1,000 Things!

   Argh I've got like 1,000 things I need to share today! It's so exciting, but, uh, I'll try to organize my thoughts as cohesively as possible.

   RYAN IS HOME TODAY, for one. It's been two years since he set out on his mission, and today's the day he returns. Ho boy, mixed feelings! Though not really. I know exactly how trippy it's gonna be for him. It wasn't so long ago that I was the Elder Perazzo returning home from his mission. Almost half a year ago, you say? Gosh.

   But, yeah. Pretty major stuff! But my even talking about it raises a few questions-- namely: the last post I did was a couple of weeks ago, about my nephew being born, yeah (oh, congratulations; why thank you.) So, what, is this blog now only for major things anymore, like the births of nephews and the return of brothers, though my blogging used to be quite daily? Is it only a, serious event, what's-going-on-in-your-life type deal now, or what? That'd be fine if it were, but, actually that question brings me to a second point.

   THIS IS THE 1,000th POST PUBLISHED ON THIS BLOG, in case you weren't counting. Though, you know, not the thousandth day it's been around or anything, of course. This is the thousandth post ever posted, but with backdating posts and getting all the in-between stuff I don't have posts for, (the, missed a few days, thing.) I haven't been posting up my backlog which I've totally got like I should have, though I do have a bunch of posts written but not posted. They await only minor copyedits and the actual "go" signal, but, no, I haven't posted them. I could've let the quadruple digit mark happen sometime during backposts, but I've actually refrained from posting a lot of the material that I do have because, post 1,000, that should come in its own little package now, shouldn't it? I tend to dump these in chunks, and I totally might have missed it had I not been careful.

   I've been going through a lot of the old stuff, of course. The "new" Thespis strips, from a couple of years ago but only posted up now, that kind of thing. Old stories I've written, too. The story I submitted to Machine of Death 2. And... I can see now why I got the rejection letter. And, all the drawings I did, for Thespis and even, like, all of them I posted up on the blog, or most of them, and, they're terrible. Should I be pleased that I've evolved that much? Should I be ashamed that I once thought that that stuff might have been good? What's past is passed, and part of the reason I posted all that is to be able to see this evolution, so, I'll let myself suck. This is one of my points, so, I'LL LET MYSELF SUCK.

   We don't want success. We're afraid of success.  For, precisely the reason that, we're not ready. I'm glad I got rejected. It's a good thing.

   But, anyway, uh... Yeah, I think that's good.

A Cautionary Tale pt 2: Amazon

   Dang, thinking about what YouTube thinks of me, I've also got to wonder if Amazon thinks the same thing- I would have brought this up yesterday but there was no room for it, so I guess I can get into it here. That I would really want to...

   I was... on my mission when I signed up for my Amazon account... euh...

   Yeah, actually, no I don't think I'm comfortable with sharing that all with you at the moment. Suffice it to say (and you really should,) for a year there, all Amazon knew to advertise at me was pranks. Not like video of people getting pranked, like the YouTube stuff, but actual implements of practical jokes. Like fake plastic poops and crap.

   The fact that those YouTube videos also happen to be about pranks is a complete coincidence, of course. Honestly, the internet shopping thing wasn't even my idea to begin with...

YouTube: A Cautionary Tale

   YouTube keeps advertising videos at me. Which is alright, gotta keep up with the one channel I'm subscribed to, but there's always the videos it suggests that it thinks you might be interested in. Sometimes, it's brony stuff. Mostly...

   A few months ago, February 3rd according to the internet history which I'm going to trust as it matches up to having occurred on a Tuesday, looking up tutorials on how to fix washers, but apparently autoplay was on and the videos just kept on going, from the washer one to a second one and from there randomly jumping to prank compilations.

   This continued on for 5 1/2 more videos.

   And every week, when YouTube its scratching that artificially intelligent brain of its, trying to figure out what kind of videos it thinks I would be into, keeps on going back to the 45 minutes straight where funny prank video compilations were playing. The screen was off and the sound was down and we were having dinner, but YouTube has no way of knowing that. So when it wants desperately to please me, it proffers things like SEXY WOMEN FUNNY NAUGHTY PRANKS, or whatever. Because, that's the only thing I seem to have shown continued interest in.

   I know how easy it is just to delete that history from YouTube's databanks, but I'm leery of rewriting history just to make the present slightly less annoying.

Thespian Acquiescence, But More Importantly...

   A note on Sundays: seriously, new strips of Sunday strip Thespis are coming out, and I've got 5 or 6 already totally completed from a couple of years ago, leading up to the new storyline coming up. They're... somewhere, on the computer. And they totally exist! At press time, of course, we have none. No new strips of Thespis, posted up, right now, like I promised I would do on Sundays. They are coming, and hopefully the seemingly overly obvious explanation that they are not up right now will be necessary in the future, but for now, uh...

   The strips, these new old ones, are, turns out, on a file format that our PC no longer supports, so I need to find some way to transport the files to the laptop so that I can convert them there to JPEG. (OH, if there were only some means of doing so, like if they invented a portable drive of some sort...!)

   Last week being Spring Break at the local school district, however, even if we did have all those things that I promised you we still wouldn't have one today (such it is when you start a comic strip for high school distribution.) So we're free to have today's blog post deal with other issues. And all that explanation seems rather petty now, seeing the issue we'll be dealing with...

   It's weird, like it feels like this should be affecting me more than it is, but, 11:51 Utah time, weighing in at 9 lbs. 5 oz., I... well... I'm an uncle now. See me mother's blog for more stuff on that; this is a way bigger deal for her than it is for me (becoming a grandparent versus becoming an uncle, hmm, let's see...) but it's still, you know, okay, I guess...

   On my mission, one of the people I worked under, Rachel, her name is (or maybe it's Rachael, I always was spelling her name wrong in my journal...) she asked me one time if I had any niece's or nephews. She said that I've got a sort of certain, amiability, about me, and I suppose assumed it was avuncular? I had to answer no to her question of course, but, you know...

   Not that we've met yet or anything.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, April 5, 2015

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT

Collin: What are you doing?!

Just look at yourself.

Look at the gifts you’ve been given.

Look at who’s given them to you.

Were you worth it?

Well, you were, but are you worth it now?

You can’t only be nice when it suits your purposes.

Trying to make you a better person through bribery? We knew it would never work, not really.

But there’s already this time and energy given to give you what you want.

All the labor costs, the multimillion dollar industry. Looking forward to the future. But you always go back to naughtiness.

Santa invests so much in you.

And you let him down each time.