We’ve reached 140 pages/day. I love you guys. Just 106 pages to go!
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Here’s something new and interesting — I’m actually going to discuss the comic in this log-thing.
First a confession. I didn’t used to be good at updates. I spent a year building a backlog of strips and managed a grand total of 20. Just shows what a deadline will do to productivity because I whipped off 20 strips in 10 weeks without breaking a sweat this year. But in the past… well, just check the archives between September ’06 and April ’07. Back already? That was quick.
Those days are gone, I promise. Barring some major disaster (like a dead parent or my left hand being cut off by ninja), we will not see the return of those dog days of the Great Slump of ’06. Since the slump I have done two things:
- Discovered Photoshop
- Discovered Podcasts
You would not believe how those two little discoveries can change the shape of a man’s work schedule. And since April of this year I have been updating every week, twice a week, providing a comic which is both written and drawn (forget written and drawn well — by webcomic standards the fact that I can write in correctly-spelled English itself is a mirucle). That’s four months of solid work. It makes me wonder. Some small, cynical part of me is doing a calculation.
Life on the Fourth Floor has existed for two years. It has 81 strips in its archive now. That’s quite a lot. So where is everybody? And I don’t mean that in a ‘I want to get rich’ way or a ‘I want to be better than everybody else’ way or even a ‘everybody hates me’ way. Because right now I’d take hate over what we’re looking at now. I don’t have enough readers. I work on this comic every day of the week — writing it, drawing it, tinkering with the site, thinking up new ideas — and I’m thrilled that every month 2000 people read Fourth Floor and come back later on in the week to read more. That means the world to me. It touches me in a way I cannot explain. It’s like my childhood spent watching cartoons and being bad at sports is finally being justified. And isn’t it better for a few people to love something than for a lot of people to just like it? But it’s a shame to put all that work in for so few people to read it. And that’s why I’m publishing free comics on the internet — because in the past I’ve just drawn pictures for myself and the people I know and now I want to widen the net.
Bearing all this in mind, I want you to consider the possibility that I will one day (God forbid) become despondent with the comic’s performance and give up, that a new slump — more terrible than the last — will begin. Right now I feel confident and happy. But if that confidence is shaken the whole thing could go tits-up. I don’t know how long the confidence will last but I do know that it will not last forever. What keeps David positive, what fuels him? Readers. When the numbers go up — even if it’s just by one — you just bought yourself another month of comics. When I get feedback — bam — that’s another two months of free entertainment. When someone criticises me we lose a week.
This is where you come in.
If you’re reading this now… well, it’s a three-score miracle since you’re:
- A reader.
- A reader who actually reads the news posts.
- A reader who has read this far down the page without leaving to read Penny Arcade.
If you’re reading this now I want you to do your part to help the comic. Get a friend to visit the site. Direct them to the good comics, the ones you found funniest. Sell it to them. Be an ambassador for me, an evangelist. If my calculations are correct, if I am to have any hope of living off this I need 100 times more readers. I’m going to do my best to make the comic 100 times better but if you’re going to do your part you need to tell 100 friends. Each. And if you’re anything like me… well, I only have about ten. And I don’t even like any of them. So forget 100 friends — let’s try just the one. Let’s see if together we can double the comic’s page-views. If we do that, everyone gets free wallpapers. Forever.
Right now we’re on 123 pages/day. Our goal: 246. Good luck. You rock.
It shone pale as bone as I stood there alone
And I thought to myself how the moon
That night cast it’s light on my heart’s true delight
And the reef where her body was strewn.
Hey guys. I wanted to talk to you today about a subject very close to my heart but one which has not been heavily discussed on the Fourth Floor site. I want to preface this by saying that I do not think any single nation or landmass is superior to any other. With that in mind I want to talk about Britain and being British.
I really hate those words. Britain, for me, is the name of an island — nothing more. There was a Britain, long ago in my nation’s dim Celtic past, before there was an England. But I do and always have identified myself as English rather than as British. It’s not because I want to dissociate myself from my Welsh and Scottish brethren — you guys are awesome. But whereas ‘Britain’ used to just be a name for the island upon which we live, named by the Romans because they came here to mine tin, it later became synonymous with England ruling over Wales and Scotland and later the rest of the world with the ‘British Empire’. And no Scotsman would go around calling himself British but every now and again you’ll hear an Englishman referring to himself as British and refer to British food and British history — and he won’t go on to talk about haggis or Robert the Bruce.
And when I fill in a form my nationality is always ‘British’ or ‘United Kingdom’. There’s never a category for ‘English’. And in 2007, with the ‘British’ Empire dead, references to ‘Britain’ make me uncomfortable. We shouldn’t be giving out MBE’s, we shouldn’t be living in this Imperialist Ideal. If the word ‘British’ as it refers to anything exclusively English were to die tomorrow I would shed no tears. I know we used to be dicks, we used to straddle the world like a colossus exploiting people from other countries — exploiting them, invading them, enslaving them — but we’ve stopped now. We’re a tiny country, we accept that now. We’re friends, yes? No more ‘British’ this and ‘Britain’ that. Just as there is a great deal of pride to be had in being Scottish, Welsh, Irish, American, French, German, Japanese or Dutch there is some pride to be had with just being English (or at least as much pride as can be had in belonging to one lump of rock rather than any other lump). After all, Shakespeare anyone?
So if you are English, please think twice before you talk about being British. And if you are not, please think twice before referring to myself or one of my countrymen as British. The days of Imperialism and general bastardry are over. Let’s stick to what we do best — cynicism and conversations about the weather. Ooh — and Hugh Grant movies. Right, I’m off to drink some tea.
‘England Your England’, by the way, is a reference to an essay by George Orwell. See also ‘Take Down The Union Jack’ by Billy Bragg. All I can say is ditto.
I know the Fourth Floor news posts are usually a safe haven in which to escape cynicism and criticism but something has been annoying me for a good long while now and I need to vent my fury. Stand well back and put on some goggles.
Okay, so you’ve been warned. Ever heard someone say they could care less? A sample sentence may be: “I could care less if it’s spelled correctly, just send me the e-mail.” Perhaps: “New Iron Man movie? Honestly, I could care less.”
If you ever have heard that then chances are you heard it from an American. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the American people — they’re great. I hate their government and the process by which they elect their leaders with a passion but Americans themselves are awesome. That said, they’re not a nation famous for leaving the English language un-mutilated.
And this isn’t a rant about American English. I don’t give a damn — you can spell colour any way you like. This is more about phraseology. And I can speak with authority on this topic because not only do I speak English, I am English. So let me make this perfectly clear:
It’s I couldn’t care less. COULDN’T. Not could.
Just think about the meaning. If you couldn’t care less, it means it is impossible for you to care any less about whatever you’re talking about. You have 0% caring. You cannot possibly care less. No caring.
If you say “I could care less” you’re saying just the opposite — there is room for less caring. It is possible that you could care less, given enough time. And in fact the implication is that you care a great deal.
Allow me to explain.
It’s a little thing called ironic understatement. Like if you were dying and someone asked how you were and you said “I’ve been better.” It means you’re in a bad way, you’re dying for Christ’s sake. Now if you adored Iron Man, Tony Stark is your Messiah, and someone asked you “Do you really care about the new Iron Man movie?” and you said “Well, I could care less.” You can see how the implication of a great degree of caring can be inferred.
So, just for future reference, the correct way of phrasing is “I couldn’t care less”. It’s not a double negative, it’s called making sense. Other forms include “I couldn’t give a monkey’s toss”, “I couldn’t give two shits”. If you say “I could care less” you’re implying the exact opposite of what you’re trying to say. The ‘n’t’ ain’t silent, guys. You can carry on saying it wrong if you like. But the difference is now you know you’re wrong. But you probably couldn’t care less.