Comic 54 up. Ah, things are starting to come together now.

Nothing philosophical this post. Just a great big say-thankya to my family for the Thanksgiving. There were many carcasses, and many pies. And Australians! (Apparently Australians believe America is obsessed with cinnamon. And Dr. Pepper tastes like a medicine they have down under, so none partake.) There was the traditional Thanksgiving Play given by Aaron, Andrea, Lara, and myself. The play is a new tradition. An "artistic explanation", if you will, of why we celebrate this holiday in the first place, and is written entirely by the children. In verse. This year's play was titled "Why Everything Necessary in Life is Purple".
And of course, there was Scrabble. Scrabble is something we Hale descendants have done since the dawn of time, and will continue to do long after Thanksgiving has been cast off as a relic of ancient society. (A poorly understood ritual from a culture that, while primitive, shaped the course of world history in ways no single life can ever comprehend.) Yes, our Scrabble tourneys are no doubt shaping history even now, each game aligning and realigning the universe toward the Good. Let it be known that Jeff and I are the Scrabble champions supreme. Jeff was well-approved of because he took part in the gloating that we all know accompanies the game.

Everything goes well, Thanksgiving goes well, so I say thank you big-big.

Man, what's gotten into my writing style? I'm not speaking hick, no worry. It's just because I finished Dark Tower 7. Ouch, my brain is hurting from its immense power! Steven King has once again sliced my brain up into little pieces. Some pieces do work, some read, some draw comics. And some just stare at the Stone, the Door, the Rose, the Tower. I'm in post-epic shock, so I'll probably be floating around for a few days, dreamy eyed and eating cookies.

Hope everyone had/has a Happy Holiday. Share your holiday story if you want. I'm thankful for you all, faithful readers. I hope you know it. Long days and pleasant nights.
  ¶ 23:02

Comic 53 is up.

I had this thought... are humans still evolving? Are we still being naturally selected into a stronger, better adapted species? When you think about herds, selection happens to the animals that are too slow or weak to run away from predators. But humans have no predators. We have laws that prevent discrimination. And we have medicines to help genetically defective individuals live long enough to breed. I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, because people should certainly be cured if cures are available. But on the largest, most impersonal scale... is medicine in the best interest of the species?
I'd have to say that civilization may be one of the only things that can stop evolution in its tracks. Survival of the fittest? We Americans seem to survive pretty well, on our fat butts watching TV. Unable to touch our toes. Of course, people say to me "Well, we may not be as rapidly evolving physically, but now we're evolving in other ways. Culturally. Ideologically." And sure, I'd agree with that. But is this the pinnacle of natural human development? In the future, will we have to look to artificial means in order to further augment and improve upon ourselves?
Thoughts?

PS: Will a comic be up on Friday or Sunday, since I'll be travelling? I dont know. I'll try to do SOMETHING.
  ¶ 23:01

Yeah, its drawn. Lemme color it. It'll be up by this afternoon.

EDIT: Okay. Finally up. Couldn't color it Thursday night because I was out eating with some new friends. The food was terrible but these two girls seem cool. I am really excited to have finally met some people I like at my school! They're both funny and easily amused, which means everyone laughs easily. Perfect. Wish me luck on that front.

I gave my last speech Wednesday. It was a monologue by an elderly person about why you should go visit your old relatives. I wrote it myself, using stories from my parents and grandparents lives. And I can tell ya, it was good. Really good. Some chick in the back started crying (??). At least it went over better than my speech on equal marriage. ^_~

Now for the part of the post that is kindof interesting but also kindof nerdy. I'm only telling you because the idea behind it all kindof dumbfounds me. Forgive me if I completely lose you here. If you get bored, skip to the last paragraph.

I just finished listening to the story on "I Love Bees". This I Love Bees thing is by far the strangest cultural phenomenon I've ever witnessed.
Here's how it works (worked, actually; it's over now). ilovebees is part of an emerging genre called "alternate reality games". Apparently ilovebees.com was once a beekeeping site, but is now all taken over and distorted by some kind of artificial intelligence. If anyone looked on the site a few months ago, he or she would find sets of GPS coordinates, dates, and times. On those dates and times a payphone would ring at the provided GPS coordinates (which could be anywhere, there were GPS coords for places all over the country). Whoever answered the phone then would hear a recorded woman's voice. After answering her questions and doing what she asked, audio files would be unlocked on the site. All these little audio files fit together to form a huge story. And the more you listened, the more you could unlock.
Let me make this clear: this all took place in the real world. These phones really were ringing all over the country. This is not a video game or something. Its like a massive sci-fi role-playing game, except that you don't play any role but yourself.
Now for the weird part: all of this was payed for by Microsoft. It was part of a really bizarre marketing strategy for Halo 2. The story takes place in the Halo universe, and the game ended the day of Halo 2's release. Of course, the creators believe the game stood on its own in a way too. (And I agree, because I could frankly care less about Halo.) And, strangely, this thing was really popular. People across the country were networking to cover all the payphones and provide answers to each other. And get this... at the Arizona presidential debate, a poster with a bee on it could be seen being held up with all the Bush and Kerry posters. If you knew what it was, you recognized it instantly. And ilovebees symbol.
I really wish I'd been more aware of what ilovebees was when it was still going on. I heard about the site, but didn't actually understand it until Brian told me all about it. And he was correct when he said the story was "mesmerizing". It was better than 98% of the scifi movies I've seen, and I think it has some pretty solid general appeal. Even if you hate video games.
Now that you've read all that, here is the link: ilovebees.

Okay, if that didn't fry your brain with its weirdity, I hope you guys have a great thanksgiving week. Dunno what my update schedule is going to be like this week. I'm heading up to Memphis, as usual. But I'll try to be faithful. So long as you are. Peace.

  ¶ 20:55

Hello faithful readers. I apologize that today's comic is a filler. But don't worry, double length will be up on Friday. And maybe I'll sort out my Keenspace by then as well. Hmm. Here's hoping.

I've got the most hectic of schedules until school is out. I think I have something due every single day after Thanksgiving. This is just a warning: I may not be very consistent until school is out. I'm sure you are all in somewhat similar circumstances, you students.

I've already decided how I'm going to fill my final 3 hours of empty space this semester, but I'll still put it up for your musing. If you had a block of 3 hours you HAD to fill with anything you wanted, and it had nothing to do with your degree, what would you take? And what do you think I should take (these can be different). Why? To me, it came down between computer science and art.

I think I'm going to post some more art in the gallery later this week. Also a story. I've been wanting to add to that for a while.
  ¶ 07:58

The 51st comic is up. Remember that the navigation is screwy. I'm trying to set up a Keenspace account to temporarily house this mess while I figure out the system.

I finally set up my esunasoul email account to forward to my gmail address. I haven't been able to check esunasoul messages for a couple of months, so if you've emailed me at that address, sorry!

I'm going to be pretty busy until school starts. Got a lot of tests and such, and toward the end of the semester I'm starting a temporary job at BPCC moving computers to the new campus. It kinda sucks I'll be working all winter break, but it pays really well, so it'll be worth it. Heather needs money!

I am so excited about Thanksgiving! It is a family tradition for all of us to head to Memphis for a few days, and I cant wait! Jeff is coming with us again this year, though I don't know how we're going to modify our driving schedule so that he can make the trip back to Austin. Its a 7 hour drive home for me, but around a 14 hour drive for him. Maybe we should get him a plane ticket ^_^;;; I am going to be in a bind to produce the final issue of "Tangerine, Petri, and Cobb". TPC was my very first comic, and I'll someday host it on this site for you when I scan and color it into reasonable readability. There is only one issue left to complete the story, but I have a hard time finding time to do it since I'm maintaining Dream Is Destiny as well. Hopefully I'll pen out at least SOME of it.

Oh, I can't remember. Have I talked to you about NaNoWriMo before? Its insane, really insane, but interesting. The NaNoLand Chronicles amuse me to no end.
  ¶ 08:40

Well, a few more things working, a few more things broken.

New comic is up. Happy 50th comic to me!

I'm going to fiddle with the templates some more on Tuesday night. Fix the scrollbar problems at least. Its starting to annoy me, so it is definitely annoying you. Maybe I'll even put up a wallpaper later this week to celebrate the 50th comic. That might be fun.

I had a great visit with Rachel and Sarah this weekend. But then I got sick all Sunday. Bleh. The only reason I'm up this late is because I slept all day. I'm still not 100%, so instead of typing a lot now, I'll type a lot LATER. Bye. ^_^
  ¶ 23:15

OH MY GOD! WHOA! GEEZ! WHAT HAPPENED?

You've probably noticed... the site is different looking. Welcome to Esunasoul v4.
Everything is essentially the same. In fact, I imported a lot of the old content into new templates. I'm still trying to work out a few kinks here and there. Glitchy things. But as of now, the site is functional, so here, you get to look at it.
Things to look for on the new site:
First, this place is no longer friendly to people with 800x600 resolution. No exceptions. Increase your monitor resolution if this page looks too wide for the screen.
There are three status screens to your right. Me, the latest comic, and the network. Right now, the only one working is me. Wait on the others a bit. At the top is the navbar, and you should see familiar links. I finally added that album section everyone has been bugging me for. I'll continue to add more pictures over time. (If you feel like you deserve to be there but aren't it might be just because I don't have a good pic of you. So send me one!)
The gallery has a new piece of art in it, mostly because I can't stand most of the stuff in there so I had to make a new picture to cover it up. There are a few new comics in the link section too.
As for glitchy stuff, I'm having problems in the comic page. I'm working on getting rid of that white box down the left side of the comic. If I delete the code for that box, the comic disappears too, and since I don't know enough about that language, I'm going to have to pick at it a while. Also, when you load the comic page right now, nothing really shows up. Just click on another comic and back again and then the pic should load. Don't know why that is. Again, working on it.
I have not spell-checked anything new in this site yet. Don't harass me about spelling.
Other than that, everything is working pretty well.

I worked to get this up today because I'm supposed to post my 50th comic, and I thought we needed something special to celebrate. Unfortunately, I ended up spending too much time on the site, and haven't had time to color the comic yet. Its drawn and all, but you'll have to wait till later for me to color it.

Rachel Sullivan (nope, not Turek anymore!) is in town, and she and I are heading down to Baton Rouge this weekend with her mom. Mostly to keep her mom company on the drive, but we'll be hanging out in the meantime, catching up as usual.
My friend Katie from UH turned 21 last week. Happy Birthday Kate! What else important happened this week? Hm. Nothing else I guess. (Because I refuse to talk about the election).
I'll post a comic later. Have a great weekend guys!
PS There is a blank section of the page under this post, to the right of the archives. "External", its called, though for no apparent reason. I've got no clue what goes in there yet. Suggestions?
  ¶ 21:46