Quick reminder: This Saturday & Sunday, from 10-5 both days, I’ll be at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, signing and sketching at the Image Comics booth (#752).

I’ll have copies of the one-off “Balrog” poster, all the Sheldon books, “How to Make Webcomics”, and Original Art for $25 off the normal price.

Image Comics booth (#752) is in the special comics area known as “The Comic Strip”, and there are a whole host of comics pros who’ll be there signing and saying hi.

So come on out! Admission is free, the weather’s gonna be fantastic…and this is one of the rare times you can meet me and Salman Rushdie on the same day. 🙂

Caveat: I have a BA and MA in Literature, and like the rest of the English-speaking world, I have absolutely no understanding of how English actually works or why it does what it does. Zero.

Hidden Secret: No one does. And if they tell you they do, they’re lying. They just know different parts than you do of the imperfect whole.

Case in Point: My use of the phrase “wail on” in today’s strip. Growing up in Southern California, I always heard surfers use the phrase to describe punishing surf. I thought I was using a slang phrase correctly with “wail”, but I had a dozen professors and professional editors pounce on me this morning. In the interest of sharing, here’s how my intensive, five seconds of subsequent research netted out:

Apparently, there are two official ways it works: Both whaling on and waling on. I honestly didn’t even realize it had been codified, and thought I was using some street-slang form: waling on. As it turns out, all I ended up doing was picking the one conceivable form where it *doesn’t* officially work! 🙂

Interestingly, if you type in “wail on” into Google (always useful to see how commonly used a phrase is in everyday life — English ain’t following L’Academie francaise rule book, after all), you get 366,000 matches.

Typing “whale on” gets you 7,500,000 matches.

And typing “wale on” gets you 2,670,000 matches.

So there you have it! Even in the court of public opinion, I failed utterly, and picked the absolute worst option of the three. English: It’s Awesome!

Judging by my clogged inbox, it’s clear there’s plenty of interest in the Balrog poster, so here we go: Balrog posters are available for 9 days in the Sheldon Store.

We’ll have them this weekend at the LA Festival of Books, as well, but I heard from enough desperate Canadians, Australians and Brits saying they’d never make it to LA in time. So what the heck: Between now and next Friday, we’ll have the Balrog poster up for all comers, worldwide! Snag yours today, before it falls into the pit of Khazad-dûm. (…What?)

Click To Enlarge

Over Easter weekend, my 10-year old nephew Ben gave me a pretty awesome gift: Hand-drawn (“Not traced!” I was clearly told) pictures of all the Sheldon characters.

I would be remiss, as an uncle, if I didn’t share a few of them with all of you. 🙂

Thanks, Ben!

For those coming to the LA Festival of Books this weekend, here’s a preview of the Sheldon poster which we’ll have exclusively at the show: “What was going through the Balrog’s mind when he fought Gandalf?”:

(I’m still tinkering with background colors, but you can click [HERE] for a larger preview image]

If there’s extra demand for it, we may bring it into the store, I suppose. But for now, come on out this Saturday and Sunday for your exclusive show poster! Only at the LA Festival of Books!

Sheldonista John J. sent me an interesting e-mail, today, that I thought I’d share. I don’t know if it’s true, per se, or even provable, but there’s enough of a true-ism in there that it’s an interesting food-for-thought.

Anyway, John was saying that the recent tech-support strips (especially the one where you had to bring *your* computer to the source of help): 1, 2, and this one 3 had reminded him of the death of doctor’s house calls:

Supposedly the act of doctors making housecalls was killed by the rising popularity of telephones. The system was self-balancing when the patient (or their family) had to put in a little effort – namely, getting out of bed in the middle of the night and traveling to the doctor’s residence in whatever weather they expected the doctor to travel in. But as soon as the investment became unbalanced – the doctor was expected to travel in any weather, but the family only had to pick up the phone – the writing was on the wall for house calls.

All of a sudden in the last month or so, we’ve had a few human spammers hit the Sheldon forums. Nothing horrendous, thus far. Just notes like “I’m writing something generic! [followed by a link to something-online.com]”. But it’s annoying to me, and, I imagine, annoying to you as well.

Our signup process is just tedious enough that I’m flummoxed it’s “worth it” to these people, but maybe in a down economy it is.

In any case, I’m deleting/blocking offending accounts as soon as they pop up. When you see an offending one, just drop me an e-mail with the username, and I’ll take it from there.

Thanks!

– Dave

For all sorts of reasons, this really put a spring in my step today.

(My thanks to Sheldonista Ray H. of Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland, for sending this in.)

Some photos have trickled in from Emerald City Comicon that I thought I’d share with you guys. First up, the *coolest family ever* came up to the the booth on Saturday with their own home-made Flaco shirts. Check this out, it made my day:

Sheldonista Leslie P. came by the booth as well, sporting her hand-made Arthur plushie. This time, though, she had an awesome little Rex Chestington hat for him. Depending on how you tilt it, he looks cut-throat…or kinda sleepy:

Also, Sheldon reader Matthew R. sent in a photo of this sketch I did for him of a fat Borg:

Also! I totally forgot mention that six or seven Sheldonistas came up throughout the show with gifts of candy, cookies, and Hobnobs…which pleased my inner 9-year old to no end. Thank you for that!

Just a quick heads up for Sheldonistas in and around Los Angeles:

On April 25 and 26, from 10-5 both days, I’ll be at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, signing and sketching at the Image Comics booth (#752).

One thing I’d like to do is create a one-off poster for the event…with any leftovers brought into the online store for everyone. So let’s open the floor to your thoughts: Any favorite strip or past Sheldon image that you’d like to see in poster form? Let me know in the comments below!

…and I’ll see you April 25th and 26th at the Festival of Books!