After sending off my complaint to Kellogg's last week I never really expected to get a reply, but when I returned home on saturday night there was a letter waiting for me - a letter with the Kellogg's logo clearly stamped on the envelope.

I tore it open and there it was: a coupon for £3 worth of Kellogg's products. Three pounds! That's almost enough to buy two whole packs of coco-pops bars, when all that I was missing was half of a single bar. My faith in the power of the consumer was restored - perhaps the age when corporations could stamp over the rights of the customer was coming to an end. Then I read the accompanying letter and things got a bit confusing.

 Dear Mr Turner

I was very sorry to learn that you had a complaint concerning Kellogg's Coco Popops Cereal Milk Bar and thank you for contacting us.

 So far so good...

Our technical staff have examined the specimen you sent us...

 Eh? As far as I was aware I had eaten the evidence, and I certainly didn't send them anything.

...and they tell me that it is a rodent dropping.

 It's a what?

 The letter goes on to assure me that the presence of the dropping is nothing to do with their manufacturing processes and they can't possibly explain how it got in there, but they're giving me the voucher anyway - presumably as hush-money.

 So what's going on? Has my case got mixed up with someone else's? Is there an unfortunate customer out there somewhere who, as he was merrily chomping on his Coco Pop Cereal and Milk Bar, was suddenly confronted with a nugget of rat poo? And to make matters worse Kellogg's have written back with the letter intended for me saying 'since you ate the evidence there's really nothing we can do, these things happen'? Poor soul.

 Or perhaps this is just standard procedure; they get so many complaints about unexplained appearances of rat-faeces that rather than hire a team of experts to analyse each case individually it's cheaper just to assume every compliant is about poo, and send out the same response to them all.

 Either way I suppose I should count myself lucky. Though I have to admit I'm now slightly less eager to spend my voucher on Coco Pops Cereal and Milk Bars. Bars made up entirely of little brown pellets...

 Oh dear.

I've finally started to ferret out my drawing materials from the towering piles of detritus that make up my personal belongings, but for today there's another guest artist providing the strip. This time it's the wonderful Chris Yates , master of all things photographical or wood related (and if you'll recall I also made a rather spiffy (if I do say so myself) guest comic for him a while back). And best of all he's going to send me all the models he used to make the strip in the post. I am never going to stop playing with my Qual'N'Gurtha, ever. I hope I don't go blind.

Also I tried to make a t-shirt design based on how horrible moths are, but no matter how I did it I just couldn't get it to look good. However rather than just throw it away I thought I'd try entering it into the Threadless t-shirt competition to see if anybody else liked it. If they do I can win $2000! But I probably won't.

Anyway, if you're 'that way inclined' you can check out the design by clicking on this fancy linky thing here:

 Brr.

Well I managed to find a pencil and some paper under a pile of dirty socks so it looks like I am back! I'm going to try to go back to doing very short stories for a while, as long as I can come up with ideas for them. SHORT ideas. And for those of you who aren't fimilar with the golem (and since he hasn't appeared in the comic for almost a year I suppose you can be excused), you can see his creation here.

I am still living at my parents. On tuesday morning my mum had to wake me up to tell me to go to work.

I HAVE to move out.

Apparently Beaver and Steve is the 'Cool Site of the Day' today.

I'm not really sure what it means, but I suppose it can't be bad. And if you like you can click here and vote to say how good the site is to maybe make it cool site of the year. Although that's probably getting ideas above my station.

I am starting to realise why I always write such long story lines: because I am incapable of fitting everything into 6 panels. Expect more 9-panel monstrosities coming this way soon.

Thanks to everyone who voted to say the site was cool - sadly we're not the coolest site of the year (but then how could I hope to compete with the awesome 'Learn Hebrew'), but we are the coolest site of the month so far. Take that Steve Guttenburg!

I'm not sure I like that last panel. It makes Steve seem like he's doing it to be evil, but really he just wants to see what happens. He's doing it for SCIENCE. Also it's not snowing, I just ran out of time to colour in the ground.

I am going to do a reprint of the Beaver and Steve t-shirts, so if you wanted one, but they had sold out in your size you can go to the shirt shop page, select your style and size, and then press the 'request more of this size' link that appears. That will take you to a page where you can fill in your email address so I can mail you when the shirts are back in stock. Don't risk missing out again - I'll be putting in the new order early next week!

I am never putting this much background detail into a comic again. I like how it came out but it took me hours.

The B&S shirts are being reprinted! They'll be back in stock in just a couple of weeks!