1/27/2001:

side note: on the topic of donating blood, I went to a Lifesource Drive last week for my trimonthly bloodletting, and they promptly rejected me!! That's right, my platelets are no longer suitable for human use. I've mutated! Only platypi can benefit from the transfusion of my blood now.

Actually, the truth is, I'm ill. :~P bleagh. Of course they don't want my germs. So until I evict the bacteria from my immune system, my fluids are staying put. You all can help me on my way to convalescence, however, by just writing me!! Yes, even tho I worked hard on that button to the left, I never get any mail and it makes feel lonely. ~_~;; ...woe is me. See, despite what Kip insists, I have trouble believing that anybody really looks at the strip, because I don't hear about it from anyone except the voices in my head. As always, feedback is fabulous! If there's anything you'd like to see happen with Scrubs, if you have any advice or comments, or if you simply want to expostulate upon the mating habits of the three-toed sloth, we'd like to hear about it!

persimmons and penguins,

-Sil

The el, for those of you who aren't familiar with Chicago, is the elevated train. That's all you need to know to understand this strip.

You might also have guessed that of our merry duo, Sil is much much nicer than Kip. Nice to a fault. Well, that's my opinion, anyway. That's why I wrote this strip. :-)

Anyway, hm, other news... bigpanda's going crazy! I wrote a little scrubble post about it but it got lost in the ether when I hit post and publish. That'll teach me to just hit post first and then do the puiblish instead of trying to get it all in one step. Because post works... and publish works... but post and publish? Beware.

So regarding the panda... Scott Kurtz of PvP decided he wanted to be listed again and posted a link on his comics site which attracts so many more viewers than this one that we are as an insignificant gnat to his elephantine audience. Anyway, he jumped to the top of the rankings, bumping off Sinfest and prompting many other cartoonists, most of whom have not been as successful as him to get a little annoyed and start fighting back in the text blurbs. So the Sinfest regulars got pissed and organized a mass clicking campaign, winning things back. Meanwhile, Scott Kurtz tried to defend his actions, saying that his work helped bring more people to the panda site, helping everyone. Meanwhile, other cartoonists went nuts in their blurbs.

Why do I know all this? Why have I been compulsively checking bigpanda? Because we just got listed there and we'd finally broken into the listings a couple of days ago. The outbreak of new clickers who just started clicking on anything but us has driven us off the ratings again. And why do I care about ratings? I really shouldn't. Sil and I do this as a way to see our strange ideas in a somewhat more material form. Then we share with others. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I like getting noticed. I mean, who doesn't?

The bottom line is that for the day we were listed as a "Underdog Comic" and a "Spanking New Comic," our page views shot up to their highest levels. We reached more people than ever before. And I like knowing that. I think any artist would. It only becomes a problem when the art gets changed to try and attract more people. Screw that. I showed Sil some strips tonight that I wrote that I think only the two of us will ever laugh at. We're still going to post them. But I think we'll give you some time to get acclimated to us first. :-)

-Kip