I’m glad I’ve been able to spend the last two months cartooning. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to spend so much more of that time with my family. I’m grateful for that family — for all their quirks and quibbles, noise and noisomeness, and especially their affection. I’ve had more family time in the last sixty days than I had in the preceding sixty weeks (and we’ve given the last sixty MONTHS a good run), and it’s been the best sixty days I can remember.

I’m thankful for my faith, and for the strength it gives me in times of trial. I’m even kinda-sorta thankful for trial, because as I look back at the assorted flavors of crap I’ve endured (yes, “flavors” is the right word) I understand that enduring has shaped me into the person I am today.

I like the person I am today. He’s got his share of issues, but he’s willing to work through them. He may not be the humblest man on the block (talking about himself in the third person… what a pompous, arrogant fool!), but he knows he’s got failings, and he knows he’s got failings he doesn’t know about yet.

I’m thankful for the eternal sacrifice Jesus Christ made, so that even the failings I don’t know about can be overcome. I know not everybody believes in Him the way I do, and I’m thankful that I live in a country where that’s okay.

Here in this spot, on this page, I’m especially thankful for my readers… the ones who follow my comic meanderings daily, and the ones who only tune in every so often to find out who’s dead; the ones who send me money, and the ones who don’t; the ones who made it through that last paragraph about Jesus even though they weren’t sure they liked the way it made them feel, and the ones who didn’t even bother to read any of this. I know you’re all out there, and I’m grateful that you’ve trusted me with a corner of your imaginations.

I’m thankful for a place to say all this. I’ve gotten a lot of email from readers thanking me for the comic over the last four-point-four years. Thank YOU, everybody. You make my day again, and again, and again.

I haven’t read The DaVinci Code yet. I want to, but the last time I was book shopping it was available only in hardback, and there are only a very, very FEW authors on my Hardback List.

That said, a friend (I forget who… Richard?) handed me a water-damaged copy of Angels and Demons, which is Dan Brown’s first Langdon book. It wasn’t bad. It had Illuminati, and Freemasons, and Rome, and hidden secrets, and a dead Pope, and all that. Pretty interesting stuff, and while he clearly takes some license with history, it’s hard to see where history leaves off and Dan Brown begins. The book is very believable.

Well, except for the commercially available scramjet, and some of the ignorance necessary to facilitate “cabbaging” (the act of explaining things to the reader by explaining them to a cabbage-headed character who really SHOULD already know this stuff).

Anyway, I finished it last night… err… this morning at around 2am.

This afternoon I went to see National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cages, Boromir, And Some Other People. It was a lot of fun, and I realized that it’s set squarely in the same genre as DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and any number of other titles in which freemasons, the Illuminati, or catacombs feature prominently. Heck, that’s a good part of the hook in the Indiana Jones series, and the same could have been said for Tomb Raider if it weren’t for the fact that Angelina Jolie is much more attractive than the stupid plots of either of her game-franchise films.

So National Treasure was fun. It wasn’t especially cranial fun, but it was fun, and that’s what I go to the movies for. If I want intellectual stimulation, I’ll read a book. If I want a cathartic, cry-baby experience, I’ll surf livejournal.com. 😉 Mostly what I want right NOW, though, is a copy of The DaVinci Code. The goofy-fun movie I saw has me hungry for something in the same vein, only with more thinking and less Annoying Blond Actress Whose Accent I’m Not Believing.

–Howard

The current Schlock Mercenary story elements that revolve around “breaking bad news” are a direct outgrowth of my own experience with this. In October of 1986 my father called me while I was at college to tell me my mother had been killed in a car accident. In August of 1988 my grandmother called me while I was working as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to tell me that my father had died from a heart attack.

I’ve ruminated a lot since then about how bad news is best broken. I chuckle about it. I sniffle about it. I write speculative fiction in which people do exactly the right, or exactly the wrong things, at least within the fictionalized constraints of the Universe I’ve conjured up for your entertainment. I’ve wondered how I would handle things if I needed to break bad news to someone, and suspect I’d do badly.

This evening my brother Bill called me to tell me that my grandmother passed away today. It was sudden, but not exactly unexpected. Yes, this is the magnificent lady I went to visit this summer, and whose life (I’m told by those in whose care she’s been) I saved by showing up and dragging Bill and Randy (randytayler) along with me. She’d been on the edge this fall, her hearing went out completely, and she was hospitalized recently in an effort to restore it. It worked, but they discovered she was dehydrated, so they kept her for observation, and that meant they got to observe her final minutes today. Apparently they were quiet ones.

Two things emerge from this tale:

1. I’m really, really glad I saw her this summer. She got well enough to fly out to visit us in August, and got to sleep through one of my Sunday School lessons. She was well enough, barely, to see all the grandkids in the flesh one last time. For this I’m very, very thankful.
2. There’s a pattern here I don’t like. Dad told me Mom died. Grandma told me Dad died. Bill told me Grandma died… I think this means that Bill is next.

Bill, if you’re reading this, you can break the curse! The Red Sox won, and Bush beat the Redskins’ prediction, and those were both THIS YEAR! Just don’t go doing anything dumb, like running red lights or eating that poisonous fish they serve in Japan. Don’t go to Japan! For that matter, don’t even get on an airplane!

–Howard
p.s. If you’re an immediate member of the Tayler family, and you are finding out about Grandma Vernon’s death via my Live Journal, it’s Bill’s fault. He TRIED to reach you, but only got your answering machine. He figured “Hey, you know that ‘beeeeeep’ noise your answering machine makes? Grandma did that today, only longer” was not an appropriate use of the technology. Smart kid, that Billy. Pity about the Japanese fish, though.

Suppose for a moment that a new food additive was discovered which had dramatic effects on humans:

1) it acted as a mild depressant.
2) It worked as a sleep aid.
3) Consumed in sufficient doses it was dangerous.
4) When abused, it was downright deadly.
5) It was addictive.

Obviously, the FDA would require all kinds of clinical trials, and the stuff would end up either banned outright or dispensed only under prescription.

I’m being pretty transparent, I know. Alchohol meets these criteria nicely, but because it’s been around for millennia (and because da gummint already TRIED to ban it once) it’s grandfathered in to our diet, our medications, and our culture. Most adults seem to be able to behave responsibly concerning alchohol, and don’t want a minority of substance abusers to ruin things for them.

Okay, let’s switch gears… what about marijuana? All I’ve read on the subject suggests that it’s SAFER than alchohol. Why the stigma? Is this a double-standard? Broad-stroked generalizations suggest that conservatives prefer to keep pot on the no-no list, liberals would like to see it legal for medicinal purposes, and libertarians would just as soon ALL regulations regarding pot, alchohol, tobacco, and anything else not immediately death-inducing be done away with because people are smarter than the government gives them credit for.

I’m not sure whether this post has a point or not. It’s just something I’ve been ruminating on, and it’s little more than an intellectual excercise for me. I don’t drink alchohol, and won’t smoke marijuana whether or not it’s legal. Y’all can pretty much do what you want.

Then again, my mother was killed by a drunk driver. He got the death penalty, self-administered, which is about what I think most drunk drivers deserve. We’ve got legislation starting to lean in that direction (albeit from a great, great distance), because the gummint has ample evidence that people are not as smart as they think they are once they start drinking.

Okay, now I’m rambling. But I wrote something today.

–Howard