April 13, 2003
Y'all Are Too Niceentry,
In less than twelve hours I got over 20 emails from readers who were concerned about my state of mind. As further proof that Schlock Mercenary readers are extremely intelligent, every gram (tele-gram, I suppose) of content served to reinforce my belief in myself as a decent human being, and none of it left me wishing I'd just kept my feelings to myself. Y'all is good people, I tell ya.
I'm feeling a lot better today. Much of this can be attributed to getting enough sleep. The welcoming pile of positively-charged emails must also be taken into account. Some of you offered dietary advice or recommended simple activities, and those I acted on also helped.
I was not able to take EVERYONE's advice, however. There are only so many hours in the day, and the temptation to compress several activities into one would have me doing things that I imagine to range all the way from "expensive" to "physically impossible." And I don't have a 55-gallon drum OR enough peanut butter.
I read back through the crappy scripts I'd written, and six of the eight that I thought were sucking in excess of the suction possible at sea-level turned out to be salvageable. They were quite funny, in fact, and just needed a little word-smithing to go with properly generated mental pictures of the humor-supporting artwork.
I got six rows drawn on Saturday, and only stopped when I discovered that my hand hurt. Sure, I've still got five rows to go (the week I'm on sports a four-row Sunday and a bonus comic), but the scripts are now just waiting on my achin' hand, which means I'm halfway there.
The only downer now is that BrainShare begins TONIGHT, and my achin' hand is not going to be anywhere near the drawing table again until sometime Wednesday, and then only if I'm lucky. Oh well. I'll destroy the forces occupying that bridge when I come to it (if you are on the bridge, and your systems indicate that you're being painted, I suggest a trip into the river. Laser-guided artillery does NOT take long to arrive on paint.)
If you're planning to attend BrainShare this year, and you want a free doodle, please feel free to ask (the trick may be FINDING me, but I'll be there all week). If you wear a Schlock Mercenary shirt on the convention floor, I'll even INK the doodle. Heck, I might even hand you a stack of Schlock URL cards to hand to the delegates who will certainly be asking you about your quality attire. I find it consistently amusing when my circles of infamy overlap, and if you can amuse me, you'll come out ahead. (Just stay away from that bridge.)