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To everyone who is experiencing technical difficulties on the site: it’s not you, it’s me. The server is kind of overloaded. Between you and me, the server has been overloaded for some time, because my traffic growth has outpaced it. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and it looks like an upgrade is in order — ’twill be more expensive, but should be more reliable. I will keep you posted, and sorry in the meantime. One specific thing that seems to be happening is that the site appears to time out when you post a comment, even if the comment really goes through; please check to see if it has gone through before you repost, as all the reloading and reposting and such isn’t helping matters.

In happier news, today is the third anniversary of the launch of this site! On July 11, 2004, I did something that I’d almost never do again, which is make fun of Non-Sequitur. When I started this blog, mostly for the amusement of myself and my family and friends, I had no idea that it would be come a widely-read site that would make me pretend Internet famous, forge community links among comics lovers, and crush server after server as it grew more popular. I would never have kept on with it if I didn’t know that you all enjoyed it (and enjoyed yourselves chatting on the site), so here’s to all of you! And thanks to faithful reader Mooncity, who reminded me of the date with this very nice cartoon.

UPDATE: OK, I think maybe I have fixed the commenting problems? Maybe? Lemme know if you are still encountering them. FIRST POSTs are still lame, though.

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A one-off, if only to keep it in a post separate from the sad previous one: today’s Shortpacked (that’s the comic by David Willis, the genius who brought you the Margo Warhol t-shirt) is a must-read for foob-haters.

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Since I seem to have become a vague clearinghouse for comics-related news, and I’m getting this e-mailed to me left and right, I should probably say something about the untimely death of Doug Marlette. Marlette was the artist behind Kudzu, which I was always kind of ambivalent-to-negative about, but he was also a Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist; though I often didn’t agree with the points he made in his political cartoons, I found their art and attitude to be pleasingly nasty in the best possible way that a political cartoon can be. He died aged 57 in a car crash on a rainy road, which is tragic no matter what you think of his cartoons. Every comic artist deserves to go out at a ripe old age at their drawing board like Johnny Hart.

In memoriam, I offer a link to the thing Kudzu did that I perversely liked best: jokes about the difference between varying Protestant denominations. Find me one other nationally syndicated cartoonist ready to make Episcopalian jokes, hun? I also am eternally grateful for him for a cartoon he did a few years ago: I didn’t like all that much, but it did allow me to set up what may have been my most offensive Family Circus joke ever.