Sigh. Just got my proof copy of the Pig book from Lulu and it’s horribly mangled. The preview in the build-the-book phase came out okay, but once it was printed and shipped, somehow all the text got flipped inside out. Very, very wrong. So I’m heading down to the local book printer today to get a proper proof done (without the long waits for UPS’s crippled African swallows to deliver it) so I can be sure that what I offer to y’all will actually look the way it should.
I just uploaded the Hungarian version of the Pig book, so if you speak Hungarian and have been desperate to read it… er… I guess you probably don’t understand this anyway.
My email has been horribly mangled the last few days (since last Thursday) due to catastrophic meltdowns in and around Hostway, so if you have sent me email that I haven’t replied to, there’s a good chance I haven’t got it yet. I have some messages from 4PM yesterday that arrived overnight, and I just started getting a flood that started at 9AM yesterday, so I can’t say when I’ll be replying.
The Crow book is nearly done, so look for that soon.
Oh, and the print version of the Pig was going to go on sale this past weekend, but the proof I received was not the one I thought it was, so I’m holding off until I know I get the right one. UPS has decided to emulate Hostway’s email service, in that their carrier pigeons have not yet crossed Washington state. Sigh. Hopefully soon.
Unrelatedly, if anyone out there knows Bobby Henderson, could you get him to write to me please? I assume he’s got a pretty good spam filter, and “MCM” on an email reeks of pyramid schemes.
I cheated a bit this episode. First of all, the art sucks more than usual. Second of all, I read some of the other answers in the record-breaking 1,000 pairs and am integrating a third idea, but it won’t show up till the next episode. Let’s just say “pieces”. If you wrote that particular answer, it’ll make perfect sense, I’m sure.
I’m enjoying this so much I’m thinking I’m going to apply the choose-my-own-adventure theory to TADC.
The questions and their answers from the 1,000+ pairs were:
How does Merc get out of the train?: Explosives.
Does he bring D’Urville with him?: Hell no.
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[last week's page]
Today as I was avoiding drawing an especially hard pic for the Crow book, I ended up on one of those long-winded Google searches that ends up back at Digg nine times out of ten. But in this case, I stopped somewhere else entirely: I found a book on Amazon that I never thought would be printed again: Other Worlds Than This. It’s been out of circulation for probably 60 years now, so I’m wondering why it’s back from the dead. Long Tail in action? Or just clearing out an old catalogue?
The reason this fantastically odd book is interesting to me is because it was written by my grandmother… a lady I will never turn into a character in anything I write, because she was far too much of a character on her own without me messing it up. (Incidentally, if there’s anyone in Italy who knows anything about genealogy and such, apparently her great-uncle was a poet named Labindo… we’ve always had a hard time tracking her roots in the Fantoni clan…)
Anyway, I thought it was a funny thing, having my grandmother’s old book for sale on Amazon. I have no idea how it ended up there… if the copyright lapsed, if she never really controlled it, if this new book is actually protected that way or if it’s essentially a public domain reprint… all the confusing questions that our modern copyright machine has blessed us with (sigh).
If you can find a copy of the book anywhere, definitely read it. I think you’ll see my flimsy grasp of reality is actually genetic.
A guy named Hans recommended I make a shirt like this… “DRM Stinks” and an angry pig. It’s pretty blunt, but that’s prolly what he was going for. Also at his recommendation, instead of donating 50% of the profits from the “DRM” shirts to Oxfam, I’ll be donating 90% to the EFF so they can continue to fight the good fight.
If anyone else has ideas for shirts, let me know. I find it’s much easier to make these than to draw new pics for the Crow book 
