Small update... i had a major hard disk failure last night (notice how all these things happen to me at once?) and I *almost* lost all my MT stuff. My 4 year old quantum drive started clacking, then stopped and kept trying to spin. I assumed that this was a bad thing. Thankfully, i have my Jwin98 computer so I could save everything.

oh, and I did a new drawing of Erika over at fredart. It's a pretty nice sketch.

Well, hi folks, I'm back. ^_^ Good to be back, too. I haven't had the flu take me out that bad in many years. The sad after effect of being sick like that is that now I have to bust my ass to catch back up with everything. Lotta thanks to Largo and Dom for takin care of Friday and Monday's strips. And Dom... I'm buying you a mouse. :)

The response so far to the T-shirts and other stuff has been really good - thank you to everyone that ordered something. A special thanks to Jonathan Steinert who managed to order and receive a 'speak l33t' shirt before they were even available. Somehow, the T-shirt item had been left 'on' over at our CafePress store last month. And, somehow, Jon found it and ordered himself a shirt. The only bad thing is that it's a older version of the shirt design, and I think the graphic is on the front of the shirt. Congrats dude, you got a one-of-a-kind version. :)

As for other shirt designs... it IS kinda weird that our first product doesn't even have any of the MT main characters in it. :) Yes, there will be other designs - I have a few schemes in mind. I personally want to see the girls on a shirt - and I suppose L P need to be on one too. If people are interested in other types of MT merchandise, let me know.

I want Erika and Kimiko garage kits... that's what I wanna see... ^_^

['Garage kits' are short-run plastic/resin model kits of favorite anime characters (usually female) that are lovingly assembled, painted and detailed. Perhaps next week I'll gather some information on the world of figure modeling.]

And as for today's strip... i note in the forums that someone DID note that this is NOT piro being a perv, it's really a delicate issue for poor Kimiko... i mean, jeeze, look at her friend. :) I had a lot of fun drawin the girls for today. I wanna try to get the quality of future strips up even more. Nowadays I can draw anywhere. i did most of this strip while sitting in a waiting room at the Dentist's office.

One of the best parts of being sick, if there is a good part, was that I re-read all of the Nausicaa manga and basically sunk myself into Ghilbi-induced coma. I watched all the movies, including my favorite "Tenkuu no Shiro Laputa" - (sigh) i *love* this film. It has such a ... feeling to it, not sure how to describe it. To me, Sheeta is one of my favorite characters, and the opening scenes where she falls off the airship still gives me goosebumps. Truly a fine fine film. I hope Disney does a good job with the dub - from what I've heard of it, i am not too worried.

BTW, i noticed that in the Nausicaa manga, brackets are used to indicate a foreign language, much like we use it here. I didn't realize that this is a real convention. :)

Ugh... email... don't know if I will ever get this mailbox cleaned out now...