I've been busy writing the next series of strips and playing UT 2004 , and so neglected the strip for today. What really sucks about that is that the last panel is more complicated than what I usually do (gotta push to grow) and it's gonna take some extra time. This could very well turn out as either my most or least favorite strip, so I wanna make sure I do it right.

Fortunately for my drawin' hand, Monday's strip is essentially a title card for the new storyline, so I can catch up fairly easily :)

A lot of people have emailed me with suggestions as to how I can get that Mest cd to play, and I just want to say thanks, but I'm not about to support a band that makes me jump through hoops to listen to a cd I paid for. RIAA influence or no.

I returned it yesterday morning, after Best Buy spent 10 minutes verifying that they couldn't get it to play either.

Ah well, the suggestions were appreciated :)

Quazarius has sent me a cool new piece of fan art, you can find it in the appropriate section. Be sure to visit his site and check out his work.

Pardon the lack of background in this and last Friday's strips, I'll be dropping it in when I get time to finish it this week.

I would like to extend a deep and heartfelt "Fuck You" to the band "Mest". I happen to enjoy a couple of their songs, particularly Shell of Myself, and today I decided to pick up their cd.

Imagine my surprise when upon insertion of said cd into my computer, for listening as I worked on the strip, the only thing on the cd was a video on the making of the disk and a link to their website.

No music.

Now I'd listened to this disc in the car on the ride home from Best Buy, and it'd worked fine. So what the hell?

It seems that to "combat music piracy" they have made it impossible to access the music tracks using a computer. Now I had tried to get a copy of Shell with Kazaa Lite months ago, and found nothing but partial looping copies, which I understand the idea behind. Obviously they don't want people downloading their music for free, god forbid. But let's be realistic, I don't put out cash for a band unless I'm reasonably certain I like their music. That means I want a couple of their songs first.

They are apparently so afraid that people won't buy their cd, that they're making it impossible to use. Hmm, such logic is intriguing...

I bought 4cds today, guess which one's getting returned?

Not the ones I'd already downloaded half the songs off of. The Vandals and V Shape Mind play just fine.

And before you ask, no I don't put music files up for download. I've got no problem with music being distributed over the net, it breeds new and easy access to bands otherwise unheard.

But I don't add stuff which wasn't intended to be there. Free stuff is free stuff, it's an incentive to buy the rest of the music.

Hell, this site is free! I don't punish you for reading it, do I? .... (editors note: Yes he does, it's called sloppy line perspective. It's a form of abuse in fact.)

The only way I make money here is by donations, which net you a wallpaper not avalible otherwise ( I must also add that I did put extra effort into it for just that reason), and eventually I'll have T-shirts and collected book volumes and such.

That's how it works, and I'm fine with it. If my stuff sucks then I go broke, and deservedly so.

So apparently Mest is amazingly afraid they suck.

And thus they do.

To paraphrase the title of my favorite new cd...

"Mest Bad, Vandals Good"