Yknow, it's a pity that this time of year is so busy. We've been getting a lot of snow here in Michigan - not that heavy crappy wet snow that sucks but that light fanciful snow we all tend to enjoy at the outset of winter. I would love to spend some time just standing outside, quietly contemplating things, exploring that inner sombre nature deep inside that takes such odd delight in the muffling solitude brought on by the fall of a myriad of icy crystals, to just stand quietly and let my mind drift with the flowing air...

yeah, not a chance this month :P

As usual, i make decisions that make my life more difficult as opposed to easier. The past few comics sure we a challenge for the artistically challenged me... but i think i almost pulled them off. If nothing else, it was a fun and interesting experiment :) In the old days, i used to totally and completely avoid showing action scenes as much as possible. Now i'm finding that in a kind of masochistic way i actually enjoy the challenge of trying them, even if the outcome isn't always... very good. :P Hopefully the sequences of the past few comics, with Largo, and Miho and Ping and yuki make some sort of bizzare sense - they do to me, and seem to to most people i talk to, but they could all be just being nice to me :P

It's been a busy month for Seraphim and I, but hey, it IS the holiday season. Having the rebuild the MegaGear store last month was enough to give me conniption fits and put us into a world of worry about getting things up and running properly, but we did it, and so far things seem to be running smoothly. With that in mind, and the understanding that a happy MegaGear store means happy Megatokyo comics (the best way to support MT being to buy stuff from our store, as you know), i will ask your forgiveness as i segue into some shameless MegaGear merchandise promotion.

<initializing super_mega_pimpage_engine v.3.2>

testing, testing, 1,2,3. Ok, good.

Today's special item selected for shameless pimpage is... the Kimiko Sad Girl in Snow Blanket!

It's warm, it's fuzzy, it's got and almost life-sized Sad Kimiko walking through the snow on it. It's 60x80 inches, exceptionally warm (we actually keep one in the car - gotta love Michigan winters :P) and quite simply just a really nice blanket. The design is woven into the blanket itself - 85% virgin acrylic and 15% polyester, and has been thoroughly tested by me (test 0334B - "wrapped in blanket in front of TV with hot chocolate playing Secret of Mana on an old SNES system" - 10 of 10 rating.) Goes without saying (or hinting) that it makes an excellent gift. Oh, and you should probably get one for your cats too - mine took my original one and won't let me have it back :(

Visit the MegaGear store for more information on the Kimiko Sad Girl in Snow blanket :)

<end super_mega_pimpage_engine v.3.2>

Whew. well, i guess that wasn't too bad. In this world of guerilla advertising and massive pimpage of vapor products, i don't know why i feel so bad about doing a little of my own. Maybe it's just me :P

my blatant pimpage is out of the way, but there's still more store stuff to cover, so bear with me :)

There are a number of things i am going to highlight over the next couple of rants leading up to christmas... part of the reason we have the store is so we can carry items that we ourselves think we might like to have. For example, Last year we started carrying COPIC markers, mainly because i wanted to start using them. This year, with the arrival of our COPIC order for this christmas season, Seraphim gave me a little advance christmas gift ... my very own 36 piece COPIC holiday gift set. Yay! More ways to waste lots of paper!!

The set is actually quite nice this year - there is a new book included with the set "Lets Draw, Illustrating with COPIC" which is actually a very nice book. Right now i tend to do most of my coloring in photoshop, but since i tend to be so analogue about drawing (using pencil on paper rather than a tablet), i also am looking forward to seeing if coloring comes more natural to me this way.

So, my next pimpage will be promoting our COPIC Marker Holiday Sets (there are 12 piece and a 36 piece sets) which just arrived yesterday. Yes, they make great gifts, and hopefully i can show a little of what you can do with em over the next few days. :)

As for everything else... you may notice that we have been low on some shirts and hoodie sizes -- more stock is on the way and should be arriving in the next few days, so if we don't have the size you are looking for, be sure to check back, as we should be getting it in.

One of the nice things about the way we do things at MegaGear is that when you place an order, it usually goes out the next day (our policy is that we have 3 days to ship things, just to give ourselves some breathing space if we need it). Especially this time of year, we work pretty hard to make sure you get stuff in time for Christmas. While i would recommend ordering your stuff earlier rather than later (don't be like me and wait to the last minute), we will be shipping orders right up to December 23rd -- meaning that with domestic customers can can still stuff in time for Christmas if you dont mind shipping things for overnight delivery :P. We'll even process Gift Certificates and send them out right up to the 24th, if your are a true hardc0r3 last minute shopper (like me).

be advised that we may run out of some items and sizes as we get closer to christmas - so don't procrastinate too long, some stuff might go out of stock. :)

There, that should take care of MegaGear promotions for now. Seraphim and I thank you in advance for your support, and we really appreciate your business this holiday season :)

There is one other Megatokyo item out there that we are not carrying in the MegaGear store: A special Sonoda Yuki clear poster available only at Waldenbooks & Borders Express! (you might recall the image, i ended up using it as a DPD image recently too). It is a little bit of an experiment working with Waldenbooks/Borders to bring you this exclusive clear file poster. You should be able to find it in the manga section at your local Borders / Waldenbooks store, so be sure to check it out next time you go manga diving :P.

Oh, all sorts of other stuff to cover, but i'll save it for the next rant :P

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Oh, One last thing i need to mention - you may have noticed that NewsBox advertising has not been running recently - thats for two reasons. The first is that i now have a nice new newsbox ad system in place that will make scheduling and running newsbox ads work 1000x better (Special thank you to Count Alpicola for the PHP hacking - the old way was a manual way and didn't really work all that well because it relied on me, always a bad thing :P) The second reason is that i've been too swamped to go through and schedule advertising - so, if you have contacted me about advertising i apologize for not getting back to you sooner, i'm intending to try to get back on top of advertising over the next few days. Thank you for your patience!