A couple things of note:

First off, I’ve removed all the redirects from Brunching; clicking on a Lore Brand Comic link in the Brunching archives no longer sends you to lorebrandcomics.com. Same with the Ratings, Bandwidth Theater, and so forth. Instead, you read them on Brunching itself.

I haven’t really thoroughly assembled in my mind the reasons for doing this, but they break down into two big categories. First, I’m not updating the series I started at Brunching anymore, so there’s less of a need to send people to a canonical site. Second, I like the idea of having Brunching look at least vagely like it did when we ended it, I guess the same way they have buildings with wood stoves and hand-woven blankets so that you can see how people lived in the time before drive-through restaurants and memory foam.

The other thing is that clearly I’m more of a Twitter person than a blog person these days. You can check out my Twitter feed if you want random jokes, updates, and links. So I’m going to formally give Slumbering over to a kind of slowly revolving message board, where I’ll try to put up a new post about once a week so that people can say things about my writings, drawings, and leavings. Have at it!

You have the twice-in-a-lifetime-so-far opportunity to check out a new comic by Jon Rosenberg — he of Goats fame.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Jon’s work; I even wrote the foreword for the third book in the Infinite Typewriters series. One thing I like about Goats is that it’s dense with imagination, but I can understand how trying to start somewhere in the middle can be a daunting task for just that reason. The aforementioned books are one way to get that Rosenberg goodness with a minimum of confusion, and another way is Jon’s new site.

Scenes From a Multiverse is just what it sounds like, assuming you’re the sort of person who uses the word “multiverse” in casual conversation. And, if you are, Scenes is sure to tickle one or more of your bones. It’s a series of more-or-less one-off gags starring any one of the infinite number of weird and somewhat less weird creatures locked up in Jon’s mind. And, as an added bonus gimmick, there’s an audience participation feature as well; each week you can vote on which multiverse you’d like to see revisited, and if you’re a member of the majority you get your wish. It’s new, it’s fun, and today it incorporates the word “integument.” Check it out.

Okay, I’m back from my little vacation, and ready to rock and/or roll and/or undertake my responsibilities as an entertainer. Because I rarely seem to get anything done outside of a schedule, I’m going to give myself a regular schedule for Speak With Monsters. Let’s say Tuesday and Thursday updates. Yeah? Okay. Look for the next strip on Tuesday.

Update: This isn’t really an auspicious start to getting back on a schedule, but this week “Tuesday update” is going to mean “sometime Tuesday.” With any luck, future updates will go up at midnight so you can enjoy a new comic over your Ovaltine.

The new version of Bad Gods is up. The main page now serves as sort of a directory, and the actual content is spun off into sub-sites. “Aprocrypha” serves the same purpose, more or less, as the former main page; it’s where I put random humor stuff I make, and it’s a showcase for stuff that I might or might not spin off into its own project.

I put the site together this way, dividing things into “Active Projects” and “Previous Projects,” as kind of a public divorce from the traditional webcomics model where you pick one thing and keep updating it until you die or get bored. I’d like to approach my creative life more like a novelist or director, starting and finishing projects and moving on to the next thing, whether it’s a sequel or an entirely new work. This gives you the courtesy of knowing when something’s done rather than waiting indefinitely for the next update, and it gives me the dignity of drawing something to a discrete close and moving on.

Speak With Monsters, then, will run for about a book’s worth of comics. Alt Text will run as long as Wired keeps paying me, and Aprocrypha will serve as a sort of running sketch book and showcase.

It took me a while to settle on the phrasing of “Previous Projects,” because I wanted to convey the concept of projects that might possibly be updated again in the future but don’t hold your breath. Some, like Brunching Shuttlecocks and the newly-named Peek and Poke, are highly unlikely to be revisited in their previous form. Others, like Sean and Wormwood, are things I’d like to get back to but which might end up giving way to newer ideas. The thing that they all have in common is that I’m not working on them right now, and if I get back to them it’ll probably be for a solid set of updates, rather than just one-offs here and there.

Finally, at the top right side you have a list of recent updates, so you can use the main page to keep up with my latest humor writings if you don’t want to add the individual projects as RSS feeds for whatever reason. I’ll probably turn that list into a link-only RSS feed if there’s any call for it. Let me know.

Anyhow! New updates at Speak With Monsters and Apocrypha, to inaugurate the new set-up. More on the way!

I’m in one of my spring-cleaning moods, and so changes are underway at Bad Gods. The first change is that I’m updating Monster Manual Comix again, and also it’s not called Monster Manual Comix. It’s now, for various reasons, called Speak With Monsters. It’s also now located at a new URL, http://speakwithmonsters.badgods.com/.

This is actually part of a larger set of changes, but I’m still working them out in my head. The plan is to make the main Bad Gods page a better guide to All Things Lore, which is something people — well, two people — have asked for. More info as I wrangle my thoughts into place.

Colette and I spent some time amusing ourselves by coming up with World of Warcraft-themed “yo momma” jokes and we thought “Why should we deprive the world, nay, the Universe the rapture we have created for ourselves?” So hey. You can read the WoW Yo Momma blog or follow wowyomomma on Twitter. Enjoy!

Now it’s officially a tax write-off.

I’m actually liking the iPad more than I expected. I thought I’d just be leaving it on the coffee table, but I’ve been bringing it to bed and to cafes.

Here’s the thing: for me, the iPad passes the Tabletop Test. This is a mental exercise I made up to compare technologies. If the old thing and the new thing were on the same tabletop in front of you, and you wanted to accomplish a task, which would you pick up to complete that task?

If you wanted to read a book, would you pick up a novel or the Kindle?

If you wanted to make a grocery list, would you pick up a notepad and pen, or your PDA?

If you wanted to cut up an onion, would you pick up a knife and cutting board, or the Slap Chop?

Of course, you kind of have to ignore the novelty factor here. I’d pick up the Slap Chop just to see how it works, but I’m sure in the long term I’d be picking up my beloved Wüsthofs.

Anyhow, when it comes to general-purpose computing, the iPad passes the Tabletop Test for me. If I want to look up something on Wikipedia or if I want to browse the Web in a cafe, I’d definitely pick up the iPad, and I’m pretty dang sure it’s not the novelty factor.

The reasons are complex, it’s not just a single feature. There’s the lovely display that works from wide angles, there’s the ten-hour battery life, but the main thing is that I’d rather be sitting back with the iPad in one hand than leaning over a laptop. It feels like the computer is conforming to my needs as a human more than I’m conforming to its needs as a machine.

But here’s the thing: if I had to get rid of one of them, the laptop or the iPad — well, that would be a tough choice. The laptop is a more powerful, full-featured work machine, that’s for certain. But the temptation to dump the lappy and pick up a keyboard for the iPad (or better yet, a folding keyboard for the iPhone once OS 4.0 comes out) would be strong. I haven’t opened my laptop since I got the iPad, I’ll let you know if that continues.

Anyhow, none of this is to say that the iPad is a perfect machine. Apple’s control of app installation remains troubling, and lack of Flash support is somewhat annoying. And if I were a student or still doing news reporting the laptop would definitely be a better choice. But I’ll definitely be getting my five hundred bucks’ worth from this thing.

The more things change, the less they stay the same. I must like Final Fantasy XIII pretty okay, because I’m still playing it even though I bought it and played it specifically to get an article out of it. I’m pretty satisfied with the level of strategic thinking required to win battles quickly. Making each battle into sort of a star-earning minigame is clever, it adds some interest to what would be, in most cases, a foregone conclusion.

I’m also planning on playing more of the original Final Fantasy, but I can’t decide whether to go forward on the Wii Virtual Console or the iPhone. The iPhone is prettier, easier to use, and the story makes two or three licks more sense, but Virtual Console is the more authentic experience, you know?

Everybody loves Smell-O-Vision!.

Kind of a weird one. Appropriately, this one came to me when I was half-asleep. I imagined telling some stereotypical old guy about my dreams, and him berating me because while I was out taking a train that turned into a Denny’s or whatever, he spent his eight hours chopping a cord of dream-logs, feeding a hundred dream chickens, and otherwise working hard all night.

So I combined that with the fact that I’ve recently spent a lot of time getting Pocket Informant on the iPhone just how I like it, and this is what emerged. I’ve gone through several cycles of liking it a lot and not liking it very much, and now it’s out there.