Michael was headed to some primeval forest, and I was headed to Spokane, so we put together a couple strips furthering the whole “dSports” concept because we can’t stop thinking about it. Then we sat down to write Monday’s strip and it’s all we wanted to write about. So there are a couple more strips on this theme, not bound into any particular storyline or anything, simply premised thus: that we live in a world nourished by something called “dSports,” and even the drama surrounding this form of entertainment is sufficient to sustain a man. It also allowed us to engage in some Wish Fulfillment, because even after the expansion for some reason Seattle still doesn’t won’t have an OWL team.

It’s every couple years an idea seizes me like this, from Penny Arcade to Child’s Play to Acquisitions Incorporated to Strip Search to the Eyrewood or Automata. I’ve thought about these fuckin’ dSports as hard as I have about any of those other things. That’s an indication to me that I need to take it seriously.

I’ve been back to Spokane three times in one month. I don’t even have the energy right now to model it as a post apocalyptic hellscape. The first time was because my stepfather was in poor health. Poorer than I knew, certainly: he died four hours after I got there.

He used to fish with grenades in Vietnam; he went there as a mechanic and started flying sorties because they needed pilots. He says bullets would go straight through the floor and still have enough juice to go right through your leg. He had to leave the .50 cal once because his best friend was killed in the cockpit and he had to land the fucking helicopter.

This is the type of motherfucker this man is: he apologized to me for dying.

(CW)TB out.