Back and Bad…

I’m back.

Bad blogger! Bad blogger! Bad blogger!

Actually, the true* reason for my absence isn’t so simple. See, first I was abducted by Austrian terrorists who snatched me as I got off the Red Line train at Belmont. They blindfolded me, tied me up, threw me into the back of a van, and drove for six days non-stop. By this time, I was getting hoppin’ mad, so I cut through my ropes using the six days’ worth of fingernail growth I’d accrued, then used the rope to garotte one of my captors unconscious, my extremely long fingernails to scratch out the eyeballs of the second, and my incredible martial arts skills to wipe out the third. Then I kicked open the door and began running. After about three miles I realized that I could safely remove my blindfold, and I found myself in a harsh, desolate landscape that I immediately recognized as the Greek isle of Crete. I hailed a taxi, but the driver was obviously sent by the Austrians to kill me, so I turned on my charms and seduced her in the middle of the street, after which she drove into the Mediterranean, switched on “submarine” mode, and brought me back to Chicago through a secret underwater tunnel that connects the Mediterranean to Lake Michigan. Then she dumped me for a midget roller derby star, but that’s okay, because frankly, she made a good choice.

Let’s focus on the important thing, though: I’m back. And I’ll be working my way through the last month or so.

* Truth not guaranteed.

Metapost: Pause Continues

My brain’s still mushy (mushier than usual, even!) from the weekend combination of Ren Fair, 8 shows of improv comedy, seven hours of library conference programs, and about 4 hours of sleep a night. So this week’s Petroleum ‘Potheticals and commentary on today’s strip is still forthcoming. See you tomorrow (I hope) or Wednesday.

Metapost: Big News Coming Sunday

I know I said a couple weeks ago that Sundays would be dark here at Going Antisane. I guess there’s an important lesson here: I reserve the right to lie.

Does that mean that I’m also lying when I say I’ve got big news on Sunday? Well, I’m not lying that there’s news. Is it suitably big? There’s the lying rub, eh? (I’m currently nodding sagaciously.)

How Much is a CC Mention worth?

For blog stat junkies — I’m sure there are millions of you out there — I can reveal that in the approximately 20 hours since the Comics Curmudgeon kindly linked here, there have been 2,070 visits to this blog.

It’s not all a result of that, though. Before that link, I was getting a good number on my own, sometimes as many as 8.

I didn’t say it was a large number, just a good one.

(Yeah, yeah. But how much humor do you expect in a metapost? Actual post coming shortly.)

A Day of Rest

I don’t have the affection for Sunday Gasoline Alleys that I do for the daily strips. Sunday strips fall outside the day-to-day plotlines, and moreover are self-contained stories so there’s not even any chance for the insanity to build. They’re sometimes even less; today’s strip is just a bunch of lame wordplay. (An astronomer’s business is looking up? Oh, ha, ha.)

Since I don’t care much about the Sunday strips, in most cases, I won’t be writing about them.

In the words of a rather brilliant philosopher (or, depending on your viewpoint, evil hand puppet), read a book!

Why? Why? Why!

My name is Greg. I’m 32, and I’m a fan of the comic strip Gasoline Alley.

I suspect that’s not a sentence you hear every day.

But I have genuine affection for the strip. I was introduced to it (and the other comics that I read) by the site Comics Curmudgeon. It was probably a year ago, maybe more, with a plotline that involved some old guy lost in the woods and trying to recover a baby from a bear, or something like that.

(I said I have genuine affection for it, not that it’s believable.)

Anyhow, it dropped off my radar, and I was reintroduced to it with the exploits of one of the characters having a scheme to get kids to stop noisily playing basketball next to his house by, and I kid you not, acquiring a large meteorite and hiring a helicopter pilot to drop the rock on the basketball court, thereby destroying it.

From there I was hooked on this strip that, while not good in the traditional sense, is delightful in the audacity of its badness. It’s sort of like Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” in comic form.

Anyhow, inspired by Comics Curmudgeon and the single-comic strip blogs that have sprung up, I offer Goin’ Antisane with Gasoline Alley, in hopes of offering first-class snark and simultaneous appreciation.