If you have a store (like a comic book shop or game store or whatever) and you would like to sell Penny Arcade merchandise in it, please fire off a mail to Brad. All our shirts are baked fresh daily and we don’t use any pesticides on our posters.

Today’s comic strip hits very close to home. I’ve become increasingly interested in Apple products over the last few months and the recent release of itunes has only fueled the fire. As an artist I feel like I am letting the other artists down by not working on a Mac. I look at their products and I begin to salivate, as if I’d been hungry all my life but until that moment I never understood what food was. I tell myself that I would be more creative if I used a Mac. That it’s graceful lines would somehow awake in me a level of artistry that had been sitting dormant all these long years.

Over the years we've been doing the site, my own policy towards Apple products has morphed somewhat. I worked service at a school district for about five years, which gave me some appreciation for the way they do things - these days, I accept without malice the idea that people own and use their products for a variety of purposes. Their grip on Gabe has been a very different phenomenon. As a person who creates visual art, their aesthetics, elegance, and seductive lifestyle that simmers just out of sight has finally worn him smooth. Before iTunes, I think he had decided that while he would still use a PC, he couldn't survive without Apple's graven idol of a monitor. Now he's listening to their subversive radio stations and buying AAC encoded music files albums at a time.

I had no idea when that interview guy was going to contact me, and I was "three sheets to the wind" when he did call. I'm very glad that he included no quotes from me in his piece, because I did mention that I worked in the Frontier West driving railroad spikes with my cock.

There is a very nice article about us this week in the Seattle Weekly. You can check it out here if you’re interested. I am not exactly sure why they chose to use artwork from the cretaceous period, but the article itself is awesome.

Stormy just sent me a new Hook-Up, according to the strange system he uses to determine their frequency. I like to think he sent it today in celebration of my fourth anniversary.

I bought Jak II and Max Payne 2 on the same day. To me they represent two very different ways of creating a sequel to a popular game.

I was desperate for information about Max Payne 2, so I called Gabe the moment they would let me turn my cell phone back on. He's already bored, finds the action listless and repetitive, and really, really wants Max Payne to Shut Up. I grabbed it just to see for myself. Who knows what that reflex is - to see another man disgusted by something, and say to yourself, "I want some of that."

Holy fuck, Jak II is fucking great!

I got a lot of people sending me mail and asking if I would share my grandfather's thoughts on the Call of Duty Demo. To be honest it was always my intention to do so. In fact Tycho and I are working on an article that will include the interview I did with my Grandpa along with some commentary from Tycho and I. I will tell you that my conversation with him has made me look at these games in different way. I think it's a very important article and I want to make sure we do it right. So it may not show up on the website until next week sometime.

Necrophilia? Maybe that's going too far? I'm actually being quite charitable. Kevin Anderson has a body of work that exists outside Dune which I've heard is pretty good. Brian Herbert has a famous dad. Together, they have conspired on a book that descends below the rankest Small Wonder fan fiction, diluting the Dune Universe down to one or two parts per million. The book itself is condescending garbage, and while it holds forth the shape and form of genuine Dune books that structure is animated with the broad, explicit motions of a puppet show. It's clear that they read the original books, by which I mean plundered - raiding them, as tombs are raided.

Tycho mentioned our Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon comic is up now. Well the cover along with the first page anyway. I think the plan is to release a page a week from now on. I know that for many of you the page loads in a new window that does not allow you to scroll down and see the entire image. That should be fixed here pretty soon.

I had great time in Spokane this weekend. Thanks to all the people who came out and saw me at Merlyn’s. I got there a little early and bought some Batman comics. I intended to sit there alone for an hour reading comic books while my parents and grandparents shopped downtown. Instead I ended up spending three hours there drawing sketches, signing autographs and chatting about videogames. So thanks to everyone, I hope you guys had as good a time as I did.

Despite any ribbing we may have given the series, we're both pretty big Resident Evil fans - solved each one, and lined up happily to buy them again when the fancy versions arrived for the Cube. We're even excited about Resident Evil Outbreak, a multiplayer variation on the game. But when we imagine the sorts of conversations one might have with strangers while playing it, it becomes difficult to maintain that enthusiasm.

Gabe's heading out of town, going back over to Spokane to work on an article for Penny Arcade. He also wanted me to mention that he'll be hanging out at Merlyn's on Saturday, in case you were bored, which seems all too likely there. Spokane is a test market for eight or ten varieties of misery at any given time, the more potent depressions and existential crises that infect our nation and even the world start out in Spokane while they are tuned for maximum efficacy.

I tracked down their website here - when I left Spokane, it was about the only place you could really get dork stuff anymore.