Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "When You See It"
HAIKU:
Question for me, huh?
Send it to journalcomic
at gmail dot com
BEGIN COMMENTARY: That picture was, as you’ve probably guessed, my usual habitat whilst living at my parents’ house. The Playstation cabinet was an actual retail fixture in its former life, but the Canadian Tire store it lived in stopped selling video games and was getting rid of it. A friend rescued it and gave it to me. It had a happy life at my parents’ house, then came with me for the year I lived at my brother’s. It was a huge pain getting it down his stairs, however, and he declared it permanently installed when we were done (which I was fine with). It now houses an enormous collection of fantasy novels. [February 13, 2012]
it was really awful outside today, that’s the…that’s the point of that one
the best plans always have phases
Hindsight is a pretty interesting thing, isn’t it? The guy writing this comic doesn’t know that he’s in for some of the most stressful times in his life, but the guy in those stressful times also didn’t know he’d come out the other side in fine shape. And the guy writing this commentary right now has no idea what’s in store just around the corner, etc. etc.
The boss list in the 2nd panel is my actual boss order for Mega Man 2. (If you’re having trouble, it goes Air, Flash, Quick, Crash, Metal, Bubble, Heat, Wood which is also fun to say.) It is a bit unusual but I learned it from a master of the game. I think that the main reason for this particular order is to get Item-2 (the flying platform) as soon as possible, which makes a lot of later sections much easier. [February 13, 2012]
if I didn’t look so dang lovable
This story is absolutely true. Not the fact that my heart is a black emptiness powered by hatred, but the exchange that I had with the student. It was a grade 9 science class that I used to work in, and the student was one that I enjoyed bantering with (or else I very likely would not have said what I did).
On a related note, I learned to accept a long time ago that I am almost completely unable to intimidate anybody that I really want to. As the alt-text says, ah well! [February 9, 2012]
stupid hands and their stupid tendency to need washing
Mystery: Solved!
A couple of weeks ago I wondered aloud about a mysterious foreign site that appeared to be inspired by me, and then remade a comic I found on it, for fun. The results of my inquiries were inconclusive and we all moved on.
But! The author of that site eventually emailed me and cleared things up altogether! I won’t quote the message in its entirety, but he is in fact Indonesian (I’ll pause here so you can exchange money with whomever you made bets with), and in Junior High. Also, he added that the last panel of the comic reads “So, I won’t tell something for now. See you later!” So there we go, everybody. Special thanks to Sidharta for emailing me and clearing up the mystery.
Interesting Times Friday Mailbag: "He Did, In Fact, ‘Do That’"
The “321-123” tag, only seen applied to this comic, is a fairly obvious reference for “Family Matters” fans and utterly meaningless to anyone else. Anyway it’s a thing that Carl Winslow says when he’s trying not to get mad at Steve in one episode. (The full saying is “Three two one, one two three! What the heck is bothering me?”) I hope that’s fascinating! [February 9, 2012]
Internet Explorer users?
Hi guys, I’m hearing that the mouse-over text on comics isn’t appearing for you guys lately. Don’t forget, you can still right-click and go for the “Properties” option! No missed jokes for you!
I’m takin’ a stand!
There’s a tiny logo in the lower right of the 2nd panel artwork which is supposed to be that of Walking Time Bomb. It’s a little alarm clock with legs and dynamite strapped to its back. WTB was a company that specialized in the kinds of sarcastic, wacky nonsense that this comic is talking about. Loads of places carried WTB shirts when I was in high school, and loads of people wore them too. Ridiculous things that tricked you into looking at them and often made fun of you for doing so.
I myself owned two; one which said “Slacker” and was designed to resemble the Snickers candy bar logo, which I actually quite liked, and another (the disowned) one which said “YES, it DOES hurt when I smile.” In my defense, neither of these was particularly confrontational. [February 9, 2012]