I’m not a sports fan, but I was into baseball as a kid.  Whenever the manager goes to scream at the umpire, it’s always an animated argument, but you can’t hear a word they’re saying.  They could totally get away with doing something like this.  Or speaking in gibberish.  Or exchanging muffin recipes.  The sky’s the limit.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: Meh.  Baseball humor.

-=ShoEboX=-

…Yeah, true story.  I don’t know what the “science materials” in question were, and I do not know the context of their appropriation, but if I were to hazard a guess, I suspect my son was attempting to entertain his classmates, and in my mind, the event includes the phrase “No one can stop me now!  My pants are full of SCIENCE!”

As a friend of mine on Facebook pointed out, “It’s hard to know what to say to ‘There’s a problem. Your son is made of you.’”

That said, my wife and I really did manage to talk to our son about this with a straight face, as of course we recognize that this sort of behavior can be detrimental to any attempt to impart knowledge to a room full of second-graders.  My mother teaches at a public middle school, and I’ve heard horror stories my whole life – one of which even referenced a “flatulence conference.”   My father teaches engineering at the university level, and has fewer such stories (though his best one is probably when he asked “Now, can anybody tell me the difference between the 8086 processor and the 8088 processor?” and a student yelled out “two!”)

-=ShoEboX=-

This is a rush-job, unfortunately, as I’ve had a rather annoying cold all week that allows me to be reasonably functional during the day but knocks me flat on my ass right around 9pm – as in, right around the time that my kid’s asleep and I finally have time to do stuff.

The joke’s pretty much completely stolen from an IM conversation with PartiallyClips webmistress Sara Trice from a job search a year or so ago (which was ultimately successful.)   I’ve been a software engineer now for fifteen years and I’ve been performing at clubs, bars, and conventions as Worm Quartet for eleven years.  In this time, I’ve gotten many rounds of applause for singing about Pac-Man, ex-girlfriends, R2D2, and my vasectomy.  I’ve even signed a boob or two (male and female, I must say in the interest of full disclosure) with my wife’s consent.   But never have I gotten so much as a golf clap for implementing a hardware interface or coming up with a clever workaround for an SDK restriction.  This seems wrong somehow, though the latter has certainly paid significantly better.

Anyway, this strip deviates a bit from its origin story since Sara is, as her name suggests, female, and I don’t think she’d trust her husband (the great Luke Ski) with a knife.  Or a potato.  Please do not misconstrue this role reversal as sexism – there is little I find hotter than a woman who can design a recursive algorithm (my wife can’t, but she can weld, and I find this to be more-than-adequate compensation.)   It’s more of a compromise in making this story work with this art, which admittedly isn’t perfect for the conversation.

Mucinex and zinc for all,
-=ShoEboX=-

I worry this direction’s too obvious, but it’s the first place my brain went when I came across this art and I couldn’t seem to go in another direction with it.

And just so I’m not accused of anti-Catism, I actually own three cats myself (named ~, ¨, and ¶,) and have never harmed them, although my wife and I did get some sadistic joy one time out of giving them a Pez dispenser full of cat treats and watching them try to extract said treats.  Analysis:  Cats cannot operate Pez dispensers.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: My god…that woman’s face…that’s really creepy…

-=ShoEboX=-

I believe this is the third strip in my “ignorant astronauts in peril” series (I’m probably most proud of this one, and this one really only sort of matches the criteria but I’ll count it.)  I have every intention of doing more of these – there’s a ton of spacemen in my clip art collection.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: That’s…creepy.

-=ShoEboX=-

Holy crap, I actually got a strip up on time (-ish) despite successfully posting two strips last week?  Where’s the Shoebox we all know and love?

This one stemmed from the fact that the bird on the roof of said birdhouse very much seems to be throwing a “whatchadoin’?” down at the other bird.

The main problem with the strip is that I’m not sure that thing is really a bird feeder, and suspect in fact that it’s not.  But it’s a structure with birds on it, and their placement is great for this conversation.

MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: A real page-turner, every nuanced grain and epiphany more juicy than the last.  Well, not so much a page-turner, I guess…more of a…box-jumper?

-=ShoEboX=-

It’s always  been a dream of mine to create a strip referencing both mucus art and 4th-century Japanese Noh plays.  The “Wonder Years” element of the whole thing was just a bonus.

It’s well documented that boys do stupid, stupid things when we begin becoming interested in girls.  I don’t know if it’s due to a resentment that our priorities are changing, or if it’s a more general bewilderment resulting in lashing out because we don’t know what our wieners are for yet.  I don’t remember being like this, but the girl I had a crush on in the sixth grade remembers me as being insanely cruel to her.  Granted I did once give her a mix tape for her birthday featuring several Tears For Fears selections (and probably a few by Wham! now that I think about it,) and I certainly wouldn’t wish this sort of thing on anybody today.  But the first track on it was Weird Al’s “Happy Birthday,” and come on, what sixth-grade girl wouldn’t love that?

The play the teacher is reading is “The Damask Drum,” a story of unrequited love and its supernatural consequences.  The story has stuck with me since I first heard it in high school, as has the modernized retake on it from Yukio Mushima’s “Five Modern Noh Plays” (though I did have to look up both stories just now.)

-=ShoEboX=-

Yeah, not everybody’s gonna get this.  I’m hoping it works for those that do.

I’m mostly a classic gaming kinda geek, but I just finally got around to playing Portal last week (after both Rob and our wondrous webmistress Sara simultaneously encouraged me to check it out) and beat it over the weekend.  Enjoyed the living crap out of it.  Great characters, great story, great feel, amazingly-quotable dialogue, and unique and challenging puzzles with only a few frustrating moments.

As far as my views on the video game ratings system, I addressed this in a song several years ago.

Got another strip coming on Friday – for real this time, it’s all laid out and in the queue!  See you then!  For now I’m off to spend some quality time with my wife.  Or, if she’s otherwise occupied, with Portal 2.

-=ShoEboX=-

The thing I expect I may have to explain here is that Cigna is an American health insurance provider. I guess I could’ve thrown Blue Cross or Humana in here instead, but Cigna just…seemed to fit.

This one’s inspired by a recent Andy-Kaufman-inspired visit to the Wikipedia entry on anti-humor, which of course led to visits of the pages for dadaism, shaggy dog stories, and meta-jokes.

On a tangential note, this search exposed me for the first time to the glorious notion of the meta-limerick, exemplified thusly:

There once was an X from place B,
Who satisfied predicate P,
The X did thing A,
In a specified way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

The sheer beauty of this broke me for quite some time.

Anyway, I’m sorry I’m so late with this one.  I plead day job plus life plus sudden unexpected family trip to Washington, DC, where I got to hang out a bit with the dude responsible for starting this here strip, Mr. Erfworld himself, and we made dumb faces at my phone to prove it.

There should be a second strip up this week unless something truly horrible happens, and I’ve never said this before in my life.

-=ShoEboX=-

This one’s timely only because it’s beautiful outside and my grill is broken.   I must fix this situation as soon as humanly possible so that I may begin once again filling the suburban air with the smell of smoke and meat.

A couple of years ago, we had a bird that kept building a nest in our grill.  I’d clean it out and use it, and a few hours later it would be full of straw and sticks again.  One would think that tearing open the bird’s home, ripping its contents out, and burning other birds in lemony-garlicy marinated effigy in what was once its living room would have been a sufficient warning that its presence was not wanted.  But no, it continued building the nest until we finally bought a grill cover so that it had no way in.

This story really has nothing to do with this strip except that both include a grill.

-=ShoEboX=-