I think this is probably inspired by the Far Side – few have done more than Gary Larson to explore the secret thoughts of cattle in comic strip format.

The last line of this was an afterthought, and ultimately my favorite part of the strip.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: *laughing* Yeah, that’s good.

-=ShoEboX=-

I’ve actually been throwing this joke around with my wife for years.  The “how funky is your chicken / how loose is your goose” cheer has always made my eyebrows arch.  I have absolutely no idea what it could possibly mean, let alone how the comparison of seemingly-unrelated bird characteristics equates to supporting a sports team.

I did some brief research on the cheer while writing this strip, and discovered two things:

1. There was a song called “How Funky Is Your Chicken” recorded by the Jackson 5 in 1970 (on the same album as the classic “I’ll Be There,”) so this may or may not be the origin of the cheer.
2. I have a creative project that has driven me to research the phrase “how funky is your chicken.”

And yes, this really was the best cheerleader art I could find for this joke in my enormous library of royalty-free clip art.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: It’s exactly what it should be, but their mouths are terrifying, and you might want to spell-check “promiscuous” (NOTE:  She was right, I’d misspelled it.)

-=ShoEboX=-

I guess my ideal target audience for this one is metal fans who know the definition of the word “portmanteau.”  But if there’s any group of readers likely to contain at least a small sampling of such a demographic, it’s probably you guys.  And hopefully those who don’t catch all the album names will still get the gist.

Bonus points to anyone who can pinpoint exactly where the segue from cataclysm to metal albums begins, extra bonus points to anyone who can name the artists of the  referenced album titles, and of course super bonus points to anyone who can come up with better ones.

A couple of the Snow-related catastrophe names were suggested by Rand Bellavia (of Ookla the Mok.)

Feeling like crap tonight.  Not sure if it’s allergies or a cold, but I’m going to bed.  Hope you’re all healthy and devoid of unnecessary mucus!

-=ShoEboX=-

This strip’s more topical than it seems because I had a dentist appointment today.

I actually wrote a flossing simulator once – part of a series of completely useless freeware games I put out in the mid-90’s under the name “Stupidsoft.”  The series also included a clock-kicking game, a piano-avoiding game, a baseball simulator based on the 1994-95 season (i.e. an empty baseball diamond with cricket noises) and a game called “Lost in the Dark” in which your hero was against a black background and you were able to walk around, shrug, scratch your head, and look at a map, until at some random point “Oops, you died!” would pop up on the screen and your adventure would be at an end.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: Amusing!

Have a great weekend, dammit!

-=ShoEboX=-

I tried several times to make anything but this out of this piece of art.  But the elegant dance of sparseness and profanity presented here was my first idea, it stuck, and goddammit I like it.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: I have no idea why this is hysterical, but this is fucking hysterical.  And it totally wouldn’t work as one panel.  It’s gotta be three.  Cute, cute, “fuck you.”  Unless maybe you did it in the second panel.

In other news, I just spent a good portion of the evening installing something insanely stupid in my reasonably glorious home-built PC tower:



Yes, that’s a 5.25″ floppy drive. I also installed the glorious FC5025 controller from Device Side Data which allows you to use an old PC floppy drive to read Atari, Apple, Commodore, and all kinds of other disks, and damned if it don’t work wonderfully.  It even reads hard sector disks.  I finally have a way to archive all the crappy old Atari 800 games I wrote as a kid, going back to early stuff I did with my Dad. Still haven’t yet come across Dad’s masterpiece, “Pacworm” (a “Snake” clone with a plot involving ridding northern NY of mosquitoes) nor my own “K-9 Commando,” “Escape from Gauley Bridge High School,” or “Spitting Olympics.” But I’ll get there.

In other news, I’ve got two shows as Worm Quartet coming up – one in Ithaca, NY on the 27th, and one in Minneapolis in March as part of MarsCon.  The latter has a fundraiser CD for the music track (including a few live tracks from my GoH performance last year) which you can order at MarsConDementia.com

That’s entirely too much commentary for a two-word strip.

See you on Friday – I’m cracking open another dusty box of floppies.

-=ShoEboX=-

Happy New Year, dammit!

Sorry for the delay in the strip – things have been insane for the last couple of weeks, but we’re through the holidays now and hopefully I’ll be back on track.

This one’s dedicated to anyone who’s ever said “God, I can’t believe (x) put out (y) and now I have to buy it even though I already have it in a form I’m perfectly happy with and/or it sucks.”

…And yes, that’s been me.  Repeatedly.  It’s mostly with music in recent years – I’ve purchased “Bat Out Of Hell” at least four times, I re-bought every Ramones album that Rhino re-released, I own two versions of most of Helloween and Annihilator’s respective discographies, and every time I see the 5-CD 2-LP 2-single $139 “Smile Sessions” box set it kills me that I only have the meager 2-disc version, plus a couple of different bootleg arrangements, the versions from the “Good Vibrations” box, and Brian Wilson’s amazing solo release of the album from ‘04 (and the live performance DVD that came out shortly thereafter.)

Anyway, if George Lucas wants fans to be happy, “A New Hope 3-D” will replace Greedo with Jar-Jar, and Han will shoot first and repeatedly.  Just sayin’.

-=ShoEboX=-

Okay then.  Let’s move on.

I’ve never taken a strip down before, but although some people clearly enjoyed it, the negative comments I received were downright frightening, and suggested some possible interpretations of the strip that I honestly hadn’t considered, and with which I have no desire to be associated.   So I made the decision to remove it.

I’m sure this will annoy some people, and I’m sorry.  But PartiallyClips is here to entertain, and I’d clearly failed at that to a very significant degree with the strip I removed.

Anyway, I had this one ready to go.  It’s another dip in the “overly-smart kid” well, as well as a tribute to the old “kids go out of their way to hate healthy stuff” comic strip staple.  Enjoy!

-=ShoEboX=-

Giant condoms last week, the photo industry this week.  We strive for variety here at PartiallyClips.

There’s lots I could say about the inspiration for this strip, but basically it comes down to the fact that I live in Rochester, NY, the land of Kodak, and the subject was bound to come up sooner or later.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: *chuckling* That’s very strange.

-=ShoEboX=-

I went in a few different directions trying to come up with a story for this art, though for whatever reason they were all about buying large condoms.  Ultimately, however, the biggest thing that made this strip several days late was the fact that I couldn’t get the last line right.  It was initially a far more simple “Don’t buy the November issue, I look fat in that one,” but I was worried people wouldn’t realize the woman was being sarcastic, and that it would come off as a “the lady doth protest too much” sort of  thing.  So I showed the early draft to a handful of friends and confirmed that yes, this was how they took my final line – and interestingly enough, given this, only the male members of this elite focus group found the strip amusing – the representatives of the fairer sex were put off by the perceived about-face.  So I changed the final line to this far-more-out-there parting shot, brought the strip to my wife, and:

*suspenseful music*

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: Okay, that’s actually pretty good.

Anyway, I hope those of you who aren’t my wife enjoy this as well.  I’m just glad it’s done so I can move on…I really try not to over-obsess over these, because they’re three panels of talking clip art, for crying out loud, but it happens sometimes.

-=ShoEboX=-

Sorry for the lateness of the update – I plead Thanksgiving preparation and travel.

This one didn’t come out quite as great as I was hoping it would, but I was really amused by the idea of having a Bob Evans (I’m sorry, this is totally a Bob Evans) across the street from a mental institution, and the employees having to calmly and politely deal with the escapees who wander in from time to time.  The “little happy pills” joke is kinda standard, I guess, but hopefully it works.

I’m typing this while my wife is on the other side of the room frantically updating her Etsy shops with her latest pieces for “Cyber Monday” (placed in quotes because I detest the term – it’s probably one of the least meaningful metaphors I’ve ever encountered.  But I digress.)  If you’re interested in buying some unique and high-quality handmade jewelry, her shop is at manicmetals.com.  She’s also got a sister shop, “Odditease,”  for paper crafts her and such.

Hope you guys had an awesome Thanksgiving, if you do that sort of thing!

-=ShoEboX=-