Heads up, everybody. Sandra and I will be opening pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars next week — probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.

If you want to be a little more sure you don’t miss the announcement you can subscribe to Blógünder Schlock via email. Does this put you on my blog’s mailing list? Well, yeah. And that might get noisy, even though comments won’t be included in that feed. Good news, though: at the rate I usually blog, in the next ten days there will only be maybe half a dozen posts, one of which will be the one you’re waiting for.

(Yes, I’ll also post the announcement here in Live Journal. But you can never be too sure, right?)

I’m not sure what limit Sandra is going to impose on me for sketch editions this time around. Last time I did 1,234, and I kind of hurt myself. A lot. Advil is now off the menu. Anyway, between Comic-Con and WorldCon we’ve already sold or otherwise accounted for close to 200, which means there should be at least 800 available for you to purchase (I won’t let Sandra pick a number lower than 1,000.) We’ll leave that option up in the store until all the sketch editions she’ll allow me to draw have been spoken for.

I was making curry yesterday afternoon, and I was making it hot. I have a bottle of 160,000 scoville pepper sauce, which I was injudiciously splorting into the crock pot. I closed up the bottle, put it away, and then VERY injudiciously rubbed my eye.

There was an explosion of pain, and I realized why pepper spray is so effective. I was suddenly blind, not because my eyes didn’t work, but because my eyelids refused to open.

I went to the sink and NEVER DO THIS spashed water on my face. This freed up unbound capsaicin molecules to float off to new nerve endings, resulting in a fresh explosion of pain in new places throughout the orbit of my right eye.

I didn’t panic. I know enough about this stuff to know that since I could still breathe I hadn’t had enough to send me into anaphylaxis (you CAN die from hot stuff, but it takes a lot, and you have to be very unfortunate.) So I hollered at Sandra. “I need help in the kitchen, please.” She may have wondered why I didn’t come down to her office and ask more politely, since my tone of voice suggested something other than “oh, geez, lookit these dishes” was up.

Eyes tightly closed, I explained what happened, and that I needed her help rinsing my eye because I was now effectively blind. I would need to lie on my back while she flushed it. Also, there would likely be screaming and profanity (just because I know the pain is fake doesn’t mean I’m immune to it.) She had to chase off worried children (“Daddy’s blind? I want to see.”) and escort me through the house to where I could lie down, and then we got started.

The flushing was quick and exceptionally painful. It felt like sand in my eye. Specifically, White Sands Missile Range sand on the day of a nuclear test.

Then it just felt like that whole side of my head was on fire. But that fire was more akin to the “this curry is way too hot” fire, and I realized that THIS pain wasn’t debilitating. It was just annoying. I’ve overdone it with the hot sauce before. I know this feeling. So I left my eye alone. I was now able to open it, so I did what any sane person would do — I walked to the mirror to survey the wreckage.Contrary to what the nerve endings had been leading me to expect, it looked completely normal, if a little red from the flushing.

There is a wonderful side-effect from dumping too much pain into your system at once: endorphin release! I knew this was coming, and I also knew I wasn’t going to get much work done while my eye burned so distractingly. I decided to lie down for a nap. I had been wanting one anyway, and these circumstances closed the deal.

It was the best nap ever. I slept deeply for an hour, slumbering in the happy embrace of a natural chemical high. When I awoke my eye felt better, and I felt very rested and very refreshed.

I’m never ever taking a nap this way again, though.

I just found a new feedburner feature. I’m turning it on, and turning it loose.

<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchlockRSS?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchlockRSS"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript>

Put that code on your web page somewhere. That will give you the latest Schlock Mercenary strip wherever you want it.

I am really loving RSS.

For years my only experience with anything remotely RSS-like was the LJ Friends Page, which is (in essence) an internal syndication system that allows external feeds for people who upgrade to paid accounts.

Once Schlock Mercenary had its own RSS feed I realized that I needed to start trying to consume this feed in different ways. After all, I’ve had people tell me for a couple of years now that my comic is the only one they read on its own website — everything else they read, they read via RSS.

I started by adding the Schlock feed to my friends page. If you’re on a paid account, you can add it here. (And please do! It’s a great place to comment on the strip via LJ, because you can confidently post spoilers! Also, you can spread the comic around because sometimes bored folks check out their friends friend pages. Adding the feed is like a public service!)

Enough plugging. On with the story…

Next I started looking for other feed-readers and aggregators that would provide me with a similar experience. I don’t want a list of links in a side-bar, like Sage provides, though I can see how some folks would. The Bookmarks Toolbar isn’t for me, either. I want a “friends page” format. And I got it using the Google Reader. I’ve dropped several comics and other feeds into my Google Reader account, and using the “Expanded” view from the “View All” link, I get just the results I want.

Wow. Never more will I need to click on the OOTS website to see if Order Of The Stick or Erfworld have updated. I’ll get notification (not the comics themselves, sadly) right in my Reader. Also, piles of Failblog, Lolcats, InsectPod, and other stuff. COOLNESS.

About a year ago I was discussing disruptive technologies with fellow webtoonists. RSS fits the bill. I get the sense that in a couple of years anybody without RSS is going to be an also-ran, and the big dogs will be the ones who embraced it to the fullest and exploited it.