I will punch a guy for fan mail.

I was expecting hate mail from the last comic, but I didn't really get any. There was one reader who referred to RAoK as "distasteful", but on the whole, I was very surprised. As a matter of fact, Monday's strip has gotten me more fan mail than any previous strip ever. This is what psychologists refer to as "negative reinforcement", and that's okay with me. I guess now the big challenge is going to lie in consistently exceeding each preceeding comic's level of tastelessness. But eventually I'll do a comic that reaches the absolute bottom depths of vulgarity and barbarism -- which means it would involve the cast of Friends somehow -- and then I'll have to stop. So I guess I'll stick with my current strategy (write something I like, and be surprised when others like it too) for now.

In other news, the local stations here keep running those "drug money supports terrorism" ads. If you haven't seen them, they usually depict an affluent white male or female doing something that affluent white people do, like using their high-end PC in their spacious home office, or riding on the subway in a three-piece suit. Affluent White Person is then confronted with visions of old people and little kids who accuse the AWP of being responsible for killing them. "How?" you may be asking. Well, AWP presents the same query, and is informed that, by buying drugs, AWP has funded terrorist groups that killed these people.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert on these things, but if you're buying drugs from some guy who grows illegal narcotics in his basement, chances are that the only thing you're funding is his next trip to the corner store for M&Ms and Fritos. On that same note, it's pretty well-known that the vast majority of the oil used in the US comes from the middle east, so the chances are much greater that the money spent to purchase that oil might eventually end up in the hands of the terrorist groups our government is currently concerned with. So buying gas, not drugs, is more likely to fund terrorism. Of course, the day that our government declares driving a giant, gas-guzzling Hummer H2 to be unamerican is also the same day that I will probably die from pinching myself to death.