First panel of the day… “Crispier, Crunchier Writing” — I’m the first to introduce myself.

“Hi. My name is Howard Tayler, and I create a comic strip. My claim to expertise in ‘crispy, crunchy writing’ is the fact that I have to make all my text fit in these little dialog bubbles, but still have it tell a decent story.”

Jerry Pournelle: “You’re the only guy in the room qualified to talk about this. I get paid by the WORD.”

My wife, bless her heart, caught this moment on video. I have proof.

So I’m at the dinner table with Jerry Pournelle and L.E. Modesitt, and Jerry turns to Leland and says “Who are you?”
“Lee Modesitt.”
“Oh. Haven’t heard of you. What do you do?”
Lee smiled. “I’ve written almost as many books as you have, Jerry.”
Jerry, only a little flustered, said “Well, I don’t read as much as I used to,” and then shoved a bite of salad into his mouth.

The two of them seemed to get along just fine after that. Jerry told us all a very amusing story about how Louis L’Amour became a famous author (it involves buying lots of beer for truckers).

Earlier in the afternoon we did a Star Trek LARP at the McAuliffe Space Education Center. It’s an amazingly cool facility, even if you do have to use a mouse to interact with the ship’s (Macintosh) computers. It was hilarious — Jerry was running sensors, but long before we actually boarded the ship he started shooting holes in the scenario. “Do you people know how big a light year actually IS?” Oh, and one of the “enemies” we had to placate on this mission was a team of 24th-century Greenpeacers, out to save Space from warp ruptures. Jerry and I agreed that as soon as shooting began with the Orion Nebula Pirates, the Greenpeacers were going to be declared “collateral damage.” Jerry’s first suggestion involved a black hole (“I guarantee, we will NOT have to worry about them complaining to the Federation President… even in the Star Trek universe”) but plausible deniablity is trickier there.

Kiki (my 9-year-old) was running the internal comms, and during a collision alarm she jumped under a nearby table. It turns out the smoke effects (yes, they blew the room full of smoke when we had our little collision with the Greenpeace runabout) pumped into the room through several vents, one of which was under the table with her. Almost as soon as the smoke began pouring out I found myself with the 9-year-old Internal Communications Officer in my lap, quite terrified, but laughing about it. Shortly afterwards we ran out of time. It’s a good thing too. The shields, they cannae take much more o’ this.

I use Staedtler Mars pigment liners for inking Schlock Mercenary, and they come in six sizes: 005,01,02,03,05, and 07. Most of my foreground characters are inked with the 03, but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been struggling with that pen. The nib is damaged, and I’ve been nursing it along in an effort to save some money.

Today I got fed up, and grabbed a new 03 from the box. Two panels’ worth of work later, I pick up my 03 to ink a foreground character, and realize that the nib is broken. Not only that, it’s broken EXACTLY like the 03 I replaced it with. Grrrr…

I looked down and figured I’d use the 02 instead, and there was another 03 in front of me. The new one.

Duh.

When you’re going to throw away a marker because it doesn’t work right, you have to throw it ALL THE WAY AWAY, Howard. That’s why there’s a trash can in your office.

–Howard

So the iTunes store has a Pepsi “redeem song” button.

My Diet Vanilla Pepsi bottles have no iTunes “Free Song” codes under the caps.

Does anybody out there know which Pepsi products DO have said codes?

–Howard