Fri, Aug 3, 2007 -- He is returned
Yeah, so I got this cartoon, it's not really, I mean I don't necessarily, one shouldn't suppose that, these things just, it's only... I just like ham, okay?

Ham
Ah, the Con
Got back from San Diego in reasonably good spirits. True, sales had been deucedly slow in the first four days, hours of non-selling, Saturday finished with a mere three boxes of books sold. Thank goodness Sunday came along with its phalanxes of eager buyers; just as there's nothing like lack of sales to sour a Con mood, there's nothing like sales to improve it. Got to wear the hat, which is always fun, and watched the lifeblood of the Con flow past my table as it does every year. It's weird to see the Con at this stage. Last year it was acknowledged as too big too bursting, the fire marshall even closing the doors on Saturday due to overcrowding. This year was the first year of the overbig, Saturday and four-day passes sold out weeks ahead of time, folks wandering around with Thu-Fri-Sun badges, two-hour long heavily policed lineups to get into any of the panels. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed there wasn't as much buying on Saturday as I've seen in the past. An overabundance of Hollywood star-seeking tourists with no money for or interest in comics? Perhaps. It's a shame to not sell out and earn the freedom to wander, but good times were had, lobsters were consumed, operas were witnessed, Futurama clips were absorbed, new Gamera movies were spotted, transferred home and then found to be missing from their boxes, $40 region-free DVD players were purchased, drunks were drunk, sketches were scratched and charming ladies were encountered. As I said, ah, the Con.

Replays
Just the one, Denied the challenge, which can be found on the Peggle Replays page.

Wed, Jul 25 - Swiftly, now
Got some serious, serious Connin' to get to tomorrow, all kinds of crazy sci-fi-buyin' and friend-greetin' and generall all-'round convenin' and the like, and my belly is a little unhappy and my suitcase still wants packing and time marches, marches, marches ever on so we got to get in on this update superfast, like, and then get out.

Strip? Yes, I believe so, this one, told in a truthful, plain way, describing the certain events of the coming weekend:

New Futurama
Y'all might wanna be a couple of steps back when it goes down. Besides that, I urge any of you con-goers to drop by the ol' table, K16 in the Small Press Area, right on legendary-nay-mystical Aisle 1400. See you there! Let's hope the city doesn't pop from overcrowding!
Fri, Jul 20 - Chicken!
I'm eating some right now. I mean I am at this moment literally chewing a piece chicken meat in my mouth. And while future generations may come to recognize the senseless aggression of such an act, I in my moral ignorance can chomp away with no thought to anything but my own sensual satisfaction. Such is the way of things.

Speaking of which, a cartoon:

Max Saw

Comic-Khaaaaaaan!
Comin' on up, sneakily fast and all, that shining city in the sky, the annual San Diego Comic-Con. If you consider yourself any kind of nerd at all you really ought to make the pilgrimage at least once, just to tell your descendants that yes, you were there, it was real and you experienced it for yourself in that golden era of computers and electrical power.

Fri, Jul 13 - Wedding Accomplished
They pulled it off, they did, gracefully and with feeling. And the party: bolts of fire flying from human hands, impromptu Vader heads offered to the stars, flames roaring up into amitous night. Ahhhhhh... good times. I love Canada.

Where was I? Oh yes, presenting this cartoon:

Panic Mode

I just bought Planet Hulk and I wanna read it, so I'm gonna be quick about it the rest, here. The links on the last set of replays were wonked; they should work now. Saw Transformers again, enjoyed the good stuff and winced forgivingly at the bad. Now it's on to Potter, I suppose. And back in Canada wondered if last's week strip came from some calamitous encounter with disease; the idea came from a commercial. Be assured my feet are fine.

Fri, July 6 - Wed Ing
Yep, headin' back to Can-style for the weekend, there to witness the joining of an old friend to his love. Then camping. Should be fun, but I can't even start to get ready to go until I've done this, this update, this sworn and happy duty to give you all

Itchy, Scaly Feet

Replays?
A few. Some replays. On the replays page. YEAH!

And speaking of YEAH...
Transformers? I saw it. Hell, I even wrote a review, though not a long one. It's on the reviews page along with all the other, er, reviews.

Fri, Jun 29 - Cartoons!
I've got 'em. Or one, at least. It's this one.

By Bidis Betrayed

Peggle Peggle Peggle
Any new Peggle replays? Just the one, but it's pretty good. Check it out on the Replays page.

Surfer?
I saw it. Him. It. It seems I do not yet believe strongly enough to alter reality. The movie did not, in fact, "rule so much we're just gonna have to abolish democracy and set up a system of government in which all legislative, executive and judicial power is vested soley in this motion picture." It's better than the first one, granted. But tried as I might, I just couldn't find anything or any moment that I really liked. No, wait, scratch that -- Doctor Doom's first use of cosmic power is kinda cool even if he's entirely retarded. And I liked the tarnished Surfer look. But man, Jessica Alba's Sue Storm got on my nerves something fierce, and Galactus was pretty much as bad and as lazy and uninspired as he coulda possibly been, and then there was that problem with the Doctor Doom and the whiny suckiness. I didn't hate hate on the movie; I can sort of tolerate the dudes playing Johnny, Reed and Ben (though man, I momentarily forgot how ass Reed's stretchiness looks). If it had just delivered one decently cool or awesome scene, I would have been able to recommend it. But it didn't quite. Maybe the third one if Alba can ratchet that frown off her face.

Transformers, though, that's gonna be the biggie. Oh yeah. OH YEAH.

Fri, June 22 - The Origin of Spidor Man
Whew, am I sweaty! Like, ridiculously so. I dunno why it happens, and so prodigiously, every time I play foosball. It's not as though foos constitutes any real kind of exercise and yet once I start to play I self-soak, I rivulate, I drip with melted salt. Passersby are moved to ask if I just took a shower. I drench and discard ream after ream of paper towel. Nothing helps.

Also, my left shoulder is sore like a bitch for some reason. It was like this when I woke up this morning. Here's the cartoon.

Clap Your Hands

Weekend in Edtown
Ah, it's always good to return to Canada. A public thanks to Fish for hosting a lovely bang-up, wherever there was a hang-up, on Friday evening. Scrotes flew through the air that night, lodged themselves in trees, drove friends to inhuman extremes of athleticism. Humans from multiple walks of life were seen and interacted with. Was good. And there was art, fun social art, the visual and contextual details of which live eternal at makeitnotsuck.blogspot.com. Long live Sheri Barclay!

Fri, June 15 - oof
Mmm, my guts are being kind of unkind at the moment and I gotta get up early tomorrow to fly to Edmonton, so I hope you all don't take it too hard if I just post the strip and conk out. So first, the strip:

Wasteland

And then, sleep! Zzzzz...
Fri, June 8 - Zip!
All righty folks, no dillyin' or dallyin', I wanna warp this one up quick cuz I got plans. Don't really know much about 'em but plans they are, so let's get on it with this harrowing strip.

Terry, Industrious Sloth

Replays!
Got a few more for you Peggle-playin' folks, so swing on by the Replays page and give 'em a try!

Ohboyohboy!
Only a week until Silver Surfer! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Tee-hee-hee!

Fri, June 1 - June!
June, damn, that's like, crazy. Whew.

Anyway, I've been puttering and hawing and avoiding doing it, but I suppose the time is now to reveal this select message to you all:

Crisis: Danger Zone


Hopes, Dreams
I don't know much, but of this I am certain: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is going to be awesome. That's right. You heard me. It's gonna rule so much we're just gonna have to abolish democracy and set up a system of government in which all legislative, executive and judicial power is vested soley in this motion picture. I say this knowing full well that the first movie was a giant load. But this one's gonna be different. The Surfer's gonna be badass. The FF power-switching is gonna to be funny and revealing of character. Galactus is gonna be terrifying and better than anything we imagined. I swear this. I will make it so by the force of my belief. God himself will change his mind.
Fri, May 25 -- Bruurrrrraaaap!
Ooops, sorry, I burped. Better out than in, as some English comic writers have remarked in comics I've read over the last few months. It's tough to resist these oh-so-relevant phrases, but they burn. They burn in, and you find yourself adopting them, comforting ejaculations like "Sweet!" and "Awesome" and "That's a ferocious workshop!" as though you knew nothing else and you don't, because you say the euphonic every time and can't think of any new thing to say.

Hmmmm... How'd I slip into the second person in that previous paragraph, dicklike, with all the accusatory "you"s as though they were not "me"s or "I"s?

Oh, that's right. I'm loaded. Well, then. The cartoon, here:

Go In For the Kill

Fri, May 18 - All Things Endure
Even those most transient of things, those single whispers, those insta-lost thoughts, if they ever were then they always are, somewhen. So it should come as no surprise to see a cartoon discussing this theme in more detail, a cartoon like

Sec's Endurance

Pardon me...
I'm afraid I'm not much use this week. I'm still slack and spent after an afternoon jizzing all over the new Transformers trailer. I think I'm perfectly placed to enjoy this movie. I never watched and give no shit about the show, so I can go in without a trace of the sloughy weight of canon I'd usually carry into this sort of thing. It's just gonna be robots turning into things and beating each other up. And splosions. It's all I, or anyone, can think about.

More Replays
It's true!

Bizarre!
Bizarro on Smallville, the season-ender, no less! Who could possibly have thunk it?

Fri, May 11 - Phase Rectification
It's been on my mind lately, tumbling around in there among rotating bricks and angles on paths and material characteristics. It's really no wonder I fell easily to the

Circulons

Code Guardian
Almost forgot, I wanted to pass on a tip from a reader about video of a giant robot versus some planes. I like the planes.

Fri, May 4 - I'm not ready
to talk about last week's episode of Doctor Who. I'm just not ready to deal with the strategic or emotional implications, which are far-reaching. Instead, here's this week's cartoon.

Conversational

Replays!
Yep, got some more Peggle replays up in the ol' Replays section, some sweet ones. Man, at PopCap I'm goin' through the Peggle Level Editor, writing up a little instruction manual... you can do so many things with it! Wheeee!

Spidey!
Comin' up! I wish I could generate more enthusiasm, but here I am, not attending a midnight screening, with no plans or tickets to see it tomorrow, content to wait. Doesn't sound like the Stephen Notley *I* know, that's for sure.

The Last King of Scotland, though, now there's a movie. It just keeps slammin' you in the guts, all the way through. Whew.

Fri, Apr 27 - See y'all next week!
Hang on. Getting ahead of myself. This week is still this week. There's work to be done. For one, and mainly, there's a strip:

Sec's Night In

I'm kinda horrified and trapped right now. I drew this strip a two weekends ago and now I find myself posting it at this very moment right between the BBC airings of Daleks in Manhattan, which I've seen and in which Dalek Sec (for whom I had such big plans) incredibly works himself, and the follow-up episode of the two-part series The Evolution of the Daleks, which I hope to see this weekend and in which happens I know not, but I suspect it'll have a big impact on how I feel about ol' Sec. So as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm torn. Really torn.

Fri, Apr 20 -- Burp!
Pardon me! It's true, I drank. But can you blame me? We wished farewell to some solid Irish at PopCap this (yesterday, Thursday) evening. Brian, Declan, seriously their names, head back to the Emerald Isles after having busted themselves on putting Chuzzle on cell phones, and we were called to drink at the nearby pub in celebration/waking. I knew I had to do this update, I knew I was departing for APE tomorrow, I knew more than these that I had to get back home before 8 pm to ensure that I saw Smallville (knowing I'd set the channel and VCR but still expecting myself to have screwed it up as I've done countless dozens of time in the past), and yet still, knowing all these, I succumbed to fine fellowship and easily-purchased doubles. So, for those of you who worry about my drinking, worry on, but worry less.

For in this update I have for you a cartoon, a strip, a thinger for ys'all.

Super Good Value

APE!
Wow, I didn't even pay attention and it happened anyway. It's tomorrow, Saturday I mean. I'll be there, flower-frocked, books-hawking. Please join me.

I also have a slab of HTML from some valued comicy colleagues, so let's see if I can insert it:
- - -

The Cartoonists With Attitude gang will be out in full force in San Francisco this April 21-22 for the Alternative Press Expo (APE). Confirmed CWAers:

And in case you weren't aware, you should really read our group blog (also available as an RSS feed or LiveJournal feed) if you want to get all our blogs and most of our cartoons in one convenient place. We also have a not-so-frequently updated Cartoonists With Attitude MySpace page if you want to be our friend.

- - -
Hmmm... seems to work. And it's true. I and many other Attitudinal cartoonists will be at APE, whooping it up as only cartoonists shall. Seriously, check it out!

Peggle Replays
Got a few more for y'all. Actually, a lot more, a 36-replay slab I got from a reader. I've zipped it up and stuck it on the brand-new Peggle Replays Page, noted here as well as on the left column of this page right above the Infrequently Asked Questions.. It may not be fancy, but it's got Peggle Replays on it! Or at least, I hope it does... I haven't actually constructed it yet. Maybe I should do that...

Okee dokee. Done. Likely the page will explode on contact, but I'm willing to upload it. Keep sending in your replays!!

Fri, Apr 13 - Oh No!
It's Friday the 13th! Something terrible is about to happen! Or so I'm told! Where did that whole Friday the 13th thing come from anyway! And why am I ending my sentences with exclamation marks, even the ones that clearly call for question marks! Terrible, mysterious! There can only be one explanation!

Pants Pooping!

More Peggle, More Peggle!
Some more replays sent in by readers: High Fever, Really High Fever, Lucky Bucket, Lucky End, BALLEr, 399Kshot, 598K, 500K and... uh... that's it, I think. As always, right-click and "Save As" to your Peggle replay folder!

Word to the Grindhouse!
Go go go! If you're the sort of person who's reading this then chances bulge that you're the sort of person who will enjoy Grindhouse. I did, mightily, Planet Terror with its oozy shovelloads of crowd-pleasing awesome, Death Proof with its delicious missing scene and its yaberizing and Kurt Russellizing and crazy carizing and everythingelseizing, also to mention the trailers and the scraggly film stock and the way the whole thing had a rhythm the two pieces never could have had apart. I'm not writing a full review but there's a very nice one here. Go! This thing deserves to make some money!

Alternative Press Expo (APE!)
Whew, that time again? Really? APE? Indeed it is, or almost, just next weekend in San Francisco. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop on by and gawk at the funny cartoonist with the nonsense on his head. It'll be me!

Fri, Apr 6 - Ooorg!
Whew! Exhausted! Not from drinking, either, but from watching 28 Days Later. I watched the trailer for 28 Weeks Later and felt waves of underwhelment wash over me, so I wanted to see the real thing to wash the taste out of my mouth. Ah... much better.

Anyway, my purpose this Friday is as it is every Friday, which is to present another appalling episode of Bob the Angry Flower. And so it must be today as I share with you

Six Years
Fri, Mar 30 - Ung!
I don't know what it is about me and updates lately; I seem to be consuming a lot of meat just prior to doing them. Two weeks ago was pot roast, this week it's a rare sirloin steak at a local pub. It's good, I liked it, but man, it's heavy meat, it'll bring you down. So with that, and after having gotten all up in my taxes today, I feel like making this a brisk one and calling it a night. So! Cartoonery as follows:

Ring Bell

Girly G
Thanks to the folks who wrote in to point out the BtAF callout in Phil Foglio's online epical storytelling thingamajagger, Girl Genius. Neato!

More Replays
I got a few Peggle replays over the week and I'm gonna throw 'em up. Some are good, others less so: One More Second, Best First Shot Ever, Big Bang, OMFGAME, SuperKickUltra, Bouncy, Cool Clear, DENIED, Riding On A Bucket, Rocket Powah and The Rekkid Spins. As always (or at least for now) right-click the links and "Save As" to your Peggle Replays directory. Keep 'em comin'!

Fri, Mar 23 - Grug!
URg! So much on the long-delayed Peggle release party! Drinks, admittedly! Cartoon, presented to yer all! Weak sauce, drunken deep-from!

Futurist Peter Schwartz!

Peggle Replays!
Oh, if only I was sober enough to truly deliver the goods! All I can deliver right this second is this shot from an angryflower reader. But wait! How do I experience a Peggle Replay?

How Do I Experience a Peggle Replay?
First, download and install Peggle. Then, er, I'm not sure. I don't know if you have to have unlocked the replay level in order to witness it. Let's imagine that you don't. What you wanna do is right-click the replay link above (or here) and "Save As" to your Replay folder, which is likely to be:

c:\Program Files\PopCapGames\Peggle Deluxe\userdata\replays

in a typical non-Vista install (if you didn't install typically then you're gonna have to launch Peggle, click "Replays", then "Open Folders", then sit through the screen resolution on-and-offs until you get a Windows folder that tells you where it is. Brutal, I know, but that's Vista).

So Much Work!
You're telling me! And I'm completely hosed! Why so complicated? Because it IS complicated! You try making your game work on everything AND Vista! And until we come up with some fancy two-click installer that'll do it all, we're stuck with this. Nonetheless, that's how it's done. Given all that, allow me to drop in a handful o' more shots to make it worth your while:
2ahhs (nice to hear the ahh chorus, even if it takes some flipping),
flower (a decent closeup of Tula's Flower Power),
miker_will_love_it (don't ask about the name),
spookyowns (it does),
demogood (it is),
throwup (you'll see),
NOOOOO (best to experience it for yourself),
Bitchin (it gives and gives),
Ghost Swoosh (a pleasing shot),
Lucky Shot (reasonably lucky).

Right-click, "Save as," dump dump dump, then fire up Peggle and click the Replays button on the Main Menu. I have no supreme QA skillz so I can only hope and assume that these will work. They do on my system! Enjoy enjoy, and let me know which ones are broken! And send in yours!
Fri, Mar 16 - Full!
Oof, I don't know how much I can do for the update this week, folks. I'm full, full, so very full of pot roast. There's a cafe, the Five Point, that advertises Seattle's Best Pot Roast 24 Hours on a piece of cut-out colored paper on the door. I haven't eaten every other pot roast in Seattle, so I'm not really able to speak on the issue of whether it's the best, but it's very good. Super soft and tender, simering in its own juices for decades, deeply marbled, wrought through with flavorful filmy tissue, gravied unto drowning. Even now I feel it spreading through my being.

Speaking of which, here's the cartoon.

More Control

Eh?
So full. So sleepy. Play Peggle. Play Star Control.

Fri, Mar 9 - Play!
Now then, now then, what manner of bafflous cartoonery lies fresh on the table for this week's examination? What nonsensical, comical thing might it have to say?

These Ads

Peggle Peggle!
I posted about PopCap's new game Peggle last week and since then I've been doing Google searches on Peggle just to see what people are saying about it (Peggle). Frustratingly, little has yet been said. What the hell? Furthermore, as I dig through the pages Goggle tosses me that contain the word "Peggle", I click and click and click and see sites in Arabic pop up before I ever see angryflower.com. Again, what is the hell? I guess I didn't say "Peggle" enough.

StarCon: Milieu
Speaking of games, we've managed to get Star Control 2 running at work on an old, busted panasonic 3DO. How old, how busted? So OB that we have to jam two chunks of metal into the power cord and live wire at the back of the box each time we play it. But play it it does, and it is balls fun. There's a couple of old hardcore StarCon masters from way back and one of the company's founders -- who'd never seen it before two weeks ago-- now loves it so much he's having dreams about it. It's a blast to be hanging out with the Shofixti and Pkunk again, knowing and throwing around terms like "fusion blasts" and "B.U.T.T. bombs" and "ZapSats," getting owned in the face, just enjoying a beautifully crafted game. PC folks can and should download the open-source Ur-Quan Masters port. It's uncommonly good.

Fri, Mar 2 - Boing!
Man, what's with the onomatopoetic update headlines? "Boing" this week, "Oink" last week... is this some kinda trend? I sure hope not. If only I had the power to affect how it turned out, some position of responsibility and authority on this website such that I could effect my preference. But my powers have been dulled by wearying and eternal go-rounds of

Strife


Peggle!

What is Peggle?
Ah, I love this game, have done ever since I saw it in its prototypical, primitive self when I first moved to Seattle and started working at PopCap. Even as simple lines and circles, without art, without fancy, without bells and carosels, it was super fun to play. You could play it for hours and I did and then again for more and more and many more. It was just flat-out fun. And the the folks at PopCap took that fun and built it up into a gleaming coliseum of chrome with magic powers, goofy characters, absurd zoom-ins, particles a-flyin', rainbows, fever, shiny shiny shiny... ahh. Or rather, "Ahhh!" like it's sung in the game.

It's been bizarre sitting on this thing for so long without being able to talk about it, again and again playing and thinking, "Holy crap are people gonna crap when they see this." And now it's out. It's actually out and I can finally tell people to download it and check it out. You should. It's cool.
Fri, Feb 23 - Oink!
Well, I'm fresh back from the rock show/40th birthday of my upstairs neighbor and I expect I'm a little tippled. Indeed, I so expect it that I'm writing up this update a day before it even happens; that way I won't have to struggle and backspace to put it all together. I'll simply fire up my file transfer program, hit a few buttons and --pink!-- this cartoon

Consensus

will be loosed on the world.

Ghost Rider
All right, now I know I'm getting soft. Time was I'd boil with energy to hate on a movie like this, but I just can't find it in me to rag on it. Yes, it's entirely silly. Yes, the chump-ass bad guy was backed up by three of the chump-assest flunkies I've pretty much ever seen. Yes, Nicholas Cage can't seem to find any characteristics for Johnny Blaze besides petulance and dozy dopiness. Yes, the fatty goth chick from the commercial turns in the most lively performance in the movie. And yet, why hate? It's not as though the original comic character was brimming with tantalizing untapped potential that has now been ruined. He was always cheese and he continues to be cheese. Does anything cool happen? Not really, but then, nothing really egregiously offensive happened either. I call that a draw.

A Link?
Just a quick one, as much so I can find it later when I need it as anything else. This comes from DaniDraws.com, via BoingBoing, and it's a list of 100 different creative things that creative people can do to help flowize otherwise gummy creative juices. I know, I know, sounds like complete assball "Stop and smell a rose"crap, but she's actually organized them into useful categories and there are some pretty good excercises in there.

Another Link?
Oh, I suppose, just a little article on Alternet called Leaving Iraq: Apocolypse Not that questions the whole "We have to stay because we're the only thing keeping a lid on the full-scale megaorgy of bloodletting that'll occur when we leave" assumption that pervades the current Mesopotamic discussion.
Fri, Feb 16 - Kryptonite!
Or no, wait. Meteor rocks. That's better. I don't know why I'm so into Smallville, but into it I am, so it's important to me to keep the terminology consistent. What the hell am I talking about? Ah, yes, a cartoon:

Prize Pods
Fri, Feb 9 - Why, hello!
Well then, well then. C'mon in. Have a seat. Can I get you anything? A Sprite, or mineral water? Some chips? No? How about a cartoon? How about this one?

DMAA

Hmmm...
I realize I haven't been posting much besides the cartoon these days, no long rants or movie gabbin'. I should be doing more but the truth is I just haven't seen anything super startling lately in either the cinematic or political realms. Something's gonna come along though, I promise, and I kinda feel like it'll be soon. There's gonna be something worth yelling about before we know it. Trust me.

Oh yeah...
This isn't really yelling, but I heard tell today that Bookworm Adventures won an award called a "Zeeby" for Best Story as well as for Best Game Design and maybe even some others... we only got fragmentary reports. Nonetheless, awesome! Something I did won an award! Wheeee! Now go buy the game.
Fri, Feb 2 - Into It
Well, here we are, February, and I just got back from a night of uncertain drinking to present this current exercise in cartooning wizardry to you, you readers, bless you all.

Roller
Fri, Jan 26 - Really? That late?
Golly, this month just sailed by, didn't it? Did it? Perhaps it's just me. Certainly my week-sense has been damaged by not having a current calendar around any more.

So! Um... a strip.

blut

Hmmm....
Fri, Jan 19 -- Hold it!
All right, all right, quiet down out there. No need to panic. Everything is completely under control. The cartoon is here. It's right here, and it will solve all your problems.

Surging

Derrrr...
Saw Pan's Labyrinth. I can see why critics love it so much. It feels like a scar. It's got that labile Guillermo Del Toro ickiness, disquieting earthy nastiness. It's a fairy tale, with fairies in it, but it's not about the little girl who finds the magic key to heal her mother. It's grounded in Franco's Spain in 1944; not a very nice place. But the magical world is no nicer, creepy and disturbing, no fanciful escape from an unpleasant reality. The real and unreal worlds mix in strange proportions. It's a weird-feeling movie, downbeat, literally downbeat in that every beat goes down, deeper into the earth. And it doesn't come back up.
Fri, Jan 12 -- Eek!
What the-- it's Friday morning? Holy Christ! I got so wrapped up thinkin' about the sequel to Bookworm Adventures I plum forgot what day it was and now I've got seven minutes to get to work. So, quick update this time around, not a lot of whistles, bells or super-fancy options. Just the strip:

Detecting Huge Fudge Levels

All right, I'm off! I sure hope Pan's Labyrinth is good!
Fri, Jan 5, 2007 -- Made it!
Made it out, made it back, clean across the border, twice. Hope all you cats and rats enjoyed your holidaying. Apparently it's 2007 now, the time of all things. Feelin' surgey already.

So, cartoons. As promised, two to make up for the week off. First we have a simple story, a sweet romance I have chosen to call

Swept Away

Then, immediately following that, we have this somewhat oddball effort, loosely "inspired" by Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which I consumed just before leaving.

Secret Scroll

Yep, cartoons
I don't know about you folks, but I had a pretty good time abroad. It's always nourishing to breath the air of a freeish nation, to drink countless gin and tonics, to catch up with cronies and to admire a plentitude of the pretty girls Edmontonia has to offer. True, it was painful to feel a flicker of hometown interest in the Oilers just as powerful forces drove every puck within howitzer range into their goal, but at least it allowed me to feel Canadian again, even if it was only pretend.

Read some good books, too. Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics is a satisfying put-down of string theory, not as ferocious as I'd like but illuminating about how a neat idea took hold, promised everything and then, dangling just out of reach, led huge numbers of physicists away from rigor on a rainbow road to Fogland. George Packer's The Assassin's Gate is similiarly illuminating as he scurries all over Iraq and the American halls of power detailing how what he (bizarrely) seemed to think was a good idea had its guts and liver blown out by organizational and conceptual screwups of every sort. He still looks for the up side but man, the book is an indictment, and it's hot. It's a stroker.

And that, for now, is all. But unless this time next week I am dead or armless, I swear I will return.
Thurs, Dec 21 - Out
Well, here we are at the last update of the year. Yes, I know, there's another Friday this year but I will be in no position to do the update when it sweeps across my life, ensconced as I will be in my sister's Edmontonian home. I leave tomorrow. In fact, and I hope you folks don't take this the wrong way, but I gotta lot of crap left to pack and do before my departure so I'm gonna make this update quick and bitterly sweet. Here is the strip:

Sayonara Kofi

The next update will have two cartoons in it, if that's any consolation. I wish you all year-end glory, fresh hope and prosperous tidings in the lead-up to and early months of 2007.
Fri, Dec 15 - Whoosh!
Holy bap, are we here in the 'Attle getting the pounding, in form of both wind and rain. Usually when it rains around here it's not really serious, it's a mild titter of damp, but today has been ugly and serious drear. Not raindrops anymore but swirling clouds of water you can see spiral in and down and across before snap-leap-shoving into your face. Under normal circumstances this would put me out, but luckily I've had a bracing dose of

Chakra Realignment Therapy

Anything else?
Not too too much, though I did read an interesting article on Commondreams.org the other day, "Why Withdrawal is Unmentionable," which points out that --despite all the breathless ISG puttering-- until we start talking about closing bases in Iraq, we're not really talking.

Fri, Dec 8 -- What? Oh!
Man, almost forgot about the site update this week. Not for the usual reason--drunkenness--but because I just got so wrapped up in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction game I borrowed from work. I know, I know, it's been out forever, and I knew it was all Grand Theft Hulk, I'd played it before, but jeez, really having the freedom to sit down with it and bash stuff and leap around... bliss.

So, it's a bit later than I'd like so I should probably get to sleep, so here's the strip:

Born Again Thanks to all the folks who wrote in about Bookworm Adventures; I agree, it is a good game. I must confess, however, I'm not the author of all the witty little loading screen bits, the "Dividing by zero"..."Solving Fermat's Last Theorem"..."Spelling A-R-C-H-I-T-E-K-T" stuff. That was all by Programmer/Robot Jeff Weinstein. Bastard wrote the funniest stuff in the game.

And hell, while I'm at it, I had a book out earlier this year. Dog Killer and everything! You should click on the link and buy it!
Earlier update is here! Next update is here!
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