Just wanted to swing by and remind everyone that, as I mentioned on Sunday, the strip will be late tomorrow.

I will try my best to get it up in as timely a fashion as possible though.  Once again, my apologies in advance for it being late.

Later,

-Ed

I got my first ever bit of spam through my Geek Tragedy e-mail account today. Normally I place spam way up there between "theater talkers" and "nazis" on my list of purely evil things which I utterly despise, but I guess in some weird way this means I must be doing something right in regards to getting the site noticed. Then again, how hard is it really to get noticed by spammers?

Regardless though, my being offered the opportunity to alter the size and shape of various parts of my body at rock bottom prices is not the reason why I’m posting. My main purpose for being here is to give you guys a rundown of what to expect from Geek Tragedy in the next few weeks.

There can be only one…

First off, after switching to a three smaller strips format last week, GT will go back to the single full paged strip format this week. The strip should be up for viewing on Tuesday as usual, but unfortunately not right at the stroke of midnight like it normally is.

I’ve got a couple of appointments this week, plus I am finally breaking down and upgrading my computer a bit. Now even though the appointments will eat into my "strip" time a bit, it’s the computer upgrade that I’m really worried about in regards to screwing up the GT schedule. Mainly because when it comes to upgrading my computer I always hope everything will go as planned, but at the same time have also learned to expect all hell to break loose instead.

Still, once everything does get sorted out with the computer (in what I pray will be a somewhat timely fashion) it should go a long way towards helping me cut down on the time, and grief it takes to produce the strips in the future.

Anyway, I just wanted to let y’all know about the strip’s impending tardiness ahead of time so that you don’t think I’ve just been slacking too much to get the strip out on time. Beside, with the exception of a few fellow night owls, and my handful of viewers on the other side of the globe, most people don’t start checking out the new strips till around noonish or later. So I’m pretty sure any delay will go largely unnoticed for the most part (but my apologies in advance to those of you that are affected).

A quick (boring) glimpse into the future…

After this week’s strip, there will be another full page strip the following week, and that strip will in turn mark the end of yet another chapter in the Geek Tragedy universe.

And just like the last time I felt the closing of a chapter in the story had come to pass, I will follow it up the week after with a Geek Tragedy splash page. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, check out the "Geektastic Four" page I did on 12 / APR / 05 in the "Archives" section, and you’ll know what I mean.

Finally, he gets to his damn point…

Okay, now that you’ve suffered through that guided tour down Boring Town’s historical "Who Gives a Shit" lane, allow me to get to our feature attraction.

After the splash page hits the site on June 14th, I will be making some changes to Geek Tragedy. I’d like to go so far as to say that Geek Tragedy as you know it today, will from that moment on cease to exist, and from it’s ashes will rise the fiery life-giving phoenix that is GT v2.0.

Yes, I’d like to say that, but I won’t. ‘Cause I know damn well that statement would prove to be far too melodramatic, and in turn lead only to a tremendous let down in the end.

I will however say that the changes I’ll be making will affect both the strip, and the site itself in a rather significant manner. New content will be added, currently existing content will be altered in varying degrees, and some content will be dropped from the site altogether.

There are a whole host of reasons as to why I’m doing this, but the only one worth mentioning at this point is that I’m trying my best to improve the site, and in return make it a far more entertaining place for you guys to visit. After doing the cyber doodling thing (man, that just sounds all kinds of wrong doesn’t it?) for a few months now, I’ve become aware of a few things that just aren’t working well, or could at the very least be working a bit better, and I’d like to act on them ASAP instead of letting them fester.

Anyway, I’ll be sure to tell you all more about what’s going on in the weeks ahead. Until then, just to recap: Strip late, strip on time, splash, and change. I just know that there is a joke in there somewhere, but I’m far too tired to suss out what it might be at this point. Feel free to write your own though.

Oh, and before I go, I will be writing a final KeyCon "With Apologies" to go with the newest strip in the next day or so, so keep a lookout for that.

Okay folks, later,

-Ed

PS: Remember: (Long post + lack of sleep – Leone’s proofreading) x Ed’s illiteracy = potential typos galore! Sorry folks.

Two things to say:

One, I hate my computer.

Now I've got to run and pick up the KeyCon pics and see how they turned out.  I don't know if I'll get a chance to post them today though, because I still have some more writing that I'd really like to get finished up.

Oh yeah, and I guess doing that whole sleep thing might be something I should consider finding time for today as well, huh?

Later,

-Ed

I noticed that there were a couple mistakes I had made on the strip when I originally posted it.  They've now been fixed and the strip is now the way it should've been originally.

More posts to come in a few hours unless I can't manage to stay awake that long, in which case more will come later in the evening.

Later,

-Ed

The subtitle for this strip should be, "AKA - Ed really needs to brush up on his women drawing skills", but I'll leave that alone for now until I've posted the "With Apologies" write up.

23 / MAY / 05 - 0940 CST : It’s amazing what only 12 hours of sleep can do for a guy… (KeyCon Day II cont) (this is a long one people, so until I take another pass at it, settle in for a whole host of my trademark nonsensical typos)

Howdy folks.

Sorry it took so long to post this update for the second day of the con but after two days with about 3 hours of sleep, oddly enough I needed to crash for a while. Which, incidentally, is why I won’t really have much to report about the third day of the con as I pretty much slept through it.

Shooting your friends for fun and glory…

First off, as I mentioned earlier, my buddy Travis had his Halo 2 tourney on Saturday. Unfortunately the turnout in the beginning was a little weak as it ended up being scheduled opposite of one of KeyCon’s most popular events, the masquerade. However once that was over a fair number of people who participated in that event headed on over to the console room and started blasting the hell out of each other with extreme prejudice. So in the end he was able to get enough people together to have four qualifying rounds, and the finals.

I myself participated in the competitive carnage. However I’d only played the game a couple times before in my life, so my roll in the event was pretty much to provide the other competitors with a constantly respawning victim that they could in turn corpsify in any number of horrific and embarrassing ways, over and over and "oh for the love of God could you people just let me take three freakin’ steps before you blow the living shit out me" over again, in an effort to help pad their own kill totals. Still, I guess it’s always good to have a purpose in life, even if in this instance it was essentially being everyone’s Halo bitch.

As well, between the tournament rounds there was plenty of time to get some casual play in, complete with ample amounts of trash talking. And judging from the creative and colourful nature of some of the verbal barbs being thrown around (some of which, usually spoken by someone who was just killed, took the form of requests for other players to commit various acts to themselves that if not outright physically impossible, would certainly produce the need for life long physical therapy in their aftermath) I think the smack talk was more enjoyable to a few of the players than the game itself.

I was able to snap pics of both the event and it’s participants which I’ll be sharing with y’all soon. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a pic of Robert, the tournament winner, with his trophy (and btw, thanks to our buddy Steve for providing that for the event) as I was too busy taking a bunch of other pics at the time.

Jimmy Olsen would never have this problem…

Speaking of photos, I ended up taking more this one weekend than I think I’ve ever taken before in my entire life, and I am very eager to start sharing them with you guys.

That being said, I wasn’t able to get them developed yesterday like I’d hope, but I’m going to try and get that done later today. The only thing is, this being the Monday of a long weekend here in Canada, I don’t know if any place other than Wal-Mart will be open to develop them for me. And while I could just drop by one of the Wal-Marts in the city to get them done, I won’t.

You see I have a bit of a problem with the policy they have about choosing which photos they will and will not develop for their customers. Now the reason I feel this way isn’t because I’m in the habit of taking pictures of questionable morality, and seeing as how I have no plans to become an amateur pornographer anytime soon, I don’t really think this will ever be much of an issue for me in the future. Nor is it because I feel a business doesn’t have the right to choose what they do, or don’t do for their customers, at least not as long as their policy is the same for all their customers. Granted I find this policy to be amazingly stupid and, as long as the pics aren’t illegal in nature, I don’t think that they should have any objection to developing them, but I still respect their right to make their own policies, and in turn follow through with them.

No, the reason I have a problem with Wal-Mart’s photo lab is because they won’t actually inform their customers about this policy when they bring their film in, nor do they make any mention of it once the pics have or have not been developed. Hell, I wouldn’t have ever known it even existed if some friends hadn’t told me about it in the first place. And once I did find out I looked back at the negatives of some photos I had developed there, only to find that they did in fact not produce a print of a photo that had someone mooning the camera in it (I didn’t take that one btw mom, it was someone else using the camera, I swear!).

Anyway, I’ll step off of my rant box now and just say that as long as I can find a place to develop the photos today, I’ll have some posted today. Otherwise you’ll get your first look at some of them tomorrow.

Chainmail, it’s not just for ‘80s Metal bands anymore…

I mentioned in a previous post about how there were "a good number" of people walking around KeyCon in various costumes on Friday. Well, I was wrong. ‘Cause compared to the legion of people getting into it on Saturday, their was just a handful doing so the day before.

Jedi, pirates, knights, necromancers, borg…if it’s ever appeared in some incarnation within the fantasy and / or sci-fi genre, then it was roaming the halls of KeyCon on Saturday night.

It totally amazes me just how much time these folks had put into their costumes. In order for you to even come close to grasping what I’m trying to get across here try this. Think of every Halloween party you’ve ever been to. Now, from all the costumes you’ve seen put only the people wearing best costumes into a room, and subtract all the obviously readymade store bought ones. Okay, multiply that by a hundred or so, and you’ll start to come close to the incredible spectacle that was Saturday at KeyCon.

I did my best to take as many pics of these costumes as I could, but even then I had to limit myself because I wanted to save some of my film for other parts of the con. The thing is though, the costumes themselves weren’t what fascinated me. What really sent my mind spinning was talking to the people inside the costume, and hearing what they had to say about process involved in making it.

The time, planning, and care that goes into these wearable works of art is unreal. Honestly, if I devoted half as much energy to this site as some of these people did for their costumes, I’d a household name the world over by now. As it stands, I’m barely a household name in my own mother’s house.

And lets face it folks, it takes a seriously secure sense of self to walk around in public dressed up as an axe wielding warrior, or a dragon toting wizard. I mean, do you know how self conscience I’d be walking around dressed up like Frodo?

Sure, most of the people who they’d run into were going to be con goers, but there was a lot of other people staying at the hotel that weekend as well. Of course from what I saw, even the people who didn’t know what was going more than enjoyed the brief glimpses they had of some of these inventive folk who walking around.

One of the biggest non-con fans of all the costumes was a freshly blushing bride who just happened to be holding her wedding reception at the hotel the same weekend as KeyCon. She got such a kick out of what was going on in fact, that she even ditched her own wedding party for an hour or so to run down and take some pictures with a bunch of the costumed KeyCon goers.

Now that’s my kinda woman! I wonder if she’s seeing anyone?

The Geek Tragedy Crew head to KeyCon this week…

Now I was planning on just continuing on with the GT story line this week as usual, but after Friday I really wanted to do a strip about KeyCon. The only thing is I had so many ideas that I couldn’t decide on just one to use. So this week I’ve decided to do things a bit different.

So, instead of a one page long strip this week I’m going to be doing three, three panel strips showing Frank, Grey, and Noname milling about the con. I have an idea for putting Casey in a one panel strip too, but it’ll depend if I have enough time to throw that out there as well. The first strip will either be up later today, or posted on Tuesday like the regular pages usually are.

Along with each strip I’ll be posting a brief write up in the "With Apologies." I hope you guys don’t mind this brief change in format, but I just had to do it. Besides, the ongoing saga of the crew will continue on next week, so you won’t have to wait too long for things to get back to normal.

Well, I guess that’s it for now. There was much more about the con to mention, but I think I’ve run off at the keyboard more than enough for one day already. I’ll post again just as soon as the next strip is up, or when I’ve got the pics developed for y’all to see. Whichever comes first.

Later,

-Ed

PS: As always with posts of this size, sorry for any typos. I’ll fix them up as soon as my brain stops showing my eyes what they want to see, instead of what they actually are seeing while I proofread, or whenever my editor Leone has a chance to send me an e-mail telling me what I screwed up.

22 / MAY / 05 - 0800 CST : Wow, should I ever be sleeping... (KeyCon Day II)

Hey folks.

I'm going to be posting my thoughts and observations about the second day of KeyCon later on today when I have more time.

What I can tell you right now though is that I ended up taking a glut of pics last night. So just as soon as I get them developed (yes, that's right, I'm the only person left in the world that doesn't have a digital camera) I'll start posting them so that you can check out the con goings-ons for yourselves. With any luck at least some of them will be up by Monday.

For now though, I've got a bunch of stuff that I need to get done before I can sleep, and attempting a long post at this point without doing just that would only end in gibberish. Unfortunately one of the things I have to do is make sure I'm back at the house to wait for Rotor Rooter to show up between 9 and 11am. I really hope that they show closer to 9 though, because I am so very desperate to lay down and get some damn rest.

Alrighty, gotta run,

-Ed

21 / MAY / 05 - 0800 CST : It really is a stereotype, but it's also true... (KeyCon Day I)

Well I was a little late getting out of the house, but I did end up heading out the door early enough to check out a few of the late night hours of KeyCon. And while I really didn't get to see much, here are a few of my thoughts so far...

First off, the venue was quite nice. A lot better than I was expecting actually. The con pretty much has the run of a few of the middle floors of hotel, so everyone attending the con is essentially free to wander around without having to worry about bothering any of the non-con guests. Something I feel that both parties are equally happy about.

The other thing I like about this venue is that for the most part it wasn't that tough to navigate around. This was a huge thing for me because I once went to a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Con in New York, and the "resort" (and oh for the love of God do I use that term loosely) was like some sort of neigh unnavigable (not a word, right Leone?) labyrinth. Seriously, I half expected to see a Minotaur wandering the halls every time I made the uncertain trek back to my room that weekend. I could actually go on and on about how crappy this place was (though the con itself was excellent!) but lets stick with KeyCon for now.

One of the places that was still up and running when I got there was the Star Trek theme hospitality suite called "The Captain’s Lounge."  When we (and by we I mean my friends Jay, Steve, Travis and myself) checked it out there was a fairly constant stream of people heading in and out so we sort of sat outside the entrance for the first while.

Now before I go any further, let me first get out of the way the observation I had that was alluded to in the header for this post. I know when it comes to "geek" sub-culture, a group I like to include myself in, one of the stigmas that is often attached to us is that acts of personal hygiene aren’t always too high on our "to-do" lists. Now as someone who tries his best to stay sweet smelling all day long I find this kinda insulting.

However, judging from the…um…aura wafting from every fifth or sixth person who passed by us as we sat outside "The Captain’s Lounge", I very much doubt this stereotype will go away anytime soon. Okay, enough said.

So our buddy Steve decided to head into the lounge and get himself a nice refreshing bevy. When he came out with a drink in hand, here is a paraphrased version of the conversation that followed.