  Imagine holding five pounds of dead weight at level with your head, expending your air blowing into it while at the same time having to move forward, perfectly in step with those around you on uneven ground in unbearable heat. You are allowed to lower it from head to chest level for about four beats every three minutes. Imagine this lasts three agonizing miles, while the people you walk by are sitting, laughing, and eating food.
Keep that in mind the next time you watch a parade. It's like gladiators - deriving pleasure from the pain of others. Other than that, Arizona was great. 2nd place by a tenth of a point in the field show, 3rd in that cursed parade. Saw the grand canyon, met some cowboys. Met three to six wonderful girls from Maine and got e-mail addresses and even a phone number. Marten suggested I refer to them as Xenophiles in my title because the were strangers who like me. Xylophones is because we have them in our pit. I must say, the grand canyon is absolutely amazing. If you've never been there I highly recommend it. Webcomic recommendation of the whenever is my official new section.
I'm going to kick it off with the ever popular Sluggy Freelance. It's got Vampires, Aliens, Ferrets, and the like, but what makes it is the characterization and the quirky humor. The page is www.sluggy.com. The only drawback is the 7 years of archives, but if you find yourself with the internet and lots of free time, that is how I suggest spending it. Thomas- I think you were eaten by a carnivorous moose from another planet. You would be dead, except that just as you were being swallowed a space-time vortex opened and you fell into another dimension, specifically one populated by super intelligent tuataras, who made you their slave. You were rescued by MacGuyver, who was thrown in by a similar vortex, and he created a dimensional flux agitator out of a pair of dirty socks, a toothpick, and some frozen orange juice. However, the agitator wasn't perfect, so you ended up in the right dimension but the wrong planet.
MacGuyver made a spaceship out of some rocks, the agitator parts, and a captured turkey-like creature, but there was only room for one, so he left you behind promising to send help. You waited for ten years and then gave up on that, deciding to find your own way home. However, at the discovery of a mostly buried statue of liberty you realized that you were on earth, just in the future.
So you spent the next fifty years looking through the ruins of earth technology for a time machine. The best you could find was a youth machine, which is why you still look 16. You didn't find the time machine, but MacGuyver found you. He had realized his mistake almost instantly, but because of relativity it took 60 years of your time for him to come back. He was able to build a time machine with all the ruins you found, so you got back, only you were in New York.
Because you had no money you had to work as a taxi driver to raise the money, but while you were driving the taxi you got pulled into a web of mystery and intrigue revolving around a series of murders and a woman named Moreen LaRue. Eventually you solved the mystery and got the girl, but she was run over by a speeding bus, so you returned here because you wanted to forget that other life and it's woes. (I think I deserve a cookie for that. ) I know from sparrows to starlings. After that, everything's a duck, as far as I'm concerned. 
