Comic for Thursday, January 11th, 2007

Posted: 12:00 am,Thursday, January 11th

I don't know if you guys have ever noticed, or why you would particularly, but the naming convention I've used, post-2005, for the pages and the strips both, have been yymmdd, which means that every strip for the past two weeks has be 070101, etc. For some reason, this has constantly made me think that this is the month of July. Now, I know I had a strip about the nutty-ass weather we've been having lately, but, seriously, it's not *that* bad. In fact, it's pleasantly seasonally cold today, which is a nice surprise. I guess I just thought I'd share this.

Oh, and you did probably notice this - I did in fact have time to draw a strip following up the adventures of Ron's computer. Yes, it's a joke about an obscure, seven-year old operating system, but, still. (Could be worse, could've been Bob.)

Some really random stuff about comic strips for a second. Via the Curmudgeon, I found this article from the Toronto Star about For Better or For Worse. I guess Lynn Johnson was thinking about retiring and decided against it, coming up with, instead, the stupid-ass compromise of no longer aging the characters in real time, but rather just freezing them all where they are now and continuing going that way. Man, that is the *one* interesting thing about that strip, and now it's gone. (Also, when I was like eight or something, I saw Johnson on a Garfield special or something, and she mentioned that she knew what color the walls were in all the rooms of the Pattersons' house. That really impressed me as a kid, and to some extent still does. I mean, I keep the colors in Five Bucks pretty consistent, but we're a full-color operation here - yesterday notwithstanding. FOOB - Curmudgeon shorthand - is in color one day a week, and even then it's not always in the house. So having that knowledge isn't even really beneficial. I dunno, for some reason I've chosen to remember that for two decades now.)

The Curmudgeon also pointed to a blog detailing the adventures of Gil Thorp. Including this thing. Dear - God! What is going on there?! I don't get it. The art of early Five Bucks looks pretty rough around the edges, but Gil Thorp has been going on for years! Can't they approximate a human being by now?

Moving on from comics - Nintendo is batshit insane, and yet I don't doubt in the slightest that this is a fun game.

Two awesome things on the Retrocrush front page right now. One is an explanation of how Filmation was allowed to have a cartoon with a flying jalopy and an ape and call it Ghostbusters back in the 80s, and the other is a link to A Trip to the Moon, the 1902 flick that my favorite Pumpkins video was based on.

I like that this is a troop surge and not an escalation. Very neat, very tidy. Good decidering, champ. I don't know how these guys bring themselves to watch that fool. Did any of you all force yourselves to? Were you doing this? 2.0's only observed this scadey-eight zillion times since last week, but did you know we're only two well-placed bullets from President Pelosi? I am not overly familiar with Madame Speaker, but I do know that a sock puppet would be better than Shitwit at this point, and you can't get much more frightening than Cheney (although, honestly, Cheney's the one doing everything right now, anyway, and if he were actually accountable for it, only half as much evil shit would get done)(did I manage to express that coherently at all?).

So, as you can see - we're back to normal here at Five Bucks to Friday. Thanks for bearing with us for the day o' technical difficulties.

bullfrog

The Curmudgeon is a genius. But does this FOOB revelation mean that April will never fully get her womanly lips, locked in a tweener hell forever?

Zero

Worse, it means the grampa will be trapped in a stroke-incuded mind cage for the rest of his life.

You know what's sad? I remember not only April's birth in For Better or For Worse, but also the birth of "Ada" in Gasoline Alley.

Sometimes, I wonder how I made it 'til twenty-six before starting a comic strip.

While the discussion turns to comic strips, I have a question for your ponderance.

I read somewhere that the Jef Mallet comic "Frazz" is possibly Calvin (of * & Hobbes fame, of course) as an adult. It's one of my daily reads... and I have to say, the expressions and the way some of the action is drawn bear heavy similarities.

Thoughts?

I only see Frazz once in a while, but 'grown-up Calvin' was the first thing I thought of, too.

I think Slick as Evil Calvin over in SinFest is probably the closest similarity I can find.

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2307

I am in the market to get a new laptop. Nothing too fancy (internet/email at home). Anyone have tips on good websites to get discounts? Brands to stay away from?

apple apple apple! I've had not one problem with mine in 2.5 years. Of course, they're not the cheapest, so it's best to get it with the teacher's discount (if you know any teachers that is)....

I was actually going to recommend an Apple for you, too, E, unless any of your lawyering requires PC-only programs (or if you were planning on beginning your career as a power-gamer). They're almost impossible to fuck up. I would've gotten one instead of my Dell, except that all my drawin' programs are on PC.

Apple is my vote ! They're very stable, mine has never had a virus, and as long as you don't overload them they don't seem to crash. My first crashed, but that's because I put 20G of music on a 30G hard drive.

Also, Apple gives a large portion of its political donations to the Dems whereas Dell does just the opposite.

Given the inglorious end of Notre Dame's own season, I should probably be enjoying the demolition of tOSU a little less than I am. But this shit's hilarious.

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=3042

Oh, which reminds me of the awesomeness that is the most recent Daily Dinosaur!

http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=916

I'm going to drop the Apple hateration on this thread. First off, PCs are infinitely cheaper, have many more interchangeable parts if you're into customizing your shit, and no matter what Apple people tell you, software is ALWAYS designed to run first on the PC, then on the Apple.

Don't get a Dell because they break easily, but I highly recommend a Toshiba or HP. I've had my Toshiba for nearly three years now and only had to make one repair, when a few keys went out on the keyboard.

when we were in the market for a laptop a couple of years ago, Mr. and I went to the Apple store to play. and we quickly realized that our fingers were so used to the PC-keystrokes that switching between one set of shortcuts when we were on our work computers and one when we were at home was just going to be more hassle than it was worth to have a beautiful computer. Something to keep in mind, E.

I agree with Pat about the Dells, largely because I just had to open up the bottom of my computer for the second time in two days to re-seat the RAM. If you're hitting a PC. Anyone had any luck with Sonys? I almost got a VAIO instead of this piece, but ... I forget what the deciding factor was.

And on the flipside, while PCs are great if you're a ground-upper, it is nearly impossible to fuck up a Mac. I've been screwing PCs up, badly, ever since I had to rig the config.sys to try and get some XMS to play Wing Commander II back in '92.