I’m on vacation! So I’m coming back at you next week on Tuesday! Even though I’m at peace with going this week without an update, you can go ahead and make fun of me if you want. I’m cool with it. All I know is aLp is still weekly after my week off and I’m still having fun.

I am hard at work on something - a birthday present for Elaine, who turns umpty-ump tomorrow! I’d show you what it is but there is the very, very small chance she might read this (she usually comes by only when the mailing list tells her to). All I’ll say is it does require a lot of the same activities that go into aLp. LIKE PROCRASTINATING LOLLLL

These are the two best things I got for Christmas:

Honestly I don’t know which one I love better. Joray Fruit Rolls are so good I literally almost cry when I eat them. They’re better than sex, at least in that they’re a whole lot cheaper to have 6 at a time. Thank you Elaine, for getting them for me, and also for forgiving me for that last sentence.

So yeah I got a PS3 too, which is really not good for getting anything done. I’m playing Prince of Persia right now, though it looks like LittleBigPlanet’s on the horizon. When I get a PSN ID, I’ll let you all know what it is, unless, like photos of me wearing my suit made of Joray Fruit Rolls, it’s something that should be kept private.

Reminder, follow me on Twitter which I seem to be able to update kinda frequently, and become a fan of aLp on Facebook, if for no other reason than all the cool people are doing it.

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Hey I’m doing ads with Project Wonderful again - there’s a spot up at the top of the page and one under the links section there on the right column. Jump in while they’re still cheap! Thanks.

Full-color desktop wallpaper of the last panel of “Ma is Lost”:

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EDIT: The star-rating system is currently down for repairs.

Hey! You can now give a rating, from 1 - 5 stars, to every episode in the archive and all episodes going forward. You see those tiny stars right underneath the comic on each page? Click the appropriate star based on how much you dig that comic relative to all the others in the aLp archive. It’ll even instantly update the average rating and total number of votes before your very eyes, via internet magic.

If you needed another excuse to read through the archives again, this is the best yet! Clicking on those stars is a lot of fun, take it from me. And pretty soon (not quite now) we’ll be able to have a convenient “Best Of” section that new readers can start with, and all you long-time fans can argue about.

Note that you can go to the Archive where each comic has its own set of stars, so if you’re so familiar with ‘em that you can remember ‘em just by their thumbnail, you can blitz through a bunch of ratings really quickly.

ALSO note the new Search box there on the right underneath the ad - you can’t search scripts of comics (yet), but you can search titles and their accompanying blog posts. And you can rate right from the search results.

LASTLY a quick reminder to VOTE for aLp at Top Web Comics!

THANKS!

Some orders of business!

- I Wordpressified the whole site! Among other things this means: 1) anyone can comment on any comic or post now without registering or logging in, 2) blog entries that aren’t tied to a specific comic will now appear as a “true” blog down here, updating with newer posts at the top, and 3) the tag system works better (e.g. here’s all the comics tagged “pee”). I apologize in advance if switching over to the Wordpress RSS feed makes all your readers go haywire.

- The Holiday t-shirt sale is still on - 25% off the official aLp t-shirt for both men and women - that’s $12 instead of the usual $16 (+ shipping)! The only sizes I got left, though, are Men’s M and L, and Women’s S and XL. If you or your favorite aLp fan fits one of these sizes, this is your chance to be EVEN SEXIER THAN YOU ARE and proudly wear aLp across your chest without breaking the bank.

- Remember, we had a deal that you’re gonna help me get the word out that aLp is back. Right now I’m gonna go back to trying one of those “webcomic top lists” like I did a long time ago… so please VOTE for aLp on Top Web Comics once a day, every day… for today’s incentive if you vote you get to see a preview of what’s coming down the pipe…

THANKS!

Last night I tried out that haunted house on the Lower East Side, Nightmare: Bad Dreams Come True, “America’s #1 Haunted House”.

Man was it lame, with a capital Man Was It Lame! I’ve seen scarier things watching Dora the Explorer with my kids. It was just a bunch of college kids paid to jump at you wearing bad costumes. It was too dark to actually see anything that might’ve had a chance to be scary, and yet not dark enough to actually unsettle you. Even just the photos in this old article of 13 Haunted Houses That Will Make You Wet Your Pants (in which this one was named #1!) are scarier than anything that was actually there. The scariest part of the whole time I was there was seriously when I got a text message from my job saying there was a glitch on the site.

Not that I didn’t have a blast last night. I was there with a bunch of friends and the crowd was having fun. Random girls were grabbing onto my hand, which was cool and all, but distracting from the (theoretical) scares. Besides it was too dark to tell what the girls looked like.

Dinner at Cafe Katja beforehand rocked. It’s a tiny Austrian place where they serve pretty much nothing but pork, in a hundred different ways with a thousand different words for them like bratwurst, bernerwurstel, and hefespatenplockasteiner. I made that last one up. And of course, great beer in various and comically large sizes. Check it out on Orchard, between Broome and Grand.

Hey, that interview I mentioned is now up here, over at Rick Marshall’s blog.

I just finished doing a couple of interviews where I had to answer the expected questions about the fate of aLp and where the new site is heading, and it helped me be able to explain things with a little more clarity. I owe it to all of you to let you know what’s going on in my head.

aLp is not necessarily over. I did literally say it was “coming to an end”, but that was mostly because I was tired of waffling and dicking you around. I don’t really wanna stop doing it but it bugged me to go on “hiatus” again. But if that’s what we need to call it instead of shutting down altogether, then yeah, ok. I’ll try to keep doing a new aLp update every once in a while because it’s actually still fun. I just need a bit of a break from it.

In terms of IYSS… for those of you who love it and those of you who hate it: I really have no idea where I’m going with it. I mostly just wanted to have somewhere I can draw or write or take a piss with no rules. And right now it feels great, like I just put on a pair of boxers for the first time instead of briefs. Or like I’m having sex without a condom? Or any number of metaphors involving my genitals! Anyway, I’m still finding my way, still learning how to draw, still figuring out what kind of stuff I want to write about, and I’m havin’ a blast. I dunno where it’s all going, but I really appreciate that there’s so many of you comin’ along for the ride.

Thanks, that’s all for now, rock onwards.

Like I said, I’m starting a new comic. It’s an editorial cartoon, except when it’s not. It’s called:

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING

and it starts now now now. Hope you dig it - if you don’t, well sorry, it’s what I’m doing now… maybe I’ll get better at it as I go along. If you do dig, tell everyone you know! AlienLovesPredator.com’ll be staying up - I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with it, I might eventually do more episodes, I might start taking guest spots - in any case if you were a fan, don’t worry, I won’t be totally ignoring it. The forum‘ll definitely stick around and serve new IYSS readers (should there be any), so keep hangin’ out there. To those of you who ordered stuff from the aLp Shop recently, THANK YOU! You’ll get your order soon.

I LOVE YOU ALL AS ALWAYS.

I’m just gonna come out and say it: Alien Loves Predator is coming to an end. This may seem sudden, since I recently just “came back”, or you may’ve seen it coming from a mile away. Either way I need to move on for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is I gotta stop breaking promises to ya. BUT…

… I’m planning on starting a new comic, one that hopefully won’t be so frickin stressful for me to keep up (yeah, believe it or not aLp was hard work), and all of you’ll wanna stick around for it cuz 1) I’m writing it, and 2) Abe and Preston may make cameos in some form or another.

I’ll probably write up a more proper farewell post to aLp eventually, but for now, it’s more STAY TUNED until next week when I debut the new series right here. This site’ll keep humming along, and I’ll use the same forums so keep chatting away, and now it’s an imperative you subscribe to the mailing list, RSS, or LJ so you don’t miss the new series. To those of you who won’t be sticking around, thanks a ton for reading.