Our recent arcade experience was absolutely bewildering.

It's not news that we get down on occasion, or perhaps even fall down and hurt ourselves. But the place we typically do these things at has enough machines so that there really isn't any question about who goes next. There's the people on there dance dancing, and then there's two other people with one foot already on the pad waiting to go. The only time there's any confusion is when the line itself actually stretches around the entire planet Earth.

This isn't what you get at a smaller arcade.

There were these five guys at the arcade we stopped at that were clearly in the throes of some kind of addiction, and I can't be sure that it was an addiction to DDR. They had wild, malarial eyes and seemed haunted by unseen forces. Any time they were not in contact with (the apparently quite invigorating) dance pads, they shambled about in a vaguely funky throng reminiscent of Michael Jackson's Thriller. It was time to get mine, clearly, and show these undead motherfuckers how the PA crew does it on the easiest level. I stepped forward, gleaming Georgia quarter in hand, prepared to place it in the silver procession of succession that exists on every arcade cabinet.

Does anybody know when people just started putting any old Goddamn thing up on the machine?

This is one of the more sensible mechanisms of arcade etiquette, in my opinion. You take a quarter, and you put it on the Goddamn thing. That's where it goes. Then, you can go. Get it? No buttons, no pennies, and sure as shit no Safeway Club Cards. Some fucker put his Health Insurance card up there, but in his defense I don't think he actually knew where he was. It's possible he just came in for a check-up. But these other mongrels, they know exactly what they're doing. We stood back from the machine, demonstrably freaked out by this random parade of items - like a criminal line-up in some pocket society. I don't know what the hell all that stuff up there means. So, I empty out my own pocket on there, figuring that at least one of the things in there would secure me a spot. I put up a quarter, you know, just in case, a dime, a penny, two nickels, another quarter, and a stick of Wrigley's Doublemint gum. When the guy got done with his songs, he looked at my stuff, then he looked over at me, then he looked at my stuff, and back to me again. He did this for five minutes. I shrugged. "Yeah," I said. "I don't really know what's going on."

There is, as you may know, a highly amusing article at Something Awful regarding the opponents one might face in Dance Dance Revolution. I recommend that you educate yourself in these matters.

I neglected to relate some stuff from Comic Con.

The second night - I believe it was the second night - I went out to dinner with Greg Dean, Lizzie, my man Cliff Hicks from Maxis, Corey Marie, and Zach. You might notice that Zach has no hypertext reference, and that's because he doesn't run some schmancy website or work for one of the most powerful developers in existence. He's simply funny, friendly, and understated. In my opinion, he's three for three.

After wandering for a very biblical forty days and forty nights in search of food, the situation became so desperate that I thought a little pigeon might hit the spot. Rescued by an adorable Japanese restaurant, we discussed cabbages and kings, and I came to realize that I don't have the faintest, foggiest, fucking idea what it's like to make a webcomic these days. And, as long as there's free services with free hosting, free scripting, and free promotion, I'm not sure anyone else will either. If Scott's not going to offend everybody anymore, maybe I need to take up the standard or something. Here, let me dust this motherfucker off: Keenspot is too monolithic to get any of you compensated properly. Oh, you don't have to agree with me now. Indeed, compensation may not be your goal! Well, good for you, then. You're with the right guys.

Zach gave me a ride back to Kiko's, and we got as lost as two people can get, I mean it, I expected to see a Dinosaur or some shit. Zach is into the "Anime" I believe it's called, the "Anime," and he defined terms like Yaoi for me that maybe could have remained a mystery and it would have been okay.

I'd like to thank everyone for checking out the comics I mentioned on Friday, and it's okay, but you broke a couple of them. Bad readers! Or bad me, I can't decide. What the Web giveth, it taketh away at the first available opportunity.

(CW)TB out.

i kinda lose my mind