The Old Hack

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2335

You know, hkmaly, if you had dated this thread properly, I wouldn't have bothered starting a new one. *sigh*

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2336

So, it's basically Le Mans for sissies.

All the other women around, which would presumably be Lilith. Talk about a shallow gene pool. To be somewhat less Biblical, there is a hypothesis that states that at one point only circa two to three thousand homo sapiens survived on Earth, in the same general region somewhere in Africa. From there the population started to grow again and spread across Earth. If that hypothesis is correct, we're all descended from these guys. Not a huge gene pool either, really.

Hm. If I were you, I'd check to see if your dishwasher is stealing bandwidth from you. It wasn't that long ago I read something about online rituals to call Elder Gods being a thing.

You know, I have this suspicion that United's policy of offering a brutal disfiguring beating and violent ejection from the flight in return for giving up your seat may not be the best way to go for Best Customer Service of the Year Award amongst airlines.

I hope they get room for you soon. This sounds terrible. Please keep us posted.

Errr, affinities, not abilities. I know it is a rather fine distinction but I am a little extra concerned when what we know is so nebulous already. For example, Susan and Diane were both born with an affinity that also placed them in the category of potential abomination killers, but they weren't actually born with any magical abilities -- just the potential for them.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2334

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2332

You better keep a sharp eye on that dishwasher. Maybe it is trying for elder gods that can call thunderstorms.

A somewhat related disaster happened in Denmark once. A whiskey distillery plant located some fifty miles northwest of Copenhagen suffered from rather aging electronics and security measures. Some of the rubber insulation covering some high-power electric wires had gotten so old that it had hardened and eventually cracked open, possibly due to temperature changes. Sparks ensued, igniting some of the thick layer of dust covering the wires, releasing a vile cloud of stinking smoke. This smoke impacted on the very sensitive smoke detectors of the place (fire not being viewed as a desirable thing in a whiskey distillery) and the fire safety systems went off. Unfortunately their first priority was to dump an entire month's production of whiskey -- one hundred and twenty five thousand gallons -- into a nearby stream to get it out of the way of a possible fire. As you can imagine, this was 1) not very good for the stream and 2) impossible for the distillery to hide. It became quite a local media sensation and many bad jokes on the lines of "at least the fish died happy" ensued. However, the mayor of the local municipality was not amused. He gave the distillery three months to modernise its electronics and fire safety system or else. With this ultimatum on the desk of the distillery's director, management knew that it had two vital tasks to complete that took precedence over everything else. One, to fix blame. Two, to procrastinate as much as possible while fighting over whose department had to cover the expenses of updating the electronics of the distillery. The world being what it is, they still had not completed either task three months later. And then the mayor showed up in person so they could show him around and explain what had been done. During his visit they managed to switch on some rarely used light fixtures. These had old cracked rubber insulation on their wiring. Sparks ensued, the smoke detectors screamed bloody murder and the fire safety system dumped another 125.000 gallons of raw whiskey into the hapless stream. Once again the local media had a field day, families started to picnic near the distillery in the hopes of recovering some of the booze the next time it decided to take a dump, and by now even the most outraged environmentalists in the area could only view the whole affair with gallows humour. "When we were considering what to do in order to restore the ecological balance of the stream," one said, "dumping another huge load of whiskey into it wasn't actually under consideration." Needless to say, the mayor was still not amused. The very next day the distillery received a shutdown order and was informed that it would not be allowed to reopen until an entire inspection team had assured itself that the entire facility had been thoroughly modernised.

Me too.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=601 Now you see it...

Or just bored developer. I was once supposed to make a very large number of merchant NPCs for a revision of the game server I was playing on at the time. The first fifty or sixty percent of them were fairly serious. But the more of them I made and the closer the deadline got, the weirder the NPCs got, too. Here is a sample of one from when I was very nearly done. It was an ancient red dragon merchant who had realised it could make a huge profit selling the magic items of heroes that had tried to kill it. Its intro line was, "Tremble, O Mortal, for I am Maxidoomius, greatest and most terrible of all dragons. Would you like to see my wares?" Sadly, our head dev nixed poor Maxidoomius. I have absolutely no idea why. Except maybe that he was prejudiced against red dragons.

Old School. Whole Cloth.

Apologies. A wee bit tired here.

I know. I updated it with no apology whatsoever.

The modern version suggests that he is still very much not there. Yesterday upon a stair I met a man who wasn't there he wasn't there again today I think he's from the NSA...

I am sure it was much better back home for you. After all, you were a God-King. o.O

The problem with that is that once it is done, it is little consolation to those who have been pre-emptively and unhumorously struck if the legislature finds that the officer ordering the raid exceeded his authority.

Ah, now that is a particularly fascinating secret. I will have to refer you to a gentleman named Mearns to explain it. Yesterday upon a stair I met a man who wasn't there he wasn't there again today I wish, I wish he'd stay away...

To be fair, Dan isn't as ham-handed about this kind of trope as certain writers I could mention are. When the local police officer is named 'Mr. Goon' and spends more time on chasing the teen protagonists than the actual criminals in the story, it tends to indicate a slanted point of view.

It sounds a little nicer than "under penalty of being raided by a heavily armed SWAT team that is entirely lacking in anything resembling a sense of humour." o.o