Week Four finds me tired, depressed, and a bit snippy. Doesn’t seem like it should be that way if I’ve gotten to “relax” for the whole month, I know, but… well, “Lazy Month” was perhaps not the most accurate moniker. I was pretty busy, and furthermore, the redesign of the site as a whole has proven more difficult and stressful and time-consuming than I had realized it would be. Add to that the fact that staying busy actually has a way of keeping me… I don’t know… sane, somehow, this has just ended up kind of being a messed up month. But things are maybe looking up….?

I find myself needing to rework the layout of the coming episodes of LDCB again. This is mainly just to make the shooting schedule more reasonable. As I mentioned before, we hit a snag when we got delayed too much and ended up not getting some episodes with the Ziggies as soon as we should have in order to get the episodes out of the way before they have their baby. Well, I’ve worked out that snag now. By rearranging some episodes, we’ll be able to shoot those episodes later and just get to some other things in LDCB a little quicker. Ultimately, I think this actually works out better because it helps to better confine the main story of Volume 1 all inclusive in Vol. 1, and Vol. 2 in Vol. 2…. that may not make a whole lot of sense to you, but trust me that it does to me…

… I’d go on, but the mail is here and needs to be sorted, and there are also some people getting into stuff they shouldn’t on the copy machine, so… later.

The third week of March Mildness… and the schedule seems to be climbing back toward daily activity with updates Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week (not to mention the blog today, which I figure only sort of counts). I wish I could say that next week would increase the activity as well, but chances are: next week is going to be our slowest week of all… in a way anyway… Let me explain…

In addition to my updates for the week this week, I’m also working on making over the rest of the site other than the front page (also refining a few issues with the front page, but that’s not as big an undertaking at this point), and I hope to have a large portion of the rest of the site up and functioning correctly by week’s end. For AoA and LDCB, I actually don’t expect for this to be all that troublesome because while their looks are being updated, the content is not. But for LoA… that’s going to be a bigger project.

So I’m planning on taking all next week to put all the work I want/need to put into LoA and its subdomain. This will mean no new updates from me during Week Four except for the continuing updates to the site’s overall look. This is okay in one sense because I’m devoting Week 4 to the projects that have been/are being submitted for the contest, so THOSE will be put on the site instead. But there’s probably only going to be a couple of those at max, so…

That is what it is anyway… I’m still not sure what’s actually coming in for the contest, so we’ll see how it goes. Anyway, it’ll all be leading up to the site’s big comeback on April 1st, which isn’t ydk’s b-day, but I kind of consider it to be its day of conception, because its when the site in all of its thrown-together-wouldn’t-have-actual-content-for-another-eight-or-nine-months glory first went live last year. So it’s fitting that it will also be the day that we return with a load of new content. That will be the day that the new LoA look and updated content will debut, along with a new LDCB (!) and a comic to mark the official end of March Mildness. So: lots to look forward to as April begins.

One last note before I go…. some 14 year old kid with a crappy website of his own thinks we’re boring. I think I wanted to kill myself after having to look at his wretched excuse of a comic just so I would never, ever even risk having to see it again. It’s 3 seconds of my life I will never get back. If those 3 seconds had been spent doing anything else in the whole world, even suffering a horrible brutal torturing agonizing death, I would just consider them lost, and “Oh well,” but because they were spent reading the worst-made unfunniest comic my eyes have ever beheld (and I’ve seen my own comic, so that’s saying something, right?!), I have to live the rest of my life knowing I gave that piece of sh** my time, and I will never be able to take that back…

It’s a sad state of affairs… especially because I now harbor a desire to DESTROY HIM……… But I think I’ll settle for having insulted his site much more competently than he ever could have concocted for mine (and managing to disparage myself in the process! - goes to show: NOBODY makes fun of me like I do!). I would give you the link to his sad, little site, but I wouldn’t do something like that to you, my friends. I would save you from such a fate. So just take my word on it: he frakkin’ sucks…. So say we all…

No… I’m here… somewhere.

But seriously, I’ve not had a good past few weeks. In fact, I’ve had a really crappy past few weeks. Starting the first of last week, my blood pressure went wacked, and I basically couldn’t leave the house for an entire week with out an escort. That sucked, mostly because not only did my blood pressure spike (at time near if not at 150/100), I also felt like poo.

So, that means that little got done last week that should have gotten done. That also means my presense was less than noticable on the boards. I feel bad about that, on both accounts, I really do, but it really couldn’t be helped. I hope to make up for it this weekend, so please stick with me.

In other news, I am *trying* to quit smoking. Again. Wow, it’s hard. I did really good until today, actually, with only about 6 cigarettes since Saturday until about 10pm tonight, when I broke down and bought another pack. But that is because of some new drama in my life, which I will only illude to right now, because I’m really not sure what will come of it.

To get more on the topic of YDK, I guess my suggestion of working on finding music for the various things we do was taken seriously. I’m actually really excited about that, and looking forward to finding new bands to introduce in the series. (To be honest, BJ, I had held off doing anything on that front because you response to my suggestion sounded like you didn’t want me to do it, so I didn’t - but now it sounds like you want me to, so I’ll start working on it.)

Here are the guidelines for songs:

All songs must be submitted to x.l.i.i@hotmail.com; you can also befriend Xlii at MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/membet.

Your band must have either a webpage or a MySpace (or Facebook or Xanga or whatever-page).

If you song is accepted to be on one of our series, you will be asked to provide a link on your page to our page (http://www.youdontknow.net); we will also add a link to your page in a special section of YDK.

I look forward to gettings submissions and finding some new up-and-coming bands!

And on the other stuff, BJ, I will get to work on it, I really will, as soon as I can - most likely this weekend. So please forgive me.

-MK

“March Mildness” is proving to be an ideal name for this month. So far, I have found it to be very, very mild. But I think that’s a good thing. Daily updates to the site, while appreciated by many of our regular visitors, can be a very tiring thing to keep up with, so breaks must be had in order to keep from burning out. Of course, after March Mildness, I think we’ll have miles and miles to go before I can sleep again. April and May will be the usual fare here, but then, the entire summer is going to be chock-full of incredible goodies and excitement. So a good five or so months that promise to be pretty busy looming over me, I’m thinking that the usual fare is going to change a little bit to help accomodate.

We’re going to stick to Tuesday and Thursday updates for AoA. I think that regular nonsporadic updates really work best for comics, and they don’t present too much trouble for that to be realistic. I’m also going to do my best to keep up with a chapter a week for LoA. I’m hoping to do more with LoA, but I often hope to do more with it, and we still tend to end up with one a week, so I’ll make no promises. So the only real difference is going to be with the videos. Video-updates won’t really be able to be regular. Now, I know, you’re probably thinking: how is that different? Well, maybe it’s not all that different to you, but to me, it’s a world of difference.

It’s hard to prevent the videos being released at irregular intervals. They depend not just on my schedule, but other peoples’ as well. Also with scripting, planning, shooting, and editing, each one takes a lot more cumulative time to complete than any other aspect of ydk. And so while they may end up coming out irregularly anyway, I try hard and stress myself over trying to get them to you as quickly and regularly as I can. By trying to be less regular with them from the start, it takes some of the pressure off me. So from now on, rather than expecting a new video every week or two weeks or even three weeks, what I intend to do is this: when there will be a new video, it will be announced, separate from the general schedule a week in advance of its release (unless it’s some sort of surprise), on ydk’s main page. You will still know when they’re coming in advance, but the time in between installments may vary wildly. Some may be released consecutively from week to week, while others may have huge gaps in between episodes. This is just impossible to avoid in our current cirumstances, so I hope you all understand and can live with that arrangement.

As far as when you can expect more LDCB… plans are tentative and subject to being affected by the lives of the participants, but I’m hoping to be able to have Episodes 8 and 9 in late March, early April, but that may well be impossible. We just have to see how things go. I’m looking to have Episodes 10 and 11 within a couple weeks after that, so probably/hopefully the latter half of April for those. In May, Episodes 12, 13, and 14 (again: hopefully). Then, the idea would be for June and July to really take off with 15-20. Whether that tentative schedule sticks or it gets changed signficantly, expect a lengthy hiatus of AT LEAST one month (possibly as much as 2 months) between Episodes 20 and 21.

And the last bit of site-business I want to get into right now… we are separating our different main features into their own ‘more-distinct’ sections with separate urls for AoA and LoA. They will all still be accessable from ydk, but this will help to create more of a distinction between them. Over the last week, I’ve particularly had the LoA-devoted site in mind, and I’m very excited about how I hope to develop that. The existing chapters are going to be reallocated into more expansive, longer chapters, there will be revisions and/or new material added to the existing chapters, and some artwork will be added to the pages as well. Expect at least one original drawing per chapter. I think it’s going to look really nice, and I’m very exctied. If you haven’t started reading LoA yet, when the new LoA site launches, it will be the ideal time to get into it. Current readers may also want to go back and see what changes have been made, at the very least to see how it all looks, but I think you’ll like changes to the text itself as well.

Wow… that’s a lot of busy-talk for lazy month, huh? Not to worry, people: I have been playing quite a bit of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as well. I’ve also really enjoyed Arrested Development on DVD. I keep recommending it. Funniest television show I’ve ever seen! I’ve watched the entire first season through, not just once, but I’m halfway through a second viewing already. I haven’t even done that before with my favoritest shows of all time. I think that says something. It’s a measly twenty bucks to pick up the first season. That’s twenty-two episodes of about twenty-two minutes each (plus an extended version of the pilot episode), and if you have any sense of humor at all, you’ll laugh nonstop throughout all of them. The same thing applies upon multiple viewings. You can’t get that much entertainment out of even the funniest movie to come out… well, ever. Ever!

 … I really need to stop turning myself into walking commercials for things unless people are going to start paying me for it… And yet, I don’t feel bad about peddling Arrested Development to you. That’s just community service, to my mind. I mean, if more of our entertainment was like Arrested Development, then Hollywood wouldn’t suck quite so much. Until next week, I hope you enjoy our light offerings of ydk goodness for the week. Later.

PS. Consider this your official notice: a new SPT coming next week to YDK!

It’s Monday in the first full week of March Mildness, and so far, I’m enjoying the time to relax. As forum-goers already know, I got access to a Wii this past weekend, and went a little nuts in my enjoyment of it. I enjoyed it a lot. I highly recommend getting a Wii. It’s an entirely new and excting gaming experience, without changing the experience so much that it’s completely alien and unfamiliar. Playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, in particular, is pretty much just like playing any other Zelda game (brilliant as always) except that you shake your controller around to swing the sword and stuff like that. Which is cool.

In more site-oriented news, I have a suspicion there will be very little participation in the fan-art contest (the rules are in the first blog, as well as in the forums, if you’re interested in participating), which is too bad, but oh well. I’m hoping that more of the cast will contribute various things as well, but it’s up to them. I’m taking Lazy Month very seriously, and really getting into it; so as a result, I refuse to try to bully them into doing anything. I hope they do, but if they don’t, then we’ll just have less stuff this month.

I am feeling bad that I totally flaked on the LoA chapter I promised last week, so I’m going to try to write an extra one this week, in hopes of making up for it. I have a video I promised for some friends that I have to prioritize before that, though, because I agreed when we shot it to have it done by this weekend, so I need to get that done first before I try slipping extra things in. If they’re okay with it, maybe I’ll put it up on youtube or ifilm and you can see it. I can’t really claim responsibility for it, though: it’s not a product of my creativity at all; I just helped with the shooting and cutting of it. Wow, with all this stuff to do, I’m sounding pretty busy for Lazy Month, huh? But trust me when I say it’s still not half as busy as I usually am. Hence the reason for this planned break to begin with.

LDCB-shooting is also currently at a standstill; I’m not sure when the next episode will be available. This is for a few reasons, but mostly because the next couple episodes center around Rad and Glamour Latham. But since the actors, Chris and Amanda are very close to the due date for their son, so arranging a time to shoot the episodes without getting in their way or causing too much trouble is a little delicate. Plus, I made a decision to alter a few things about the direction of the story, and it affects information that I need to get across in the next two episodes, so the scripts need revision now.

And that’s pretty much the sitch for this week in ydk. There will be a new AoA comic on Tuesday, and a new LoA on Thursday. A video and maybe an extra chapter in the meantime. I can only hope I can get a little Wii-time during all this too, ‘cuz the Wii… did I mention: I love it! That’s all I’m writing till next week. If the ydk blog gets updated again till then, it’s up to the other contributors. Later, peeps.