Well, once again the apocalypse has let me down. Now I’m gonna have to pay rent and all that stuff again. Thanks for nothing, End of the World.

Haiku!

Unknowable frog.
You have confounded us all.
How you jump so high?

In other news, I just bought a box of Crayola crayons. Is it my imagination or do they not smell the same as they did when I was younger. I suppose the possibility exists that it has been so long since I’ve bothered to smell crayons that they have changed and I was left unaware. It is also possible that my own body reacts differently to smells than it used to. It is sad that I can’t tell if crayons have changed or if my memory is imperfect or what. Stupid reality being essentially unknowable.

I have noted in the past that my blood seemed to taste better than it does now. The smell of crayons and the taste of my own blood. Is nothing from my childhood sacred?

This last weekend I had to go into work for the first aid course they make me take every three years. Usually I’d take it with a bunch of other people, but though my good luck and other people’s illnesses, I was the only one in the course this time. It was much better that way. The instructor catering specifically to me instead of a group made it much easier to actually learn stuff. One specific thing I learned: I get annoyed by having to take breaks.

Back before my work ethic was doused by my distaste for my job I used to work right through all the breaks we would get in a day. The smokers always need to get out there and do their smoking, but PDR would rather keep on working so as to get it all done sooner. I remember back in high school when they took away our lunch breaks to keep us from fighting and we used to finish our school day at like two in the afternoon or something! That was a sweet deal! And this attitude has grown into my work life apparently. I figure that if I can get the work done quickly, I get a longer period of not-work, and that’s way better than a break during work. Granted, that really only works for jobs where you get to go home when the work is done and not jobs where you’re there for a set number of hours… I suppose that breaks improve those kind of jobs…

But anyway, why do we need so many breaks? I propose that all schools do like my school used to do. Get the kids out of there early so that they can have better afternoons. Heck, while we’re at it we could take away their Summer breaks and they’d be finished the whole schooling process years earlier! Surely when I explain it them the kids will be okay with that.

Okay, I am serious when I say I prefer not taking breaks during a workday, but if I could get Summer breaks again like in school? I would be a happy person.

That guy up there? That’s Dog-Thing. I created him for an art project in Junior High, but I no longer have that project. The only thing I remember about it was that his arch enemy was the Technicolor Spoon.

Since only one uncolored sketch of the character remained, I have only the vaguest memory of what color he was. But working with that memory I whipped up this picture. But every Dog-Thing has his day. And that day is today as I let bring him to the Book of PDR.

I also don’t remember if there was an origin for Dog-Thing, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I never bothered to explain what he was or where he came from.

Okay, so January is over and I did indeed break the previous record for the most posts in one month on the Book of PDR. So take that 2006. I don’t think it will be much of a problem to make 2011 the most-post year either at this point. I’ve eleven months left and even if I’m guaranteed at least one post a week for comics, so this will be easy.

Speaking of breaking annual records, I’m sure we’ve had more snow this year than the last two combined already. The Winter here is pretty much in full form now. We’re covered in snow. And it isn’t even good snow that you can build things out of. It’s just crappy powder that gets in my way. Now, it isn’t that we’ve actually had a lot of snow this year, really. There’s snow sure, but it isn’t quite the “End of the Snoworld” that news networks are bandying about for other places. But those last two years amounted to about a week of actual snowfall and it rarely stuck around on the ground.

I have to wonder if the snowy winters of my youth really were as snowy as I remember them. In my mind I remember massive snowfalls that stayed on the ground for months, but I bet that if we don’t get another storm, this stuff will be gone by next week. Is it a Global Climate Change thing, or am I just misremembering? Likewise, are people really getting worse at dealing with snow, or did I just not know about all the things that would shut down with every single storm when I was younger? Maybe it’s those news shows who feel the need to blow everything out of proportion with terms like “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon” which just makes it seem like things are worse than they really are. Who can say? Who can say? Not me.

Patrick D Ryall has been on the computers for as long as he can remember. Starting with gaming on a Commodore 64 in the 80s I was at the forefront of the technological progress all the way to the present day. I was never doing much at the front line. Just standing around. But I was there.

And so I was on the Internet back when it was still pretty small. Not like super-small, but pretty small. I can remember those days when it was actually hard to find information on a topic you were looking for. Last week I searched Google for “show about a kid in a coma” and I totally found what I was looking for! As easy as that! In the olden days it was not that easy. I feel like I spent years going through Yahoo categories.

But in the end I never used my connection to the Internet to its full potential. If I’d known ahead of time I’d end up trying to create a website with comics and crap, I would have started early and built a fanbase and stuff. Instead, my time on the Internet was spent just looking at stuff that interests me and interacting with people as little as possible. Much like life in general.

The first time I remember joining a forum and participating in conversations and stuff was a board devoted to Quest for Glory Five, while it was in development. Wikipedia tells me that the game came out in 1998, so I figure my time on those boards was 1997ish. When the game finally did come out (not as good as its predecessor it has to be said. QfG4 ruled!) I moved on and left that forum behind. But it was around that time that I was combining my interests in World War Two with Superheroes and I ended up finding a website about World War Two-era Superheroes. Though there I found a link to some comic book message boards where I participated in conversations and became a small part of an online community. To this day, though I don’t post often, I still make sure to check the boards regularly and keep in touch with several people there.

That held me for a few years. But eventually my desire to be online more grew! I teamed up with my peeps and we needed a website! I remember at some point we came into owning LittleChoy.com but I have no idea how. And we never did anything with it, really. Oh well. Then came the Adam West Batcave on Geocities. That lasted for a while, but it was not enough. On Tuesday June 4th 2002 Contains2.com was launched. The Official Nonsense Homepage. There we could write about whatever we wanted and make stupid drawings and all that stuff. And so that is what we did. For a couple years. Eventually Contains2 started to die and I couldn’t hold it together myself so I came to this site, the Book of PDR making my first post on Friday April 28th 2006. And since then I have been here. Very here.

I avoided the Myspace thing, and probably some other social networking things, but I did end up on Facebook around Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 where, for my profile, I described myself as follows: “I’m kind of a weird loser with an immature attitude and delusions of grandeur. I claim to hate humanity, but it’s only because I love them and want them to grow up. I have a high opinion of myself, but no self esteem. I’m a goody-two-shoes that refuses to play by the rules. And I’m also kinda dumb.” and I have not changed it since. While I don’t do that much with Facebook, I am still there and like it.

So what does it all show? Not much. I guess it just proves that my history on the Internet is not all that interesting. So… History Post Done!