So I'd like to start this week by welcoming all of you who are new to the Pogo Shtick Funny Pages. We just started a little promotion on the Pogo front page this week which should bring in some new readers and, if experience has taught me nothing else, it'll mean this is the week when everything will start breaking. Normally, I'd say it'd be impossible for a web page to crash your computer and then use your modem to prank-call Dominoes into delivering 50 large pepperoni pizzas to your house, but this week might be an exception. So at the very least, it'll be an exciting few days.

Another reason this week is so exciting is because this Sunday is Mother's Day. This is particularly important to me not only because my mom reads the Funny Pages every week, but because my grandmother has been known to check out the Funny Pages once in a while. And I'm pretty sure she enjoys them. Actually, my grandmother's exact words to my mom were, "You mean Todd gets paid to do this?" but I'll take that as a compliment.⁽¹⁾

I'm also reaching the age where some of my friends are starting to have children, or at least thinking about it. And it's finally dawned on me that there's no special training that parents get before they have a child. I had always assumed there was some sort of secret expectant-parents school that taught classes with titles like Car Trip Negotiation 101: What to do when somebody crosses that invisible line in the middle of the back seat. And I was convinced that Lamaze class might appear to outsiders at though it were all about breathing techniques, but after about 30 seconds of breathing, the class would break up into practice sessions of dividing ice cream into several bowls so that no one child ends up with more ice cream than any other.

But now I'm realizing that parents are pretty much winging it the whole time. There's no secret manual. And that they just play things by ear when children start acting up. (Which, according to my mom, started about three months before birth, when I apparently decided I was going to enter many amateur kickboxing tournaments during my lifetime and needed to get in some practice at 4:00 in the morning.)

So anyway, as a tribute to all you hard-working moms out there, we've got a couple of special Mother's Day related articles for your enjoyment. There's the Mom Scientific Monthly, the important scientific journal we'd probably be reading if all scientific research were performed by our moms. And we've got a fun little movie quiz for you to check out.

On a more practical note, we'd like to apologize for any glitches you might have noticed a week or two ago with some of our comics. It was due to a fascinating little technical problem that occurred when we upgraded our systems. That's assuming, of course, that your definition of "fascinating" involves adding and subtracting different time zones from Greenwich Mean Time. Lord knows I find it about as dull as paste.⁽²⁾

And while we're at it, let me just follow up on some old issues:

• The Liza Minnelli Wedding: Okay, Liza is officially on my snub list for still not sending me a thank-you card for the spoon we got her. Next time I have a party, she will definitely not be receiving an invitation.
• The "Send Us Free Stuff" Offer: Now come on. I know at least one of you must work for somebody like Procter and Gamble, Sony, or Hasbro. Start pulling some strings and get us some free stuff. In return, I think I can work out a deal where you can get a Pogo account for free. (What a deal!)

So that takes care of most of the items of business this week. Remember, if you found something you thought was funny, offensive, or you just want to tell us how cute we all look in our baby photos, send us some mail. And we'll talk to you next week.

⁽¹⁾ Curiously, that exact same phrase showed up on my performance evaluation this year. Small world.
⁽²⁾ And not any of that exciting Elmer's paste, either. We're talking the boring generic stuff.