"Godammit! Kitty!" (for Blair Miller)

Pretty self-explanatory, I'd say.

Bin Laden squirrel and Castro dog (for Adam Finley)

If there is a political statement here, it is entirely lost on me.

I should submit this to the New Yorker.

"a hobo fighting a condor" (for Jeffery Hackert)

I don't know that condors have purple feathers and red glowing eyes, but I don't know that they don't have those things either.

"My future child" (for David Block-Schachter)

Not all future children will be androids. Just most of them.

"Katie Katherine in South Korea" (for Colleen Haines)

"Katie Katherine is female, dark hair and living TOO far away from me in South Korea doing the right thing or whatever and teaching little tiny people how to speak American slang." (Colleen)

So the tiny little South Korean person is supposed to be saying "no," but I'm not sure whether or not I got it right.

"Dana and Jenny fight zombies" (for Jennifer Gibbins) (and Dana, too, I think)

No idea who Dana and Jenny are, or what they look like. However, I do enjoy drawing cats. Here is a compromise I hope we can all live with.

"Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, I'm a Lasagna Hog" (for Jonathan Ziemba)

The post-rock palendrome that wasn't. For context, exhibit A and exhibit B... But remember: Context ruins everything. Always.

"A peeved penguin" (for Rod Begbie)

Krillpops®, of course, are pretty much the only thing a penguin would want from the ice cream man.

"Two Squirrels Eating a Steak" (for Laura Farrell)

A momma squirrel and a baby squirrel, I suppose.

"A ninja from Ninja Burger delivering a burger to someone. Maybe a pirate?" (for aethereal FORGE (possibly not his or her real name))

Anyone can put their differences aside, even mortal enemies, when burgers and commerce are involved.

"Joe Mathlete drawing on an index card" (for Chris McKeever)

No comment.

"President Franklin Pierce endorses Jameson Irish Whiskey" (for Kyle Felling)

Pierce is known today primarily for having the most rock-star haircut of any US President. He still looked kind of like a dork.

"Bocce: Fat Orange Tabby and Luca: Skinny Brown Tabby" (for Angela Schacht)

Poor Luca.

"A ninja dinosaur giving a hypothetical hug to Kirk Cameron, while Randy Moss looks on in a disapproving manner" (for Chris Miller)

Not very many people know this, but a "hypothetical hug" is a sexual practice quite popular with dinosaurs. I've depicted step one, which involves a surprise ear tickling and everyone dressed in skintight black leotards). Kirk, being an evangelical Christian, is blushing something fierce.

"A stick figure doing a backflip into a bowl of jello" (for Michael Thompson)

Even in the stick figure Olympics, the Soviet judges always display bias.

"Henry Sabin, Age 3 Days" (for Colleen Haines)

Colleen got three different cards (including this one); two of them were to be of specific people. I have never met Colleen, and have no idea who she is, or who the people she asked me to draw are. As such, I realized after drawing little Henry here that if I crayon-ed him in a way that made him look like a normal human being, I would have to make a guess at his ethnicity. Because I really like coloring with crayons (well, obviously), I went this route.

And while I didn't really think about it while I was drawing this, and while I've never taken any sort of psychedelics or hallucinogens, I bet being a newborn baby is a lot like being on acid all the time.

"Abe Lincoln & Napoleon fighting on tigers" (for Darin Ficorelli)

The tigers don't really seem to be all that into it.

"TV Time Club minus one" (for Colleen Haines)

I imagine that Arlene has some sort of hourglass on her screen. If she had something more accurate, she probably wouldn't be late to so many TV Time Club meetings.

"Country Joe & the Fish" (for Ben Howard)

I don't know whether or not Ben wanted me to draw the band, but if that's the case he probably should've been more specific. Also, I know that Lynyrd Skynyrd isn't a country band, but it IS a band that anyone called Country Joe would probably enjoy quite a bit.

Girl and cat in bumper car (for Aisha Memon)

The full request/title is written on the drawing itself, as always... Aisha offered me a link to her MySpace page to see some pictures of what she looks like, but you can't really see much of her face in any of them. Regardless, this is how I would have drawn her anyway, based on her description (it's hard to do a great deal of facial detail when you're limited by the constraints of sharpie, crayons, and 3"x5" of working space, and also are sort of a mediocre visual artist to begin with).

You'd think the dog would've bounced off the bumper car rather than being flattened by it, but you'd be wrong... That's not how bumper cars work when cats drive them. If you don't believe me, google it.

"The Final Episode of NYPD Blue" (for Jason Nodler)

I've never actually seen NYPD Blue before, but Jason says I basically got it right.

"Bubbles with Mice Inside" and "Mosaic Squirrel" (for Lisa Pearson)

Lisa is my roommate/landlord (I don't know if there's a word for that). I told her about my new art/business venture, and said I'd give her some freebies so that I could generate a couple samples. She didn't have to think about her requests at all. I like living with Lisa.

"The Nina, The Pinta, and the Santa Maria" (for Paul Locklear)

I tried to represent Columbus' main interests as best I could.

"The Electric Prince" (for Justin Crane)

Justin's a friend of mine who moved to Austin last year... He was given the nickname "Electric Prince" by our friend Jenni, for reasons still at large. This was intended as my late Christmas present to him, but I still haven't mailed it, so it's now a really really late Christmas present.

Also, I didn't try to make this look like Justin; I just drew what I thought the real live Electric Prince would look like.