Running late with my comics post this week, but not drastically so.

First up we have Little Choy, still insulting aliens:

Then there is the Phone Guys:

After three decades of anticipation, I somehow expected my first broken bone to be more dramatic.

So anyway, I’ve been all splinted up and had some sleep (though not as much as I expected). I have some feeling getting back into the fingers and, as one would expect, it is sore.

Still, I think, probably the worst parts of this for me are yet to come. For one thing, I’ve got to take antibiotics four times a day, specifically with food. I do not generally eat food four times a day. I predict a week of feeling overly full.

I am due to go back on Thursday to get it checked out and until then, I’m not meant to change the dressing or anything. That’s gonna annoy me too.

Also, I’m told it would be a good idea to keep the hand raised above the level of my heart at all times. Like, even when I am sleeping. It is bothersome having to mentally remain aware of my hand like this. It takes up brainpower that I should be using to think about prehistoric mammals. And the stranger part is that during my first visit, right after the accident, I asked the guy working triage if I should keep it elevated and he literally replied “If it makes you feel better.” The actual doctor made it sound less optional.

In any case, the whole thing could have been much worse, so I’ll just be happy in spite of the above annoyances.

Finally, and be sure that I don’t like to objectify anyone, but I feel it is important to note that the doctor who did my sutures was easily one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Is it possible that hospitals breed some sort superhumanly attractive doctors to make treatment more tolerable? Because I’m not wholly against that.

Okay, guess what, I hurt my hand at work again. Got it jammed in some machinery. It would appear that I have my first broken bone, though it is just the tip of my of the distal phalanx on my right middle finger, not a bone that would need to be treated with a cast or anything. Still, I have to go back to the hospital in the morning to see a hand specialist to see what they can do about the rest of the finger, which is pretty beat up. In all likelihood I will have more information after the follow up appointment.

Anyway, that’s all the typing I am up for right now.

I feel that maybe it is worth noting that this last month or so I have actually been feeling like Patrick D Ryall, which is something that doesn’t happen often enough. That may sound strange, because whatever I, Patrick D Ryall, feel like should be what it feels like to be Patrick D Ryall, but it is not so. I’m feeling PDR in the adjective form.

I have a pretty clear idea of how the ideal PDR is supposed to go, and to be honest, it doesn’t go that way often enough. But that has been improving. Last month I saw a great number of people of whom I don’t see enough, so that was a plus. A combination of the winter being over and just taking circuitous routes has increased the amount of walking I’ve been doing, and walking is a definite must for PDR. During one of those walks I got the attention of the police, another classic PDR result. My monetary situation seems to have slightly improved, which is a definite plus because all that dwelling on money is very much not a PDR action (For that matter spending a decade in a job I can’t even pretend to care about just so I don’t be homeless is very not PDR, but I haven’t quite worked out what to do about that one, yet). Also, my creative output is up. Things like this make for a very PDR PDR.

I should point out that feeling like myself isn’t necessarily the same thing as feeling happy. In fact, the spectrum of PDRness runs the full gamut of highs and lows and these months has been no exception. There have been various minor things like the whole affair with my wallet and credit cards. (and also losing a book on a bus, which certainly seems like something a PDR would do), and some other things I don’t plan to dwell on here on the site (although, actually, I will add that losing my three day weekends is utter ballsack. And not in the good way), but at least for the moment the state of the Nation of PDR is such that at least the youth in the Nation of PDR aren’t rioting in the streets ashamed at our loss of national identity. Or something.

And finally, for those who saw the title of this post and were disappointed by what it turned out to be, I’ll try to see if I can’t make an a guide to groping PDR someday in the future to make up for it.

Okay, today marks the end of the story of Stanislav Blue in Secret Government Robots. It has been great having Marq on the art duties for this one. He took a story I wrote off the cuff and made improvements that I couldn’t have done on my own, and it is great to see my words become images without actually having to be the one making those images. Thanks Marq!

Next week will start with a single strip that I made up at a boring night at work a few months back that I need to use before it becomes irrelevant, but then I can jump into my next full-length story. So that’s something.

In the meantime, I have not been living a completely artless life. I already mentioned my first watercolor painting, which I have titled “It’s Like A Metaphor For Life Or Something” and now I present my second:

I call it “Nude Ascending A Staircase (Inside A Rocketship)”:

And I’ve still got one more frame I want to use up. When the inspiration hits, look out art world.