Okay, so, with the release of the latest Swartzwelder novel, the Million Dollar Policeman, I have declared National Bookorderin’ Day in the Nation of PDR. But this year I have a complication: I already bought my books for this year. I did it months ago.

So, in addition to my new Swartzwelder, I’m getting the Black Panther Masterworks, which collects that characters appearances in Jungle Action. I’ve read these some time ago and they were quite excellent. Even saving a bit for a sale price, I’m paying more than I ought to spend these days, but owning this is going to make me happy, so there’s that to consider as well.

On top of this I got the cheapest of the used copies of the Space Quest Companion, which as far as I can tell is a prose retelling of the Space Quest games narrated by Roger Wilco. I would like to read that.

I will not be buying more books this year. This is all the money I can spend.

Well, we have a space for advertising on the Book of PDR now. Over in the sidebar, under the menu, I’m sure you can see it. I had resisted doing such a thing because it is sort of ridiculous, but now I’ve done it anyway. Isn’t that a great story? It sure is. The bottom line is that it would be cool to make any amount of money, no matter how small, from this website, seeing as it is one of the main things I enjoy in life. It may be a long while before you actually see any ad there, though, since I don’t get a lot of hits to this site and people probably prefer to advertise in places that do.

Haiku!

In a world of pie.
One man must learn about love
And eat all the pie.

Here’s a terrible idea for a video game: The alien bad guys are summoning their armies through a Star Portal Machine that you destroy in the first level. After that you just have to kill the hordes that have already made it through, so there is constantly fewer dudes. As the levels go on they just keep getting easier and easier because there isn’t many bad guys left. The final level is just you leading an army against the one alien left who is just scared and hiding. It’ll be easy, but think of the sense of power you’d get. You’d be like, a really terrible guy!

Okay, as I said previously, today’s SecGov update is just some single thing I doodled at work one time long ago. But unlike I said previously, it will not be immediately followed by my next storyline. Instead, to give me just a little bit more time to heal my drawing parts, Marq will be back on Thursday’s page with another single page strip. Then, hopefully, next week will be back in action.

In other news, I think I have updated all the automatic credit card payments that I need to with my new credit card information. It is a relief to have it done, though in the process I discovered that there has been a thirty dollar a month payment I have been making for years and I simply don’t know what it was for. All this time I just assumed it had something to do with the site, but apparently not. The website it says I am paying has no explanation of what they do or anything. So I am not giving these people my new information (and anyway I don’t think I would know how to do so if I wanted to).

Assuming this doesn’t turn out to be something important that I don’t understand, it is perfectly likely that I am about to stop paying an unnecessary monthly fee that I have probably sunk thousands into at this point.

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.

I have resolutions to announce regarding my aforementioned missing wallet. It was indeed found in the theatre where it had been assumed to have been lost. I got a call (as expected, during day-person hours) and was told I could go pick it up.

SO I DID THAT!

I am now, once again, in possession of my wallet. So that’s a plus. Unfortunately, I had cancelled my credit cards and my bank card, so now I have to get the replacements for those. But those are the easiest things to replace that were in there anyhow, so it is a small price to pay. As long as I remember to update all my online payment things to the new credit card numbers when I get them. The Internet needs this information.

REMEMBER TO DO THAT PDR!

Something I forgot to mention before, though: Just hours before I lost the wallet, I also lost my sunglasses. This was less significant. Sure, I hate to venture into cursed natural light without my sunglasses…

…but I lose sunglasses at a rate of something like three or four a year. I don’t like to lose them, but I’m hardened to that particular loss.

Still, after I looked for the missing eyewear, the waitress in the restaurant told me she’d keep a look out for them so when I went downtown to get the wallet, I stopped in at that restaurant, it being practically next to the cinema. The same young lady was working there today and she was not only able to return my sunglasses, she had the perplexing story that they were apparently already behind the counter pretty much as soon as I’d left the previous day. It is unknown how that occurred. My current leading theory is that I did not, as originally thought, lose the glasses while sitting, but perhaps near the door as I first removed them upon entering. From there they were perhaps found by some other employee found and put behind the counter even as we ate. Could be true! But we’ll never know!

So anyway, in these two days I have managed to lose a bunch of stuff and then get it back. The moral is: In life, stuff happens, deal with it. This is a common moral in my life.