#DailyLaws June 24
Demonic Language
In my graphic novels, I don't deal in facts. I deal in spells. Language isn't just a tool; it's a veil. I chase the lyrical, the poetic, the beautifully deceptive. The kind of phrasing that leaves your mind tingling, unsure if you've been enlightened or seduced.
That's the power of Cioran, of philosophical venom laced in silk.
Sometimes off the page, I summon it in person, sparingly, strategically.
#DailyLaws June 23
Play to their High Self-Opinion
Yes I let others talk, not because I'm disinterested, but cuz I'm patient. I nudge the convo just enough to let them reveal the best version of themselves, or the version they want to believe in. Suddenly they're wittier, wiser, more generous. Not cuz they've changed but cuz I dimmed my light just enough for theirs to glow unchecked.
They leave the exchange feeling smarter, more seen, more them.
#DailyLaws June 22
Control What You Reveal
In face to face meetings I let silence sit like a loaded gun on the table. Most can't handle it. They squirm, fidget, start tap dancing with their mouths. Trying to kill the quiet before it swallows them. But not me. I wait, watch & listen.
They'll crack first. They always do. Filling the void with nervous trivia, personal leaks, petty monologues. And that's when the gold spills out. Insecurities, weak spots, tells.
#DailyLaws June 19
Make Others Come to You
They came to me with children's dreams & crayons in hand, asking for a sunny little picture book.
I told them no. Twice. I draw comic books, not coddle fantasies with wide-eyed animals & sanitized rainbows. Different worlds, different tools.
I even handed them names of artists better suited for the soft focus innocence they craved.
Still, they persisted. Because it wasn't just about the art. It was the gravity. My name carries weight.
#DailyLaws June 18
Never Reform Too Much at Once
People do not want change. They want the illusion that change is their idea, preferably while clinging to their comfort blankets of nostalgia. That's the game: renovate the haunted house but keep the same creaky floorboards. Paint the devil in new colors but let him speak in the old tongue.
That's why I weaponize mythology.
#DailyLaws June 17
The Seductive Visuals
The sad truth?
Nobody cares about your story until the cover slaps them hard enough to bruise their eyballs. For my first graphic novel, I dove into the visual rabbit hole, plundering everything from American pulp to Heavy Metal to manga. Hours of poring over digital scans, thousands of images, until design fatigue blurred the line between genius & psychosis.
#DailyLaws June 16
Get Others to Play the Cards You Deal With
The Western Brain loves its two-lane highways. Good vs Evil. Us vs Them. Coke or Pepsi. Male or Female. Binary oppositions like training wheels for a consciousness too terrified to face the infinite. We're conditioned to split the world into clean halves. Not cuz it's true but cuz it's digestible. Multiplicity is a cognitive acid trip most cannot stomach.
So I feed the masses what they crave: polarity.
#DailyLaws June 15
The Art of Presence & Absence
If you're always around, always chirping in the digital void, congrats. You've joined the slush pile of the forgettable. The dopamine fueled peep show of your life might rack up licks but it bleeds mystique dry. Leaders, artists, anyone worth a damn understand the gravitational pull of a controlled disappearance.
Me, I ghost the world by design. My phone, dead silent unless the world is burning or brilliance beckons.
#DailyLaws June 14
Deter with a Threatening Presence
I don't need to raise my voice or sign bigger & more demonstratively. I don't need to posture. What I wield isn't volume. It's vocabulary, sharpened to a surgical edge. I play nice, quiet, low profile. Most of the time I'm the guy you forget that's in the room. Until I start.
A well-timed dismantling, elegant, brutal & unmistakably intentional, is enough to keep the vultures circling elsewhere.
I don't do it often. That's the point.
#DailyLaws June 13
Lead from the Front
There's no shortcut around blood. If you haven't crawled through the fire, don't expect anyone to follow your smoke signals.
I don't ask anything of others I haven't already paid for in sweat & time. Every demand I make, I've made of myself first. Harder, longer, w/o applause.
That's the currency of real leadership: scars. When people see you in the trenches, not the tower, they stop needing to be pushed. They chase you. They burn cuz you burn first.
#DailyLaws June 12
Use the Surrender Tactic
When I'm cornered by someone's immovable dogma, their rusted-shut theology or hand-me-down politics, I don't bother lighting a match. I pull a matador move. Not out of grace but strategy. Debating zealots is like arguing with a thunderstorm. You won't change it & you'll just get soaked.
So I nod, smile, let em preach. Every rigid belief, every sanctimonious opinion tells me who they are, where they've buried the bodies, what levers they respond to.
#DailyLaws June 11
Strike the Shepherd
Every team has its parasite, the guy who poisons the well then complains the water tastes funny. Back when I coached FAAD basketball, ours came with a standard square beard & smug certainty. A sideline critic with a martyr complex. He knew more than the playbook, more than the coaches, more than God, apparently. Defensive sets, player rotations, you name it, he griped about it. Loudly, relentlessly. Classic locker room lawyer.
#DailyLaws June 10
Infect the Group with Productive Emotions
In 2010, I helped built a Deaf Writers' club out of raw ambition & talent. I sent in my work on Pantheon every two months like clockwork. Manuscript, penciled pages, everything dripping with intent. I was a machine. Consistent, unapologetic. The idea was simple: set the tone, infect the group. Model the grind until everyone else caught the fever.
But the infection never took.
#DailyLaws June 8
Distract Them From Your Real Goal
Nothing triggers sabotage like visible ambition. Tell someone you're making something real, & suddenly their support morphs into surveillance. Their curiosity becomes a parasite. So I don't tell them. I misdirect, play coy while I build empires.
I knew a bunch of comic book fanatics. They knew every ink stained trivia crumb from Kirby to Morrison. Passionate. Obsessive.
#DailyLaws June 7
Never Impugn People's Intelligence
I grew up believing that intelligence was objective. Measurable. Real. A fixed number on a cosmic scoreboard. If you were smart, it showed. If you were dumb, tough shit. You'd better get good with your hands. But stepping into the meat grinder of society, elbowing my way through construction crews & cocktail parties, comic cons & campus lounges, I realized something brutal: no one can admit they're stupid. Not even to themselves.
#DailyLaws June 6
Play Your Role Well
Call it emotional aikido. I've learned to flatten the spikes, mute the noise & live in that even -keel limbo where nothing rattles too loud. Not joy, not grief. Just a steady hum of performance-grade composure. It's not apathy, it's armor. The golden means of emotion isn't sainthood. It's strategy.
In the theater of academia, I play the role of the Reasonable One. Professors love him. Students trust him. He's calm, collected, never drops the mask.
#DailyLaws June 5
Create Dramatic Effect
There was a time before Pantheon & a time after.
Before I was the guy with talent but no tangible proof. Everyone knew I could draw but they filed me away under "potential." Like a car with the engine running but no wheels in motion. Familiar, ambient, easy to overlook. Then came Pantheon.
No teaser. No soft launch. Just boom! First Deaf graphic novelist.
#DailyLaws June 4
Play on People's Instinct to Trust Appearances
People see what they expect to see. That's the hack, the trap. Their instinct is to trust the surface, cuz questioning everything would fry their circuits & make them hermits. So I dress accordingly. Modestly & I become modest. Polo & jeans = just a guy. Nothing to see here. But I pick out the afro to solar flare size & throw on something loud, patterned, unpredictable? Now I'm the artist, the eccentric, the myth.
#DailyLaws June 3
Take Control of Your Image
Nowhere does image matter more than in LA. This overexposed circus of curated authenticity.
Here, your clothes aren't fabric. They're signals. The car you drive is a resume. Your friends are a living portfolio of your own desirability.
That's why those who thrive here are walking advertisement tailored to be just enigmatic enough to suggest mystery, just trendy enough to feel relevant & just detached enough to radiate power.
#DailyLaws June 2
Use Absence to Increase Respect
In marginalized communities, where gatherings are rare & visibility is already a contested resource, presence becomes currency. And like all currency, too much in circulation devalues the coin.
There are those who show up to every event. Rain or shine. Always present. Always available. And always unnoticed. Their consistency breeds invisibility. Familiarity turns them into background noise.
