Last year’s Advil overdose continues to plague me.

Here’s the back-story: I cranked out 1200 sketch editions in six days. It was grueling, and by day two I’d started taking Advil in prescription-strength doses. By day three I was overdoing it. By day four I had stomach cramps, so I started taking anti-diarrheal (loperamide) along with the ibuprofen. By day six I was wondering why food had lost its appeal. Doctor Google then informed me that while I was nowhere near the LD-50 dosage for ibuprofen (LD-50 means “lethal to half the people who take this much”) I was still taking far too much, and it was tearing up my GI tract.

All that work netted me $12,000 in sketch edition bonuses. If you’re ever asked to damage a body part for money, try to get more than I did. Also, try to make sure that you can cheat, and damage someone else’s body part instead of your own.

And now for current events:

Tuesday and Wednesday I worked really, really hard. I scripted, penciled, and inked a week of comics each day. On Wednesday at 3:00 pm I took two Advil pre-emptively. They reduce inflammation, see? Then at 8:00pm when my hand really started to hurt and my shoulder started to ache (whine, bicker, moan, mutter, grumble, murmur) I took another two. Between those two doses I had the equivalent of one prescription-strength dose.

Within 20 minutes I had stomach cramps. They stayed with me all night.

I’ve been taking it REALLY easy on Advil for the last YEAR. I don’t take it for headaches — I take Tylenol, which works differently. I only use it for inflammation (muscle pain) and then I only take half-doses. I didn’t have any problems with it until just now.

Apparently whatever minor damage I did last year has resulted in permanent weakness. Advil is now off the menu for at least two weeks, and if I find I really need the anti-inflammatory goodness of ibuprofen, I’ll have to limit myself to no more than two tablets per day taken one at a time no less than six hours apart.

In related news, Sandra has told me I’m only allowed to do 1,000 sketch editions. She has also suggested that I spend two weeks getting them done.We’ll see… I’m pretty greedy, and very short-sighted.

(cross-posted to webcomics and onlinecomic, although they didn’t get the handy FAQ)

Schlock Mercenary has finally embraced the promise of its premise and stepped into the twenty-first century. There is a Schlock RSS feed, and that feed is available to be “friended” here on LiveJournal at http://syndicated.livejournal.com/schlock_feed/profile. Those choosing to read the comic using this feed will be able to use LJ’s comment system to discuss the strip.

It’s just in time, too. On August 28th Schlock Mercenary will be celebrating strip number 3000 after 3,000 consecutive days of no missed updates, no fillers, and no guest strips. That’s just two weeks from now.

I needed SOMETHING to brandish jubilantly, and an RSS feed will do.

(Even though all the cool kids already have one.)

And now, the FAQ:

Q: What about ad revenue? There are no ads in the feed!
A: There is a “buy Schlock stuff” button under the comic. That ad pays really, really well. 🙂

Q: No, seriously. Aren’t you going to lose ad revenue from this?
A: I’ll let you know. I don’t think so, though.

Q: What isn’t included in the feed?
A: Well… it’s got the strip, it’s got footnotes, it’s got five buttons and two links to get you to appropriate places on the site… I’d say it has everything, but I know I’ve forgotten something.

Q: Why did this take so long? What were you waiting for?
A: I thought that RSS had to be built in to my updater engine. So did the two engineers I challenged with the project. This made it look daunting, to say the very, very least. Fortunately a bright guy named Mark Shieh came along and volunteered. He pointed out that the whole thing could be built independently. Then he went and DID it. And then when I dared to say that it was a great, and he could stop, and I’d wait for site updates before getting my “perfect world” feed, he rolled up his e-sleeves, dug back in, and made my “perfect world” feed. It didn’t take long. It took about three days. But we waited about three YEARS before properly starting the project.

Q: Is Blogunder Schlock included in the feed?
A: No. The blog has its own feed at http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/feed/, including a comments feed at http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/comments/feed/

Q: When will we see attorney drones again?
A: Right now, if you go re-read the archives in the correct places.

Q: When will Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars be available for pre-order?
A: At the end of this month. I’m waiting until I have advance copies in my hands.

Q: You’re just making up questions now, aren’t you?
A: I’m trying to anticipate you people. It’s harder than it looks.

I bought Hero With A Thousand Faces as an audiobook today and started listening. I’m about 10% through the abridged version.

Some thoughts:

1) No, this isn’t going to ruin me as a writer.
2) The reading is kind of flat, but that doesn’t stop the prose from kicking my head in.
3) I get the feeling that for this material to be useful for a writer, he/she needs to read (or listen to) the book, and then keep a cheat-sheet around.
4) I’ve already read the cheat-sheets. It’s possible that the book doesn’t need to be read (or listened to) at all.
5) Except that the prose still kicks my head in. I tried listening while drawing… CAN’T DO IT. Campbell needs the whole brain.

In completely unrelated news, there is now a Schlock Mercenary RSS feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SchlockRSS

WorldCon 66 has been amazing thus far, and I don’t expect to be at all disappointed for the remaining three days.

As always, the highlights are the people. Countless (or at least “I lost count”) fans have stopped by to say hi, buy stuff, gush, or otherwise interact. It’s great fun for me, and Sandra has been enjoying it as well.

Then, of course, there are the fellow professionals with whom I’m privileged to rub shoulders. We had dinner with Phil and Kaja Foglio and friends on Wednesday night, and Steve Jackson and Monica Stephens on Thursday. After each of those meals we wandered the room parties and the con suite as a posse, meeting and greeting other notables, fans, and friends along the way.

And for all that there are still a million-zillion-bobillion people here I don’t know, but who I can meet if I want to. I expect I’ll be meeting a bunch more tomorrow, because the comic I created for the newsletter has no dialog — it’s a “caption this” contest. I hold out reasonable hope that in this festival of creative minds SOMEBODY can make me laugh hard enough that I give them free books.

For those of you who have been by to buy stuff — THANK YOU. Sandra and I were worried that the large expense of this trip (flying our children off to California for fun at Grandma’s falls under “babysitting,” for instance) would make it unprofitable, but apparently we’ve more than broken even already.

For those of you who plan to come by to buy stuff — HURRY. We’re already running out of T-shirt sizes, magnet sets, and mouse-mats, and at this rate it looks like we’ll run out of books before Sunday. Yes, you can buy this stuff online, but here at WorldCon there’s no shipping fee, and we’re eating the sales tax.

My only complaint with WorldCon 66 here in Denver is that it’s very spread out compared to WorldCon 64 in Los Angeles. We’re in six or eight different hotels, the Convention Center is being shared with two other events, and the result is that fandom doesn’t seem to be developing the critical mass it did two years ago. We’re just a little too far apart, and when we leave the Convention Center for hotels, we scatter, rather than clumping up and raising the ambient temperature of the networking.

Still, it’s a good event. No, a GREAT event. I’m having a fantastic time.