Friday comic! Let’s see if I can keep writing about Christmas until February.

HEY, I’m trying something new… I’ll be running sweepstakes over at the aLp Facebook page every week. Become a fan, click the “Reviews” tab at the top, write a short review, and you’ll be entered in a random drawing for a free aLp fridge magnet! I just announced the winner of the first drawing over there. Thanks and good luck!

Another new comic coming on Friday!

Happy New Year!!! Yeah I’m still here. Aside from all the problems I told you about that were conspiring to keep me from making any comics, I enjoyed the hell out of the holidays. It was the first time in years where I just shut my brain off for 2 weeks. Spent a lot of time with family, and with Elaine, and with my brother. I’m back and gearin to go though… my computer’s still doing that blue-screen b.s. but I managed to get it to boot by just ripping out one of the memory chips so I could throw today’s strip together for you. Since it’s down 2gb now, the machine’s a bit sluggish but at least it works.

My resolution for 2010 is to not stress out so much all the time about everything. So I’m not gonna flip out that it’s January and I’m still doing comics about Christmas. I hope it’s not too weird but hey, fuck it.

It ain’t news that there’s Christian themes in LOTR (though the things I mentioned in the strip are all on the secular side of Xmas); I did want an excuse to wish a happy birthday, actually, to J.R.R. Tolkien himself (January 3). I was actually invited to a party to celebrate (yeah really), but I didn’t go, because I was afraid of having TOO MUCH FUN.

I think I’m starting to confuse some of you newer folks with this alternate reality / time travel storyline. If you haven’t been following along, you can start from back here to quickly get caught up. Or go further back to when Corinna first comes back into the picture. If you couldn’t tell, my style’s evolving, consciously or not, for better or not. Hope you’re enjoying, and sorry for the growing pains.

Lastly, to repeat: NEW COMIC FRIDAY. Today’s strip was originally part of another full-pager I was hacking away at, cuz I wanted to finish all the Christmas stuff asap, but then I remembered when someone once suggested that since my full-pagers usually had a lot of jokes I could split ‘em up into smaller, faster updates. Also see above about the not stressing about Christmas thing. So here you go. See ya back here Friday…

I loooove Dhalsim gags.

Vote for aLp at TopWebComics.com to see the alternate, politically-incorrect version of Panel 5.

Merry Christmas all!

(Update, 1/6: Workin’ on today’s comic; it’ll be up later today! Thanks!)

Hey, Happy 2007!! Sorry again for the break from updates, but the Christmas and New Year season was a simultaneously stressful and constant party. Over the weekend we had some drama when we found out our babysitter, who’d committed to being available to us for New Year’s Eve a while ago, was suddenly bailing on us.

WHAATT   THHEE   FFFF– ?

Finding a new babysitter for New Year’s Eve two days in advance is NOT A RECOMMENDED PASTIME. Especially since we had employed only one babysitter ever. HER. And, consider that New Year’s Eve is ALSO Elaine’s birthday. WE DO NOT SIT AT HOME WATCHING TV ON ELAINE’S BIRTHDAY.

Well in a gift sent down from the heavens my buddy Jason came through in the clutch and came over with his 8-year-old daughter and stayed the night while we went out to the party, got messy and rung in our new year (in both senses) with style.

Thanks again J! Oh, and incidentally HIS birthday is TODAY, January 2. So happy birthday too old man!

What’d all of you do on Sunday night? And I guess what’d you get for Christmas, for that matter?

Sinead O’Connor came out of the closet in 2000. But ten years earlier, she released her breakthrough album, called “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”. DO THE MATH

I’m gonna take Tuesday (the 26th) off, but I’ll see you again on Friday! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I was thinking of taking today off, for Xmas, but then I thought I could at least put this up.

The new Chia is a great idea! It’s better than the Mini (iPod, but small), Shuffle (iPod, but stupid), Video (iPod, but you can watch tiny moving pixels), and Nano (iPod, but too easy to accidentally swallow). The Chia is an iPod that will continually produce food for your cow.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas – and a Happy Hanukkah (which began yesterday too)… I sure did.

Those presents under the tree “To: Daddy, From: Rachel” and “To: Daddy, From: Adrian” that I mentioned I was looking forward to opening really were my favorite part. Very thoughtful of the little ones, though maybe a bit vain:

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

As the 25th is this Sunday, a day before my next update day, this is where I say MERRY CHRISTMAS! You can imagine this is a pretty special Christmas for me cuz it’s my two kids’ first one. They love to stare at all the lights on our tree and love to wear their little Christmas pajamas. On the other hand, they seem to not like it when I play Christmas carols on our piano. I thought it used to be cuz the piano hadn’t been tuned in, like, 30 years, but we just had someone come in and tune it and still they protest. It’s like, oh, it’s not the piano, Daddy really does suck.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when you have 2 new babies, there is an exponential explosion of presents under the tree. It’s not like there’s just 2 new people to get gifts for, it’s like a massive shift in the Balance of Power and I am just a serf in their mighty kingdom of Colorful Box Land. And I bet they’re even gonna make someone else do the menial work of unwrapping all of ‘em. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU STEP ON ON YOUR WAY UP, KIDS.

I do see a couple of gifts under the tree “To: Daddy, From: Rachel” and “To: Daddy, From: Adrian”. Even though the handwriting on the tags doesn’t look like that of a couple of 5-month-olds, I do look forward to opening those up.

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

No, I don’t have a Bowflex (nobody in NYC has room for one), but I do have a Total Gym. You know any product endorsed by Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley has gotta be good. I feel like I can kick someone’s ass now, or appear in a Billy Joel video.

Merry Christmas from aLp! If you wanna send this as kind of like an e-card (I know it’s kind of late to be sending cards), copy & paste this URL: http://alienlovespredator.com/index.php?id=53 – so they’ll get this specific page.

- Hey Red Sox fans, time to pay up.

Some stupid notes:
- I removed a tag I’d originally drawn hanging off the bong in the third panel — it said, “FROSTY THE SNOW BONG”. Funny, but ultimately unnecessary.
- I knew a guy in high school named Bong. One night years later, my friends and I ran into him at a bar around where I lived in Gramercy. After we left him, we went back to my place and invented an entire card game based on his name. Apparently, after four years of high school and then six or so years after that, we were still stuck on finding it hilarious that his name was Bong.
- Speaking of unfortunate names, here’s an oldie but goodie…