My butt hurts. I spent at least eight hours, maybe nine, perhaps even 10 sitting at my computer and coloring and lettering the last of the current commercial project. Yes, there were breaks in there. I had to take some time off because my mouse-hand started to hurt. That hasn’t happened since Starcraft (or maybe Insaniquarium yesterday, but that should go without saying).

Anyway, now my time is my own for the next 13 days. Hopefully I can get some Schlock cranked out in that time. I mean, I’ve just demonstrated that I can put the hours in when I’m being PAID to.

–Howard

The female character I created for the “GWAVAMan” comic wears a tight, white outfit. In my usual cartoonish style, I show the shape of her breasts with three lines — a curve under the closer breast, a curve beneath the more distant breast, and a “gesture” line (sort of a sketched “slash”) between the points where her nipples would be. The result is attractive without appearing immodest.

Well, when I reduced one of the strips to JPG, that “gesture” line became three pixels, and in the reduced strip it looked like Ms. Redline needed to , shall we say, step into a warmer room.

I guess this means I got the gesture in exactly the right place. It also meant going into the JPG file and muting three pixels for the sake of propriety.

Before and after snippets are behind this link.

On the advice of others, I medicated my stuffy head with capsaicin.

I took a can of Van Kamp’s Pork ‘n Beans, added a quarter-cup of brown sugar, and three chopped-up slices of dinner ham. I then took a half-cup of the resulting mixture (about a quarter of it) over to another bowl, and added a teaspoon of Blair’s Sudden Death Sauce.

Understand, please, that I’ve let myself go “out of shape” with regards to capsicum pain-gating over the last few weeks. I’m still no slouch, but this was easily as hot as the hottest stuff I was eating before — I selected the dosage for pain, not flavor or fun.

I’ll let Sandra describe what happened when I ate it. Suffice it to say that now my nose is no longer aching, and though it still runs, I can type without replacing soft-palate consonants.

There is one danger… I put weapons-grade capsicum in a dish known for its ability to induce flatulence. I could be farting tear-gas tomorrow…

–Howard

By dose is stuffed ub preddy good right dow.

Do you hab EDDY idea how hard it is to DRAW whed your dose is tryig to rudd all ober the page?

I hab a roll of toilet paber sittig dext to be, ad I’b goig through it like a fabily of four od their way hobe frob Bexico.

–Howard