Comic for Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Posted: 7:25 am, Tuesday, April 1st

GOD. I hate the internet on April 1st. Although it made me rethink the order of the strips and go with this one instead of the one I was going to run, because this is just a bizarre strip that kind of really worked better in my mind, but I've been meaning to do something like this for years. I had wanted to make one of these in 3-D, but I was having a hard time getting that to work. I do like the colors in the second panel and the textures in the third, and I have no idea when the 'scribble' effect would ever be useful to anyone, ever.

I don't know about where you all are, but the weather here in New York has been sucktastic pretty much since I've been home, which is one of the reasons I'm rocking Link to the Past so hard. And I thought today was supposed to finally be in the sixties and sunny or something, but it sounds terrible outside as I write this at six in the morning. God dammit, I just want to ride my bike.

2.0 and I went to Dewey's last night, the unofficial bar of the St. Louis Cardinals here in New York, to watch opening day with 15 and a bunch of her displaced friends. The Irish had a networking night at Dewey's once a few years ago, so I had an eerie remembrance of the place, but I think the food has gotten better since then. It was a bummer that the Cards got postponed after exploding for four in the first, but the company was nice, and I got to keep tabs on Gagne continuing to suck ass in '08, coming in with a 3-0 lead to start the bottom of the ninth against the Cubs and promptly giving up a three-run homer to Fukudome (watch yo' mouth!) without recording an out. Has anyone fallen further from their steroid high than Eric Gagne? Except for Sosa? And McGwire? And Juan Gonzolez?

Other baseball: Man, the Soxaholix dude has had a terrible fucking month.

I think Google has finally lost their minds. I know it's early and I'm only a third of a cup of coffee into the day, but I had to read this three times before I really knew what was going on.

Crownover sent me this the other day - "It's Not You, It's Your Books," an article from the Times about dumping people because they read on a third-grade level. The relevant passage that made Crownover send it to me was this:

Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)

...because I gave up on Atlas Shrugged about 300 pages in. I may pick it up again some day, because I'm kind of interested in the premise of the book, but, God, life is too short to read Atlas Shrugged (sorry, Sec!). I don't believe I've ever broken up with anyone over the books they do or do not read, although I've definitely altered my opinion of people based on their reading habits. Musical taste is much more likely to be the thing for me. I dated a girl once who owned three CDs, one of which I gave her during the two months we were dating. Lovely girl, but I just can't deal with that.

Sox have the second of I believe their four opening days today (Japan, Oakland's home opener, the Jays' home opener, and then finally the Fenway opener), at a thoroughly reasonable ten o'clock at night. 'Til then, this is Five Bucks to Friday World HQ, over and out.

bullfrog

2.0 -- Tuesday, April 1 2008, 07:22 am

My friend SD dated a dentist briefly who not only had no CDs, he had no stereo of any kind. How is that possible? She had to drop him...though she came out of it with a lot of extra toothbrushes.

In case anyone's jealous of my life of leisure right now and wants to exit their job, Kotaku linked to a free web-based Civilization-style game overnight. I'm not sure how it is, but wine is evidently one-fifth of the material you need to build your empire.

http://ikariam.org/tour_step2.php

hey mere - http://gothamist.com/2008/04/01/dave_eggers_cur.php

I'm just pumped there's a website named Bookslut.com. I've never broken up with someone over their reading habits, but any ladies who don't get my highbrow Russian literary humor are swiftly shown the door!

As seen on CNN, yet another reason to fear Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE

It's God! That was cool.

As I said, I've never dumped anyone over books, but 2.0 and I did spend much of the time the evening we got together talking about books. So books can totally get people together.

I did like the bit about the Corrections in that article, also - "brilliant!" "overrated!" I go with overrated. It was a great book for about 350 pages, and then it had another 250 pages to go.

I have to remember to get my freaking GoodReads widget back on the front page.

I'm sure I can find this somewhere, but is this the first time in their history the Devil Rays have been in sole possession of first place?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/standings/

I have a lot of CDs. Well, not a crapload, but a fair amount. But I don't listen to 'em anymore, really, not since I got iTunes. There's all kinds of 90s alternarock and 70s classic rock and so forth on those CDs; I wonder what an eligible chicklet would think if she saw the collection? (Hopefully she wouldn't then ask about the iTunes songs, which number 1000+ - all from the same artist. That's not something I'd wanna advertise, ifyaknowwhatimean.)

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/

I have only read about 4 sentences from that blog, and that's all I intend to read. I'm still chuckling, though. It's a good nerd link for the English majors in the room...

Okay, baseball geeks (er, fans)...help me with this quiz that's got me stumped: Which of the following is actually possible? A) A game called off b/c of the 10-run mercy rule B) A walk-off home run in the top half of an inning C) A double by a designated hitter in the NLCS D) A four-strikeout half inning

Also, what is a fly ball that hits the foul pole? A foul, out, home run or ground rule double?

thx!

MNP: D), and Home Run.

Devil ("Don't Call Us Devil Anymore!") Rays having sole possession of first place has got to be the cruelest of April Fool's Jokes...because it's true.

okay, but HOW can you have 4 strikeouts? This seriously has me confused.

maybe a dropped third strike by the catcher?

I love google :) http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats19.shtml

Yeah, it's totally a dropped third strike by a pitcher, runner advances to first. Wakefield's done it once or twice, when the knuckler scoots away from the catcher.

And a ball that hits the foul pole is a home run, no ifs ands or buts.