We're going to be out of town next week, both of us, on "vacation." We're going to roughly the same place but we have no desire to see one another. During this time, I have secured the services of a kind of all-star developer supergroup, like a Menudo versed in Maya, to handle the newspost portions while our third-grade comic trainees have agreed to handle the strip. At some point during this week a viewing of Superman Returns is veritably assured. It is running at an exceptionally comfortable theater near my house, but beginning at nine o'clock each night I have a standing agreement to interfere with (virtual) terrorism. I don't know how grave the threat actually is from these simulated miscreants, but I must admit that the process does make me feel better.

I guess you guys like the new PAX program cover. Every time I refresh my mail I have another dozen emails asking for a wallpaper and a poster version. The actual image was for the book cover so it was only about eight inches high. In order to make a poster of it I had to re-draw some big chucks of it. I also had to extend the image vertically and horizontally to match the dimensions of our posters. But I did all that this morning and the poster will be on sale at San Diego Comic Con. Here's a little peak.

I finished the cover for the PAX 2006 program today. It still needs this year’s logo slapped on but here’s the original artwork.

If my earlier experiences with the co-operative campaign had not endured so, there would be no question - fifteen dollars is quite simply not a value that men of reason would associate with the GRAW Map Pack. But, drawing on that idea, let us move forward as though the powerful fraternal bonds forged in Campaign One were sufficient to assuage price related suffering to some degree. I realize that this moves our narrative into the realm of fiction.

So San Diego ComicCon is coming up next month and we will be there with stacks of shirts and books. Kiko just finished up our new booth banner that shows all the designs we’ll have as well as all the prices. Give it a click for the large version.

There was an article online which establishes our absolute primacy over all living things. Or, something like that. I haven't read it. It is my policy to continue living my life the way I have lived it: singing to orphans, sixteen hours a day. I must warn you that this is not the universal policy of our establishment.

If not, I really should have.

Listening Post was (in art world terms) an Installation, but the term installation has a lot of baggage for me.  Media Experiment sounds pretty silly, too.  Well, maybe you can tell me what it is:  a bank of LCD screens display random snips of text from the Internet at various intervals, presenting it in one of a few different ways.  One of them sounds like a men's choir, where the top thirty words starting with a particular letter are recited.  Seeing the Internet, an entity with which I have a more than passing familiarity, represented in a novel way - the cacophonous noise of fifty flamewars at once, presented as art - was something that remained with me.

I just found another site that plays with raw information in a similar way called We Feel Fine.  Culled from your Earth Blogs, it collects and presents text strings about "feelings" in various novel, interactive ways. 

(CW)TB

That the other modes you liked from Guitar Hero are still in - I was simply talking about new stuff.  And even then, I didn't discuss all of it.  On the official forums, there's a frequently updated post that has bits of information cobbled from interviews about other possible songs - some of which I would describe as "very" to "extremely" exciting.

(CW)TB

Though Patch 1.11's torrent of ravening undead does make me want to pull my paladin out of retirement - Wyneth Harridan is well suited to the task - I'm determined to remain strong in the face of that reeking tide. Patch notes these days are like reading the newspaper from an alternate dimension. Tidbits and trivia stacked one atop the other, and certainly the week's weather forecast for Tanzidar is very interesting but none of it is really correlated with the price of rice in China.

Live Anywhere was one of the most elaborate things shown at a show known for elaborate things, but it doesn't condense particularly well, so wringing the meaning out of it can be taxing. What's more, my cohort actively hates the idea, so any pleasure I'm bound to derive from the process will likely be leached out by his withering rays of wrath and scorn.

Tycho mentioned some new goings on at our store yesterday and I just wanted to mention it again. We’re introducing three new designs and we’re getting rid of three old designs. Here are the new shirts:

Lil’Gabe get’s a mention in today’s strip and so I hope you will all forgive me if I play the proud papa for just a moment. It’s true this is essentially my blog but I normally try to avoid this sort of thing. Since Father’s day is this weekend I figured it was sort of appropriate.

The fever came back, but I welcome the state when I have time to lie back and enjoy it. I understand that the pleasurable sensations are actually important parts of my brain winking out, but there is something luxuriant about the consumption of such a precious commodity. Fish eggs? Liver paste? Come now. Let my consciousness be my strange meal.

We have three new "shoits" available, and in accordance with an ancient pact, three old shirts must go with a discount, which is to say big savings!  The newcomers are Annarchy (in men's and women's) , the return of Kiko's classic Shoryuken (also in men's and women's), and the stern new Jesus Says garment with a message of warning for mankind.

I am sometimes taken to task by idiots for not linking more online comics.   These are often the same idiots - mealy-mouthed idiots, cabals of mumuring idiots in the dark, perpetual failures angry at the universe - that imagine we use our traffic as a weapon.  

What they don't seem to understand (because they are idiots - see above) is that any link I formulate is like directing the Eye of Sauron on that person's rack at the ISP.  Any link.  The intention is irrelevant.  Because they are scrabbling,  turned-in on themselves, base and carnal scavengers,  it must be that every act bears with it some hostile payload, because this is how they comport themselves in every gnarled chunk of electronic correspondence, and all the world must be thus.

The upshot is that I have linked you to something that I enjoy, and think you might enjoy, and what has actually happened is that the site is now barely accessible, and people with the misfortune of  being hosted on the same equipment are now inaccessible to me as well.  There's your dark consipiracy, idiots.  I'm polite.  That's why I don't link comics.

(CW)TB

I’ve mentioned my reading habits on the site before. For the most part I stick to Star Wars books. In fact I just finished up Triple Zero and so I was on the hunt for something new to read. Before I could get to the store Tycho suggested I try a book he had just read. He promised me I’d like it and when I asked about the dragon on the cover he told me that it was “not a dragon.” Here is a picture of the cover: