bernieh

Comic 254: What is Sexy?

2008-07-11T16:44:10Z

Groovy fan "Graylensman" sent in a copy of this banner ad which was apparently running on the site recently:

... 50K.

Comic 253: Hail Madonna

2008-07-03T20:59:21Z

Still busy trying to catch up from a (totally great) vacation in Chicago last week, so I had to do a bunch of art-recycling for this comic, and this'll be a short blog post.

The latest gossip going around New York is that (married) Yankee third-baseman Alex Rodriguez is having an affair with (married) entertainer Madonna. There's nothing remotely interesting to me about this "scandal", but it did lead me to compile a list of all the women that teammate Derek Jeter's been linked with, for comparison's sake.

Jessica Alba
Jessica Biel
Jordana Brewster (actress)
Mariah Carey
Lara Dutta (former Miss Universe)
Joy Enriquez (singer)
Vida Guerra (model)
Scarlett Johansson
Minka Kelly (actress)
Adriana Lima
Vanessa Minnillo (MTV VJ)
Gabrielle Union

Holy smokes. Poor A-Rod.

Comic 252: Scalp 'um

2008-06-28T13:17:22Z

On Friday, the Mets and Yankees played the third-ever "subway double-header" in the history of the two teams - the 1st game at Yankee Stadium, and the nightcap at Shea. This is pretty cool by itself, but the fact that we're in the final year of BOTH these stadiums' existences makes it fairly awesome. I would've been tempted to go if both teams didn't suck and I didn't care about having enough money left over to feed my family.

But the rest of this post will be about Monopoly. I was dismayed to find out that the classic "You have won second place in a beauty contest! Collect $10" Community Chest card was replaced, in the Monopoly: Here and Now Edition released in 2007, with "You have won second prize on a reality TV show! Collect $100,000". First of all, that's all kinds of lame. Second, that's 200 of those orange $500 bills! Sucks to be the banker. Ok, so they probably upped the denominations of the bills... or have they incorporated credit cards into the game? Or maybe you fake-PayPal each other. Man, I hate progress. I miss the good ol' days where you could buy entire city blocks for $400... at most.

I was also shocked to find out that that rule that we all knew and loved as kids - where you won whatever money that had accumulated in the center of the board when you landed on the "Free Parking" space - is not, and has never been, an official rule of Monopoly. Officially, when you land on that space, nothing happens. Nothing. So what I'm wondering is, how did we all learn to play that way? It's not like it's some drinking game that spreads by word of mouth and gathers all sorts of weird variations along the way. It's a game that you buy, and pow, there's the rules in the box. Did/do you play with the "Free Parking" jackpot rule? Do you remember who taught it to you?

Lastly, the rudest, most anti-social thing I've ever done in my life was because on Monopoly. I was about 7 years old, and this girl from the neighborhood, who was maybe 8 or 9, used to love to come over and play with me. All I remember is that she had long blonde hair, and was really pushy. She did a lot of annoying things, but the thing that bugged me the most was that she played Monopoly ALL WRONG, starting us out with the wrong amount of money, buying houses at the wrong times... and I think she even IGNORED THE FREE PARKING JACKPOT RULE. So one day, I was having lunch at my kitchen table when I saw her arrive in our backyard on her bike. She saw me sitting there through the sliding glass doors of the house and mouthed the words, "Do you wanna come out and play?" And without a word, I just ignored her and went upstairs. That was the last time I ever saw her.

Seriously I have no idea what I was thinking. Chalk it up to being 7. Hey pushy blonde girl from Forest Hills (shit I don't even remember her name... Bridget?), I'm sorry! Send me a MySpace invite; I'll put you in my Top 8. For a week. And let's play Monopoly your way!

Comic 251: Low-bandwidth Porn

2008-06-20T15:41:56Z

Places where I've done at least an hour of work during a work day with my laptop: a coffee shop, libraries, hotel rooms, hotel lobbies, a diner, airports, my health club, the mall, my car, a Honda dealership, and a bar. Am I proud of myself? Yes.

Recently, I also discovered that I can use my cell phone as a broadband modem (if you have a Palm Treo and wanna learn how, drop me a line). Which opens up a world of telecommuting possibilities. So far the park, the beach, and strip clubs have been suggested to me. I'm hoping one day soon to work from outer space.

Because someone's asked already, the full version of the ASCII pic in panel 4 can be found here. Perv!

Comic 250: Summer in NY

2008-06-12T21:03:24Z

Whoa, it wasn't 'til I went to upload this new comic that I realized this is the big two-five-oh. What does that mean? It means that at the current pace, it'll be only 5 more years 'til 500! Remind me when I hit that one and I promise I'll buy you all ice cream.

Actually you know what I'm gonna do? I get emails all the time from folks asking me to write more about NYC, or to have Abe and Preston visit their city, or to use their joke, or to get Abe a girlfriend, or even "I would totally be Abe's girlfriend!" So what I'm gonna do is give you a chance to get involved. HERE'S WHAT TO DO:

UPLOAD (in rough order of priority):
- photos that'd make a good background for a comic*, and/or
- photos of yourself with space next to you for Abe and/or Preston to come "hang out", and/or
- just plain photos of yourself, and/or
- anything at all you think that I, or fans of aLp, would find interesting

TO:
- Flickr group Alien Loves Predator, and/or
- Flickr tag alienlovespredator, and/or
- the aLp Facebook group

In all cases you'll be implicitly giving me permission to use your photo(s) on my site, but of course you'll get full credit where applicable. Thanks!

* - Take a look at some of the backgrounds I use in the comic to get a sense of what makes a good background photo. Ideally it should have space in the upper portion for dialogue balloons, and be high resolution, but I'll take what ya got! Below are two good examples...)

Comic 249: More Like Suckquiem

2008-06-05T19:29:29Z

This is my farewell to Hillary's campaign. I've been in Obama's camp this whole time but I do feel that Hillary got unfairly reamed in the press and on the net. If there were technically still a chance for her to win the race, as there totally was back when everyone started calling for her to stop kidding herself and quit, then why shouldn't she keep going? Because it hurts the party? That's BS. And it's not like any of us can understand this, but I assume that when you run for president, you run for president. You don't just do it for the good of the country; you do it because you want to be president, which isn't a dream that is or should be easy to give up, especially not after you've spent your whole life preparing for it, and millions of dollars of your own dough, as well as that of all the people who contributed from their own pockets because they're inspired by you.

So I finally rented and watched AvP:R. Sure, it was a terrible movie, with cardboard characters and not much excitement, but that's all academic. In every way it was better than the first one. It was fun. Kinda. There were plenty of cool moments, but the big problem was every single one of them was shown in that "red-band" trailer that came out last fall. Every single one. I can't think of anything cool in the movie that we hadn't already seen in that trailer. Can you?

So I'm pretty damn sure that if I hadn't seen the trailer, I would've enjoyed the movie a lot more. And then again, there's the chance that I wouldn't have watched the movie at all if I hadn't seen how cool the trailer was. We'll never know. But it looks like, from their perspective, they did it right, given the stinker of a movie they had to work with. They got my money.

Good thing I just got my stimulus check! W00+! Npw I have to go buy the DVD.

Comic 248: Smell You Later

2008-05-29T20:40:04Z

If you believe that bacon makes everything better, check out Crif Dogs on St. Marks near Ave. A. They take a hot dog, deep fry it, wrap it in bacon, deep fry it again, smother it with cheese, deep fry that, and for good measure they deep fry the actual deep fryer. If your body can take it, give it a try - legend has it that they even serve beer at a hidden bar next door (I didn't know this the last time I went).

Thus endeth the B.O. storyline. Sorry it took me almost A YEAR AND A HALF to finish. It was obviously a GRRRREAT idea to start it just when I needed a break. The restrictions of a continuous plot REALLLY helped me regain my momentum. It's TOOOOO BAD that I'm free to be more spontaneous now.

Oh yeah, POTTY-TRAINED TWINS? CHECK. ELAINE SAYS: IS THAT ALL YOU GOT???

Missed update

2008-05-22T13:42:33Z

Another missed update today, sorry. I ALMOST made it in time; the new comic's about 80% done but we're gonna be busy for the long weekend (starting... now) so it'll have to wait 'til next week.

It's been suggested that maybe I should go down to bi-weekly - a relaxed schedule I can keep is better than a more aggressive schedule I can't keep... and there's no doubt I've lost a TON of readers over the past year - but I'm not havin' that just yet. At the very least I gotta wait 'til I'm past this goddamn storyline - it's got ONE MORE installment!!! - and then I can get back to the old, sweeter days of just writing whatever the hell pops into my head. Hopefully that'll get things flowin' again. If it keeps stressing me out, THEN I'll consider making a change.

'Til then, sorry! Join the mailing list, get up in my RSS, or pleasure yourself to my LJ.

In my previous post I broached the subject of torture, allowing for the fact that it'd stir up debate and that I'd be accused of saying things I didn't say. All I really said was that in any past, current or future use of "torture" by our government, our interrogators most certainly don't enjoy the causing of pain (whatever the amount) - it's simply a means to an end, right or wrong. If there were a way to do the same job without it, they'd do it. I don't think the government's biggest distractors even disagree with that. It's just an observation I made.

There's a small debate going on in the previous post's comments section. Join in if you wanna, JUST KEEP IT CIVIL. OR ELSE I'LL WATERBOARD YOUR BALLS.

Comic 247: Don't Tase Me Bro

2008-05-16T19:26:02Z

I've seen a lot of descriptions and demonstrations of the "enhanced interrogation" technique of Waterboarding, and from what I can tell, you don't so much experience pain as much as you mostly "just" fear for your life for the few seconds you can stand it until you "break". I'll definitely allow for the possibility that there IS actually pain involved, and that you can suffer severe lasting psychological effects, but it seems to me that, at least with the way our government's reportedly practiced it, it's specifically designed to be as effective and efficient as possible while causing the MINIMUM amount of pain. No matter how you feel about it, it's not like the CIA are sadists.

This isn't a defense of waterboarding, but rather an excuse for me to link to the Medieval Torture Museum in San Gimignano, Italy, which was one of the most haunting experiences of my life. THIS was how to inflict intentional pain. Elaine and I visited for our 2nd anniversary (we did other less macabre things in Tuscany too), and we both paid for admission, but Elaine had barely entered the first room when she said, "Uh, I'll wait for you outside". I'm glad she did. This illustrated online tour does a good job describing the nasty devices they used in the Medieval times... it's nothing compared to standing face to face with an Iron Maiden like I had the "pleasure" of doing, but if you have any sort of imagination, that link will freak you the hell out.

How many of you knew that the Iron Maiden was an old torture device and not just a metal band? Ok now how many of you knew that Uday Hussein used to put underperforming Iraqi athletes in one as recently as like 10 years ago?

Comic 246: Don't Buzz Them In

2008-05-09T18:13:52Z

I was gonna make a Mitt Romney joke. But then I thought a lot of you wouldn't get it. Then I was gonna make a Schrodinger's cat joke, but then I thought even less of you would get it. Then it turned into a Schrodinger's LOLcat joke, but that was just getting stupid. And that's been done already.

So I went with what you see now; not my best work but it took me like 2 weeks to come up with two words that mean the opposite of each other, both of which you can be at the same time. There's credible and incredible, but they don't make for a good joke. Then there's flammable and inflammable, but as you all know, they actually mean the same thing. Here's a video of Marina from HotForWords.com explaining why.

Obviously her looks are the big reason Marina's so popular, but she does know her shit, as an actual philologist. She's not my type, but hell, put ANYONE in front of a camera telling me about the etymology of words and I'm hooked.

Regarding this old comic, here she is explaining the origin of the phrase "gird your loins" (God, these stillframes are making my site look all smutty).

Sick

2008-05-02T21:18:03Z

Here I go, breaking another promise. Sorry, the new comic won't be going up today after all, cuz I got hit by a nasty cold and I felt like crap both yesterday and today. But you'll see it next week for sure.

Comic 245: Mall Popes

2008-04-24T19:32:45Z

Pretend this comic went up last week, when the pope was still in NY...

Those of you who've been waiting a while for your shop orders, I'm reeeeeally sorry. I had t-shirt shortages as well as printer problems but we're all good to go now so your orders'll be going out in a day or so, if they haven't gone out already. Note that I'm all sold out of fridge magnets for now (though everyone who's ordered already will get 'em). I know I should've at least let you know about the delay but I think I have some sort of aversion to good manners. Sorry...

If you're a fan of photo webcomics - though I'm not sure why you would be - you'll want to check out my buddy Chris Yates' new book of collected Reprographics strips!

Missed update

2008-04-17T19:12:28Z

No new episode today... hey, I made it 4 whole weeks before I missed an update. Taxes killed me this year - seriously, I had to amend six prior-year returns before I even started on 2007's - but now my life is much, MUCH easier. Is that worth anything to you? No, but it makes me feel better saying it.

The new comic will be up any day between tomorrow and - WORST CASE!!! - a week from today.

Comic 244: Four Matches

2008-04-10T21:13:06Z

No real blog post today; our entire block had a short power outage today (a transformer down the street blew with a huge, really cool VZHHEEEEWNRRRR noise) and taxes are kicking my ass. Enjoy the new episode...

Apropos of nothing:

dean: this is one of the things about war. you take what was probably a person with repressed but very controllable violent tendencies, and you leave them completely amoral and fucked up
bernie: i finished Call of Duty 4. it's so fun killing people in that
bernie: when a grenade lands at your feet, a message appears on the screen: "PRESS MIDDLE MOUSE TO THROW BACK!"
bernie: i wonder why anyone gets killed by grenades out there in iraq
dean: they have the old two-button mice

Comic 243: Pheromones

2008-04-03T18:45:53Z

While poking around the net reading about pheromones, I came across this article, with the following excerpt:

In a study to be published in the journal Biology of Reproduction, researchers collected samples from the underarms of men who refrained from using deodorant for four weeks.

Yeah. And then:

The extracts were then blended and applied to the upper lips of 18 women, aged 25 to 45.

First of all, I can think of about 9,000 less ridiculous ways of trying to get a woman to fall for me, including running her over with a car. Second, even if my "experiment" above is successful with one of the women in the "study", no matter how many times she washes her face I am NEVER letting her kiss me.

Comic 242: Celibate Rights

2008-03-27T18:35:13Z

Remember, I'm back and I'm WEEKLY. Shout it from the rooftops, but be careful while you're up there.

My sister-in-law's new boyfriend accidentally dropped and broke my camera. WAY TO MAKE AN IMPRESSION DUDE! I'm only kidding, he feels bad enough about it and is helping me pay for a new one, even though I wasn't gonna hold him responsible. He's just lucky I'm lazy and wasn't gonna shoot new footage for this week's update. Shhhhhhh! Don't tell him that I like NEVER shoot new footage.

My logs tell me that you guys have been clicking on a particular ad that you may or may not see over to the right, the one for Sugardaddie.com... "Dating for the Elite: Successful Men & Gorgeous Single Women". I'm glad you're all thinking pretty highly of yourselves.

Hey, here's two new(ish) fan merchandise pics! Craig looks way hot in his t-shirt, looking out onto the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Eva is a double threat, with her signed print and fridge magnet (frame and Alien plushie acquired elsewhere).


craig		eva

Comic 241: Zero Again

2008-03-20T19:10:31Z

I TOLD you I'd have a new episode up this week. And when I say I'm gonna do something, 2 times out of 10 I DO IT.

AND I'm going back to a WEEKLY SCHEDULE. What day of the week? Not sure. Thursday feels kinda weird to me, so we'll see if I can gravitate towards another day; if I do, we'll see if I can do it without going more than a week without updating.

I just gotta say, how DARE Eliot Spitzer betray the vows of his marriage and have sexual relations with a call-girl? Prostitutes are filthy, unholy people. I mean, LOOK at the girl he was caught with. Her name is Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Just LOOK at this picture of her in a bikini. LOOK at this picture of her where she's topless and barely covering her breasts. No, don't go to her Myspace page; the photos _I_ have of this terrible, lecherous woman are the RACIEST you'll find anywhere. And don't forget to DOWNLOAD her new single, so you may HEAR what the music sounds like of someone who we are TOTALLY SHOCKED is a celebrity now. Let me ALSO now give EXTRA PUBLICITY to that awful man Joe Francis who is responsible for GIRLS GONE WILD because he SAID SOMETHING RELATED TO this girl.

This week

2008-03-17T16:24:13Z

Today's "deadline" aside, I'm gonna have a new strip up this week. And then I'll be going back to WEEKLY.

The "more ambitious" project of mine needs to be postponed, cuz of course nothing goes as planned. But until I get that to where I want it to be, I'll keep doing strips on the ol' weekly sched.

See ya later this week.

J&K+8

2008-02-21T22:45:23Z

Anyone here watch Jon & Kate Plus 8? It's the ongoing "day-in-the-life-of" reality show about this couple who had twin girls 7 years ago, tried for 1 more 3 years ago, and ended up with FREAKING SEXTUPLETS. All of Elaine's mom friends keep asking her if we've seen it. Not like I watch TV anyway, but I'd personally avoided it cuz I just figured it'd be like the Osbournes or some other trashy reality show about some train wreck of a family.

Well we finally caved, mostly cuz Elaine was tired of introducing herself in her mom circles as "the one who hasn't seen Jon & Kate Plus 8"... and it's great! For starters, they're a totally normal middle-class couple - normal jobs, normal looks, normal relationship; in fact, they're so normal that anybody actually hoping to see total insanity will be disappointed. I have to admit there's really nothing that a non-parent would find interesting about it, cuz all they talk about is the ridiculous amounts of laundry, groceries, toys, poop and pee there is but as a parent (especially with twins), I eat this shit up! (So to speak) It's like... this is my life! Only with 6 more kids, but that's just a gimmick to convince themselves this is worth showing on TV.

The best part that we saw was when Kate had to take 2 of the kids to the eye doctor and left the other 6, who didn't have to go, with her sister for the afternoon. She was like, "I can't believe what a RELIEF it is to ONLY deal with TWO KIDS." OH SNAP. All of you parents of 7 or fewer kids... SUCK IT.

I also get why everyone poured the J&K+8 propoganda on Elaine especially thick: they're an Asian guy/white girl couple, like us. And their kids all have that great mixed-breed look (but objectively, they're not as good-looking as ours). So yeah I'll admit, that does make me root for 'em a bit more. This guy Jon's like the Yao Ming of family reality shows.

Relatedly, Elaine's going out partying out with her girlfriends from out of town tonight and crashing at a hotel in the city, so I've got Rachel and Adrian all to myself through tomorrow morning. After they're done watching The Shining, I'm gonna teach 'em to clean my handgun and then it's lemon Pez for dinner!

Happy VD

2008-02-14T22:57:26Z

Happy Valentine's Day!

Some girl at the office today (the one with actual people in it and that I don't work out of) baked brownies today and sent out an email saying they were "in honor of VD". She was wondering why no one wanted any.

Elaine, who really wants to help me turn my new pig sty of a basement office into a pleasant space, got me a Valentine's Day plant today. I love it! Here is what my desk looks like with the new addition that is intentionally green:

click to enlargenate

"Soon"

2008-02-12T02:03:30Z

I owe you all an(other) explanation. It's fine for a guy in my position to say, "I need a break for a bit." It's also fine for me to quit this site altogether. It's fine for me to post nothing but cute pictures of my kids, continue to rake in the ad dollars on the strength of a popular webcomic I used to run and keep selling t-shirts to those of you who keep coming back here and ordering them for lack of anything new to do. Hell, apparently aLp is a finalist for "Outstanding Photographic Comic of the Year" at the "Webcartoonists' Choice Awards" for the second year in a row, despite the fact that I made like 6 new comics all of last year, so hey, maybe I could keep up this racket for another 5 years.

What's not fine is for me to keep stringing you along with rumors of new stuff coming "next week", and "just one more week", and "soon". I feel like a total dick now that I've been doing that since Christmas. Folks are arguing about this in the forums now. I'm sure you'd rather I just said "Come back in 2010" instead of feeding you this "soon" crap I'm dishing out. It's kinda like a slot machine - it's a stupid game that you can't win, but just the slight, random chance that you might unexpectedly win is what keeps you playing. What you really need is for the casino to tell you "you'll win on your 30th pull" and then you can decide whether it's worth playing or not. If I were a casino I'd keep dicking you around (I'd also eat lobster more often), but since I'm not, I'm gonna level with ya. Again.

Two things are holding the next update up. 1) Work's been insane again, and 2) the next installment of aLp involves a hell of a lot more work than any individual one in the past. So in addition to the fact that I haven't had the time to work on it, it's more ambitious than usual, which makes for a brutal combination. Will it be worth it? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that work is gonna keep me snowed under for another 3 weeks or so, and then I swear I'm gonna take one mother of a vacation, and I'm gonna sit down and crank the new aLp out. I'm gonna give myself a conservative deadline - if I don't have it up by Monday, March 17, 2008, I'm gonna quit altogether and take up knitting.

In the meantime, though, I'm gonna try to make good on my promise to blog more here at least. There's no good reason I can't at least do that. It bugged me that I couldn't motivate myself to say even a little something about the unbelievably awesome Super Bowl. So if you still insist on coming back here everyday, even though I've said what I just said above, at least maybe you'll have something to do besides buy my merchandise and join the mailing list.

I love you all!

Old + 3

2008-01-25T19:35:55Z

It's my birthday again today, just like it was last year, and the year before when I turned Old + 1, so that makes me Old + 3.

- Yesterday, when Rachel came downstairs to my office in the basement to get me for dinner, she said, "Daddy, I have a BWOON (balloon) for you." "Oh yeah?" I said, "Where is it?" "In my closet! We got it from Target. Mommy said don't tell you."

At the dinner table, Adrian also goes, "Daddy, we have BWOON for you. And... COMPWOOTER game!" Elaine is trying hard not to crack up. That'll teach her to keep secrets from me.

I haven't gotten the computer game yet, so I can't tell you which one it is, but I can tell you I'm hoping for Call of Duty 4, and my guess for what Elaine actually got me is Guitar Hero 3 (which would also rock).

- Elaine still managed to surprise me this morning when I came down to my office and it was COMPLETELY CLEAN. There used to be dirty clothes everywhere, wires, books, bags, boxes... all gone. Stored. Sorted. Vaccuumed. I stood at the doorway with my mouth open for a minute. This would've taken me a WEEK to do. She did it in an hour this morning while I was still sleeping. I don't know where any of my stuff is anymore, but this is still amazing.

- I got an email from my dad which consists solely of a forward of the automatic reminder that Amazon sent him about my birthday. Subject: "Fwd: Bernie's Birthday Reminder", Message: "Hi. You asked to be reminded today of Bernie's birthday. etc..." That's it. That's AWESOME.

Super busy as always, still working on the next chapter of aLp whenever I get a few free minutes at a time, coming at you... "soon". BLAH BLAH BLAH

Christmas

2007-12-28T18:26:19Z

Apparently Christmas was this week. Who knew? So I won't have anything new for you until next week. We'll kick off the new year right.

How was AvP:R? It looks like it's getting hammered by the critics - at least the critics who bothered to review it. I'll probably go see it eventually anyway; a lot of these guys wouldn't know a good movie if it hugged 'em in the face.

And how was your Christmas? Mine was totally great, and absolutely exhausting. You haven't lived until you've seen your 2.5-year-old son jump on his new trampoline, or your 2.5-year-old daughter try to call Baby Jesus on her toy phone.

Bangtail

2007-12-19T07:30:04Z

Hiya everyone. Sorry for going AWOL again. I'm workin' on something for ya and I hoped to have it up this week, before Christmas and the new movie, so I've been kinda waiting to drop it on ya... but you know, STUFF gets in the way. So I'm here to say this:

- In all likelihood, aLp is not ending.

- In all likelihood, there'll be a renewed focus in the new year.

- In all likelihood, you'll see something new next week.

- ARE YOU PSYCHED FOR AVP:R?? IN ALL LIKELIHOOD I AM

Now you're probably expecting me to say something funny. All I've got is one word, about the reply envelope of my latest Macy's bill:

BANGTAIL.

Accidentally Speaking

2007-11-28T22:50:42Z

This is/was my car. I was driving it, with Elaine in the passenger seat and my kids in their child seats in the back.

EVERYONE'S OKAY - hardly a scratch on any of us. And no one else was involved, thankfully. On Monday, driving home from a really nice holiday weekend with Elaine's family, I took a curve too fast on the Hutchinson River Parkway a few miles from the GW Bridge, lost control of the car on the wet road and slammed into the highway divider on our left. Both airbags deployed, there was a smell of burnt rubber coming into the car and a little bit of smoke, but no one seemed to be hurt. Adrian and Rachel were both crying, but it was probably because they'd been watching Elmo's World on their headrest-mounted DVD screens and he went away so suddenly, without saying goodbye. In theory, the biggest fear in a highway accident like this after you come to a stop and you realize everyone's ok is if someone barrels into you from behind, but in reality you don't have a lot of time to panic about that because after like 2 seconds, you figure no one's hit you YET so you're probably ok. Fortunately that was the case.

In fact the lady in the car behind us stopped, got out to check on us, and stayed with us for 15 minutes while all the emergency crews were arriving. She even helped hold traffic in the lane next to us so I could run over and retrieve our front fender that had gone flying two lanes away and was cutting off traffic in that lane. Absolutely everybody, from the few civilians who stopped to make sure we were ok, to the cops, to the ambulance crew, to the tow truck guy, were all incredibly friendly and helpful, so I give big thanks to all you men and women out there in blue, red, and filthy overalls. You made a bad situation MUCH easier to get through.

As Elaine was expertly calming the kids down, and I was in between talking to the various people explaining what was going to happen, I realized that we had knocked down a pole that was now laying across two lanes of the highway going the OTHER direction, cutting off THOSE lanes. I don't know how we managed not to cause a big disaster with all this debris flying in different directions, but thank God zero people were hurt. I WAS very self-conscious that they were talking about US on all the Ultra Doppler Copter Jam Cam traffic reports. "There's a slowdown on the Hutch going BOTH ways because some idiot who hasn't updated his comic strip in months drives too fast in the rain."

I'd like to thank Elaine's sister Amy and our friend Donna who came to support us at the hospital where we were taken just as a precaution, Amy's husband Duy who left work early and was making calls for us, and especially Donna's husband Marc who went more than 2 hours out of his way to actually drive us all home. THANKS.

I'm one of those people who gives thanks every day for his family and health. Every single day. So I don't need something like this, or a holiday like Thanksgiving, to remind me how truly special my life is. But I admit it does make you appreciate everything just a little bit more when you put the two together.

Those of you that drive, DRIVE CAREFULLY. Now, take a moment to acknowledge that that phrase meant practically nothing to you, and think about it for real. DRIVE. CAREFULLY.

About aLp: It's time for me to make a serious decision about the comic strip, if only for the short term. It's painfully clear that I can't make the comic unless I make myself make it, and that means sticking to some sort of schedule... but of course I'm afraid it'd take over my life like it did before. I kinda enjoyed having my life back this year, even though I know it made the site suck for most of it.

But there's such a huge amount of you still coming to the site after all this, and that makes me REALLY uncomfortable. Kinda like when I ask my kids, "WHO WANTS TO SING A SONG WITH DADDY?!" and they say, "ME ME ME!!", and then like I can't think of a song that's not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or the alphabet song. WHICH ARE THE SAME SONG, BTW.

So, when I finish and post the next comic, I'm gonna either announce I'm going back to some sort of regular schedule, or I'm going to give up the strip altogether and come at you with something else. Don't stick a fork in me yet, however - stay tuned until I make that announcement.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by.

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP IS ALSO THE SAME SONG.