A follow-up to “Dumb Phones”, what happened to my iPod and “Rosscott’s Law”.

Also, some unfortunate news, not sure about the update schedule for the next couple of days. Life is pretty swamped, so I may have to miss some updates. Fair warning, but I’ll try and keep you up to date through this post and new posts on the site.

I was in a bike accident on Sunday and beyond any physical damage (stitches in my chin and a severe blow to my pride) I’m playing catch-up all this week, so you guys get some guest comics!

Hatton and I clearly share a kinship, as his comic In His Likeness uses a sort of minimalism akin to what goes on often here at The System. Of course the style and usage are very different, as his is much more of a continuing story following God, the Devil, etc. This is also most likely a reference to a guest comic I did for him recently which you should check out here.

The minute I posted word about the accident and the need for guest comics, Hatton jumped to it straight away. As much as we jibe at each other, he’s a good friend and it’s moments like that that make doing a website by myself actually fell like much more of a community.

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes

A quick thank you to all of you from both Rossmom and myself! You helped her celebrate her 60th birthday in style, leaving a whopping 58 comments! I know, half of them are her responses, but I give you credit all the same. The times this site goes from a monologue to a dialogue are always great for me, and for that I thank all of you Systemics. Also, this was a really cheap gift to give her, so that helped too.

Trivia Night Sunday

Any of you in the DC area should come by Bedrock Billiards in Adams Morgan on Sunday night, I’ll be hosting a trivia night. Topics will include (but not be limited to) “Stupid Shit on the Internet”, a favorite of mine. It’s free to come and play, and the winner gets $50 off Sunday night’s bar tab, as well as a shirt from the HilariAwesome.com store. Bring a few friends and come along!

I was in a bike accident on Sunday and beyond any physical damage (stitches in my chin and a severe blow to my pride) I’m playing catch-up all this week, so you guys get some guest comics!

Dern is a jackass. Yes, he did a guest comic for me. Here was the email I got from him:

TO: Rosscott
SUBJECT: This came to me in a dream
ATTACHED: Comic

weirdest part about the dream? It was a system comic.

So why, when I’m being provided a guest comic by one of my closer comics friends, do I call him a jackass? He laid out the whole thing in Arial. He knows how I feel about Arial, just like how I know how he feels about people never returning pens. And even so, he lays out the whole thing in Arial. Of course, I couldn’t just let that go. So, in my pain-killered, drug-addled, injured stupor I re-set the type in the appropriate Helvetica, complete with some art touch-ups (this is why you’re seeing something nice above, and a nice straight line across the lower case “t” just like the lord intended).

Dern is the writer behind Hello With Cheese, if you can call that writing. Strange thoughts appear in his head, and he sends them to his slave artist who tries to make sense of it all and then turns it into a comic. I admit, half the joy of this comic is thinking about how that went down sometimes, as most of the ideas range from groans to jokes I’m ashamed at laughing at. Still, at least it’s not a pirate advice column. If you’re looking for a place to dive in, I had a comic come to me in a dream one time, and he made it into a comic. Hell, twice. Check out a HWC comic I helped write HERE.

Thanks to the amazing Jessica Hagy, creator of the truly amazing Indexed, a site full of fun and interesting charts less about numbers and more about relationships. I had a chance to meet up with Jessica at SXSW a few weeks ago and, after a rather poignant conersation, she decided to make this chart. Want to know the minute I knew me and Jessica were going to be friends? She’s embraced my motto:

It couldn’t come at a better time! As I mentioned the other day on The Tweepers, I was in a bike accident on Sunday and beyond any physical damage (stitches in my chin and a severe blow to my pride) I’m playing catch-up all this week. Those comic remixes I asked for a little while ago will be making an appearance this week, as will some guest comics from friends and colleagues.

Btw Nerds, where you at?

Most of you know my mom from the website. She comments on every post, responds to many of you, and generally weighs in whenever possible. In fact, some of you are probably here because she handed you one of the official System business cards at a convention or while she was performing some errand or, my personal favorite, if you met her while she was on vacation on a cruise ship taking her picture and she said that you might like her son and his comic (ACTUALLY HAPPENED). In fact, I was asked recently if I had a publicist, and my response was “other than my mother?”

Anyway, in case this post wasn’t obvious, today is her birthday. I won’t say exactly how old she is, but it’s old. Really old. I know, I should be nice to her due to her birthing me and her advanced age, but she is also a large fan of the truth, and the truth is that she’s older than blogs, YouTube, cell phones, most televisions, and even MySpace. Oh and dirt.

The best thing I can say is that we all have my mom to thank for much of the humor on this site, as it is her upbeat and quirky attitude that I inherited that has led to many of the comics seen here. Except for the puns, those were all Dad’s influence. Blame him.

Anyway, leave her a post in the comments! She’ll be reading and thrilled I’m sure.