Updates will be sporadic for a time. Our iMac - the $2000 wind machine - is about to be shipped back to Appleland and a new hopefully trouble free iMac will come this way as if by magic - or FedEx - whichever.

Good time for it, too. The iMac has started randomly shutting itself off and on.

You might look at panel 3 and wonder, how is beatnik Leonard keeping those glasses on sans ear stem? That's just how cool he is, man.

This is the first Zumwalt strip I've written in at least 6 months. That's the glory of a vast backlog. And far as jokes go it's pretty lame, but the original ending of the slam arc was Del walking in on Boris in a school bathroom stall. See, alternative high schoolers don't lock bathroom stall doors. Funny, right? A universal issue we can all relate to. Ha ha.

I had time to fix Leonard's ear stems, but I've known people who didn't fix ear stems for whatever reason. It just goes with his style. Maybe he'll get that ear stem replaced once some peoples somewhere are no longer oppressed or more likely - being a beatnik - when his old lady gives him some dough. And by his old lady I don't mean beatnik Chloe but his actual wife. I know how beatniks are exactly like I know about alternative high school students and their proclivity for not locking bathroom stall doors.

The sheer chunk of dialog in panel two forced the orientation of the layout to a lengthwise Sunday style format.

Del holding up the sign in panel three seems almost too much, but it was that or turn him into a donkey and that would be one of those takes forever to get right undertakings.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do know my limits. Today's almost had a page wide fourth panel filled with a Mos Eisley cantinas worth of slam poet rabble.

For the TMI department, boobs caused me difficulty. Chloe's in panel two and the nipped out slam poet to the far right in panel 4. Nipples reproduced at such a small size look like black specks even if drawn not as black specks.

I don't like the look Satchel gives Chloe in panel 3. He thinks he's a little too smooth or something, sliding closer to her. Oh wait. Actually he's in the clear and that's my inability to recall where people are sitting around the table. Another error to correct come the Director's Final Final Cut.

From thumbnail to full sized sketch to pencils to done this one took over 10 hours. It doesn't seem quite possible. I thought it would be a breeze. The pencils were about as detailed as I've gotten.

Satchel is shedding the Little Orphan Annie eyes. Leonard, too. They are about as expressive as boiled eggs pushed into or pulled out of envelopes.

The gaggle of similar looking girl poets transitioned from standing around all cool like the Donnas posing for a photo to doing something - even if the something is little more than freaking out their den mother with the loving, cult member patented staring.