So, I have a portable word processor, and on the plane ride to Minneapolis I was in the groove and outlined the rest of the year’s scenes/situations including writing a few pivotal strips. I also wrote extensive notes on two other projects I’m working on. So, this word processor is awesome in that it’s light, portable, and the batteries last about 20 hours. It DOES use a palm-pilot virtual memory, so if the batteries die, ALL data is lost. But in the past, when not using it, it would keep some minimal charge for MONTHS. (Do you see where this is going yet?) Exactly. All gone. And I haven’t thought about the ideas at all since I wrote them down because I’ve been super-busy and because I wrote them down.
Sigh.
Trying REALLY hard to remember, and I know I had some really good brand spankin’ new ideas, but so far the memory well of what I wrote has been totally dry.
Ooohhhh, so frustrating. And I’m usually such a good backupper. I’m also really good at saying “water under the bridge,” but this one is REALLY difficult.
On a happy note, I posted a recipe blog about making Lemon Raspberry Chocolate Tarts over at Cookrookery. Check it out.
And…. if you like a strip, you should always click below. Really. 🙂
This is the funniest one yet…!!
sorry about your data woes though…
aw, damn and drat. but on a high note, this is one of the funniest strips of Vol. 2. The triumphant return of the Potty-bot!
Thanks for the sympathy, and I have made a tiny bit more progress in rebuilding the year (or to best of my recollection. I mean, how SciFi can you get? Spacetrawler no doubt plays out totally differently in an alternate universe where I downloaded the text before the battery went).
And thanks for the kind words!
Brave, faithful Potty-Bot to the rescue!!!
Pierrot is a totally dominated by Emily. He must be one of those submissive guys who like femdoms. If Fiyena wants sex, she should hang with Dimitri. He’s randier than Captain Kirk. Dimitri will hump anything that moves. When he walks into a room, the fish stop swimming.
But at least the poor “girl” is trying. Pierrot could do a lot worse. Emily would kick in his teeth, and Yuri may just eat him in some sort of post-spider flashback. Besides, Emily is still pining for Growp.
Pierrot and the potty-bot is my favorite running gag of this comic.
My God, I love potty-bot
Hemingway spent the rest of his career mourning and trying to reconstruct the stories he left in a briefcase in a Paris bathroom…
I really can’t see submitting a strip from a daily plot-driven comic to Reddit, etc. — spoilers, backstory, etc. Sorry. :-/
I never really thought about it before reading this comic, but I think I *really* want to have sex with an alien.
Yay! Pottybot and Fyena are back!
Argh! Finger animation is also back!
“Emily is still pining for Growp”? Bwahahahaha!!!!
Oh gah! That is awful about all your notes! I feel your pain.
(>_<") ouch
@pastordan, I didn’t know. That’s fascinating. I had a professor at UMass who told a story about how he was so into his proffesorial comparative literature huge project publication thing he was doing and was ignoring his family and life and then…. he left it in a suitcase in an airport and never saw it again. After a period of being devestated, he decided to start teaching Children’s Lit and laugh more. (I liked him LOTS)
@Frank, Lol!
Totally loving this comic. It makes me happy whenever there’s a new one. Your humor is lovely and subtle.
Love the human alien interactions. Pierrot isn’t like Dimitri who has no bias or qualms of getting sexually close with non-humans both humanoid and other. It is a question some of us science nerds and SiFi readers pose to ourselves. Would we? Could we? Answer unknown. But could our civilization survive if we actually met not just one intelligent species but many? All more advanced than we?
For humans when say 20th century humans met for the first time Neolithic islanders during WW2 it changed the locals. Their societies fell apart. We, as a species, just aren’t ready for it. We could fall apart too even without an invasion or a tripod firing a shot. But some of us would be ready for it.
Great comic, I can imagine lots of funny business with the potty-bot.
I am really curious that anyone makes any kind of word processor where everything vanishes if it loses power. No permanent memory at all? Seems to me that product falls into the “glass hammer” category.
So how common are inter-species alien relationships/sex in this universe? It seems like it is fairly widespread… is this a case where evolutionary convergence/pansperma/whatever allows for fertile offspring to be produced? If so, is that why there are so damn many species here?
So Moses, Jesus and Mohamed are up in heaven and decide to have a contest for all the souls of the Abrahamic religions. They are to write a new book to append to their respective holy books, and they agree that the best one gets sent to earth to convert all those of the other two faiths. So they set a time limit of one hour and start writing. Ten minutes before time is called the devil comes through and unplugs all three word processors. Who wins? …..
Jesus. And Why?
Jesus saves.
On the one hand- a word processor that doesn’t take a thumb drive? or an SD card? Dayum…
On the other, I carry a terabyte with me to work at all times, and just so I can back my stuff up because I use work laptops instead of my own. (Well, and listen to music.) And one week ago, the hard drive in the laptop went bloop, and a month’s worth of work was gone just like that.
But of COURSE I had backed it up on my handy T-byte, right? I mean, how stupid would I have to be to have the T-Byte with me all those weeks, and never actually do the backup. Right? Right??
I’m going away now.
@TB, welcome to 2002.
@Charlie, I’ve asked myself but honestly haven’t decided yet. Inter-alien hanky-panky exsists, but not sure if there’s much inter-alien offspring.
@verisimilidude, ha! 🙂
@AG, whooo. Eek. Ouch, sorry to hear. Yeah, at this point i back-up on a local external as well as an online service. But
I agree, potty-bot is hilarious, but I got to thinking, would I want my toilet to talk to me and follow me around? I’m with Pierrot, that would be creepy. I don’t even like to talk through the door when I’m “occupied”. I just “vant to be ah-lone”. Hope Pierrot doesn’t have “bashful kidney” syndrome.
I think it’s totally obvious the Pierrot has bashful kidney syndrome. Or if it he doesn’t, potty bot has definitely given it to him by now!
I think Fiyena would, in the long run, be a bad thing for Pierrot. Basically she, due to the nature of her speciesm, is totally nonconfrontational but probably as passive-aggressive as all hell. In a way, she’s like Pierrot and I think that will be calcifying to them both.
Emily on the other hand, confronts Pierrot’s unexamined tendencies and will probably make him grow as a person. At the same time he’ll probably make her grow as a person too–helping her get past all her trust and control issues.
Anyway, I’ll lay off the armchair relationship counseling now.
Fiyena’s species is so generally weak-willed, I’m actually a bit surprised that Fiyena is as persistent as she is with Pierrot. Passive-aggressive, sure, but relentless. She must really want him. I suspect her violent mood swings are more off-putting to Pierrot than anything else. Maybe if she eventuallys finds an emotional equilibrium, Pierrot might be more comfortable with her.
Fiyena is annoying. why should Pierrot have to settle for this girl? Also, complete lack of spine, and he would grow to resent that a lot. You know, being the defender of all things awesome and all.
Futhermore, Emily/Pierrot would work in a lot of ways. They respect each other [!!!], and they both have fight when the time comes so Pierrot could probably hold his ground more than you think. Pierrot could calm her down a bit. She could loosen him up.
I am rooting for this so badly.
I’ve lost story notes a couple of times. I even lost an entire D&D campaign I had just finished when my hard drive exploded just as I was about to burn it to a CD. I’ve found that after mourning the loss, I have an easier time inventing new awesome ideas than remembering the previous ones.
Still, it really burns to loose so much so suddenly.
*plays ‘Taps’ to mourn your lost brainstorms*
I was about to believe the whole space carrot cake thing until I remembered what happened to the dead mercs…
You lost me, @Tom. 🙂
I believe Tom’s referring to the fact that dead bodies on spacecraft are jammed into the maw of the spacetrawler to become raw material for the synthesizer. The same synthesizer that’s used to make food. Thus there’s no telling whether that slice of cake was made from space dust or dead people.
“Emily on the other hand, confronts Pierrot’s unexamined tendencies and will probably make him grow as a person. At the same time he’ll probably make her grow as a person too–helping her get past all her trust and control issues.”
Yes, this. Pierrot and Emily will help each other become better people, assuming they don’t kill each other first.
Thank you for clarifying that, @Metaphizzle, phew, I must have been totally slow last night.
@Charlie: Sex doesn’t require reproduction as a consequence. Sex with aliens is even less likely to have unplanned and unwanted entanglements since offspring is impossible.
Though I could see that being a great storyline down the line for Dmitri… One random encounter with a alien that is able to internally perform genetic manipulating (a la Octavia Butler’s ‘Lilith’s Brood’ Trilogy)leads to a spawn of hybrid offspring. Make it so, Chris.
Very true, an advantage of sex with genetically ‘non compatible’ alien species would be lack of concern about pregnancy. Hopefully there are no ‘space-sti’s’ but maybe the eebs could cure space herpes anyway.
oops, ‘space-sti’s’ should be ‘space-stis’
Krep seems oddly sensitive to Fiyena’s needs here. Kinda weird considering his irascible nature. Maybe he has a soft spot for her himself?
@KingInYellow, or Krep is enough of a bastard that he just wants to screw them both up royally.
shouldn’t space-stiss (or whatever) be Space-STDs?
Just pondering it for moment, Space-STDs are probably a concern in direct proportion to the chances of Space-Pregnancy. If the pair are genetically incompatible, their diseases are likely incompatible as well.
Yeah I had a palm pilot for awhile that was great for writing things down, and yes, the same thing happened to me as well. A whole chapter of my book written, lost. The blessed thing in my case, refused to charge, so anything I did the PDA had to be plugged in which is a bit point defeating. Thank the Naaru for my netbook; not as portable, but ’tis very effective in its use, plus fun games to add to it, along with great wifi connection.
To remember what was lost rebook that flight and find another groove. Or Hypnosis with a voice recorder and notehpad on hand.
For saves make a Youtube (etc.) site, give it an obscure name, file Everything under self commenting in it that’s text or pictures or links that will be referenced to. Have It Stay There FOREVER. Did that with my watched anime/recipes and webcomic list and now all I have to remember is the name to search for. External drives are good provided the computer in question can read them and that the USB port is accessible, as is self mailing, up to X space.