It was great to touch base with Jeremy Parish and (writer supreme) Chris Kohler at that Nintendo thing - I've been reading both of them for a while, and the Mutual Appreciation Society was both active and intense.

I'm going to start off with some Child's Play news. We went Live with CP 2006 on Monday and as of right now we're sitting at about $64,000 in cash and toy donations. What's incredible is about $40,000 of that is in actual wish list donations. I try not to cuss when talking about Child’s Play but that’s fucking incredible! I’ll admit that I was worried about CP this year. There are a lot of worthy causes asking for your charity this year and I would not have thought any less of you if you chose to send your money elsewhere. I’m honored that so many of you see the value in Child's Play.

It's certainly not their fault - allotments of the 360 were cut pretty much in half. I went and preordered the first day I heard about "shortages," my mind flashing back to the frigid PS2 launch. I don't think that the similarities are entirely superficial. I don't see any reason to believe that reported shortages constitute a marketing "bonus round" coming into the holidays. I hope that you came away with one, in any event: it's an amazing platform. There's some faint praise, for you.

I know by now that when a word sounds kind of officious, it probably bears investigation.

I apologize that I'm a bit late linking this. Things at PA industries have been pretty crazy lately. We just moved into a new office with a lot more space but they don't have the intertron hooked up yet.

Still having some database trouble with the old site as we get the new one in place, it looks like - the comic will be up shortly.

If you have attended PAX then you probably know about Sweet Kitty. It's a great local anime/candy/toy shop run by some friends of ours. We actually met them a few years back at the very first Sakuracon we attended. Anyway, they have an online store now. You should check it out.

Apologies.

There is a very real possibility that Guitar Hero will agitate your neighbors. Your crotchety, diminutive neighbors.

The Penny Arcade card game drops in the early part of next year. Here's a look at a couple of the finished cards.

The final version of Guitar Hero is, as I hoped, a completely engrossing experience. It was supposed to ship today, but I haven't been able to find it at the usual suspects - your Electronics Boutiques et al.

We were down to Blizzcon a day early and back almost two days late, I imagine to optimize pricing on airfare, and changing the tickets we received would have cost money. So, we did things like go to Disneyland, the dark account of which I have already related. We attended a screening of "The Weather Man," which settled itself easy into my top ten films. We also had a Playstation 2 in the room with an RF adapter, along with two dual shocks and a copy of Soul Calibur III.

Can you think of any reason why Forbes would incorporate Penny Arcade into their special feature on communication? People like Arthur C. Clarke and Jane Goodall are on there, which you'd imagine would preclude our involvement.

BlizzCon was a blast. It was nice to get a little vacation after all the recent drama. I returned home to see that the Seattle Police will not be arresting us. Not that we were ever worried about it. Although we did briefly discuss how we might make comics from prison. Do modern detention centers have Wi-Fi?

Blizzcon was a unique experience, not leastwise because they had a series of cash bars centrally located. I would say that the tonics they had on offer placed a downward pressure on my equanimity and propriety both, but those virtues are rarely in ample supply. Indeed, stocks have been low for quite some time.

After we put the finishing touches on the booth - assuming that booth is not a glorified term for the two of us sitting on a heap of merchandise - we walked over to Disneyland because it is literally across the street. It was then that I heard of Gabriel's three period long speaking engagement at our old high school, and of his regret that he did not take a few select young men aside and relate to them what we know to be true: not only is adult life infinitely more tolerable than the somnambulistic enterprise of secondary education, but that there are (in fact) valid, crucial, satisfying roles for our people beyond those evil warehouses full of idiots.