruhlinger on something,” well, now’s your chance! Shoot me an email at bio@jfruh.com. I suddenly have some free time on my hands.

Mark Trail, 4/30/12

I would like to hereby apologize for disparaging the quality of the violence in the current Mark Trail storyline last week. The lackluster bludgeoning on Friday was clearly just a set-up for this fully awesome scene of Andy suddenly transforming from a cheerful, happy companion to a slavering vicious attack hound at Mark’s command. Do you think Mark saw that the marijuana grower was growing marijuana with a gun in his hand? If so, we must assume that he knows that any bullet fired from such a feeble pistol would simply bounce harmlessly off Andy’s massive skull. It’s not like he would ever put his best friend in danger, after all!

Family Circus, 4/30/12

The key to understanding this panel is Jeffy’s expression of heavy-lidded boredom. “Mommy always looks great, and yet society’s crushingly unrealistic expectations about female body types can cause her to spiral into an emotional tailspin when that cheap scale tells here she’s gained only a few pounds. I’d rage against the patriarchy, but I’m just too exhausted by the efforts I make to comfort her, efforts that always fall short.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/30/12

Kudos to Apartment 3-G for being so sensitive as to keep all intimate, interesting details about the death of Nina’s mother off-panel. Sure, letting us in on this information would have made the storyline more engaging, but at what emotional cost to its fictional characters?

Mary Worth, 4/29/12

The greatest thing about Mary Worth … wait, no, scratch that, there are so many great things about Mary Worth, how can I be expected to choose? Ahem, let me start over. One of the great things about Mary Worth is how each storyline begins with limitless possibilities of amazingness. These are generally swept away by a tide of painful boring, but it’s fun to imagine at the beginning where it’ll go, and once in a while you do get an Aldo-style payoff. Anyway, right now I’m hoping that against all odds the Gina-Bobby star-crossed love story will suddenly become an Agatha Christie-style locked room mystery in this mysterious mansion. “Is all this yours?” “Ha-ha … no! It belongs to a friend of ours, mysterious benefactor who specifically requested that we gather a demographically heterogeneous group of people, each with a dark secret that will come out at some point during the proceedings, for a ‘special announcement!’”

Your first clue: this Long Island manse has the Spanish-tile roof that we see everywhere in Mary’s West Coast home. Did she ever really leave California at all? Or did her flight out, which was full of trippy visuals, all happen in her own head? Prepare to have your mind blown at the shocking conclusion! Or maybe Bobby and Gina will just announce their engagement at their friend’s house and then Mary will go back home, that seems more likely.

Marvin, 4/29/12

Whatever you think about Marvin’s relentless and repulsive obsessions, you have to credit the strip for using the entire space the Sunday format provides to set up this “Marvin enjoys wetting himself” joke.

Hi and Lois, 4/29/12

Hi and Lois sure has been leaning heavily late on the Thirsty and Irma sure do hate each other schtick. That all ends today in spectacular fashion as Irma beats her husband to death with a broom handle, while a horrified Lois watches and tries to figure out how not to be arrested as an accessory to murder.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/28/12

Quick Funky recap: Those anonymous replies to Cody’s texts weren’t from Summer, they were from his friend, not because his friend was in love with him, but because he too was hot for summer, but then Summer was seen flirting with some jock, the end, OH BUT WAIT, Cody got some more anonymous texts which he’s deleting and which — SHOCKING REVELATION — come from some blonde girl in the background of panel three who I don’t know who she is? Now everyone loves someone who doesn’t love them back, and the cycle of Funkyverse pain is complete. Mostly this story has made me think that it was originally written with anonymous paper notes in mind and then there was a sudden realization that “Oh crap kids use the texting now, right?” and then “notes” became “texting” even though that made everything make little to no sense.

Mark Trail, 4/28/12

So, violence has broken out in Mark Trail, but does anyone else find this a little anticlimactic? Mark doesn’t get off any awkward bon mots or even use his fists, but rather just knocks out Drug Guy #1 with a desultory WHAP to the back of the head. I know, I know, Drug Guy #2 is still out there, waiting to be dealt with in hilarious ways, I should just be patient.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/28/12

The tale of the Sexy Half-Naked Drunken Houseguest is not turning out to be anticlimactic at all, though! I love that Rex and June have their own little code word for “Make sure that lady doesn’t drink all the off-brand liquor we have in the cabinet.”

Apartment 3-G, 4/28/12

“TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW,” Nina’s father orders Tommie. “How can we use your knowledge to get Nina back together with the husband who betrayed her so she can be in an intact marriage when she gives birth to the baby she never wanted? HER HAPPINESS DEPENDS ON IT.”

Rejoice! For the week’s top comment is upon you.

“Is anyone else weirded out by how Slylock Fox is standing? ‘Don’t mind me, I just have a tape recorder down my pants, if you know what I mean.’ *Wink* Wink*” –Holly Folly

And behold, there are hilarious runners up:

“Looking to sober up? Play the Mary Worth drinking game! The rules are simple: take one shot every time you see a person who isn’t white while she is in New York. Spoiler alert: at Mary’s insistence they are filming the story arc in Calgary.” –NoahSnark

“AAH! AAH! AAH! AAH! I can see Margo’s waist! I didn’t even know she had a waist! I don’t know, man, I just sort of assumed you got to the navel and she just … stopped! I’m freaking out!” –bunivasal

“I don’t think Jeff even knows what Mary said. Judging from the dazed look on his face, I’d say he’s just automatically answering out of his drunken stupor. Expect ‘When?’ ‘Where?’ and ‘How?’ to follow, quite possibly after Mary’s already left the room.” –Pozzo

“You ARE way out of line, Nina. Margo has never claimed to be anyone’s ‘friend’, much less yours.” –Chryon HR

“I could be misremembering completely here, but didn’t Gina have to leave New York in the first place because her father unwittingly witnessed a brutal gangland murder? And now that Gina has returned to the scene of the crime, everyone she ever met or spoke to during her sojourn in Santa Royale is mysteriously called together to assemble in one convenient place … Yeah, I know, I’m always secretly going ‘please God, let this Mary Worth plot end in a gruesome mob-related massacre,’ but this time I really think we might be on to a winner.” –Higgs Boatswain

“I was thinking magenta is a poor color choice for sneaking up on someone in a forest, but Mark probably thinks he blends into the background of whatever the crazy potheads are hallucinating.” –nescio

“After Gina ran off from the diner to be with her soccer daddy without so much as a by your leave to Mary, Mary jets across the country to attend a party with a ‘special event.’ I hope the ‘special event’ is the kidnapping of Mary for ransom that no one will pay.” –Gabacho

“That guy’s more of a Stooges Three, if anything.” –Mibbitmaker

“Spider-Man will have to defeat him in a half-assed fashion stand around being slightly clever while Laurel Hardy’s super-power backfires and he pushes himself down the stairs. Or maybe the director will just call security.” –Nekrotzar

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