The Black Helicopter TRUTH store contains shirts/calendar with the lifecycle diagram; buttons you can use to disguise yourself as a nanobiotechnician; and the brand-spanking new "DESTROY ALL BLACK HELICOPTERS!" propaganda poster which features an angry, red microcopterswatter being swung righteously by the hand of Paranoia at the nanobiotechnological menace of the New World Order -- an inspirational message for all paranoids.

(This is the newer version.)

This is almost a year old, but I just now discovered it: "Un pinguino comunista contro il sito di Forza Italia".

Last June, some naughty person defaced the website of Forza Italia, the political party of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, using the original version of my Commie Linux wallpaper (or rather a screenshot of it being used as a Windowmaker desktop). The odd thing is, from what I can Babelfish together, the defacing was done anonymously (no 133+ bragging, political statements, or shout-outs to people with handles like Neo or Wintermute) and the site's server was running Linux, making the choice seem a non sequitur. Maybe the perpetrator just really liked my drawing and wanted to share it with all of Italy.

I don't know if they ever found who did it, but if they're still looking, it's not "Comrade Zapato".

Searching around, I also uncovered another appearance of lil' Trots the Commie Penguin in Italy: La Casa Del Popolo is a blog that's presumably anti-Berlusconi (given the entries I skimmed) and uses the screenshot version of the image for its masthead (complete with scaled down Windowmaker title bar at the top).

This is an updated version of a wallpaper that I made a long time ago. Someone named Mib emailed me a link to his improved version a while back, but I was having server probs at the time and lost the email. (So that's why I didn't email you back, Mib.) I've implemented his two ideas -- adding the RMS-compliant GNU prefix bisected with the flagpole and using И instead of N -- in the re-done versions, and have released the SVG source code.

Another SVG icon, this time of a red ant.

I've created two more vector icons -- an African and an Emperor penguin -- and have added SVG and PNG versions of all three on the Zapaticons page. These are still experimental and are subject to change. If your OS or desktop environment supports SVG icons, let me know if they work or if there's any issues with them. I'll add more once I'm satisfied with the format.

Thinking about my icons in the previous post reminded me of an idea I had a while back to make vectorized versions of some of them for use with newer operating systems and desktop environments that support that sort of thing. So I whipped up a take on my thorn-mimic treehopper icon. It's more cartoony and simplified, yet bold like the mighty treehopper himself! I'm undecided as to whether I should add vein lines in the wings -- if I do other insects, some, like dragonflies, will look better with them so I might add them for consistency's sake.

I'll put a vector version of it, and any other's I do, on the Zapaticons page when I figure out the best way to save it for use by OSs/DEs. Currently it's in SVG, but Inkscape adds extra info to the file that's unnecessary. (Anyone with any suggestions on this, feel free to email me.)

In the mean time, you can enjoy this rastorized version, which coincidentally makes the front page look more festive... Feliz Navibug!

For some odd reason, lately people (11 to be precise) have been buying the Penguin t-shirt from my Zapaticons store. I say "odd reason" because it's the only thing from that store that anyone has bought in the almost one year that it's been there and people only started buying it in October. I haven't done any advertising of it other than the banner ad on the Zapaticons page that has been there since I added the store. I thought maybe it was because of the shirt's placing on Cafepress's search, but it only shows up on the third page for "penguin". I also thought it might have something to do with the increase in Cascadia sticker sales around the same time, but the only place where the two stores are mentioned together is on the front page sidebar, so that doesn't make sense.

What gives? Has there been a sudden outbreak of penguinophilia? Some sort of joint Penguin-Belgium psy-op campaign aimed at influencing my website?

Anyway, the Zapaticons store is a hodgepodge mess of random icons on random items; however, if penguins are so very, very popular (does no one appreciate the homopterrific cuteness of the thorn mimic treehopper?) I could increase the penguin-to-nonpenguin ratio there (I already added a second penguin shirt and two penguin ornaments), or add a separate penguinicon store with a full complement of penguiny products (unless that's what THEY want!) If anyone has any requests or suggestions regarding this, email me and I'll take it under advisement.

Now you can zoom in on the Dactyl Fractal with this mysterious Flash doodad. Endless, mesmerizing fun for the whole family.

Thank you, Mr. Cicada. For your valiant, if ultimately useless, efforts to help Cascadia, I offer a selection of three cicada Zapaticon shirts for sale at Cafepress, including the following: