Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton is trying to ride the wave of reactionary paranoia about "adult" content in videogames to a presidential nomination and inevitable second place finish in the 2008 election. Those of you who identify as gamers may even know who Jack Thompson is. Jack is portrayed in the media as a regular ambulance-chasing lawyer trying to cash in on ignorant paranoia by blaming videogame makers whenever a kid who plays videogames (which is all of them) breaks the law. Would you like to know more?

Because of this, VG Cats recently did a comic accusing Thompson of just doing it to further his career. Were this the case it would've ended there; you don't have to be a lawyer to know there's neither money nor fame to be had suing webcomics. Or making them, for that matter.

However, ol' JT is not just a regular law-whore, and hilarity ensued. Now, I'm not really a fan of The Cats VG, but at times like this we have to pull together. Not because we're both webcomic creators, or gamers, or closet homosexuals, but because we're non-retarded, which makes us a decided minority in the world today. As nontards we have to stick up for each other and make sure all the tards out there don't get a chance to collect their pitchforks and light their torches. We wouldn't want to end up like the smokers.

As it turns out, Jack Thompson is the media equivalent of an internet forum troll, who has decided to flame the videogame industry Derek Smart style. Or to put it another way, he's an actual internet forum troll who has gone on to troll the media, having run one of the funniest (though unsuccessful) election campaigns in history.

As an aside, the election linked above was in Dade County, home of the sleaze-bag lawyers and corrupt public officials made popular in Carl Hiaasen novels. Which means that Janet Reno probably had actual skeletons in her closet he could've exposed, rather than making unsubstantiated claims that she was a lesbian and therefor a "great candidate for blackmail by the criminal element."

But of course, if crazy people did the logical thing they wouldn't be crazy. They wouldn't go around saying videogames cause violence because they'd read the reports saying there is no link. Instead they might focus on the issue of videogames killing people directly.

For those of you too lazy to click, a Korean guy (big surprise, right?) died of heart-failure after playing "online battle-simulation games", by which they presumably mean Starcraft, for 50 hours. First of all, Starcraft isn't that good a game. Second of all, he only lasted 50 hours? And he took breaks? What a fucking sissy. This guy lasted 86 hours.

So, obviously, the dramatic re-launch of UAC fell a little short. Penguinx had promised to rededicate himself to the site; specifically he said "Tell you what, if I produce a month worth of UAC by the end of next week, will all of you shut the hell up about it?". And to no one's surprise he didn't follow through, so we're not shutting up about it. But I've been getting complaints (by way of minions, obviously I don't deal directly with the plebes) about the disappearance of the rantenspiel during this second, more pronounced hiatus. Apparently people who had grown numb to the lack of comics are now going through withdrawal all over again over the lack of the literary cellulose I append to each comic. I guess that's flattering. Sad for you lot, though.

The reason I took a break is that I'm a bit bipolar (shocking, I know) and I just didn't have the mental energy to keep dragging this site along all by myself. The nice thing about being bipolar rather than regular old depressive is that the pendulum inevitably swings the other way, and now I am infused with confidence, creativity and a desire to change the world. On an unrelated note, can somebody send me an unadulterated copy of the anarchist cookbook? The napalm recipe in the version I have doesn't work at all.

The upshot is that I am officially off my summer vacation. I will post some hate-filled screed twice a week just like I always did, and once I run out of filler comics I'll start scraping them together myself. I picked up a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain last week, so the filler art may just be my inept scribblings as I try to teach myself to art. It may take a while before I can accurately portray a face-raping Deacon-wasp and his cannibal kids, but that is the ultimate goal.

While I'm not lying for a moment, I should come clean about something else too. In fact, the only person who complained about the absence of the rantenspiel was Max, the helpful internet imp who turned my half-baked idea for a Fat/Stupid Index into a fully operational web application. Apparently in addition to implementing my raw ideamannery, he's also whored the site to all his co-workers, and it is they who are now going through the hate-DTs. Here's your fix, Max's Coworkers. Next time you'll have to sell your bodies to get it.

We have a new record holder for Best Search Term in our referral logs: "if god was a racist, homophobic, misogynistic anti-semite 2000 years ago, he probably still is. people don't usually get more liberal with age, and he has less incentive to change than most."

Never heard of keywords, huh? I hope for your sake, whoever you are, that you copied and pasted all that. Although I guess it would be more impressive, for both of us, if you actually had that line memorized. Then again, if you can remember two sentences of English language abuse word-for-word, why can't you remember the name of the fucking comic? It's three letters for god's sake.

Today's filler art was provided by Percy Kittenz. I'm not sure who actually drew it because I try not to sully my creative palate with inferior attempts at webcomicry, but Percy was the one who did the hard work of putting Gordon in there. Maybe if this whole "learning to draw" scam turns out to be too much work, I'll just create a series of "Where's Gordo?" images. Or perhaps "What's Gordo Pleasuring Himself With?".