Comic for Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Posted: 8:50 am, Thursday, January 18th

Having to use Illustrator 10 this week, I'm noticing how many improvements Adobe has made between 10 and CS2. Many, many, many improvements. Whoo. Anyway, that stomach virus I mention in panel three? The people who live below us have apparently had that the past few days. Mere's heard them vomiting a lot. Fun! We're fetching our mail with tongs and boiling it.

I'm in kind of a hopeful mood so far today, squad. Barack's making at least a try at the presidency, so if he doesn't get it in '08, '12 looks pretty good. I found ten bucks in my pants pocket this morning (actually, this happened the other day, but I thought about it today and it cheered me up all over again), and there was an article in the New Yorker about an optimistic genius environmentalist that has me thinking maybe we won't all be snorkeling to work in ten years. Let's see if we can't keep that all going (despite the fact I only got $2,050 in You Don't Know Jack! today).

I don't know when Pajiba actually ran this, but it's a pretty thorough listing of some excellent TV theme songs. I usually give Gilligan the nod over Sanford and Son, but that's just me. I forget what someone in my office told me the best TV theme of all time was... I want to say Quincy Morgan or something like that, but that appears to be an NFL player. Anyway, freshman year, Sweaty edited a .wav of the Seinfeld Greatest American Hero clip to announce that he and his roommate weren't home. To this day, it is the hippest thing Sweats has ever done.

More lists! RAW sent me this AV Club of terrible band names. It is with much relief that I notice I only possess music performed by one band on the list. RAW says his favorite is Here Comes Old Vodka Tits, which I propose is Sweaty's new nickname.

I had stories I wanted to tell today, dammit, but the morans at my office are at it already. Someone realized that the thing he had me rush to do yesterday was not the final version of his report, which means I have to do it all over again. I'm tempted to tell him I'm sick and going home, but unfortunately, I'm not actually a bastard. So I'm going to just tell one quick story. This was a conversation I had with my dad the other day:

Dad: So I had to go to a wake yesterday for Billy Phelan. [I forgot the guy's actual name, so I'm plugging in a character from a William Kennedy novel.]

Me: I'm sorry. Who was this guy?

Dad: Ah, he was a supervisor from back when I worked at the state. Young guy, only 57. He was what we called a brittle diabetic. Never took care of himself, never. Man, that guy worked constantly. He must have had a million hours of overtime. Came in with bruised hands all the time.

Me: What, from the diabetes?

Dad: No, from fighting. He only ever did two things - work and drink. Well, three, he fought a lot. We used to call him Killer. I'm pretty sure he did hard time.

Me: What the hell, Dad. Hard time for what?

Dad: I'm pretty sure it was manslaughter, but it could've been murder.

Me: Then that was a pretty apt nickname you guys had for him. Well done.

This is not unlike a story that my dad told me and 2.0 a few years back over Irish coffees on St. Paddy's Day.

Dad: My friend Tommy Mannigan used to drink Irish coffees all the time. Man, Tommy. [Laughs.] Tommy had arms like a gorilla. We'd be horsing around, wrestling, and if he got you in a bear hug, you weren't going anywhere 'til he felt like letting you go there. Tommy was a funny guy. A *funny* guy. Yeah. He got stabbed to death up in Montreal.

Yep, that's my paw.

bullfrog

Apparently my short lived quest to become the leprechaun has been cut short (entirely too quickly I might add). Some chump named 'Kevin Braun' stole my future job. I may have read the article wrong tho.

Got Rejected from Harvard yesterday, one step closer to sending my acceptance of thier acceptance to the acceptance people on the acceptance committee.

Dammit, I'm too busy to give any of these a try.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3156339

Am I on notice again?

No, you're OK by me, Old Vodka Tits.

Mental note - don't piss off Bullfrog, his father knows guys nicknamed "Killer".

The show was Quincy M.E. [Medical Examiner] Think CSI, in the late 70's/early 80's, with Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) as Gil Grissom. For some reason I used to watch the syndication of this show all the time, despite being 8 at the end of the run.

No, not that one... God, what the hell was this TV show? Barnaby Jones? Did that have a funk theme song? This is going to bother me all day.

i know it's not the one you are thinking of but the one day at a time theme was pretty catchy

OK, I actually went and asked the guy - "Barney Miller" is the one I'm thinking about. I have no idea where that other stuff came from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Miller

This article does a great job of putting the cost of the Iraq war into perspective (particularly the graphic) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html?em&ex=1169269200&en=0d6743c864e8ea1b&ei=5087%0A

1.2 trillion. Sheesh

'Get Three Coffins Ready' is a great name! Great line from either 'a Fistful of Dollars' or 'a Few Dollars more,' which Clint Eastwood mutters to the coffin-maker as he goes to talk to a few of the 'bad' guys. After he kills 3 + 1 he walks past and says out of the corner of his mouth, "My mistake. Four." Classic, in the Spaghetti Western sense of the word.

Zero

There went all that optimism from earlier this morning!

yeah, the times has been a downer lately. did you see greenland is falling apart?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/earth/16gree.html?ref=science

ARGH.