Between last friday and tuesday afternoon I had both artist block and writers block *really* bad. It's weird, you can be rolling along just fine and then boom - you got nothin'. You find yourself reaching to pull things out of thin air like you usually do, but there ain't nothin there but air. ^^;; Believe it or not, the SGD monday was planned, but it was a good thing... if a SGD can be called a good thing. ^^;;

I don't really have a lot of organized thoughts to deal with today, just a lot of little things. First thing I want to mention is that as of today the 2nd reprint of Megatokyo Book 1 should be finished and start shipping to bookstores, comic book shops and the ThinkGeek store and direct to you from the IC Entertainment store. I am very sorry about the long delay, but at least they are done now. We tweaked and fixed some typos and errors in the first book so this one should be just about dead on.

The other thing i wanted to mention is actually hanging on my door. Yesterday, a truck from Homewood Press pulled up and dropped off a box of Pirogoeth poster reprints - and they look amazingly good. Yes, Merekat and I have pulled together version 2.0 of the famed 'Pirogoeth' poster we did almost two years ago. (i don't have a preview of the final version for some reason, i will shortly) The reprint is smaller than the original print (which was almost too big) but I am very happy with the size - 20 x 28. It's bigger than the Capture the Bear poster, but it's the same excellent print quality. Kudos to the folks at Homewood Press - they do a great job. Anyways, due to a goof up on my end, they actually delivered the entire order of posters to my Mail Boxes Etc. address rather than the ThinkGeek warehouse. ^^;;;; No worries, they are on the way there as we speak, and should be available sometime next week.

Merekat and I also have yet another poster project in the works. She is busy rendering the Broken Miho drawing, and we expect to be able to show off a preliminary print of the image at Sakuracon next weekend. It is looking rather remarkable. :)

Oh ya, and don't forget, Sarah and I will be at Sakuracon in Seattle this weekend. Merekat will also be there, as well as two other well known webcomic guys (i don't know if they want it known that they will be there, so i'm gonna stay mum about it). Anyways, we will be there Friday thru Sunday, and I don't know the schedule yet, but when I do I will post it here. I've never been to seattle, so it should be a fun trip.

I can't believe how many responses I got to my request for info from people living in and around Sendai or who knew the place well. Thank you for all your emails, and I will be responding this weekend. Like i said, it's fun writing a story about a place you've never been.

Lessee, what else... oh, if you know of anyone serving in the military who cannot reach the web to read MT but is a MT fan and can receive attachments, please let them know they can e-mail me and i will send out strips starting from when they were cut off until they are current. I didn't do a good job of doing this last time, but this time I am determined to be more organized about it. From everyone here at MT, you guys have our support and best wishes.

There are many opinions on the conflicts that are now underway in the middle east, and I don't want to make any comments myself for a variety of reasons. I feel that the best thing that I can do is provide support to the people who need it... and to me, that is not just the troops in the field, but you the readers as well. I will do my best to give us something to laugh at and something to react to that you can rely on in this unstable world we live in. That is what entertainment is for, really.

I was asked to join the 'make games, not war' benefit drive by that annoying little european bugger from Little Gamers (don't get offended, it's a private joke between the LG guys and me that goes back to the early day's of MT ^_^). Like i stated above, i did not feel that i could join this project, but i feel that people should make their own choices about what they support, and that is why i'm graciously providing a link for them.

And, since i'm providing all this gratuitous linkage, Visit Robert's little piesquares game page. Robert, cool dude. piesquares, not a bad little game. :P

Ya ya, anime radio. I hate it when the DJ's make fun of me because they know me. Listen to Aniverse radio and feel my pain.

So much mac support from people, i can't even deal with all the emails. ^^;; Drew from Vizspring Software deserves a bit of a pimpout for providing me with some Mac OS X goodies to play with. :)

Originally i was planning to change the 'linkup' thing in the newsbox once or twice every week. As you can see, i haven't been keeping up with that. ^^;; I'm gonna try to automate some things so it will change more often. I have a huge list of things to link.

Ok, now this has turned into one disjointed rant, so i might as well wrap it up with more random information. Like i said before, i'll be going to Sakuracon next weekend with Seraphim, but there are a few other things coming up real fast too. I'll go down the list:

On Saturday, April 12th, from 9:30am to 4:00pm both Seraphim and I will be in South Bend Indiana at the St. Joseph County Public Library Open Book Festival. So, if you live in the area, you can come down and hear me talk about the process of getting published ^^;;

I tentatively have a Lecture I am suppose to be giving on "Publishing your Creative Works to the Internet" in Dublin, Ireland - i'll provide more information on when exactly that will be when we get things all sorted out.

I tentatively have a book signing lined up for April 19th at Wizzywigs in downtown Ann Arbor. It's a tad tentative, but i'll toss out the date here just for the heck of it.

Other conventions I am planning to go to this year are... Anime Central in Chicago, which is May 16 to 18. This will be the first of two Naze Nani Megatokyo shows we are planning this year. You have been warned. Oh, also, one of my friends in the Chicago area is a Industrial/EBM DJ, and is looking into the possibility of doing a club event near the convention on thursday night before the start of the con. Essentially, we were thinking of doing a Cave of Evil themed club event. If you would be interested in attending this, please email me with 'CoE Chicago' in the subject line. We would be doing a set of tunes that we put together, much of it reflecting a lot of the heavy industrial and EBM stuff that has influenced me over the years. If there is enough interest, we might just do it :)

Next con will be Project A-kon in Dallas, Texas on May 30 to June 1 (which is still a little tentative, but i plan to go). It was a really good con, and I really feel like coming back :)

then I get a few months off, and then we will be in full force at Otakon on August 8th thru the 10th, like we have for the previous two years of insanity. This will be the second showing of Naze Nani Megatokyo this year. Nyow.

Ok, what else... I am also planning on attending the San Diego Comic Con on July 17th thru the 20th. Originally, i was just going to go and float around, not really having a home or a booth at the con, but a webcomic friend of mine wanted to know if i wanted to go in on a booth at the show. I'll provide more details as we get things organized, but when we started talking about it we had the idea that this booth we got could be more than just a place for us to park our butts, but a nice nodal point for any other webcomic people who will be at the show. Sort of a casual spot to radiate too. I think webcomics deserve a good representation at that show, so i figure if we can do that, that'd be cool. :)

And finally... my little 'fantasy trip' so to speak, the one that will probably NOT happen, is going to Winter Comike in Tokyo at the end of December. That would be a very expensive trip, and I don't think i can justify it, but it is something i really want to do. We'll see how the year goes. I've got an application sitting here, and i have ideas for what i will do, so i'll do some preliminary planning, but that's all i feel safe doing right now.

ho boy, tons of stuff. Sorry about the rambling nature of this, but i think i got a lot of info out in this little core dump. Now off to do something productive :)