I am doing an awesome and hilarious prank for April Fool’s Day this year, everyone.

Haha! Gotcha! I’m not actually not doing anything (other than this post I guess), because I genuinely don’t actually care about April Fool’s Day.

Hooray!

Man, this post is late. I was so caught up in my International Robot Day celebrations, I must have forgot all about the Monday comics update I’m supposed to do. Or some excuse anyway.

Anyway, here’s the Phone Guys:

As I mentioned a few years ago, I once decided that March 25th is International Robot Day. Then I decided to stick with it. Nobody has the power to stop me!

And this is March 25th! Happy International Day to everyone, but especially to robots.

One time, also years ago, I was bored at work and I decided the solution was to draw this:

(I didn’t save the file, but I printed it, so now we have this scan)

If not for this drawing, I would not at all even remember that I had chosen an International Robot Day. But when I started making an actual webcomic about robots, I looked at this drawing and decided to use that robot design as Stanislav Blue. PDR never leaves a character behind. Someday, I probably should get around to doing a story about Stanislav. Hmm.

So, it is International Women’s Day, the day when we are all encouraged to find a special gal and buy her chocolates and pretty bows for her hair. That’ll shut ’em up, right?

Wait, I’ve just received word that I completely misunderstand what International Women’s Day is about and I am, in fact, a horrible person. Go figure. Well, as I’ve said before I’m a nation with no female population*, so it can’t be that surprising that I don’t know what the people of Internation do. What excuse does the Republican party use?

Anyway, why not throw out a little story with a positive female role model, PDR? Okay PDR:

Sally Titan saw the bank robbers get into their van and start speeding away. “Idiots,” she said to herself. “Now I’m going to be late for my tutoring session with Mrs. O’Malley’s kids because I have to deal with this.” With that, the muscular hero leapt across the street, bounded off the wall of the bank, and propelled herself down the street after the van. Civilians saw her streaking through the air toward the getaway vehicle, but they would never believe their own eyes. Sally kept her existence as secret as she could because she wasn’t in it for the fame. Overtaking the van, she grabbed the roof and used her momentum to slam it downward, stopping it. She had the criminals tied to a telephone pole before the police even made it to the scene. The crooks couldn’t describe what had happened, but they also couldn’t shake the blame for the heist, so they all went to prison. And Sally made it to the tutoring session on time after all.

There. Happy ending and everything. That makes up for what I said about bows, right?

*Some would say that my vigilant separation of PDR and women is my most important contribution to Womankind. You’re welcome everybody.

Over the last couple years I have manufactured something of a tradition here in the Nation of PDR. National Bookorderin’ Day is the one day in the year I waste some money on the ordering of new books from the Internet (I get books from my mother for Christmas as well, but I don’t pay for those, obviously) and the date of National Bookorderin’ Day is entirely decided by when the new John Swartzwelder novel is made available on Amazon. Well, the announcement of that novel has just been made: The Million Dollar Policeman will drop in a matter of months, so I’ve got to start figuring out what books will be coming with it.

Obviously this year has the Nation of PDR in a sort of financial state where maybe we shouldn’t be spending much money on books, but I remain confident that by the time this book rolls out (in the vicinity of April or May) I should have at least enough disposable income to make this one order. I’m diggin’ myself out of the red, so it’s good to have a reward waiting on the other side.