Fatal Error

3 Generations

2011-10-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

Albert Wilcox Savage III, 1947

John Colin Savage, 1981

Grant Dean Savage, 2011

Schrodinger's Bagel

2009-10-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

I burned two bagels today. We need a new toaster.
For the non-physicists among you, the "Perfect" equation is the time-dependent Schrodinger wave equation. In this context, it means, "Somewhere between 1 and 2 is the perfect setting, but it changes each time, and you can't predict what it's going to be, so the only thing you can do is to pick a setting and see what happens."
Of course, thanks to Murphy's Law, it's always the wrong setting.

Thus IPOs doth make fools of us all

2009-09-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

The astute among you will realize that the (fictional) IPO values the company at $3 billion, almost twice what I just said was waaaaay too much for a company that hasn't made a dime since the day it was created. But you just KNOW that stock would go through the roof if they ever went public. You'd think we would have learned from the dot-com bubble that a company that hasn't made money, isn't making money, and probably never will make money is not, in fact, a sound investment. But... but... it's TWITTER!!! TWITTER FOR EVERYONE!!! COME AND GET YOUR TWITTER!!! STEP RIGHT UP, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You know, the guy back there laughing maniacally about how much he loves being a stockbroker.

The hazards of family history....

2009-09-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you find things you don't want to know. E.g.:

I, John Savage, was born in 1981.
Son of Albert Savage III (1947)
Son of Albert Savage Jr (1923)
Son of Albert Savage Sr (1889)
Son of George Savage (1851)
Son of Edwin Savage (1813)
Son of Seth Savage Jr. (1786)
Son of Seth Savage Sr. (1755)
Son of Elisha Savage (1728)
Son of William Savage Jr (1699)
Son of William Savage Sr (1668)
Son of John Savage, born 1630 in Cheshire, England, died 1684 Middlesex, Connecticut (my namesake)
Son of Thomas Savage (1611)
Son of Thomas Savage (1586)
Son of John Savage (1550)
Son of John Savage (1505)
Son of John Savage (sir knight!) (1493)
Son of John Savage (1478)
Son of John Savage (1450)
Son of John Savage born 1422, Clifton, Cheshire, England, Married Catherine Stanley

Wikipedia sez:

John Savage and Catherine Stanley had a daughter, Dulcia.
Dulcia Savage married Sir Henry Bold
Maud Bold married Thomas Gerard
Jennet Gerard married Richard Eltonhead
William Eltonhead married Anne Bowers
Richard Eltonhead married Anne Sutton
Martha Eltonhead (Died: abt. 1652) married Edwin Conway (immigrated to Virginia)
Eltonhead Conway married Henry Thacker
Martha Thacker married Thomas Hickman
Edwin Hickman married Eleanor Elliott
James Hickman (1723-1816) married Hannah Lewis
Susannah Hickman married James Browning
Annie Browning married Robert Overall
George Washington Overall (1820-1871) married Louisiana Duvall
Susan C Overall 1849 married Christopher Columbus Clark
Gabriella Clark 1877 married Henry Ellington Armour
Ruth Lucille Armour 1900-1926 married Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham
Stanley Armour Dunham 1918-1992 married Madelyn Lee Payne
Ann Dunham 1942-1995 married Barack Hussein Obama
Barack Obama 1961-

Oh.
My.
HECK.

Cartoon violence - perspectives

2009-07-30T12:50:00.001-07:00

I was watching cartoons with Maddy the other day, and all I could think about was the writers and animators sitting around a table, discussing plot points, debating dialog, etc. Where has the magic gone? Oh, that's right, I grew up.

Cool health blog

2009-07-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

Check out this health blog I found. It's got all kinds of up-to-the-minute info about natural health remedies. You'll find something useful almost every day. It looks pretty balanced, too - it's not just a "all natural food is good" kind of thing, it actually examines the claims and cites studies and presents evidence for or against a particular product. The articles are well-written and interesting, too. It has info about everyday foods, like chocolate and coffee; it's not just obscure health-nut stuff. I'm adding it to my list of blogs I follow, in case it turns out that popcorn cures (or causes) cancer.

New blog!

2009-07-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that being a web-comicist is hard, even when all you do is snap pictures of strangers and steal images from Google Image. So I've started a new humor blog, called "Google Suggest Makes Me Lose My Faith In Humanity." The link is here. I'll still update Fatal Error, though; fear not. But GSMMLMFIH is a LOT easier for me to do, so I'll update that a few times a week. Enjoy!

Also, she's blonde...

2009-07-22T06:07:00.000-07:00

I saw this girl sitting at my bus stop yesterday. I had to be very sneaky while taking pictures with my camera phone, just casually holding it and surreptitiously snapping pics. It took a few tries before I got a good (enough) one.
Seriously though, why DOES she have three pens stuck in her hair? What's wrong with her pockets?

Twitter status: all good

2009-06-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Read this and this. Huzzah for twittah!!

E.g., the official state media reports that there's no protest happening here; Twitter says:

Hiding Fail

2009-05-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

It might be kinda hard to tell, but those are Maddy's little pig-tails sticking out from under the blanket. The title is from yet another Internet meme, adding "Fail" to pictures of people who... well, failed at something.

eCONomy

2009-04-15T09:14:00.001-07:00

Think about it... why does WalMart give you perfectly good stuff in exchange for shuffling some bits around in a computer somewhere? Because we all agree to pretend together. That's it. That's the entire economy. Bits in a computer, pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, shiny yellow rocks... as soon as we moved beyond bartering, it's just layer upon layer of pretending and illusion and delusion. There's really no 'there' there. Not even a little. The economy is the biggest con game ever, but it's so big that everyone cons everyone else equally (mostly). Think about that the next time you buy something: "Ha! That poor fool took a piece of paper in exchange for this delicious doughnut! I sure tricked him!" Congratulations, you're a con artist. Sawyer would be proud.

VAMPIRE BABY!!!!

2009-01-26T14:03:00.001-08:00

Wow, over 2 months since I posted a comic... and this is what I come up with? Sheesh.

Discovery

2008-11-17T09:08:00.001-08:00

A better slogan might be, "We fired our copy editors and pass the savings on to YOU!"
Or maybe, "Let's discovery grammar together!"

Confirmed

2008-11-05T05:22:00.001-08:00

Here's a link to the Snopes article about this myth.

Quite so.

2008-10-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

My most obscure comic yet!

2008-10-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

What's that? You're not into astrophysics or particle physics? Well, allow me to enlighten you.
Currently, in France and Switzerland, there's a giant machine called the LHC, run by an organization called CERN. Some people are afraid that, when this machine is switched on, it will cause the end of life on Earth. The aliens in the first 2 panels have created a similar machine (that's the CERN logo in the upper right), and when they turned it on, it created a gamma ray burst. The alien in panel 2 is pushing a button with his tentacle-fingers, not trying to open a can of tuna with a wrinkled bow tie.
A gamma ray burst is an explosion that makes a supernova look like one of those popper-snapper firecrackers that you can set off in your hand. No-one is sure what causes them, but they're thought to be caused by things like collisions between black holes. (Technically collisions between neutron stars, which are sort of almost-black-hole things.)
So, yeah... the joke is that gamma ray bursts are actually caused by civilizations reaching this particular phase of development, then nuking themselves to smithereens by accidentally building a doomsday machine.

Alright, a real comic already

2008-10-18T01:50:00.001-07:00

So it's 3 am and I can't sleep without my little sweetable, so I made a comic. My hand in the 3rd panel is supposed to be counting items on my fingers as I list them, not holding an artichoke. Or paperclips. Or something.

More Memetic Mortgage-Mocking

2008-10-17T15:20:00.001-07:00

Sorry, this crash thing is comedy gold. And I love to spread memes. It makes me feel hip. Anyways, this meme refers to an episode of South Park where these little gnomes steal underwear. Their business model is:

"One of the running memes on the Internet comes from the gnomes' business plan in this episode, where people will say something to the effect of "1. (action) 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!"" (quote from Wikipedia.) With the effect being to mock the action in step 1. I thought about adding another one, for the year 2000, where step 1 was "dot-com", but I thought 3 panels was enough.
Read this article if you want to know what happened with tulips in 1637.

LOLCATS explain it all

2008-10-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

LOLCats is an internet phenomenon where people put silly / cute captions on pictures of cute / silly cats. A couple of these are famous ones: the "I can has bailout" cat was originally "I can has cheezburger" and is the one everyone thinks of when they think of LOLCats. The "I made you a cookie... but I eated it" is a close second. The "Invisible Housing Bubble" was originally "Invisible Sandwich", and is part of an entire sub-genre of "Invisible [something]" LOLCats pictures. The last cat is saying "$700 billion, please. Ok, thanks, bye" for those of you who don't speak LOLCat. The final picture is Rep. Ron Paul, a vocal opponent of the bailout plan. It's a reference to yet another internet meme, "The cake is a lie!", which means something like, "Your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator." The 'K THX BAI' and 'the -> teh' are also Internet-hip. And, for completeness, the title is a reference to the Nickelodeon TV show "Clarissa Explains It All", a TV show that was popular when I was about 12, coincidentally the age of kids who think these memes are cool now.

Re-watch-ability

2008-09-27T20:29:00.001-07:00

I had a tough choice to make in the first panel - accuracy, or recognizability. Over at TV Tropes (one of my favorite sites), they call this a Beam Me Up, Scotty - a phrase that everyone remembers but was never actually said word-for-word. The actual quote is, "No, I am your father." But that doesn't scream "Star Wars" the way "Luke, I am your father" does. Similarly, I'm not sure if the 2nd panel quote is accurate, but it's close enough.
And again, props to Jenn for helping with the last panel. She pointed out that it's funnier if you *have* to watch it over and over, rather than the first two, which you *want* to re-watch.

The Gluey Kablooey

2008-09-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

I drew this while waiting for the glue to dry on my earphones. Jenn came up with the idea for the punchline - I was going to say something like "Yeah, I know..." but then Jenn pointed out I wouldn't hear too well with earbuds glued in my ears. Thanks punkin!

Crime & Punishment

2008-09-19T08:10:00.001-07:00

So I realized that I was too worried about things like 'art' and 'ratings'... so I got rid of both. Now it's back to stick figures (but with facial expressions) and no "Vote For Me!" nonsense.
And yes, I really do call Maddy a 'scrapscallion' sometimes. She's a tiny rapscallion, you see...

The Lodge Family's Shocking Secret!

2008-09-13T19:21:00.002-07:00

Take a look at Veronica's two moms:

Mr. Lodge is a polygamist!! Maybe Archie should join his cult so he can finally settle the Love Triangle once and for all... (of course, neither Betty nor Veronica would stand for it.)

Reboot

2008-09-13T19:21:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I didn't like the last blog-comic-thing I had. So I'm starting over. Yo.