Hi, everybody, this is Mr. Average.  You might be wondering why I haven’t answered email or posts this week.  Well, I’m afraid there’s a flu epidemic here in New England right now, and I’ve caught the damn thing.  I made the unwise choice of trying to work through it this week, and now I’m really laid up.  It’s viral, they tell me, so there’s nothing I can do but wait it out.  I can’t really even draw a straight line, or focus on working on anything other than sitting in my chair here and waiting for my immune system to fight this damn thing down.  So with deepest apologies, I’m afraid there’s not going to be a new page this week.  I’ll see if I can dig up something entertaining from my underground hard drive here to fill in the gap, but for now I’m on a strict regimen of rest and no stress until things clear up.

Sorry about this, guys.  Just have to roll with it I guess.

Well, I gotta tell you, I guess I need to speculate about the nature of my personal philosophies more often, because last week was one of the most in-depth and interesting discussions I’ve had in recent years, as well as setting a record for a single week for comments on 6-Commando (even excluding my own responses!)  Thanks to everyone for taking the high road, as well – there can be a temptation for these things to to turn into flame wars and nonsense, but everyone really put in their best and I found it all very interesting, not to mention uplifting.  It’s nice to know that this comic attracts a higher mental caliber than, say, CNN.  Which is just the worst, if you want my honest opinion.  The only thought I’ll add to last week’s discussion is this, from my ten years as an architect: it takes an enormous amount of effort to build beautiful things, and very little effort to destroy them.  That’s the nature of entropy, I suppose – but we can all make a choice to be on the right side of it, if we want to.

As for me, it’s just been another week in the can.  I’m tired out.  Nothing more for for me to do for this week, though.  Just putting one foot in front of the other.  Maybe in a year I’ll feel silly for worrying about these things.  Maybe we’ll all find our way.  Either way, I’ll just keep drawing until they make me stop.