A winner is me!

Explanation for those of you not hip to internet memes. (And for the headline.)

Today was a lovely productive day. The much-hyped dessert violence strips have been sketched and are ready for inking. Barring a horrific inking accident, I am happy to say it's some of my best work yet. Yay!

Not content with merely being badass (and too much of a coward to risk a horrific inking accident) I set off on scripting the next back of comics. Time time I am working without a net. As previously mentioned, most of my strips were scripted or outlined long ago, so I live in fear that I may no longer be able to think of new material. After my quasi-success with the Roddy strips, I set out to do more. Once again, the strips ended up filling a need. The five I conjured up all deal with the Precocious parents reacting to my darling children. Gene Et and Harvey Linkletter are set for their Precocious debut, while the Oven parents remain no where to be seen. (That's what the also-much-hyped parents prequel arc is for!) The strips are going to be artistically adventurous and are lovingly amoral. If you want to know what *I* consider funny, allow me to share a deleted line from one of the comics: "It's a real bummer if you're HIV..." Those in the know are laughing right now. Those not are perhaps terrified. Either way, I'm entertained. (The "bummer" line is going to end up the comic's title.)

Edit: If every cloud has a silver lining, the inverse is true. Every bright, sunshiny day causes sunburn and maybe skin cancer. I was so excited that I stayed up all night working. This is going to wreck me for the next week at least, but at least I got some sunshine from it. The result was ten strips, laid out,sketched and ready to ink.

Progress was only halted by three factors:

1) The Australian Open is held in Australia (who knew?) - which means I was watching some very exciting matches live. Watching the plucky underdog chick come so close to the semifinals, only to choke away at least three 40-love leads and several deuceamajigs (technical term) was both inspirational and realistic. And unfortunately engrossing. Watching Andy Roddick play even with a player who spent most of the match debilitated by heatstroke or something until he was forced to retire made me proud to be an American. Let me explain: American athletes are often spunky, deeply flawed and carelessly talented. Time and time again, Americans lose due to a lack of discipline. Why is this a good thing? Because the best (technical) atheletes are built by rigid, dehumanizing training. (Think Chinese gymnast mills.) I'd rather be represented by the boastful clusterfuck that is Bode Miller than "flexibly-aged" He Kexin. America: If we can't beat you, we'll beat ourselves!

2) Finding links to explain the geek references in this post lead me to the TV tropes and idioms site. (Damn you, Andrew. If you hadn't told me about it I never would have investigated!) I knew it was an all-consuming time suck, but it was just so interesting!

3) I ran out of pre-lined strips. It's a simple process to go mark off panels for new strips, but the process of getting up and moving opened me to distraction. By the time plucky underdog's final surge fell short, I was reading all the examples of how Star Trek: Voyager failed in list after list. At this point, I was in the undead state - not able to sleep, but also no remotely able to function properly. One more strip got scripted - which features cynical parenting, educational corruption, alcohol consumption and automotive vandalism - but that was it for me. (I'm running that strip on a Saturday, meaning it'll be the active strip for TWO days!) Since it takes me about four hours to wind down and sleep FROM THE POINT WHEN I DECIDE TO GO TO BED - and that is WITH a sleeping pill, which I did not take this time, involved - I should be falling asleep approximately 10 minutes after my "get the fuck up and take your Focusin" alarm sounds. Yeehaw. Silver lining: I ran out of Focusin and my shrink messed up the script, meaning procuring more is more hassle than Major League Baseball conspiracies are worth.

At least I got to watch some pretty snow falling.