I don’t have any introductory remarks today; sorry.

• I started out by thinking to myself, No way did Randall Munroe draw 1000 little stick figures for today’s strip, but a very basic eyeballing (counting the stick figures in a small section, and assuming a relatively uniform density) indicates that if he didn’t, he’s within the bounds of experimental error. Then I said to myself, Well at least he didn’t draw references to all of his major recurring characters and most well-known strips, on account of Cory Doctorow’s cape would show up in red. Then I looked closer and saw Cory, in black and white, around the 9:30 position on the first “0”. Haven’t spotted any velociraptors yet, though.
• The thing is, when it comes to who I want to get all squishy with, I am of the same mind as Gerda and have interest only in the ladies¹. So why did Jess Fink’s G+ announcement that she was collaborating on a new artblog full of sexy, sexy dudes [NSFYWP]² for lustful gazing catch my attention? Maybe because I dig on Jess’s art, even when it’s Boners Ahoy!? Maybe because the ladies deserve a place for female gazing? In any event, there’s never a bad time to point out tastefully smutrotica and dammit, Jess always makes the sexy equal parts hot and fun. Can’t wait to see what her Smut Peddler (whose contributions just closed, and so we should see it complete soon) story looks like.
• From the helping out colleagues department: Ms K Brooke “Otter” Spangler has finally gotten her plush production completed, after more than two years of effort and many trying setbacks. The big pile of Mr Speedy clones at Otter’s house much surely be the fuzziest, wuzziest, cutest impromptu sleeping spot on the eastern seaboard, but the important part comes from her summary writeup of the process, which is quoted here at length due to no permalinks:
  

  [H]ere’s the super-brief version: the Speedy plush has been in pre-production for almost 28 months. Most of that was raising capital to fund production. Early last year he almost went to production with a different company. I paid a fairly huge chunk of change to get a prototype made, but poor quality, combined with some rather off-putting communications with this company, made me pull out at the last minute.³

  I began working with a new company back in late September, and cannot recommend them strongly enough.* They have fantastic customer service and they busted their rumps getting him to me in under 3 months. He was supposed to be here for the holidays but there was a lengthy snag getting him across the Canadian border.

  *Webcomic people looking to make their own plush, email me and I’ll talk your ears off (eyeballs out?) about them. [asterisk footnote original, numberic one mine]

  That footnote is what I wanted to draw your attention to; I’ve known a buttload of webcomickers (some of them from Canada, making their unit of measure metric buttloads instead of Imperial) that have tried — some successfully, some not — to get various 3D representations of their characters made, and it’s almost always been a huge headache for them. The fact that one has now found a company that can turn around a design from sketch to prototype to delivery in three months (during the run-up to Alliday, no less), and is willing to share that information? You’ve earned yourself a place in Webcomics Heaven⁴, Otter.

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¹ Hey, ladies.

² Not Safe For Your Work, Probably.

³ Insert your own joke here.

⁴ Which is itself found in the First Circle of Hell, wedged into a somewhat unassuming corner, with a nice garden and decent DSL. There no other place to put them and it’s been ages since they got any fresh Roman orators, so there’s plenty of room.