I’ve been talking about The Next Project for a while now. And recently, I’ve also been talking about the “technically-doesn’t-exist-yet” forum. As it turns out, some small bit of information about TNP has surfaced in the forum. If you’ve got questions, feel free to help me make sure all the kinks are worked out of the forum before it officially exists. (No registration needed, but making an account takes an extra sixty seconds at best.)

EEEEEEE!

EEEEEEE!

I’m not a huge roleplaying fan, but (largely thanks to Futurama)I do know who Gary Gygax is. But no heartfelt sentiments here, you’ll have read the one at Websnark because he’s a better writer (and roleplayer) than I am, and I have to leave for work in about… one minute from now. Scratch that, right this second. Seems that sentence took more than a minute to write.

Anyhow, this is probably the best (but not most heartfelt, that would be the one at Websnark) sendoff for the good mister Gygax. (Of course, what self-respecting geek doesn’t read xkcd? You probably saw it before I did.)

“Oh jesus, he’s getting out another rulebook.”

www.heartshapedskull.com.
www.heartshapedskull.com!
…
www.heartshapedskull.com!!

Oh fuck yes.

The video in question. It’s actually pretty cool. Applegeeks is a damn decent comic.

Now that I think of it, they might have a demo unit at an art supply store… There’s one down the street from me, too…

There will be one more photo-based comic. Two artists, both much better than me, posted videos in the same day. The next one should be better.

If you want to know what all that shit is on my computer, enjoy this photo without me in the way. I probably violated four dozen copyrights and trademarks with this photo. Um, fair use?

The story of Ness getting run out of town, and indeed what town it was, will be revealed. But not any time soon.

The comic in question at Wikipedia, I’d suggest going to Amazon and getting the one volume edition. It’s a fucking two inch thick comic book. (I don’t know about you, but that thought alone makes me salivate.)

Remind me to never wait before posting a comic. I waited a couple of days to get the last Maturity strip done before posting this, and in the intervening time I managed to forget everything I wanted to say about this strip except this:

Matriculated. Read it, it’s good.

Edit, Jan 27 2008:
I don’t rightly remember how long it’s been since I put this on here (the trouble with setting a future timestamp for automated updates is that the timestamp is, y’know, set to February 4 (the PSD was last modified Tuesday the 22nd, that seems about right)) but I did remember that I never did link to the strip in question. Oops. (Of course, this won’t actually be public for about 8 days anyhow.) So…
The strip in question
What the fuck is up with the Digital Pimp website? The navigation buttons use an URL that’s relative to the newest link, what the fuck kind of idiot uses numbers that change with each update? And it clearly accepts an URL based on an ID that makes some kind of sense, they just don’t use it for any actual navigation, hence there’s no easily available permalink unless you notice that the URL doesn’t make any fucking sense. [/rant]

Seriously, TENACITY was simple, slow, and sloppy, but at least it wasn’t counterintuitive to use! On the other hand, I didn’t have to resort to alliteration to criticize the digital pimp system.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I couldn’t let this one go without comment. And I even got to use that lame joke on Tim Buckley I’ve been kicking around all day. (I hope he doesn’t obsessively check his referral logs. That could lead to an angry post which would draw a lot of traffic to this site, and I’d hate that. Yes indeed.)

I like Tip. He’s silly.

The stock art is from bstocked and mark45cmd over at deviantArt. Though nearly worthless for artists, it does remain the only place you can find stock without some asshole asking fifty bucks for it.

Hey, look at that! I can get in now! Hooray for the MySQL server actually serving MySQL!

I grow weary of Jessica being my strawman. I think I’ll do something about that in the future.

The Angel Moxie strip in question, though you really ought to read it from the beginning.

“Steve Troop’s tiny southern parrot” refers to his catchall response when someone started picking apart the pseudoscience in Melonpool: “You’ll believe the giant talking hamster, but now…” This explains the “parrot” part. The “tiny” and “southern” parts should be more self-explanatory.

I already know the answer to the question in the last panel. I’m a massive pervert. Non-perverted people don’t give that kind of thing a second thought. Of course, my bias toward badass baggy clothing over spandex may be a factor.

Now, if I were smart, I would’ve done these strips before I said anything on the Venis Board, so the first thing all the Moxie fans see coming in is an in-joke targeted specifically at them. (On the other hand, that in-joke involves tentacles, so maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t…)

One might wonder how Jessica knows about John Prine. Its the same reason I know about John Prine: her dad played John Prine albums a lot when she was a kid. Er, more of a kid. How she’s heard of George Harrison, though, your guess is as good as mine.

The comic in question is from Realms of Ishikaze by Dan Hess. The page itself is behind a subscription wall, so the link only works if you’ve shelled out the three bucks a month for a Wirepop subscription. However, if you’re a cheapskate, Dan is graciously looking the other way while I post a cropped image below.

Now go and subscribe, it’s only three dollars.

I try and make it a rule not to make the punchline of a comic an in-joke, and I told myself that I wouldn’t do anything evil while discussing an all-ages comic, but panel six kinda blew both of those at once. Oops.

(Incidentally, the paraphrase in the fourth panel is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.)