We saw something our last day in Rome that shut me right up. We went to something called the Cappuchine Crypt, where an order of monks made sculptures out of the bodies of brothers that had been returned to them. Each of five or six small rooms had their floors spread with earth from Jerusalem, and over this they combines different bones into patterns, flowers and other designs. An effigy of death itself held hourglass also made out of bones, for example - and a scythe made out of shoulder blades.

The continuity continues!

I typed in all those Goddamn newsposts and dated them for the future, I figured I was kosher up until Monday at least. We'll discuss things like Italian Traffic and CounterStrike next time, I'll make sure I track down another Cafe where I can do this kind of shit from.

Here is the new comic, enjoy.

I talked to Tycho a bit yesterday and he told me it should be me in Europe not him since I can appreciate art in a way that he cannot. Unfortunately I don’t like leaving my house so going to Europe is kind of difficult. I have been getting better recently though and this leads me to believe that soon I may actually be able to go to a foreign country. For example E3 is usually the only trip I take every year and I spend it either at the show or in the hotel room. The other guys head off to all the fancy parties while I sit back at the room and play games. I do this for a few different reasons. Mainly I have an overwhelming fear of getting lost. I am not sure if I got lost as a child or something but somehow my brain got fucked and now I cannot go anyplace that is not the kitchen without first thoroughly mapping out the route I will take and making sure that I have several back up plans should something unexpected happen. I’m not jut talking about trips out of state here either I am talking about going downtown.

Not bad at all.

In much the same way that XSN makes me wish I enjoyed sports, visiting the Vatican made me wish I was into Gods.

Not bad at all.

In much the same way that XSN makes me wish I enjoyed sports, visiting the Vatican made me wish I was into Gods.

There is a sort of public market right when I leave the hotel called Campo Del Fiori, which literally translated means Campo of Something. That's not the point of the story.

Penny Arcade reader Katie was kind enough to draw this lobster for me so that I would not have to write a news post. Thanks Katie!

I am in a really good mood right now. There was a good sized protest last night in Seattle and it’s all over the news today. They are running video of it on all the local news channels. There is nothing I love more than watching hippies get the shit kicked out of them by cops on TV. I’m not saying I like cops or that I think one side was right and the other wrong. Honestly I am too apathetic to care about it either way. All I know is that for me it just doesn’t get any better than some as clown in a gasmask and a pair of Birkenstocks getting a face full of pepper spray. Now that is good television. Cops even used something I had never heard of called “sting grenades” and judging by the reaction of the hippies I saw they lived up to their name. They could just show protests and animal attacks on TV 24/7 and I’d be a happy camper. Like that one lady who tried to take her picture with the polar bear and got her leg chewed off. Oh God…that one still cracks me up.

I apologize to Club PA members for the month of May who have not received the gift yet. Tyco left all the information for me to login and send out that gift but it does not appear to work. I hate to bother him with this kind of thing while he is on vacation so it might just be best to wait until he gets home.

If you are interested in participating in the Soul Calibur 2 tournament please fire off an email to Brad.

Any person who has flown internationally knows that the airplane, at some point in your trajectory, becomes a sort of flying asylum. Time loses meaning. You are buffetted by wailing of all kinds as you try to retain a grip on the steady operation of your mind. Children keen and shriek as though being murdered, and you hold to your in-flight cookie like a life preserver.

It's up to me to hold down the fort while Tycho is off gallivanting across Europe. I realized that this meant it was up to me to upload the comic strips at the appropriate times but it did not occur to me until just a few minutes ago that I would also need to produce a news post. It's funny, back in 1998 when we started doing this PA thing we were one of only half a dozen or so web comics. We left loonygames after Jason told us that the word fuck "just isn't a funny word" and we decided to make our own website. Being as we had not yet met Emma and had only the most rudimentary knowledge of HTML it amounted to some buttons on the left side and a big empty space on the right. Tycho said he didn't like having all that white space on the right and that we should do something to fill it up. I told him to figure it out and he decided to write a little post to accompany each comic strip. Originally he would write posts just long enough so that they equaled the length of the buttons on the left, making the page look more balanced. As the years went by the number of buttons on the left side of the page grew and his posts became longer and longer. He essentially invented the web comic "news post" as we all know it today in an effort to make our page not look like ass. We could have just as easily centered the buttons or put a picture of a lobster over there and accomplished the same thing. Obviously I'm glad that he revolutionized the world of web comics or whatever, but its times like this when he is gone and the news post falls on my shoulders that I think how much easier this would be if I'd just put a picture of a goddamned lobster over there.