Rogan: after that household respiratory sickness in November, running again was harder. I was still doing it, but normally my breath-cycle is two steps inhale, two steps exhale, and now it was three for each. It sure wasn’t because I’d gotten BETTER at running; I would wheeze like a busted accordion around the half mile mark, it’d last for an hour or two, and it sounded bad enough that my asthmatic roommate told me I needed to go to the doctor.

( Read more... )

In summary: hey, if you are wheezing and short-winded a month after recovering from a respiratory illness, maybe go to your doctor and get it checked out!

Comics we got at MICE! All are great!

• BE NOT AFRAID, by LSJM(?) Black, white, and red one-pager that’s like if the angel from Pet was giving you a Trump-era pep talk.
• Secret Black Woman, by Ingrid Pierre. Autobio about anti-black racism, anti-Asian racism, passing, and being biracial.
• Default, by JCJB. Poetry essay watercolor about fighting empire and suffering. We think Phosphor of hungryghosts would like this!
• Prompted: an educator’s response to generative AI in the classroom, by Caroline Hu. Science, chatbots, and college. We think erinptah would like this!
• Cannon Fodder, by Eric Alexander Arroyo. Queer mecha pilots in love during wartime. Got it for the sci-fi library; we have now purchased all three printings of this, haha.
• Maintenance, by Cryptozoology. “What if a robot liked it when their creator performed upkeep on them (in a sexual way) and they were both girls???” Grabbed for sci-fi library.
• Silhouette, by L/V. Navy blue Riso robot porn. May also end up in sci-fi library because the art is so gorgeous.

I don't know what sort of greenhouse the downstairs neighbors are running, but they are practically heating our own apartment for us. It is 20 degrees outside, we have YET to turn on the heat.

Through luck, we have ended up with the warmest room in the apartment. We wake up in the morning bathed in sunbeams and radiance. The heat is off, and I am comfortable just wearing a sweatshirt--no gloves no hat. It's a little rough in the summer, but right now, I am blessing those downstairs tropical neighbors.

Okay. Our health has been kinda rough and the fan poll and Patreon perks are a bit delayed, but hell or high water, we will be dragging our carcass through a couple shifts at the Boston Comics Roundtable (BCR) table at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) this weekend:

• Saturday, Dec. 6, from 10:30-2
• Sunday, Dec. 7, from 11-2

MICE is at the Fuller Building at Boston University (808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA), off the Green Line.

If all goes well, we will be debuting Coming In or Staying Out, the color edition, at MICE! (As in, we will be frantically stapling and folding it as you arrive, having picked it up from another tabler at opening.) Here's the sneak peek pics the printer sent us that we've been sitting on for a week due to computer breakage!

( CAKE THAT BEEF! CAKE THAT BEEF! EDIT: now with EVEN MORE spicy beef! )

It's being printed in violet and bubblegum pink on ivory paper. Exciting!

EDIT: also, I discovered that apparently all this time, the paperback of Infinity Smashed: Found Wanting had been set to international shipping rates. Eesh. We have reset the shipping to proper rates. I don't know how we fumbled it so badly, but at least it's fixed now. (And the person who ordered a copy even at that nosebleeding sum has gotten a partial refund to bring the shipping down to domestic rates.)