Hey every­one! I’m back from my vaca­tion and stuff!¹ Here is a list, because lists are useful ways of orga­niz­ing data:

• Brazil was pretty fan­tas­tic! If you ever have the oppor­tu­nity to go, do it! I may throw up a pic­ture or two from the trip in a later post.
• Stay tuned for the thrilling con­clu­sion of the OWLS sto­ry­line this Friday! We will pick up again with the main quest next Tues­day. (And just for the record, John and I have mutu­ally agreed that the OWLS sto­ry­line is 100% canon. I know many of you have been losing sleep over this point. I hope you can slum­ber peace­fully once more.)
• Remem­ber John’s post about public opin­ion? We sure do! We mulled over your feed­back and did our best to take it to heart. When the story picks up again on Tues­day we’re going to try our best to keep things focused and moving for­ward. Explo­ration is fun and all, but all this mean­der­ing is get­ting to be old news and John and I agree that it’s time for the gang to get back to work. Thus: if it feels like the strip is moving along at a brisker pace, be aware that it’s all by design.

¹ This is Greg, by the way. John wasn’t ever on vaca­tion, so it would be weird for him to say that he was back from one. Then again, John is guilty of stranger acts. I heard that he once wrote a whole series of comics strips about how a bunch of owls were harass­ing a skele­ton man. Crazy, right?

In light of all these Brazil-​related delays, I might as well go ahead and make the fol­low­ing announcement:

Chronil­log­i­cal is on hiatus until August 21st

By that time, Greg will be set­tled back in town and we’ll be rain’ to keep the story going. Sound good?

“But John. John! Hey!”

Oh, yes. You!

“Yeah, hi. So what’s going on with the site in the meantime?”

Well thank you for asking! The web­site will still update every Friday and Tues­day with comics of ques­tion­able canon­ic­ity, star­ring some of Chronillogical’s present-​day denizens. So there will still be comics here! Although they will not star our star trio.

The extrav­a­ganza starts tomor­row! Get pumped!

This morn­ing, I was comb­ing through my inbox—like I do—when I ran across a mes­sage from Chronillogical’s very own Mr. Adven­ture (Greg). And you know what he said? I’ll tell you what he said! He said “I’m going to a jungle lodge for the next 4 days or so, so I prob­a­bly won’t have inter­net access until Friday.”

Which means what, exactly:

1. There is a strip ready for tomorrow!
2. But there is not one ready for Friday, so:
3. Filler again on Friday!

If you’re the patient type, then we’re eter­nally grate­ful for your patience! If you’re get­ting impa­tient … blame Greg! Alter­na­tively, you could blame Brazil and/or jun­gles. Because, really, what have jun­gles ever done for us? I’m going to guess that they pretty much have no eco­log­i­cal or soci­o­log­i­cal impor­tance to anyone, except for jaguars.

Sort of.

Instead of tor­tur­ing you all with another pun from Mr. Skele­ton, I fig­ured I’d instead indulge in some­thing that I haven’t done around here in a while: the fabled Sketch­dump. Obvi­ously, none of these are fin­ished yet, but I aim to ink and color ‘em when the time is right. (All except for the last, which I am unsure about. You’ll see!)

↓ Anyway, click here for the rest of the post, won’t you?

Let’s get the bad news out of the way: Brazil has once again con­spired against us.¹ There will not be a full comic on Friday! To dis­play the inten­sity of his anguish regard­ing the sit­u­a­tion, Greg sent me an email con­tain­ing no less than 601 frowny emoti­cons.² That, friends, is regret. I’ll do my duty to pro­duce some­thing humor­ous or inter­est­ing in the meantime.

Regard­ing public opin­ion, though, I’d fig­ured this is a good time to gauge peoples’ thoughts on a couple of things. Chronil­log­i­cal has run for more than 100 strips now, and while Greg and I have dis­cussed the strip’s future, it’s always worth­while to know what fans are think­ing. So, feel free to leave a com­ment or send me an email (john [at] chronil­log­i­cal [dot] com) regard­ing one or all of the following:

1. What do you like about the strip?
2. What about the strip is most non-​triumphant and/or not so great?
3. Are there any eras you’d want our trio to tackle in the future?³
4. Spe­cific merch ideas?

Of course, we may decide not to use anyone’s sug­ges­tions and have the gang fizzle out in the Pleis­tocene, a gaggle of Megath­erium their only com­pan­ions. Then again, we might use all sug­ges­tions simul­ta­ne­ously in a schiz­o­phrenic post-​modern bar­rage! Who knows? The only thing that will reveal the answers … is TIME.⁴

__

¹ BRAZILLL!!! [shake-shake-shake-a-fist]
² The orig­i­nal plan was to repro­duce the email here for all to read, but that’s just too much gloom for one post to handle.
³ Hah … “future.” (Almost any time word becomes a pun in the con­text of this site. It’s ridicu­lous.)
⁴ Regard­less, thanks for your input and thanks for read­ing!

The inter­net café I’m at only seems to have IE 6 avail­able. Upon check­ing out the redesign, I’ve found that it doesn’t look too good on this browser. (I would have checked this ear­lier, but I don’t have IE 6 on any of my com­put­ers at home.)

My rec­om­men­da­tion: if you’re view­ing this on IE 6, you really really really REALLY need to get a new browser.

Today is the day! Today is the day that his­tory changes us all. Or … per­haps it isn’t that aus­pi­cious. But the site is dif­fer­ent! Snazzy, right? Couldn’t have done it with­out Greg, who may have offi­cially Left the Build­ing (or will do so within the next 12 hours, I’d imagine).

What you need to know: things aren’t 100% fin­ished, and I’ll most likely add some con­tent here and there over the next few days. Like Greg said, he’ll still have “intermittent” inter­net access, so send any tech­ni­cal prob­lems his way (I’d gladly take them, but am unfor­tu­nately code illit­er­ate). That’s greg [at] chronil­log­i­cal [dot] com.

So take a look around! Famil­iar­ize your­self with the face of the future. Chronillogical’s future, at any rate.

Okay, so: I have been work­ing on the site redesign. It is coming together! I think you will like it. I am hoping hoping hoping it will be up and run­ning some­time tomor­row night.

While work­ing on the Oh No Robot inte­gra­tion I real­ized that I hadn’t been get­ting email notices about pend­ing tran­scrip­tions. I had inter­preted the lack of noti­fi­ca­tions to mean that we just weren’t get­ting people transcribin’; instead, it turns out there were a whole slew of tran­scrip­tions wait­ing to be approved! Due to my crummy admin­is­tra­tive prac­tices, they lan­guished unused and unseen for far too long. Def­i­nitely my bad. I feel pretty bummed about it!

ANYWAY, I just approved them. And I promise to keep a much better eye on the Oh No Robot queue from now on. I can only hope our awe­some tran­scribers haven’t gotten too dis­cour­aged by my lameness!

In other news, I am going to be out of town for three or so weeks start­ing this Wednes­day. Where will I be? Swat­ting mos­qui­toes and out­run­ning jaguars in Brazil. Seri­ously! John will be tend­ing things while I’m away.

This means a few things for the site:

1. John and I are going to try to do the whole “distance collaboration” thing while I’m away. We’ve done this before (we were on oppo­site sites of the coun­try for most of the comic’s run) so we’re hoping it won’t affect updates too much. That said, don’t be sur­prised if you see one or two filler strips during the next few weeks.
2. In a clev­erly thought out scheme, I sched­uled our major site redesign to go live mere hours before I take my leave from the coun­try. Still, if some­thing goes wrong with the site (as it invari­ably will) please email me with your prob­lem. My net access will be some­what inter­mit­tent, but I’ll try to sort out the issue as quickly as pos­si­ble. In gen­eral, we ask for your patience if any­thing goes wrong with the site.
3. I won’t promise any blog posts while I’m away—but who knows! At the very least I’ll do a wrap-​up of the trip once I get back. In the mean­time, John’s in charge of the blog. What will he do with it? No one knows.

Although we do try to get the comic up before dawn breaks, occa­sion­ally we’ll take full advan­tage of the tech­ni­cal ambi­gu­i­ties involved in the “Tuesday/Friday” update sched­ule. Which is to say: the comic will be up today, but a little later than usual. Please check back later this afternoon!

If you’re look­ing for some­thing to do in the mean­time, might I sug­gest you check out Mr. Deity? It has noth­ing to do with time travel or web­comics, but it is a very funny web series I stum­bled upon recently. I enjoy it, and maybe you will enjoy it too!

Oof. I’ve been sufferin’ from a bout of writers’ block all week­end, and I still can’t think of nothin’ good to write about. On the upside, the site update is coming along, and I hope to roll it out before long. So while it may seem like I’m being a lazy non-​posting bum, that is in fact not entirely accu­rate! It is largely accu­rate, but not entirely so.

In the mean­time, stop on over by My First Dic­tio­nary if you are look­ing for good times. Mildly dis­turb­ing good times, but good times nonethe­less! Yeah woo good times!