I have some more PAX announcements to make.

I survived my week in the woods and I feel pretty good. It ended up raining almost the entire time we were there which meant that everyone was stuck indoors. Thankfully I had the wisdom to bring a Gamecube and a PS2. Much of my time at the lake was actually spent inside playing Warioware, Karaoke Revolution and Tales of Symphonia. Pretty much everyone in Kara’s family is an incredibly talented singer. Each and every one of them was born with the ability to hear a song once and then reproduce it almost perfectly. This is not something I can do. It’s not even something I can comprehend. They all got hooked on Karaoke Revolution and battled it out tournament style each night. Kara ended up winning the whole thing by nailing a 100% perfect score on a Nora Jones song. I did a rendition of “I hate everything about you” that I would describe as emotionally charged. It certainly got a laugh out of everyone present and I was asked to repeat it at various points during the week for the benefit of family members who had not heard it yet. This became my signature song and out of respect it was never performed by anyone else again.

Gabriel has returned - haunted and harrowed by woodland beasts to be sure, but otherwise ready to accomplish our noble endeavor. There's also an odd, stunted conversation between myself and Kara, so there really is something for everyone.

Okay, I have the final lists of the Microsoft and Ubisoft games you'll be able to check out at PAX. You will understand how a person could get excited:

While you are digesting today's comic, I have something that might give you a bit of context.

One of my big problems is that I will often say things that I don't really mean, simply because I can state whatever it is with precision. This tends to create a lot of problems for me socially, but at the same time creating a sentence with an undeniably clear purpose - regardless of the purpose itself - produces in me an elation which I find difficult to describe. I could try to do it now, and I bet it would feel really good, but I actually have a point I'm trying to get across.

A few new announcements regarding our big thing:

Let me try this again. I've played it a few more hours since last we spoke, and I have another way of going about it that does away with the specific references and the benchmark-type trivia that characterizes our prior conversation.

He has returned, but don't get too excited. It's just for this one comic, and then he's going back.

Before Gabe hit the road, he asked me very politely to mention his new sketch dump over at GabeArt, and I didn't do it. He doesn't say what they are, but the cowboys he drew are an updated form of a comic we've always planned to do called Sand. It has a ridiculously elaborate backstory, as all post-apocalyptic westerns should.

We could not have made up the special Bald Eagle Family T-Shirts, we simply don't have the ability to conjure an image of that power. Everything in this strip is quite true, Doom is coming out, country bait stores rarely carry software, and I desperately hope that Gabriel dies in water. Please say a silent prayer for Gabriel as he endures this week. Special Alternate Task For Atheists: Deny your maker.

This guy was at Otakon I guess. That might be the coolest thing ever.

I'm getting hundreds of mails about these mexi-fries. I was told that mexi-fries originated at Taco Time. Apparently the Mexi-Fries were very popular but the rest of their food wasn't. Taco Time went in the crapper but Taco Bells popped up everywhere. The fuckers at the Bell decided that they could just rip off Taco Time's mexi-fries and no one would notice. So Taco Bell started carrying mexi-fries, only their proper name was Mexi-nuggets. These mexi-nuggets also bear more than a striking resemblance to Taco Johns' Potato Ole's, seen below.

I got a lot of mail from people requesting I scan and post the pictures I got from Stephen Silver and Stan Sakai. They are actually being shipped back up from SDCC and should be here in a few days. Once I have them both I'll scan them for you guys.

I don’t travel that much and when I do I guess I never go to Taco Bell. Lots of readers are writing in to tell me that they have never even heard of mexi-fries. At first I thought that the Taco Bell people must have gotten to them. Not content to simply remove them from their restaurants I figured they had set out to remove them from the very minds of their patrons.

I went to Taco Bell last night and I was shocked at what I discovered. I understand that it is their policy to mess up my order. I expect now that what I ask for is never what will actually end up in my bag. It turns out that simply forgetting your burrito or shorting you a taco is no longer good enough for these sons of bitches though. Now they have decided that they needed to replace their awesome mexi-fries with new shitty fiesta fries. No more delicious and authentic seasoned tater treats. No sir, now you get disgusting little potato wedges fried in salt and sweat. I noticed something was wrong a few months ago when their combo meals no longer included mexi-fries. They tried to pawn off some shitty taco in their place but I would have none of that. “Fuck your taco bitch, I want my fries!” is what I was often heard to say. Now it’s obvious that their removal from the combo meals was simply a precursor to a much larger mexi-fri conspiracy. They are now missing entirely from the menu and every bit of evidence that proved they ever existed has been meticulously removed and probably destroyed. Did those filthy Taco Bell bastards really think I would simply forget how much I liked mexi-fries? Its bullshit like this that makes me worry about bringing a child into the world. These are dark times indeed.