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HEY! Be nice to the members of the Danish Parliament! You can't just... just... ...excuse me. I was trying to come up with a reason as to why you should be nice to them, but for some reason I came up with a complete blank.

I dunno, the way Pandora said "memoirs from my...previous self" and Disco Wizard's "Previous self? But magic last changed...." seemed to strongly imply that it was the life just before Pandora's current one. Compare that to when Pandora was talking to Sarah about the lie, Pandora said "Some earlier version of me" which would admittedly be very vague about which past life decided to pass on the lie to the next, could have been her previous life, could have been 5 lives back. Sarah seemed to has assumed previous life as well, but I don't think Pandora would even know what point the lie started to even try to correct Sarah, I doubt Pandora was in the mood to make any expositions about it either. I feel like saying "my previous self" as opposed to "a previous self" might be a big difference in context.

Page size is an important factor here. A paperback novel sized book is better one column per page. An 8.5x11 or larger handbook or text is usually better either two columns, or with lots of boxes and charts and graphics that break up the monotony. If a column of text gets too wide, then it's more difficult to track back from the end of one line and find where the beginning of the next is, instead of accidentally re-reading or skipping a line. It can be done, but it slows the reader down unnecessarily.

While I would be on board for Edward walking in on them as I don't want Tedd to continue hiding how she feels about Edward's reactions to her genderfluidity. I don't think that would happen after Dan had just gone through the trouble of adding an extra page to show us that Edward and Grace are still sleeping soundly. Keep in mind that Pandora's going to be talking to Adrian on Saturday, she's got all of Friday to deal with other things, she's got to have planned on chatting with several people throughout the day. Also, I did some colouring:

And then pounces upon them because dancing lesser beings are irresistible to cats. Lord Borwnie never plays for long before suddenly falling asleep. Much to the relief of the lesser beings.

Snifff. Sniff. I smell an upgrade. Yeah, got one.

Once Tedd adds the FV5 beam to the wand, she's going to need to test it, to demonstrate how multiple spells in one wand works, right? So I wonder who is getting zapped, herself or Pandora? I think it's likely a little of both. He gets the drive to help people from his father, but due to him being half-immortal, he can't act directly in most situations, so he instead seeks others to train to act in his stead.

Maplestrip made a comment on discord about this being the first time Tedd's been praised for changing sex and it got me wondering if Pandora's trying to build Tedd's confidence to be able to talk to Edward about being genderfluid? The way Pandora's going about teaching Tedd about his abilities seems so much different than how she taught Adrian, Panel 2 of the last page of the Legacy chapter shows Pandora looking like she's being very strict, very serious about training Adrian to be able to defend himself and such. My guess is she's realized that how she taught Adrian might have influenced how Adrian taught Edward and Noriko and how they turned out. I can see her wanting to make sure that didn't get perpetuated through Tedd.

Tedd's smile in panel 8 means the world to me. Pandora is actively encouraging and supporting Tedd. I know Grace tried to during the tournament, but she was limited by "magic in public = bad." Pandora's unconditional support really seems to help Tedd, and I might be too happy because of it?

Fair warning to everyone: the opening shots in World War Tea have been fired.

Today's strip reminds me of a Darwin Awards tale... Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup, and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, covered by several customers who also drew their guns, thereby removing the confused criminal from the gene pool. No one else was hurt. From this it may be inferred that if you have to rob a gun store, you had better be the Terminator.

9:09 p.m. CDT 20170818. I am home, and I seem to be okay. I'm a bit sore, and I will be for 3-5 days until the cortisone kicks in on the proper nerve endings. Thanks for the good wishes. I'm going back to sleep for now.

Pandora's dilemma definitely reminds me of Ashildr, from Doctor Who, a Viking girl who became immortal sort of by accident. Infinite lifespan, finite memory. She started keeping a journal with the most important things in her life, to re-read when she had forgotten who she used to be. It filled a respectably-sized library in her home and spilled out into the halls the second time the Doctor encountered her. There were places pages were stained with tears, places where pages had been torn out because she wanted to forget what those pages held. But she only knew what was in the diary as something she had read about. One wonders whether someone like that could actually learn the important lessons in life, or whether they too would be forgotten along with the details of how they were learned. Apparently she could, though, because the person who the Doctor met at the end of the universe was very different from the girl he saved from dying. They did something visually similar with Methos's diary in Highlander, kept since writing was invented, with parts of the diary on papyrus scrolls and cuneiform tablets. In that series, however, Immortals have excellent memories so I never really got the impression Methos needed the diary. From what Pandora and the Emissary of Magic said, it sounds like an Immortal only passes along what the most recent incarnation chooses to pass along. There isn't an ever-growing library of mental tomes. Or, if there is, the older ones must be much harder to access than the most recent one. Perhaps they're nested, like a hard drive archive with files for a previous archive that contains a previous archive which contains the recovered files from a crash which contains.... Hmm, wasn't there an xkcd on that? ....yup, there sure is!

There are times that I'm glad I don't have a TV. This sounds like one of them.

Unfortunately,I think you're going to have to share now. Also, I did it again:

Doc and Roger work in that town. They need 101 members.

Thank you, thank you, good sir. Your moderatorly support has allowed me to hijack a forum thread to post the details of my screwed-up physical life, and everyone's support (yours definitely included) has given me the strength I've needed to go on when things looked most bleak. There will never be any way I can fully repay either, yet I hope that I can still count on everybody's support in the future when it's needed. In the fullest sense of the phrase, thank you, one and all.

*singing* If you're feline and you know it, groom your paw! If you're feline and you know it, groom your paw! If you're feline and you know it and you really want to show it If you're feline and you know it, groom your paw!

The Green Hornet, complete with Bruce Lee as Kato. "The Green Hornet and the Firebug" was the name of the episode, I think.

This comic made me smile for that reason. It's just so sweet. The way Tedd blushes, that grin. I know exactly what Tedd is feeling there and it's just sooooooo good.

This is the attitude that promotes so much drivel with the justification that 'it is a good story.' Helicopters on the Moon (vacuum? what vacuum?), 'historical' fiction where lack of research and basic comprehension are handwaved with 'but in my world, it doesn't work that way' and sparkly vampires that attempt to replace romance and emotion with stalking, abuse and codependency. I am fully aware of the fact that one can make a good story based on "what if magic worked" or "what if J.F. Kennedy had shot Lee Harvey Oswald first" or the like. But merely because this is possible is not a license to ignore all facts, physical laws and historical events if one considers them inconvenient. The more you do so, the less convincing your work becomes until in the end it is the sheerest idiocy. Mind you, at times idiocy will sell quite well. That does not make it any less idiotic.

That's what makes it so weirdly endearing. I love the fact that her character combines genuine love and affection with a twisted view of the world and a need for excitement. It's a mess but it's one that I have to love.

I am not sure if my own reflexive reaction is any better. It leans towards gallows humour. At one time I fainted while having an injection of a drug needed so I could donate stem cells to my brother. I woke up on the floor with a very worried nurse trying to take my pulse while looking at her watch. I did the to my mind only logical thing, which was to quote Groucho Marx. "Either my watch has stopped or the patient is dead."

Oh dear. This reminds me of an old story. I was in the kitchen getting a bottle of Coke from the fridge. My old Burmese Catso (on sight nicknamed 'Fatso' by my wife, and instantly changed into 'Catso' by me, and stuck with that for the rest of his life) was doing the 'rub against Daddy's legs for attention' thing. But somehow when I opened the bottle it let out a loud hiss and poor Catso instantly fled, looking horrified. "Oh no! Daddy is mad at me! What did I do?" I had to find the poor thing and coax him out from under my bed to reassure him. He was a very sweet-tempered and gentle cat. Just not terribly bright.

It is very good to have you back. Keep us posted and I hope you feel better soon!

Wait. Not "suggest". "Imply" is the word I meant.

For the first time since we brought him inside, Loudmouth ate kitty snacks! He's always turned them down before. We've offered him the Cat-Man-Doo chicken snacks and whatever snacks are freeze dried raw (Baker wouldn't even touch the latter, and he's started barfing the former). Today, I tried the Orijen snacks. Baker loved them. Loudmouth wouldn't take them from my hand, but he did eat them off of the cushion in front of him. Result! The Orijen snacks had boneless chicken, boneless turkey, chicken liver, turkey liver, and boneless flounder (?) as their ingredients. Weird mix, but I'm not gonna argue as long as the cats eat it.

3:56 p.m. CDT 20170817. Whew. Just talked to Baylor Scott & White's Pain Management department and cleared up one rather big point. I'm not going to be unconscious for two hours tomorrow. I'm only going to be out for 20 minutes. I will be there for two hours, though, mostly in post-op as they make sure I'm in good shape after the procedure and don't have any spinal damage. It's still a scary thought, as tomorrow's 12:20 p.m. CDT appointment time approaches.

The simple fact that Immortals can lie to their future incarnations through these memoirs would imply they have some degree of control over what they pass on. If everything was automatically passed on in a proper death, then the lie would have been nigh-impossible to pull off(all it would have taken to break the lie is for an Immortal to check the memories after their elf child had a child) If an Immortal can choose what to pass on when they die, then they can leave out or generalize the more personal parts of their history if they so wish. Similar to how a human writing their memoirs can omit or alter details to be passed on to future generations. Also, we've seen that an Immortal has to actively reference the memoirs to get the information from them. They don't automatically know the contents. Though likely some information is automatically known after a proper death, otherwise the new Immortal wouldn't know how to reference the memoirs, as we saw when H&D didn't know how to reference their ancestral memories after an improper death.

Well, she accepted it, as long as it came from a nurse. We're switching back to 4x a day dosing, though. 4am/10am/4pm/10pm, if it works, 15mg per dose. That'll start tomorrow, because I've already taken my 20mg dose for this morning. Quite frankly, the nurse was perplexed at why I wasn't taking the full dose. I didn't get a chance to explain Mrs. Prof's paranoia over the whole thing. Besides, I'm only going to be at that level for two days prior to the procedure. I'm more scared over the procedure than I am over the medication, to be honest. She doesn't seem to be worried at all over the procedure.

Found more bed pee, this time on Loudmouth's mattress. Don't know when it happened, but Mrs. Prof thinks he did it right after she prevented him from making a dash outside. He was pretty pissed at her (hands /me the list). I got him to calm down and slow blink at me. BTW, on the subject of nuzzling, Mrs. Prof says she's never got Loudmouth to nuzzle her. Then again, Baker is really her cat, while Loudmouth is turning out to be mine, affection-wise.

This weekend I learned how to spin yarn on a spinning wheel. My first attempt was, of course, inconsistent and sloppy. I am told that the result is "art yarn" and that people actually pay big bucks for handspun art yarn. The thick and thin bits, the not very well twisted sections, all of that is seen as a plus in some circles. I also got to make a frit glass piece which is a dark blue background with glow-under-UV flecks and slightly larger stars, to make it look like a night sky. There's also a paw print in there, but it's black on a dark background, so you can only see it if you know it's there. Made an Arduino robot, but it didn't work and they ran out of time trying to diagnose why, so I'll have to bring it to the next con that the Blinkies guys come to. www.2Dkits.com is the main source for their various soldering projects, and the guys who make the kits were there. The robot, which is supposed to be controllable via bluetooth by a smart phone, was a new product, and they wee revising the instructions as we built them and they discovered what was missing and what worked better done a different way. Also did chain maille jewelry, which was fun but is likely too fiddling for me to take up as a regular hobby. Then again, it's fairly simple and repetitive, migt be good to do while watching TV. I got some extra rings and figure if I use them up, then it mightbe worth ordering some rings myself. Double-pointed needles for knitting. You can knit tubes, like socks, arm-warmers, and daleks, but they're rather fiddly and get in each others' way. Haven't done enough DPN or enough circular needle knitting to know which I like better yet. I signed up to build a bat house, but was so busy with other stuff I never got around to it, so they sent the kit home with me.

Have I mentioned how much I love Pandora? Yes? I have? A bunch of times? Well, I must say it again because she is wonderful.

Mrs. Prof led me back to get Baker for his Elavil half-pill tonight. We couldn't find him at first, until we went into our son's old darkened bedroom. She gasped, with no explanation. Failing one, I stuck my head around the corner and saw Baker and Loudmouth sitting on the bed, side-by-side, like friends. Seriously, it was almost too good a scene to disrupt. Unfortunately, there was bed pee tonight, so we're back to square one on that.

Thanks, but I don't need it right now. If you want to give to the Red Cross. I'm good.

I think you're right, especially given the fact that they are sterile and the way they keep decapitating one another on a semi-regular basis.

That wand made a lot more noise, I wonder if it was enough to carry upstairs? It still feels like Tedd's dad waking up and coming in should happen at some point. Maybe not this visit, maybe another night, but before the night of Hell Rains Down seems more appropriate. Only question is whether he'd come in wand blazing at the very idea of an immortal with his son, or whether he'll pause on the stairs long enough to overhear the conversation, perhaps just as Tedd is explaining that he doesn't want to tell his dad and why. I can definitely picture Edward hearing that, and quietly backing up the steps again, needing time to digest this new information. Hopefully not leading up to a tearful deathbed forgiveness for one of them.... :-P

You do sound more together! I hope it continues and that you can be an active participant in your appointment. I think you've put up with the Lyrica's effects better than I would have, but then again I don't have a Mrs. Prof to help me if I were to fall apart. Here's hoping the pain management guru knows what to try next to get a more reasonable yet effective response! *hugs*

Relaxed cats always look so smug.

Loudmouth is such a beautiful cat. Please tell Mrs. Prof that both I and my wife think so.

We did have one bit of progress today: we found a ball of pee in one of the litter boxes outside of his main one, and no bed pee so far. Result!

So Ellen was shocked that a significant number of respondents were left in a more confused state by the explanations? And then she merrily FV5's herself and runs off panel? ... I've seen this public speaking strategy before. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull." - W. C. Fields

/* proudly claims this half of a cookie in the name of France */

As for the "Teaching Style"? Tedd knows a lot of the basics of magic, although much of that was learned in a non traditional manner. And the magic Tedd does have doesn't work like the magic of most other spellcasters. So a significant portion of the normal basic training would be redundant or useless anyway. Also, much of what Pandora has done so far isn't really teaching as much as telling Tedd, "This is something you can do. Now do it." Is this the point when Edward walks in unexpectedly?

The polite vampire is such a rarity these days. *sigh*

One thing I can think of that can support Edward not thinking anything odd about the glove and watches would be the magic analysis wand, it looks like an electronic device, even has a pop-out piece that covers where batteries go. Who ever made it was either a Seer like Tedd, or maybe there actually is a way to make magitech devices and Edward assumed that Tedd was able to figure out how to make them as well, maybe Edward just figured that Tedd reverse engineered the Uryuom tech. Something just occurred to me, and this is at the moment a wild theory, but what if those other glow incidents are related to Tedd's second purpose? Two of those moments were in relation to very strong positive emotions. Voltaire's been trying to traumatize or otherwise entice very strong negative emotions from Tedd to worsen the outcome of his hidden purpose. I should be safe to assume that the strong positive emotions would make for a better outcome. The best analogy that I can think of would be the Light and Dark sides of the Force and Voltaire's trying to get Tedd to go Dark Side. I'm not entirely sure it would make a difference whether Tedd based the transformation watches on Elliot's morphing or anyone else morphing I think the spell would be the same or at least very similar no matter who had it. The results of the spell wouldn't be so much dependent on the spell itself, but the caster being able to focus on the form well enough to get it right. Elliot has a hard time getting his forms right because he's trying to focus on a lot of detail, plus it's easy to distract him and sabotage the results. Susan did a better job of keeping her clothes fitting well enough probably because she's just better at focusing on what she wants, while Nanase....obviously didn't. I think you give Tedd too much credit, yeah Tedd should have questioned it more, but remember, he didn't like the idea that his parents might have been wrong about him, so he tried to think up other ways to justify how he could do certain things. I don't know for certain if the glasses were magically made or just high-tech, everyone thought they let him analyze magic but even he admitted that they only made him look scientific(even Dan states in the commentary that the glasses were an intentional misdirection), so... I think at this point... That's what I mean by fine tuning, the watches that have specific forms and such would have a lot of details that Tedd would code in by computer and transfer to the glove, and then once those are imbued into the watch would allow the user to just think "Grace 1", rather than having to actually picture what Grace looks like. The dynamic morphs probably only have a few parameters to make sure certain thing do or don't happen, but for the most part rely on the person to properly picture how they want to look. Also, and this is just a theory, but what if the size limitation that Tedd has isn't necessarily because he's only seen someone cast a spell that shrank or grew someone a specific size. But because he's basing those kinds of watches on the limits of spells that only have size adjustments as a portion of the spell effect? For instance, Tedd watches Elliot transform, he loses 4 inches in height due to the form itself but it's not an actual shrink spell being applied, Tedd sees that a resize happens but it's not quite the same as it would be if Rhoda had used her resize spell. So Tedd has to try to separate the resize from the rest of the spell and fill in any blanks that results. It works but it's limited. If Tedd were to see Rhoda's resize spell in action, he should see exactly what those missing bits should be. He certainly does, because Lespuko blood was planned part of the project and Lord Tedd likely also has TF gun. Yeah I don't doubt that General Shade Tail has the same control of his morphing ability as Grace does, and could likely pass as a stranger on the street easily enough, but I don't expect to see him impersonating Edward or Greg or anyone else we know because that would require clone forms of people that may not exist in Lord Tedd universe or not even look the same (Lord Tedd seems to be taller than our Tedd for instance), in order for it to work, they'd have to somehow scan someone from the main universe and that's even assuming Lord Tedd has access to a TFG and scanner. Also, Dan's already stated that if he has anyone impersonating anyone, there'd be clues, we'd have a chance to figure it out ahead of time if someone wasn't who they claimed to be. Then again, considering all the potential stories one could make involving someone impersonating another, we'll probably now expect any impersonator to be General Shade Tail.

As opposed to Emperor Norton I....

It's better than bad, it's GOOD!

I made kettle corn "from scratch". Assuming I have enough sugar in the house at the time of making, that will be my pop corn of choice for a while.

I'm sorry, the mail truck from Arizona is running late. Tedd will just have to use a Houston feather instead.