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Just to let any newcomers know what's going on, the current series of banners for mail-lists & web-sites is not typical. I'm going to be taking a 2 week trip and not have computer access while I'm gone. My eldest daughter is having a wedding (her third, I think), and we're using it as a venue for a family reunion. I'll be leaving Oct.1, and resuming the comic on the 17th. But anticipation of the trip ruined my creativity, so I've been running these banners just to showcase them since mid-September. They're not as funny as the regular strips, but the artwork is better.

Reading these notes, one could get the impression that I'm always missing deadlines and working behind time. But that's just because I only write a note when I am. Really, I'm usually not that bad at getting this comic out. Yes, I did drop out without an explanation for three weeks. And I don't have much of an excuse except burnout. I really enjoy doing this comic, but after being at it for 3-1/2 years now, sometimes... Well, I hope you feel that my getting away for a little bit has made me fresher on my return.

While I've been gone, I've been working on some websites (got a new one up for my Masonic Lodge at http://cerrillos.org), and also finding out a lot about myself. In particular, that I suffer from "auditory verbal agnosia" a "central auditory processing disorder" (CAPD), also known as "pure word deafness". I've always known that, but I never had a name for it — my hearing is distorted in my brain, not in my ears, so hearing aids don't do me much good at all. My actual hearing loss, although moderately severe, isn't really my main hearing problem after all.

The other thing I found caught me more by surprise. ProsopAgnosia, or "face blindness". An inability to recognize or remember faces. There's a lot of information about it on the Net, and I've spent the largest part of my time the past 3 weeks reading it all. I won't bother with details here, but if you want to talk to me about it, drop me a line.

As usual, I've been running a few days behind. This time it was because I was working on a new comic strip, just for Freemasons. (and also building up a store of those pseudoku puzzles). I hadn't planned on displaying the Masonic comics here, but I've fallen so far behind, I needed to do something drastic to catch up. So here's the first 7 comics of my new strip, "Square & Compasses" (abbreviated SNC) as #831-837. A couple are redux of jokes I've already used in MT, but somewhat reworded to fit the new characters. Most are ones you probably won't understand if you're not a Mason, so don't feel bothered by it. Just consider it blah filler, and move on. I'm still a few behind, and I'm tempted to throw in another pseudoku or two, but I'm not sure how well that went over. Did you like the one in #819? Would you be interested in another? Please let me know.

You take off for a week, and what do you get?
A week behind!
I've uploaded the past 6 days worth of strips all at once, so you may want to go back to #816 to start reading forward. #819 explains what I was doing while I was gone. Let me know if you'd like directions to other places on the Net where I've posted several of these pseudoku puzzles.

I missed 8 strips last month, and promised I'd fill them in with some Limericks I did awhile back. I've finally gotten around to it. You can see them at #773-780, March 8-15,2007.

I've finally gotten all my archives loaded both to here and to Comic Space. The URL over there isn't as neat and tidy, http://www.comicspace.com/owenkl/comics.php?comic_id=7765 , but their archive set up is easier to negotiate.

The navigation buttons on this page don't work (yet), but if you'll click on the comic itself it will take you to a page where the buttons do work, and you can leave comments besides. I've been trying to get my old website to work within the framework of SmackJeeves. To that end, the items on the menu bar at the top of the page, for "MoneyTalks Main" and "Extras," are just experiments that will look blank (except that my old chatbox is still active on the "MT Main" page). The reason I've been neglecting the comic a bit is that I've been spending more time working heavily on both this and some of my other websites —
one titled The Lion's Egg (it's not on the Web yet), one for my local Lions Club, the Masonic site, a site for my condo complex...

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

The previous comment was made in response to a generic introduction, when I first signed up on SmackJeeves, but which is no longer here, leaving my disclaimer of it hanging out there looking ridiculous all by itself. I only posted a couple sample 'toons at that time, and they weren't my best by any means.

But now I'm posting regularly here, and so I hope you'll enjoy the current strip, and visit my old website to see the archives from before I started posting here. Once I get a few bugs out, I'll probably port the archives over, but that's not a priority as long as they're accessible where they are, so probably won't happen for a long time.

~Owen in the City Different.

That's a LIE! I did not make that previous posting! Because today certainly isn't the launching of Money Talks, which will be two years old in another week. The archives are available at my other site, snurl.com/MoneyTalks . However this is the first appearance of Money Talks on Smack Jeeves.

Money Talk is not usually about geocaching. This is just an arc I'm going through to give myself a change of pace, as I was feeling some burn-out starting. It should be returning to the usual mix of gags and political commentary in about 2 weeks.

~Owen (for real) in Santa Fe