Cartoonist Rees first became known for his
office-cubicle humor that was inspired by his experience working in a basement for
Citicorp. He also pulled his humor from his experience as a
part-time fact-checker for
Maxim and
Martha Stewart Weddings magazines. There are five collected volumes of his work. His best known and most controversial comic is
Get Your War On, which has been translated into
French,
Spanish and
Italian. When the follow-up volume,
Get Your War On II was published, Rees donated all the
royalties of both books (more than $100,000) to
Adopt-a-Minefield, an organization that works to remove landmines from post-conflict areas. He is also the author of the comic strips
My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable,
My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable, and
Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear.
Artisanal Pencil Sharpening In 2010, Rees worked as a
civil servant for the
United States Census Bureau, a position that revitalized his interest in pencils. In July 2010, Rees announced an Artisanal Pencil Sharpening service. Rees said that, for prices starting at $15, people could buy a sharpened pencil or mail in a pencil to be sharpened by him. Rees claimed to be a craftsman in "the age-old art of manual pencil sharpening", saying his “artisanal service is perfect for artists, writers, and standardized test takers." He also sold art prints bundled with a sharpened pencil. According to
The New Yorker, "This was before parody menus of
farm-to-table restaurants had come out, before it was a cliché to make jokes about
Mason jars and pickle-making, and artisanal culture desperately needed to be mocked. For fifteen dollars, Rees would hand-sharpen your pencil, bag up the shavings, and send it all back to you with a certificate of authenticity. It was deeply, satisfyingly ridiculous, and he was besieged with orders". Rees released a book entitled
How to Sharpen Pencils in April 2012.
The New York Times called it a methodical, deliberate and gleeful subversion and satire that "capture[s] the inherently joyless tedium of conveying specialized instructional information, while tipping off the reader that the cod liver oil is laced with laughing gas." It noted the book contains sections such as a list of common and uncommon children’s names, a comparison of the taste of certain wines versus the taste of certain pencils, and a guide to impressions of Sean Connery and Robert De Niro, but the review also noted that you can actually use the book to learn how to sharpen pencils. In 2016 Rees announced that he would be raising his price per pencil to $500 and said he did not know if anyone would accept the new price.
Television and podcasting In July 2014 the TV show
Going Deep with David Rees launched on the
National Geographic Channel. The show featured Rees humorously investigating the
science and process behind very basic tasks such as making ice, lighting matches and the tying of shoelaces. For the second season, the show moved to the
Esquire Network. Rees hosts the weekly podcast
Election Profit Makers with his childhood friend Jon Kimball and
Starlee Kine in which they discuss the prediction market website
PredictIt.org. The podcast first appeared as a series of 17 episodes before the
2016 U.S. presidential election and returned in the months before the
2020 U.S. presidential election. Rees co-created the animated television series
Dicktown with
John Hodgman, and starred as the character David Purefoy. It was released in 2020.
Dicktown was renewed for a second season, which premiered in 2022.
Music In late 2014 via his
SoundCloud page, Rees released
Aphex Swift, a collection of eight songs that combined the vocals of
Taylor Swift and the electronic music of
Aphex Twin. The collection received positive mentions ranging from
The Verge, which called it "bizarrely good", to
The A.V. Club and
Time. In 2021, Rees released his first album of original noise music titled,
YOU AINT GOIN NOWHERE, on the flower sounds music label.
Writing and blogging Over his career Rees has written for a variety of publications. Since May 2005, Rees has been a contributing
blogger at
The Huffington Post. In 2013, Rees began writing for
Wired's first scripted
web series Codefellas. ==Personal life==