Wow what a weekend. PAX was a crazy big success again, thanks to everyone who came out and made it so awesome. One of my favorite things this year was seeing the incredible response to our new Pinny Arcade pin trading. I can’t even count how many pins I gave out but it had to have been in the thousands. By Sunday we were sold out of pins at the merch booth and it was awesome to see all the trading going on at the show. Not only did you guys seem to really love the pins but the exhibitors did as well. After seeing how popular it was we had so many companies come to us and ask about making pins not just for PAX Australia and PAX prime but for other conventions like E3 and comic con. We even had publishers asking about putting special Pinny Arcade pins in collectors editions of their upcoming games. I am so excited to watch this thing grow!

We are bullish on Lego City Undercover, which looked like it was basically gonna be GTA minus the G and the T, which is basically true. It's also incredibly silly in that Disney Pixar sorta way, in that it fights a Two Front War against children and their parents with physical humor and references that aren't meant for every member of the intended audience.

In the very first Elimination episode of Strip Search, I ask my co-conspirator Gabriel if we are even capable of performing in the way we ask contestants to during the challenge. I asked it partially because I thought it might be a good line, which you might be able to triangulate from my wholly manufactured "high gravitas" tone, but also as a real question, because the methods we use to determine who is best - when hiring, or for the show - are incredibly intimidating. And I can tell you, just from my own perspective, it's very strange when you build a company staffed by such competent people that you probably couldn't get hired there.

Want to watch all the cool stuff happening at PAX East this weekend but can’t make it to the show? Well Twitch has you covered. They will be streaming tons of great content from the show all tree days. You can find all the details right here.

It's PAX! PAX is today.

It is incredibly strange to have something be true for the first thirty seven years of your life and then cease to be so. I found my parents' divorce at eighteen quite startling, but that was a Deeply Localized Fact that did not have an effect on incarceration rates. Remember that all of this hubbub is about a substance that has, as its primary effect, the not doing of anything.

Brian asked me to let everyone know what he’ll have in the merch booth at PAX this weekend.

I got a lot of interesting responses to my post on Monday. It sounds like I’m not the only one out there who avoids things because they are illegal. With the laws about Marijuana in Washington flipping I’ve heard from quite a few people in my position of being mid to late thirties, never having tried the stuff and curious what it’s all about. So I’ll go ahead and break down my first experience with it. Get ready for REAL TALK part 2.

EP. 6 PRESSING BUTTONS

One of the crazier things about marijuana prohibition is/was just how bad they have been at prohibiting marijuana. If I were walking through Seattle's University District, I think it would be difficult not to get some. This is the kind of trufact which can be ascertained just by going outside, by attending a concert, or (especially) by attending an outdoor concert. Gabriel used to complain about it at the Dave Matthews shows he'd end up at, and I was like, man. Listen.

I still have the KS bug pretty bad, I just try not to beat you over the head with it. I am a big fan of dice cup/push your luck type games, and this one tries to see where the frontier might be in that style of play. The deal has sweetened up pretty nice over the course of the campaign - the Kickstarter price is five bucks cheaper than retail, and has free shipping in the USA. The company also treated me right last time I backed something, so (for me, at least) it was a pretty easy call. As of three o'clock PST, there's about six hours left.

As you can see by the “part 1” in the title of today’s comic, we are kicking off a little storyline. It’s just three comics but it’s actually an idea we’ve been kicking around for a couple months. It touches on some pretty personal stuff for me and so I wanted to give you all a little setup if you’re interested.

We were going to tell you a story in the next few strips; as usual, it will be your half of the equation to determine what percentage of what we say at any given time is true. It's never been an especially hard game, because it always is. But that epistemic judder is what allows you to engage true topics. Sometimes you need a little space.

I think we can all agree that the previous episode of Strip Search was pretty intense. In today's episode we slow things down a bit with another social challenge and give you all some time to get to know the artists a bit better.

I have wanted to make a comic that used all these words in a single strip, that's the sort of thing I fantasize about, to the extent that I've had them all typed into the Cloud equivalent of strip.txt for coming up on a year and a half. Occasionally, one must do for oneself; occasionally, one must reclaim.

Strip Search episode 4 is up and we have our very first elimination.