Is it a Munchkin, a snake, or a dog/cat hybrid that speaks in song?

• Welp, there’s a project that blew the hell out of the Fleen Funding Formula for Kickstarts; I shouldn’t be surprised that Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz wound up so far above what the FFF would have called for¹, given that enormous bump near the end of the campaign. Dahm came in at roughly twice the midpoint of my projected range, with a total of US$61,324, or some 408% of goal.

  Take a look at the trendline data from Kicktraq; you just don’t see the long tail skew upwards like that, and in just two days near the end of the campaign, Dahm nearly doubled the number of backers. That bump, by the way, coincided with Kickstarter declaring the book a Pick of the Day, bringing in a horde of new backers. Whatever the reason, more than 1200 people will be getting copies of this sure-to-be-handsome volume in a few months, hooray.

• Speaking of hooray, two new things out there in the aether that you will want to look at. Firstly, the inimitable Jen Wang² has a new webcomic going. More precisely, she’s releasing what looks to be a new graphic novel in chapter-length updates, and the first chapter dropped yesterday (the second will be released when it’s ready, don’t be greedy). Go get in on the ground floor of The White Snake³ now and beat the rush.

  Secondly, as I write this the Cartoon Hangover channel at Youtube is counting down live to the premiere of the Bee & Puppycat series, made possible by viewers like you. We’re at just over five hours remaining (which would make the debut at 8:00pm EST [GMT-5]), and B&P characters are being made out of fondant to decorate cupcakes. Hell, yes.

Spam of the day:

The following are just three examples of why defamation laws are so important; if these cases were never resolved, we may have read much differently of these historic figures.

Honest to dog, I read that quickly in the spam filter and I thought it said defenestration laws and thought it was going to be much more interesting than it turned out to be.

_______________
¹ The FFF would have taken the 24-30 hour trend predicted value (PV) from Kicktraq (US$130K), divided that by 4 (US$32.5K), with a range of +/- PV/20 (US$6.5K), for a final predicted range of US$26K to 39K.

² Who is responsible for one of my favorite original graphic novels ever, Koko Be Good, and more recently an adaptation of a Cory Doctorow story, In Real Life (which I’m still thinking about).

³ Not to be confused with Whitesnake, thank glob. Far too much of the background noise of my college years was taken up with David Coverversion’s hair-metal glam-shouting in the direction of Tawny Kitaen.

Sometimes, the stories just line up.

• Speaking of John Allison’s decision to end the Bad Machinery casefiles, there was a nice demonstration of how deep his comic world does in today’s update of Expecting To Fly. In 1996, young Erin Winters learns that being in Hell is pretty awesome if you’re a kick-ass lady. In 2007, Erin got sucked into Hell and found it wasn’t all looking awesome in skimpy battle armor and beating boys with a sword. Rather, it was honkin’ huge battle armor and beating the snot out of Robot Hitler.

  Alas, ruling Hell can get old and she made her way outwards in 2010, but even escaping from Hell doesn’t make things all the way better. If Hell is other people, what is people not being able to remember you unless they look right at you? Will she ever get to see her family again? Possibly not. And that, my friends, is how you do a callback across two (maybe three) different series.

• Speaking of old strips and re-draws, part one: tomorrow will be the re-release of the one strip that did more than any other to propel me wholesale into the world of webcomics. Tomorrow will be the return of the fabled Frog Rocket Wiener. I’ve mentioned before that the first money I ever spent with a webcomic creator was for a merch pack offered by Owen Dunne in the before-times: a t-shirt, a book, a sketch of Jethro. I think I speak for all when I greet this news with a hearty Clippy.
• Hey, anybody going to be in the lower panhandle of Alaska, say, this weekend? The fine folks behind Alaska Robotics continue their trend of inviting creators north of 48 to talk on topics of interest, and this Friday/Saturday is when Dylan Meconis talks about character design (and since this is Meconis we’re talking about, probably a good mention of worldbuilding as well).

  Best of all, she’ll be sharing a wealth of never-before-seen material for the workshop part of the weekend, and we may see the information shared widely afterwards. I’d drop by, but you know — there’s a whole continent in the way. If you in the PNW and can catch a flight or ferry, I urge you to do so.

• Speaking of old strips and re-draws, part two: in case you ever wondered why it is that Randy Milholland hasn’t released any Something*Positive print collections (I know I was), we now know the answer is bad luck:
  

  Basically, long ago, I lost a lot of the 300dpi master files. I had multiple back-ups, but some ended up corrupted and some, the CDs they were on were destroyed in a move. I did over 330 strips my first year, and I only had about one hundred comics’ master files in a complete form (i.e. laid out with word bubbles, etc.). Just under a third them, I had elements of the master files — characters and backgrounds — but not laid out in strip format (mostly from December to March – I don’t remember why I saved all of those elements to separate files, but am glad I did). Many of these aren’t complete, so elements had to be redrawn, but that’s something.

  The remaining strips, I had nothing for but the web-resolution 72dpi files that are on my site. I considered pushing the 72dpi files to 300dpi and just redoing the text. The comics would be fuzzy but readable, but I got some sample pages and it looked awful. I tried a slew of things (converting to vector and enlarging, filters, and more) – everything looked horrible.

  So what I’ve been doing since for comics I have no master files for is printing the 72dpi comics out, enlarged, and tracing them on a light box — panel by panel — rescanning them, coloring them, and just remaking the entire comic.

  Check out the sample originals and redraws — Milholland’s done an amazing job of recreating his art style from 2001-2002, which is to say he’s probably ground down his teeth to nothing, since they look so very different than his modern style. For me, this is great news … not the ground-down teeth, but the fact that my long wait for a print collection of S*P (the first of many, hopefully) will not have to continue much longer. Soon, my precious, ssssoooonnnnn.

Spam of the day:

Variable weather is one of the few guarantees.

In Juneau, that is definitely true. Dress warm/dry, Dylan!

Hey, remember back at the start of September, when Sisters and Amulet 6 made the New York Times Bestseller List for paperback graphic novels? Good times, a whole nine weeks ago, and Raina Telgemeier and Kazu Kibuishi have been on a near-neverending book tour since.

Let’s consider what’s happened in the weeks since on the NYTBL. By the second week on the list, Sisters and Amulet 6 vaulted to the #1 and #2 slots, where they’ve pretty much sat ever since¹. Smile has been on the list basically forever, and as of the fourth week, it started rising up as people who heard about the new Telgemeier book decided to check out the older one they’d missed. By Week Five, Sisters, Amulet 6, and Smile were #1, 2, and 3, respectively.

By Week Six, the top four books were Sisters, Smile, Amulet 6, and Drama (Telegemeier’s last book, not related to the other two, with more than a year on the list previously). And in the latest New York Times Bestseller List, the tenth since Telgemeier & Kibuishi started their march to dominance, Kibuishi’s first Amulet book gets added in, as readers that have missed the Amulet train have decided to go back to the start and run the series². As Ryan Estrada put it:

Dang, literally half the NY Times GN best seller list is Kazu and Raina.

It won’t end there; there are four more Amulet books, and I’m confident in the belief that at least two of Kibuishi’s back catalog will join book six at any given time, meaning that Telgemeier and Kibuishi will form a majority of this list by themselves. None of which should surprise anybody, given that by all accounts (such as this one by graphic novel superstar Gene Luen Yang), Telgemeier and Kibuishi are rock stars to kids (a significant number of whom are recovering reluctant readers):

The signing was freaking amazing. I’ve never been to a comics signing like it, not even with the Image Comics founders when they were at the height of their fame in the 90’s. Raina did a joint event with the inimitable Kazu Kibuishi, and the entire store was packed with parents and kids holding stacks of Smile and Drama and Sisters and Amulet.

The crowd was so big that the store had to give out little tickets to tell you what signing group you were in. Group #1 got to see Raina and Kazu first, then Group #2, and so on. We were Group #7. Twenty minutes in, I said to my daughter, “I know Raina and her husband Dave. We see each other at least a couple times a year at different book events. We can get her to sign it later, at Comic-Con or something.”

My daughter looked me straight in the eye and pointed to her ragged copy of Sisters. “Daddy, we came to get this book signed.”

And that is why I don’t despair every time somebody moans that kids don’t want to read; put the right book in front of them and they will read holes through the pages. On the off chance you know anybody that would sniff that what Telgemeier and Kibuishi do isn’t “real books”, just wait to see what those kids do if either of them decides to do a mostly-prose-occasional-pictures type of book (like, say, Ursula Vernon, or what’s being done by Zach Weinersmith or Evan Dahm).

Kids want books that they can find themselves in, and that’s what these creators are supplying. The only way that this tide breaks is if Raina or Kazu succumbs to Book Tour Madness. Should you happen across them, feel free to offer quality ice cream and/or booze, and a nice quiet room with a soaking tub for their signing hands.

Spam of the day:

Typically I really don’t master post on information sites, but I would like to declare that this kind of write-up quite forced my family to perform thus! The crafting style have been surprised my family.

_______________
¹ That is to say, Sisters has stayed #1 for the past nine weeks, and Amulet 6 has typically hoved in the #2 or 3 slot, but has dropped as low as #6.

² When the first Amulet released nearly seven years ago, it flew a bit under the radar — possibly due to being released right after Christmas — and never charted. This is the NYTBL debut for The Stonekeeper. Kibuishi started their march to dominance, Kibuishi

It’s always a mixed bag, I tells ya.

• Good! 1 November marked one year of Stand Still, Stay Silent, about which I cannot say enough good things. Minna Sundberg has quickly moved into my top rank of personal favorite comics creators, and the fact that she turned out a stunning 208 full-color pages of gripping story in the course of a year¹ which is an incredible achievement for a creator working alone. If you haven’t been reading for the past year, I’d say it’s time for a binge.
• Less Good! We mentioned the Kris Straub/Len Peralta/Mikey Neumann nightmarebuster e-comic series, Exterminite a couple of weeks back. 1 November also marked the day that Neumann shared the data from the first couple of weeks of sales, which were officially Not Very Good At All. While the story of Exterminite (and the story of the making of Exterminite) are far from done, it’s entirely natural for Neumann and his collaborators to have wanted things to do better than
  

  [M]ost likely between 3.5% to 5% of a total recoup of the initial first issue investment. [emphasis original]

  It’s a tough read, but Neumann did self-publishers of comics everywhere a major solid by sharing his experiences (so far) and the changes that will have to be made for the book to not lose a great deal of money. The best we can hope for is — like Jim Zub’s experiences with Skullkickers — the long tail and (and on this point I’m speculating) trade collections will make the book eventually at least a break-even proposition. Good luck, gentlemen, and if you like the sorts of things that those guys do, maybe check out Exterminite either directly through Amazon or via comiXology?

• Mixed Less-Good And Also Some Good! It’s been a bit more than two months since we saw the teen mystery sleuths of Tackleford, what with Bad Machinery being on break for a dip into the SGRverse’s past in the form of Expecting To Fly. It’s been a great story filling in a lot of who Shelley, Tim, and (especially) Ryan are. But still, that notice just above the comic has been making me count down the days:
  

  Bad Machinery is on hiatus until the new year. This is EXPECTING TO FLY! You can read it from the start here.

  Today, sadly, that message is superseded by a blog posting from John Allison:

  I’ve decided to conclude Bad Machinery with the Case Of The Modern Men. It feels like the right time to do it. The characters have outgrown the setting, the premise and the format.

  Oh dear. I love Bad Machinery, out of all expectation of how I thought I would when it replaced Scary Go Round. But if Allison has told the stories that he can tell (eight of them, let’s not forget, each spanning half a year), then that’s all we’re going to get. But in and among this less-good news is the good news:

  There’s definitely more to come from Charlotte, Shauna and the rest of them, but you might not see much of them for a little while. With the third book released in December and five more stories to go, Oni’s beautiful print editions of Bad Machinery should continue unabated. I’m really proud of what they’ve done with my work.

  Thanks to everyone who has supported Bad Machinery. Think of this as a Doctor Who-style regeneration in progress. Your friends will be back.

  Well, that’s all right, then. I might not get my daily fix of Lottie, Shauna, and the rest of Griswald’s Grammar School, but they’ll be there in the world that Allison’s created and can’t help but tell us about. I’ve got room on my bookshelves² for the remaining Bad Machinery collections, and in the meantime there will be Bobbins and other projects. Bad Machinery cases go by the wayside, but the weirdness that is Tackleford will persist.

• Good! We have a date for ComfyCon 3 — the con you attend from home — and it is 21 – 23 November. It appears that Randy Milholland and con spouse Danielle Corsetto are the ringleaders once again, so if you’ve not got any plans for the weekend before [American] Thanksgiving, fire up your browser and get in on all the hanging-out from the comfort of your own home. And speaking of Corsetto, I received her 8th Girls With Slingshots collection today, and it’s wonderful. Thanks to her and all the fine folk at TopatoCo.

Spam of the day:

No matter what the weather, festival-goers need to always pack a few essentials — including macs and wellies, as well as suncream and sunglasses.

Bit late in the year for outdoor festivals, isn’t it?

________________
¹ Which is just about exactly equal to four pages a week — all the more impressive when you consider that she had to take a couple of breaks of 10 – 14 days to handle order fulfillment on A Red Tail’s Dream books.

² Or more likely, will make room.

• New Emily Carroll comic! Boo!
• What’s better than getting full-size Snickers bars in your treat bag instead of “Fun” size? A successful Kickstart! Case in point: the Unshelved e-books USB drive. Second case in point: a significant bump over the past day or so for Evan Dahm’s illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  Or even making progress on already-concluded campgaigns, such as the welcome news that Augie and the Green Knight is on the verge of going to press or that the Rachel Peng audiobooks have finished recording and those who have been patiently waiting are getting an extra e-book for their troubles¹.

• Followup! Regarding TopatoCo invoice numbers and how much business they’re doing: David Malki ! (who in addition to his myriad other projects is in charge of communications for TopatoCo) throws some cold hard data into the game:
  

  Like most ecommerce software, TopatoCo’s increments order numbers whenever a new shopping cart is created…. The number references that unique cart whether or not the person actually goes on to check out….

  So, the number of completed sales is less than the difference in invoice numbers, because you have to deduct some number of abandoned carts — I couldn’t say how many that is for TopatoCo in particular, but perhaps about 30% (based on industry averages).

  Good to know, but then there was the announcement from TopatoCo Supreme Leader For Life Jeffrey Rowland that they have definitely passed 500,000 orders, and it seems impossible to have done that with fewer than 500,000 invoice numbers. More on this as we mess with math³.

Okay, get out there, get some candy, and rot the hell out of your teeth.

Spam of the day:

Of course, he follows the scalper’s golden rule — never carry more than 10 tickets at a time. His partner carries most of the tickets and hides in dark lanes awaiting a call from him.

Yes, yes, very clever. The spam is coming in thick these days — up from maybe 3 or 4 a day to 50 or 60. For the love of glob, nobody here wants your fancy sunglasses or footwear.

_______________
¹ Disclaimer: I did a technology test on that e-book for author KB Spangler² to make sure that it looks good on a variety of screen types and resolutions, and I can assure you that Come Bowling With Us is friggin’ gorgeous. As soon as Spangler adds this item to her store, you’re going to want to get it.

² AKA “my buddy Otter”.

&sup3: To wit: do we assume that every invoice number since #500,000 up to 519,348 was abandoned except for mine, and that reported by Alice Bentley? That would seem to be the worst possible case, making for an abandonment rate of 19,436/519,348 or about 3.74%. This requires more thought.

Okay, disclaimers out of the way: the comics-making duo known popularly as Becky [Dreistadt] & Frank [Gibson] are practically family; despite the fact that they went to art school with a niece who is totally my dogg since small times, I believe that I would have found my way to their work in any event. Dreistadt’s paintings are whimsical and achingly beautiful at the same time, and Gibson’s command of language is playful and erudite in equal measure.

Their latest project, a comic book adaptation of a 151-painting series in tribute to Pokemon, releases in a few weeks, and Gibson was kind enough to take some time out to talk to me about it. As an added bonus, Gibson sent along a four page preview of the first issue, which you can see below.

(more…)

Health and commerce and flying through Atlanta in a couple of hours; Wednesday, in other words.

• This deserves to be quoted at length, because it speaks directly to how capital-A Art impacts capital-L Life, for both creator and audience; Dean Trippe on why the Something Terrible books are behind schedule:
  

  Just a quick note: I’ve had to temporarily stop reading messages and emails from fans of Something Terrible due to emotional health and safety concerns.

  The books are still in progress, and I’m hoping pre-orders continue to make the purchase order larger and my unit cost lower. But it’s been slow going during con season due to the emotional toll hearing so many similarly heartbreaking stories has been taking on me. I think I was better at this in the beginning, when I was mostly getting messages from fellow adults and folks who shared minimal details.

  So please understand: I don’t want to discourage anyone from writing, but it’ll be a little bit before I respond, as I need to stay functional for my family and the folks who rely on me. This year has been amazing, traveling the country and meeting people who needed my story. But while it’s validated every ounce of the small courage I mustered to tell my story, it’s also been fairly overwhelming on a regular basis.

  I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone to hear I have a bit of a Batman complex with this stuff, and feel a strong push to fight through the tough parts to be the shoulder and sometimes the symbol fellow victims need to help them process their own pasts. But while what I present to the world tends to be chipper Adam West or driven Kevin Conroy, the cumulative effect of these stories has left me wallowing in decidedly Frank Miller territory.

  I appreciate your patience as I plot this batboat back on course, and I’m sorry for the delays in getting the ST hardcovers printed. It’s all down to decisions now, but I’m the one who’s been flaking on making them. But I’m dragging my broken back to Nanda Parbat to get my head right again so I can finish this.

  Watch for my signal.

  Anybody that’s met Dean Trippe or seen him at a show in the time since Something Terrible released knows that his Batman Complex is absolutely true; I’ve never seen anybody that wanted to take care of the entire world as much as he does¹ and he is absolutely right to adopt a posture of defense for as long as he finds it necessary. Light the signal when the time is right, we’ll repeat it as needed. Be well, SuperBatDeanMan.

• Because I’m curious: I placed a TopatoCo order yesterday (for volume 8 of Girls With Slingshots, out now!) and I noticed the invoice number on the confirmation page: 519348. Every order I’ve ever placed with TopatoCo has had an increasing invoice number, and I believe that it’s actually serially increasing. Combined with the announcement that they recently passed order #500,000, this would mean nearly 20 thousand orders have gone out in the past few weeks. We’re arguably at the point where year-end holiday (Alliday?) shopping kicks into high gear, and I’m curious as to exactly how much work that is for the Space Potato and his earthly minions.

  So I am going to make a small order at the start of the year, compare invoice numbers, and get my answer. Right now I’m going to estimate it’s somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 orders between now and then.

Spam of the day:

In honor of James Gunn’s Marvel movie masterpiece becoming the highest grossing film of 2014 domestically, and the recent announcement of the upcoming sequel, [site I’m not shilling] knew that now was the time to begin work on showing the world what real space genitals should look like. Gnardians of the Galaxy: 50 Shades of Groot will be written & directed by Lee Roy Myers.

What.

_______________
¹ Which is why I actually look on Trippe as having a big red S on his chest. In my eyes, he’ll always be Superman from issue 10 of All Star Superman. If you haven’t read it for God’s sake go do that and understand why this character inspires despite being so badly bungled by recent movies.

It appears that we’ve managed to get a number of things wrong. Let the self-flagellation begin!

• Whoops. Looks like Jon Rosenberg actually did get fired from the webcomic that he completely and entirely owns, contradicting my conclusions from yesterday. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jon’s replacement, Mr Leonard Stanky:
  

  Hello Twitterverse! I am Leonard Stanky, a dad and a cartoonist! I am taking over the cartoonist duties over at Scenes From The Multiverse.

  You can see my cartoons about The Multiverse every other day starting Wednesday!!! The web site is at http://amultiverse.com < I want to wish @StankyLeonard all the best in his tenure as SFAM’s new cartoonist. Good luck, Leonard! We’re all rooting for you.

  Huh. I figured if anybody would replace Rosenberg so as to minimize disruption, it would be the Klassic Kartoonist known as Kelly. As of this writing, it is unclear if the terms of Rosenberg’s firing and Stanky’s hiring includes a transfer ownership interest in either the strip or my soul. As for the mistaken assertion that Jon Rosenberg would continue as the creator of Scenes From A Multiverse, Fleen regrets the error.

• Double whoops. It appears that I have deleted some recent comments. I can see that comments on at least two recent posts have gone missing, which means almost certainly I did something wrong. If yours is a comment that did go missing, it was not intentional or a judgment on the quality of what you wrote, it was likely me being fumble-fingered. Once again, Fleen regrets the error.
• Triple whoops. I missed the opportunity to talk about something because the combined effect of slow network and trying to get a comment from Rosenberg conspired to keep me from browsing too widely. Just before the weekend, Wacom — maker of the digital drawing tools that every artist working in webcomics as well as non-webcomics uses — announced that it’s putting together an anthology of digital comics.

  Meredith Gran will be joined by Ming Doyle, Giannis Milonogiannis, and a creator to be named later. It’ll be 32 pages long, released sometime in January, and free. I first saw the story over at Comics Alliance, so check with them for further details (it appears the anthology is being wrangled by former CA contributor Caleb Goellner, so it’s likely they’ll get all the news first), but the story’s been popping up all over the place in the past 24 hours or so. For being late to the party, Fleen once again is filled with regrets.

• Hey! Remember that Squirrel Girl series that Ryan North is writing and Erica Henderson is illustrating? You can now read the first two pages of the debut issue, which — fair warning — will leave you humming the Spider-Man theme song all day long. At long last, Fleen regrets nothing.

Spam of the day:

You should not live a life of a laid back person. Come out of your self-built life and start enjoying it by filling colors in it.

Too late! Bwahahahaha.

From the ol’ Fleen mailbag:

Perhaps Jon Rosenberg is just being his usual bitterly funny self, but I don’t have nearly enough caffeine or alcohol in my bloodstream to figure out if he really is pulling the plug on SFAM or not. Could you be a dear and go clear things up for his loyal readers? I need to go have a bit of a lie-down. I’m really getting too old for these shocks.

First of all, thanks for writing in with a question this morning, as it turns out that the network access I have today is largely limited to what my phone can grab at a blistering 2G speed. That’s what happens when your worksite is on the lower level of a building that’s built into a hillside, I guess. Fortunately, emails are reasonably easy to access even at a whopping 0.18 Mbit/second.

Secondly, I’m happy to be a dear! In case you missed what the question referred two, Mr Jon I own Gary’s soul Rosenberg issued a series of tweets today that included the likes of:

Goodbye everyone! It’s been fun. http://amultiverse.com/comic/2014/10/27/dear-everyone/

and

Dear Friends, today I was fired from SFAM. http://amultiverse.com/comic/2014/10/27/dear-everyone/

Along with further discussions where he hopes that Chris Yates gets named as his replacement. Please consider the content of today’s strip, which is in reference to a burgeoning media/sex life/accusations of abuse scandal a-brewing to the north¹. Furthermore, the strip directly quotes tweets Rosenberg made last night that paraphrased said Canadian scandal, so I’m pretty sure that he’s not really quitting.

But I’m nothing if not thorough, and I sent Jon an email asking him to clarify the nature of his continued employment with the strip that he entirely owns. His reply, verbatim:

My lawyers have asked me not to comment until further notice.

Keep in mind who the lawyer in question is. Don’t make him notice you if you value your sanity and/or existence. I suspect that come Wednesday, we’ll see the first strip by the “replacement” in a style remarkably similar to Rosenberg’s.

Spam of the day:

Google

Check below, are some completely unrelated internet sites to ours, even so, they’re most trustworthy sources that we use.

True story: somebody somewhere on the Marriott guest network (not necessarily at my particular hotel) is running a computer that is making automated inquiries against Google, which has responded by blacklisting the entire damn network. If the miscreant has not be convinced to knock that the hell off, I will have no access to the single most useful site in my bookmarks for as long as I’m on that particular chunk of wifi. This sucks enough that I’m almost willing to clink the links that “Google” tells me they totally trust and use.

Almost.

_______________
¹ That was the least gross report on the situation I’ve found; at this point, there are a lot of people digging in heels, holding positions re: believing accusers in cases of sexual violence, believing that public personalities may be the target of unwarranted accusations, and the likelihood of true reports from (relatively more) powerful parties vs (relatively) less powerful parties.

It’s a mess and at this point nothing has been adjudicated and I don’t know what the hell really happened; I suspect that even the principal parties sincerely believe things that cannot be simultaneously true. But Jian Ghomeshi (whose radio work I greatly enjoy) has arguably come out on the attack and that’s rarely a good means of reinforcing the I’m innocent position.

Seriously, three things dropped yesterday that exceed all my wants and desires except for the places reserved in my heart for my wife and dog.

• Item the First: Rich Stevens and Danielle Corsetto decided to kibbitz about work into a pair of microphones and it is glorious. Ladies and gentlemens, please enjoy Coffee & Cider, your new favorite podcast.
• Item the Second: David Malki !’s comic about a terrible, terrible sea lion has been verbed, and turned into a wearable declaration that you are not a terrible, terrible person, at least for the next six days or so.
• Item the Third: Similarly, Chris Hallbeck also has a comment on current events in wearable form, also for the next six days. Gird your loins or whatever else need girding in the shirt that declares your allegiance to opposing terrible, terrible people. Coincidentally, also available for the next six days or so. It would be kind of neat if both of these were such motherscratching runaway successes that they got added to regular merch rotations.

Okay, that’s it. Enjoy the crap out of your weekend, and hope you avoid all the terrible, terrible people.

Spam of the day:

We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable info to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our entire community will be thankful to you.

I find your schemes to be insufficient. You may wait outside the Pilgrim’s Door.