My presence has been, shall we say, minimal of late. Many reasons for this.

First and foremost, the daughter got chicken pox, then croop, then an ear infection all in the same month. Somehow during the most recent illness both mom and I also got sick.

As one of the more recent strips alluded to, I began school again.

Also, I started a new job.

Plus, it appears that Time Warner, under no circumstances whatsoever, wants me to give them money for cable tv and internet access. I have tried pleading with them, yelling, crying, I even offered to bake and Fed Ex them some cupcakes but all to no avail. They are dead set on never coming into my place of residence and installing said cable. My wife asked the other day, “Do we have a cable bill yet?” to which I replied, “What the hell can they bill us for, they haven’t provided any type of service.” Apparantly, they are content with heedlessly pushing back our installation date wily-nily. At this rate, I fully expect to have my cable modem installed sometime around April 2009.

Anyway, as a sort of piece offering for my flagrant absense I offer the following slice of internets goodness as a peace offering.

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but one I’m sure both exsulis and Jezmon (hey, by the way, nice to see you here…now where are the other two?) would have answers for in spades.

The prescribed “method” for the way things are supposed to work around here are, I post on Monday, I post on Wednesday, I post on Friday and “tada!” we put up a comic. Erratic is certainly a word one could use to describe how we’ve been doing things. Much in the same way big is a word one could use to describe the universe.

But do not despair, with help from the ever gracious exsulis, we are slowly but surely stumbling toward a real website, instead of our url slapped on top of a wordpress template (thank you, wordpress, for your free template!).

And in my defense, I did have a post written, or at least started, that was going to go up on Tuesdayish, but I didn’t really finish writing it. Plus it was on the “serious” side, which is a side I find quite perplexing and disorienting. Also, the article it referenced is something like 5 days old at this point, which in internets years is like 20,000. That shit may have already become fossilized!

So’s anyways, work continues, as it tends to do. And I thank all of you (or, maybe I should say, all 5 of you) for your patience.

One last piece of miscellaneous information. I’ve really been into the new Spoon album of late, and while checking out their site I came across an old news post that said they were playing a show on July 12 at “Cafu Nord” in San Francisco. I assume they meant Cafe Du Nord

which is a pretty small club, literally, a ten minute walk from my old apartment in San Francisco. Don’t believe me? Well see for yourself…

Sometimes, and by that I mean, often. I fucking hate living in the god-damned suburbs! Sure, we own a house, which is certainly better for the kid, but fuck I miss being able to drink heavily in the full confidence that I can, probably, stumble the quarter-mile necessary to reach my bed. Hell, I miss being able to drink heavily, period!

As exsulis and I stumble around in the dark, sometimes bumping into each other, trying to figure out this whole “website” business, you will likely find a number of changes here at your favorite url (that’s normalityrestored.com, by the way…). We are at the point where it is about to get, as the kids say, “real up in this biatch!” But until it get’s really real, it’ll get a lot less real first.

Not exactly sure how we want the site laid out, yet. I certainly have a number of ideas, a few thoughts, maybe even one or two conjectures, as the case may warrant. And while wordpress.com doesn’t allow for a whole lot of, experimentation, you might say, I can at least start to get an idea of how certain set-ups look and/or feel.

And I realize I can preview a theme without actually applying to the website proper, but I ask you, what would be the fun in that?

Yeah, that’s right, nothing.

and the site completely changes O_O. Luckily, I think that this change is a rather nice one… so yay!

Normally today would be a day of webcomic-y shenanigans but alas, I think I have nearly killed myself by fighting nigh impossible odds to complete a literally 6 foot+ tall webcomic for Megalo Life to complete the 4 part Xmas Special mini-series ( parts 1 2 3 )… I had to wrastle things, dive through poison dart spitting ancient corridors, out run, out smart and out last voracious executive elements that breathe the foulest smelling air hidden within the deepest dungeons of the day-job fortress. Within these slime-coded catacombs, where eldrict era cobwebs constantly wafted into my eyes, nostrils and mouth I did valiantly venture forth, my trusty wacom, Goliath, in hand to complete this unruly quest.

But now, the quest is complete, I am rewarded with a message far better than, ‘Sorry, your princess is in another castle, fuckwit.‘ And I can at last relax… needless to say, this horrendous and gargantuan project has tried to not only eat my soul over the last four week spanning episode releases, it has also invariably been gnawing away at what precious time I have… but now, time is mine once more, and so I shall use it to sleep.

In the meantime, I think that the webcomic will be returning next week, and in the interim I am preparing something special for the Holidays. Until then, when I see you once more, after a long shower to wash away the slime, crusted blood and other unthinkable detritus brandished upon me in dying gasps and fountain like spurts from my nearly human, but ultimately fallen, combatants.

This is not madness, this is Normality Restored!

–Aleister D D Gilgrim

Hello to all!

I was planning on putting together something a bit more festive for today in honor of the winter celebration of the western sun god’s birth tomorrow. Unfortunately, I got hit with some less than stellar news today which made the whole idea of scribbling something festive-y not so attractive anymore. This makes the second piece of weird or bad news that I’ve been handed in the last 2 days. If the old rules still hold true then I’m sure I can expect one more piece of emotional-psychologically-draining-or-physically-debilitating shit to hit me square in the face before everything is said and done, and things start going back to a more enlightened form of multiverse-cosmic balance.

That said and in honor of my current feelings, here is a little something for the season of traitors and wrongdoers…

In special honor of those who seem to have spent the better or at least latter portion of this year trampling on trust, destroying a record of unrequited devotion, sacrifice, honor and basic civility. To those few who seem to have made it a special mission to attack and or endanger my family, my self, my work and my livelihood, as they say, ‘this one’s for you!’. It is my sincere holiday wish that Krampus was real and that he would show up individually to your doors tonight, flatulent you repeatedly, and painfully with his fist full of switches and carry you away sobbing, beaten, broken and bloody. He’s ready, he’s happy to do his job and he has no problem showing you what I think about you miserly, fucktards of despair, spiteful retaliation and selfish ghettoized sense of community responsibility. To you, slobbering, rancid cunts, Happy Krampus, may you receive nasty staph infections, IRS audits and street walker born STDs all!

To everyone else, you’re awesome, please do enjoy this winter holiday and unlike the previously mentioned twats, may you find happiness and comfort in your honorable deeds, the company of your friends and family and in the reflection of another year gone by!

I love you all (or at least those who shouldn’t have Krampus coming after them tonight),

–Aleister