Again, a couple of things I want to touch on with this one.

1) Strangers having incorrect opinions does not affect me - this is something I've had to drill into my own head repeatedly over the past decade or so. Seven billion people with differing ideas on everything from economic policy to the afterlife to the shape of the planet - I'm never going to be able to chase everyone down and cram them full of logic and evidence until they all agree with me. The most I can do is say my own thing with my own megaphone and signal boost stuff I agree with. Am I preaching to the choir, reinforcing my own personal echo chamber? Perhaps I am, but perhaps that's inevitable. Like will always attract like.

2) Curating your own online presence is essential these days, especially if (like me) you make a significant portion of your living from the Internet. I do feel bad sometimes that I'm not better at it, or at least more diligent. There are a lot of things I've left in my wake that I could go back and tidy up - or, at least, put a date on them, so people know they were written by a version of me from 2005 - but I just haven't bothered (I like to tell myself I'm being "authentic"). There are dead links on my old pages. Heck, there are dead links here in the Leftover Soup archives. I don't even have the password to access ComicGenesis to modify the page for my first webcomic any more. It's in my nature, though, to push forward, and not to look back. That's part of being an artist, for me. I feel bad for those who'll have to clean up after me when I'm gone.

3) I am (as of this writing) in my thirties, and most of my friends are as well, and we still say things like "ah, I have to be an adult! Being an adult is hard" when we have to file paperwork or set up doctor's appointments or drive somewhere. I'm not sure if that's something peculiar to our generation or today's culture - it's hard to imagine my grandfather saying it while running a bakery and raising three kids. I think "adulthood" is being pushed further and further back these days, more and more of our lifespans are being subsumed into adolescence, sometimes a permanent adolescence. Certainly, Wallace's statement that sex is for adults is becoming more and more untrue, I think. There are plenty of pop songs on the radio today that file coitus and alcohol under "never growing up". The eloi and morlocks from The Time Machine come to mind.

4) This is comic #800. Yay me!