Have a Happy (and Literate) New Year

Happy Holidays everyone! As the new year rolls around, I wanted to throw out a link to author Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize speech. She contrasts the hunger for books - any books - felt in an impoverished African village, with the attitude in a privileged London school, where many students don't read at all and the library is half unused.

Looking around at the kids (and adults) in America today, I can see this sad lack of interest in literature, despite our country's seemingly unlimited resources. Are we so inundated with reality TV, YouTube, IMs, and text messages that we find it boring to stimulate our minds with some good old-fashioned reading?

Let's dedicate some extra time in 2008 to reading good books. It's amazing how much more a well-written novel will affect you than even the best movies and TV shows. I'm currently reading some great Hemingway and John Irving; what are you reading?

Comics + RSS = Super!

Since the inception of my little family comic strip, I wanted it to be available for easy consumption via RSS. I've found that RSS makes it convenient to keep up to date on the latest blog and news articles, so why not for web comics?

Recently I stumbled across Tapestry, an online directory of hundreds of online comic feeds. Awesome idea! Ironically, I found this resource at a time that I am actively trying to cut out RSS feeds and other noise, in an effort to be more productive and centered; but I think I will make an exception for the important things in life: comics and literature.

Delay

Sorry but due to illness and a busy schedule, this week's comic will be late. In the meantime, you should check out Achewood if you haven't already - perhaps the best comic ever (start from the beginning!).

New Educational Feature

The comic is finally back on schedule! For the last few weeks, I had been slogging through several huge projects at work, while simultaneously looking for a new job. I finally got a great new job, and now I have the chance to catch my breath and sit back in the cartooning seat.

I just finished adding a new vocabulary word feature for each comic. As some of you have noticed, I try to put a "word of the day" in each strip. This may come off as a bit pretentious, but my intention has always been that this comic should have some educational value. Now when you click on a comic, you get sent to the dictionary.com definition of the featured word. Could this humble comic strip be a valid SAT or GRE study tool? Perhaps!

Thanks to my friend Kristian for the idea to integrate the featured word into each comic page. Also I am glad finally to explain why I use big words in each strip, so that maybe I don't seem like such a conceited douche bag.

Just Another Excuse

I realize my all-too infrequent blog posts have lately been nothing more than excuses for why my comic is late. Well for what it's worth, this post is no exception! I have been hammered with an unprecedented workload at my job, and I won't have a chance to come up for air until at least next weekend.

This weekend, Julia and I did take Friday off with a vow to relax, enjoy each other's company, and not worry about work for a full four days. We saw a movie (Superbad - very funny), took part in our neighborhood's block party where we met our new fun-loving neighbors, went in-line skating in Washington Park, and got a great deal on some awesome snowboards at a block-wide Sports Authority sale downtown. Indeed I had planned to finally draw a comic after a two week hiatus, but our schedule of complete relaxation won out, and I accomplished nothing.

I will return to a regular cartooning schedule next week. In the meantime, please enjoy some messed up animals.

Comic Late Today

Julia and I are closing on our new house tomorrow, so we've been pretty occupied with house-type activities. I will have to post this week's comic a little late. Sorry, and I hope everyone is having a great week!

Update: Sorry folks, the comic is taking longer than expected due to our move. We just got the Interweb working today, and it took us two days and higher math to move our sectional couch down the stairs. But our new place is amazing. You must come visit! Expect a new comic this week, within the next few days.

I Blame a Stupid Flash Game

Man it's been a long time since I've posted, and I apologize. Sure I've been busy - my work is always a handful, we're in the middle of purchasing a new home in Denver, and we've been actively searching out new experiences and adventures in the rocky mountain state.

But the biggest fritterer of my free time has to be the simple and bizarrely addictive online flash game, Desktop Towers of Defense. Now, I'm not much of a gamer. The last game I can remember playing is the ancient Warcraft II, and in general I avoid games that require ridonculous video cards and have anything resembling a learning curve.

But this game, in which you simply place defensive towers on a map to prevent monsters from reaching the other side, has me playing for hours on end. And boy does Julia hate it - you should see her eyes flash when she catches this on my laptop. And yes, so will your spouse if you get hooked, so don't say I didn't warn you!

New Comic Tomorrow

National Free Comic Book Day was yesterday - hopefully some of you got a free comic book. Unfortunately I totally forgot about this important day until today; yesterday I was busy drinking beer in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, serious stuff here in Denver.

Amazingly I am still sick, though I have been feeling better over the last couple of days. I haven't felt well enough to post a comic last week as I thought I'd be able to do, but I will post as normal tomorrow. Hurray!

Been Sick, Thus Another Delay

I came down with some sort of evil flu and fever during the week, and it hasn't let go yet. That didn't stop Julia and me from trying frisbee golf for the first time today with a couple of our friends (the weather has been gorgeous here in Denver), but nontheless I feel pretty awful. Trying to sit down and cartoon just didn't work, so I must apologize and promise a new strip sometime early this week.

Julia's Concert Pics and Movies

From Julia's post in the blog comments:

Linkys...
Brazilian Girls
photos: http://www.loveofapril.com/braziliangirls-april07/
movie clips:
http://www.loveofapril.com/MOV00077.MPG
http://www.loveofapril.com/MOV00114.MPG

Decemberists
photos:
http://www.loveofapril.com/decemberists-april07/
movie clip:
http://www.loveofapril.com/MOV00165.MPG

Enjoy!

Comic Late Today

Today's comic will have to wait until after I get back from work this evening. We had an action-packed weekend, touring the local Denver bars, celebrating a friend's birthday, seeing an amazing show by Brazilian Girls on Saturday, and just returning from a Decemberists show tonight. Denver rules, but I need to catch my breath, whew.

Apologies

For the handful of you who regularly visit my comic, I apologize that a new strip hasn't been posted in a couple weeks. I've been very busy with work and travels for the last few weeks, and now I'm hacking and sniffling through a cold (and got Julia sick in the process). I will definitely get the comic back on track next Monday!

Meanwhile, Julia and I have set up a new blog about our new lives in Denver. She has posted our first entry, and we plan to keep it updated regularly once our lives get less hectic. Thanks again to all of our friends, family, and readers.

We made it to Denver!

Julia and I survived the cold, hazardous, four day trek from Gainesville, Florida to Denver, Colorado; me driving a 16' moving truck and dragging a car behind, and Julia shuttling a couple of (understandably) grumpy, mewling kitties in her car. You can view a camera-phone pictography of our journey in the photo album. There is a lot to say about our moving adventure, and we might have to start up a separate blog to chronicle our new lives in Denver.

But, for now I'll just say that Denver is everything we'd hoped for. There are tons of great places to eat, the public transportation system rocks (I can take the bus from my doorstep straight to the front of the building where I work), the downtown is lively and full of character, the microbreweries are ubiquitous and excellent, and the people are some of the friendliest you'll ever meet. As our cable guy said, "Denver is America's best kept secret". If only it weren't so damn cold all of the time... (and for those dear to us who we left behind, we miss you!)

Hector is a Cat

Apparently there has been some misunderstanding in my office, where The Remonstrance is read with a mixture of disgust, confusion, and indifference on a weekly basis. One of my officemates assumed that Hector was a dog, and he was surprised to hear me describe him as a cat.

Looking back on my catalog of exquisite artwork, I cannot possibly see how anyone could mistake Hector to be anything but the extremely rare male variety of diluted tortie feline that he was designed to be. Sheesh.

GATORS WIN! GATORS WIN! 41- 14

It was crazy as hell, man! Pandemonium 2007!

New Pictures

I just posted new photos to the album of Julia's and my adventures for the last couple months. We travelled to New York City to attend a black tie event and to see Julia's grandfather's portrait hung in NYU medical school, and then flew to Houston - in a fit of spontaneity and temporary insanity - to see Jeremy Enigk and Cursive play. Then I flew to Denver for some job interviews (yes, I got a job, and yes, we're moving to Denver in a few weeks!). Not two weeks later, we both flew back to Colorado to go snowboarding at Copper Mountain... Whew. I don't need to see another plane for a long time.

What I'm Reading

John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, never saw his novel get published. According to the book's forward, his mother persistently pushed the manuscript on an unwilling English professor after her son's death. When he finally read it to appease her, he found it impossible to put down, and quickly agreed it needed to be published (it eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction). I'm glad he did, because this book ranks among the funniest I've ever read.

All of the characters are drawn with such flair and audaciousness. The main character, the morbidly obese and pretentious Ignatius J. Reilly, has to be one of the most colorful antiheroes in literary history. He waddles around 1960s New Orleans spreading his peculiar brand of medieval nihilism, wreaking havoc and headaches for employers, his mom, her friends, and pretty much everyone with whom he comes into contact. I especially enjoyed the metropolitan setting, as Julia and I spent last New Years (exactly one year ago, at that) in New Orleans, and it was gratifying to read a narrative of the familiar street names and locales before they would forever be changed by the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.