Handshake,

That’s right.  You have all had your hands shook electronically.  I hope that is a first for you.  It is a legitimate form of greeting that I think gets passed over too often when it comes to written correspondence.

Wave,

Ben

Grandiose greetings,

I learned this week that “greetings” translated into Spanish is “saludos”.  I learned that by myself with google translate.  Then shortly after that I learned that “saludos” is used by at least Mexicans to end correspondence similarly to how we use the word “regards”.  This was troubling to me.  I like the word “greetings”.  I don’t particularly care for the word “regards” as it is used in emails.  Now I find out that via Spanish they are one and the same.  I feel a little betrayed.

Today I had two unusual experiences.

Unusual experience number 1: I called one of our vendors to ask about a Telemecanique part I needed some information on. (Its a company, I don’t know why every time I mention this company name the person I’m talking to says, “What?” like I was stuttering or something.  Its a real company.)  The vendor didn’t know what I was talking about so they gave me the 1-800 phone number from memory for Telemecanique’s tech support so that I could talk to them.  The number ended in 6969.  I thought that a tiny bit of an odd choice for the phone number of a giant industrial electrical parts manufacturing conglomerate and proceeded to call it.  A recorded greeting began to play, “Hello there sexy.”  A little bit of risque advertising from a giant industrial electrical parts manufacturing conglomerate I thought. They are getting creative though these days in the make believe world of marketing.  “You are only moments away from talking to beautiful, sexy women…”  I kind of blanked out a little at that point as I batted wildly at the phone clicky thing on my desk.  Hmmm.  I called the vendor back.  “Sorry, I think I gave you the wrong number.  I checked my book after you called and the number is actually…” (ended in 6699).  He had no idea who he had put me in contact with.  Later I got an email, “…of all the numbers I could have picked, that was the worst possible…”.  Thank you vendor.  You made my day more interesting for which I am sincerely grateful.

Unusual experience number 2: I learned the name of the premier of British Columbia because she visited the company I work for.  We made broad statements suggesting that government could make things easier for businesses and CeeCee (that’s what I’m calling her) made broad statements suggesting that we should all vote for her party sometime.

Brillante Saludos (Scintillating Regards),

Benjamin

To you,

It’s been a week since I did the last comic.  I’ve had things going on every day until yesterday.  I would have sent one last night but at the last minute I decided to play ball hockey until 10:00 instead so I didn’t.  Why am I explaining this to you though?  You are getting a free comic once or twice or three times a week.  You know too much about me already I think.  🙂

One of these weeks I’m going to surprise everybody and send out four comics.  It will surprise everybody because even I don’t believe that will ever happen.

Dear friends and family (because that is still the only people who know this comic exists),

It may sadden you to know that I have created my last comic.  It isn’t the one I am posting today and there will be a lot more comics in between but it exists.  My comic writing career is a little worried about that but it doesn’t bother me personally at all.  I’m quite happy about it actually.  I will put it on the this website someday with its own page titled: The Schtick Comic #N+1, where N is the total number of comics I will ever create.  N is a finite number but I don’t kow what it is yet.

On to other thoughts.  Safety Nut Thrill Seekers 1 is the first in a series.  I’m not sure how long this series will be but I’ve got many ideas for it and I’m quite happy about all of them.  I better start drawing more.  I’m running high on ideas while at the same time very low on physically existing comics.  It’s hard to draw a shark.  (That was a teaser for the next installment in this series.)

Signature,

Me