Meta: The hell?

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What'd I do, die or something?

Jeez.

Meta: Hey, kids.

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So.

I managed to fall off the Internet again, thanks to my ten-year-old laptop deciding one night a few months ago that it was time for its modem to become a small, light, actually-relatively-useless-for-the-job paperweight. That kind of sucked.

Now I have a new laptop. And its modem works -- see, I'm posting and everything.

So basically, maybe with the Plugfics again, dammit.

Meta: Past Expiration

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Funny thing... I was going to write the Plugfic for this one, and then I realized that Arthur Machen beat me to it over a hundred years ago.

Pluggers are stuck in 1895.

Meta: Post Slowdown.

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At least I'd posted more recently than the Viscount Stokington. I mean, geez.

I blame the slowdown of plugfics partially on school, but -- it must be confessed -- mainly on knitting. Yes, the art of moving bits of yarn through other bits of yarn. I have recently taken it up, and am now obsessed. There is simply so much power in looking at a basically formless lump of yarn, telling that formless lump that you have decided it will now be something else, and then actually bringing about that metamorphosis through sheer force of will.

My guess is, this is what it's like to be God.

Fortunately(?), the God of Moving Bits Of Yarn Through Other Bits Of Yarn is still interested in writing about Pluggers now and then. Thus this is not a blog abandonment, but only a post slowdown.

Feel free to enjoy reading about towels, below.

Meta: Prettification.

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I got bored of the old gray-blue layout, so I changed all the colors and a bit of the HTML. (Did you know you can add color variables to your template HTML and then they'll show up in the WYSIWYG color-picker? I didn't!)

That is all.

Meta: Yes.

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Soon, I think. Trying to fight the backlog was a huge mistake, so that's out; all the Pluggers comics I missed will simply have to remain forever un-ficced, at least by me. (Is ficced a word?) I think at least one post a week to start, whenever an installment strikes me. And we'll see what's what.

Answers to your potential questions:

The capybara is the world's largest living rodent. It is also known as the "water hog" due to its propensity for living in and around water, and its resemblance to a hog. It is a sadly underappreciated creature, and if you're going to draw a fictionalized animal-creature-thing version of yourself, there are far worse choices.

I sadly do not have a huge, slightly-off-perspective flatscreen monitor, nor a wireless keyboard with strangely misshapen keys. However, I will graciously accept donations of either.

I do indeed own this hat. Although to be honest, I don't generally wear it while using the computer.

And the change of blogging moniker to Blog Post Frank? Well, seein' as Google told me that nobody else had started using it yet... why not?

Current top-of-the-page post.

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Hi, welcome, and drag up whatever passes for seating in Pluggerland. I got behind on the plugfics for a while there, but updates are still continuing; in fact, I just finished January 9th's entry not five minutes ago. Eventually I'll get caught up.

Stick around if you want, and feel free to comment no matter what your opinion. I've got plenty of green bean casserole, leftover meatloaf, and gallon-jug wine for everyone.

Edit 2/28: Also, since Blogger forced me to switch to the new version (boo change, boo having to get a Google account), I have tweaked the layout (boo the helpfile on post summaries being no use whatsoever¹, forcing me to look elsewhere). I hope the new color scheme looks okay on monitors that are not elderly and over-dark.

1. Mainly it just lied about where to insert the conditional in the template, but that was sure enough to break everything. Mr. Chen actually leaves out the endif statement on his first code snippet, but that's a lot easier to debug than "this code goes somewhere but not actually the place the helpfile claims".

Meta: Holy. (Updated 2/2.)

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I, um. Er. Hi to anyone coming over from Curmudgeonland. It is rather surprising to be noticed by my comic-blogging hero, but it is also completely awesome.

I would just like to note that updates have in fact been continuing apace lately; they're just backdated. All the plugfics currently showing up on the front page were actually written in the last three or four days. I am finally up to December! Hooray.

So, uh, basically pull up a chair (or since this is Pluggerland and we can't afford chairs, then I guess a rock or an orange crate or a pile of newspapers from 20 years ago or something) and stick around if you like. Check out the About entry if you're at all confused, although it is somewhat out-of-date.

Whatever you do, do not feed the bears. They'll find some way to turn it into a source of defiant working-class pride.

[UPDATE 2/2] Incidentally, thanks to everyone who left comments on various entries over the last weekish! I did not reply to each one individually because there are only so many different ways to say "thank you" and I am not creative enough to think of most of them. Regardless, know that it gratifies me to know when I have managed to write something that strikes people enough to want to post about it.

I just did December 15th's entry, which means that I'm only about a month and a half behind instead of over two months like I was for a bit. Feel free to rejoice and eat Sir Robin's minstrels, if you like.

Meta: Behind. (Updated again.)

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Starting to come back from the extended downtime. As a reminder, first I was moving and getting set up for school; then I had to drive across a few states to deal with a minor family issue; then I found out that my fiance had died. It has been hard to get back to the point of wanting to do creative things, but really, random Internet-related creative endeavors have been a major part of my life for years. Heck, it's how the dearly departed and I even met in the first place. So I'm comin' back, slowly. Wrote a couple more plugfics today.

Thanks to anyone still interested in my bit of e-weirdness here.

Meta: Sundays.

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I read Pluggers off the Houston Chronicle comics page, because it is awesome. They have Pluggers on there running back to at least early 1999. After reading back so many years in one sitting, though, I had to stop and go do something else, lest the malaise overtake me entirely. My point is: the Chronicle's online comics page is awesome, and the links at the top of each plugfic post won't expire a month after they're posted.

The drawback in this case is that the Chronicle doesn't have Sunday Pluggers. The official site does, but not the Chron. On reflection, I have decided to take this day of the week off as well, which means no plugfics on Sundays. Perhaps I will use the day to talk about other Plugger-related matters! Or perhaps not. It truly is a mystery.

See you Monday, my as-yet-theoretical readership!

Meta: About.

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OBLIGATORY LINKY PARAGRAPH
There are many fine blogs that discuss newspaper comics, either in aggregate or one strip at a time. You have your Comics Curmudgeons and your Big Al'ses (Al's-es?) in the former category. You have your Blather 'Bout Burl and your Crap Every Time in the latter.

ACTUAL FRESH CONTENT
I don't know that anyone's yet doin' this with Pluggers, and so that's where I come in.

On first sight, this daily one-panel offering may seem simple and down-to-earth; you've got ordinary folks, represented as animals for some reason, going about their lives, with all the ups and downs that entails. The strips are "written" by the readers themselves, who send in comments and suggestions to be illustrated by one Mr. Gary Brookins. It's all about the simple, the down-to-earth, the ordinary, the mundane, held up to the light to glean a chuckle from the audience -- that "80 percent of humanity who unceremoniously keep plugging along, balancing work, play and family life."

But then you read a few of them in a row and come to realize that apparently a plugger's life is incredibly depressing.

I find myself fascinated by this comic, and by what it says about its subject matter. These are real folks, accept no substitutions. They're by turns cheerfully anti-intellectual, a touch conservative and nuclear-family-centric, "charmingly" rustic or gently confused. They're overworked, underpaid and always on the verge of going under. To quote from the unlikely source of a radio commercial in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, "This is real America -- drunk, proud, and unemployed." The only thing that's missing is the drinking, and what's to stop them from doing that off-panel? Surely in whatever crazy world they live in, even a bear can buy liquor if he's over 21.

That's basically where I'm going with this blog. Every day I plan to take a gander at the newest Pluggers, and every day I plan to write a short bit of commentary on it. I'm hoping to come through with a short piece of fiction inspired by each comic, because A) I don't know that anyone else is doing this, and B) I once considered myself something of a writer, but in later years I have gotten sorely out of the habit of actually writing. And so here we are.

I may go back and edit all up in this thing later with more information or an FAQ or something, but for now, I think the above is more than enough to get started with.