Comic for Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

Posted: 7:35 am, Wednesday, September 20th

No, this wasn't inspired by the Michigan game. Or even by the tool whose car decided to just start blowing its horn at three in the morning last night. Directly outside of our window.

Slow day on the interweb, so here we go. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that Reggie Ho's favorite band of all time is Tool - his handle in every fantasy league we've ever been in and in every round of Duke Nukem back in the day was NJ Tool, and I first knew that he accepted me as a human being when he invited me to a Tool show in K-zoo at the end of freshman year. (This is why Pete wears Tool shirts from time to time.) Anyway, some dude wrote a defense/praise piece for Tool in the Voice, and I thought I'd link it. My second-favorite part of the article is that not only did he write it, he drew the picture. And my favorite thing is this line:

They do not suck; they are awesome.

You can't state your defense much more plainly than that.

The elevators in my building have been excruciatingly slow in answering the call of the down button lately, so while waiting three minutes for the doors to open on my way to lunch yesterday, I had precious little to do but study the mail drop in the hallway. The building has a big collection bin in the lobby, and every floor has two tubes built into the wall for letters to be dropped down. Our old building had one, too, I think they're pretty cool although I know some people who don't trust them. Anyway, Mr. ZIP was there, and it got me wondering about his creation. Thankfully, wikipedia exists. And then there was a link to other fictional postmen that I thought was too good to pass up.

So, 2.0 was doing some work on her computer last night, and I'd already drawn a strip and didn't really have the attention span to do any writing. I'd also already gotten in my good-luck game of NCAA for the week (the 1924 Fighting Irish beat Sparty 77-3)(although the '46 Irish similarly beat the snot out of the Wolverines last week, and we see how much good *that* did), so I really didn't have too much to do. Actually, I should've practiced the guitar, but I only just now thought about that. What I did do was subscribe to a ton of podcasts. I like to listen to podcasts while I draw the strip. It's pretty relaxing and can actually help me focus (although I tried listening to one while writing a short story the other day, and that didn't work at all). Also, I from time to time consider slapping a podcast together for the site, so I guess you could call it a bit of research. (I really don't know which direction I would go with a podcast, and it's not like this thing doesn't eat up enough of my time as it is, so I don't think I'd hold my breath for Five Bucks the podcast if I were you. Also, I loathe the sound of my recorded voice.) Anyway, I'll be reviewing these guys later in the week for you, but I'm now subscribing to: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; All Songs Considered; the Unger Report; Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!; the Onion radio news; Today from BBC4; the Brian Lehrer Show from WNYC; On the Media; and the Catholic Insider, which seems to be a Dutch priest talking about his tours of Europe. I figured I m'ise well go for well-roundedness and throw some religion in there. Oh, and there's a new Irish podcast out there, too, from the House Rock Built, called Friday Night Lites. Fightin' Amish interviews bloggers for the enemy team every Thursday night and drinks his way through the interview. Hilarity ensues, highly recommended. Anyway, we'll see if I actually bother to listen to all these things and if so, if they're any good. Most of them are straight lifts from TV/radio shows, so it's not like I'm stumbling upon anything brand-new here, just I never get to listen to the radio since I don't drive much.

bullfrog

Oh, right, we have to be enemies this week and potentially have alumni-related fisticuffs. uhm, Go Spartans! Whip ND just like you did, uhm, Central Michigan! The MSU Fight song is the worst thing ever. Seriously. this is how it ends: Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Victory for MSU! ugh. I predict a pissed-off ND wins 37-24

Zero

Re the strip: his freshman year of college, my younger bro had this snobby roommate that everyone on his floor hated. (The kid tried to fight my brother in the hallway, and when my bro threw him to the floor in front of the crowd, everybody cheered.)

Anyway, one night my bro came home a bit buzzed and the roommate started talking more shit about how he was richer than anybody else, etc., so my bro just said "Seriously, the world would be a better place if you were executed." So I thought that was the worst thing I've ever heard said to anybody else.

That's awesome. I quite thankfully never had a roommate like that, although I was fairly certain my next-door neighbor freshman year was going to plunge a pair of rusty scissors into my chest while I was sleeping one night.

Zero, evidently Central is the *perfect* warm-up to play the Irish, so there may be trouble. (Also, how did they settle on five 'Fight's? The odd number there seems, well, odd.)

It's, well, let me try to make this more clear. Imagine the forward slashes are breaks: Fight!/Fight!/Fight! Fight! Fight!/ Victory for MSU!

It, uhm, sucks. Kinda like the team year after year, which when you're drawing from a student body pool of over 80,000 is astounding.

Zero

Hi. Nice site, good job!

Huh, I thought I had posted this a while ago, but let's try again. This was out of shock at the sheer size of Michigan State.

So, back in high school, when collitches everywhere carpet bomb juniors with prospective student material, I got a pamphlet or something from State that had words to the effect of, "Despite our size, you're not just a number here at MSU!" On the postcard that you were to return were you interested, was a bar code labeled "Entity Number." I found this to be hilarious.

I had a roommate one time who had the audacity to pull my bunk bed over along with his and used it to start doing it with two girls. So, I came back from studying and I see him doing it, and none of the three has no plans of stopping in midstream. I hastily left and spent the night sleeping in the dorm's lobby's couches that night. I just threw out my linen and bought new ones, there was no way it could be redeemable now. I didn't know what to say at that time. The only thing I could do was to file a request for a new roommate assignment quicker than you could say "Fifth Down."

What I should have done was tell the girls as they were leaving the next morning, "You do realize he's got VD, right?"

I am so glad I'm living in a studio these days.

Dodged a bullet with that roommate pratfall, too. If it happened now, you'd be equipped with Ron's diatribe of dripping hatred to deliver, though.