oddnoc

CRAAAACK heads

With a mighty CRAAAACK!, the Universe lets the assembled witnesses know exactly what Its objections are to this union—hey! Wait a minute!

All the guests are gone, delivering the inexplicable continuity failure I promised you. The director forgot to have the congregation congregate for the big lightning scene. Because it doesn’t make a lick of sense for the two principals and the officiant to hang out in the rain alone. No human beings would do that. I guess the Batominc Quarter-Inch Reality Generator Mark 4 is on the fritz again, because it really shanked the plot on this daily basis.

The Blonde Rachel Character Unit fails to see “any reason to leave now.” Yeah, well, I’ve got about a dozen, not counting the inclement weather, and—dollars to doughnuts, cancer to Alzheimer’s—they’re huddling at Montoni’s, wondering where the hell these clownbots are.

You’ll see.

Bumbershoots in testudo

Let’s continue the litany, shall we?

with ten guests, or only seven;
with illness chronic or acute;
with thick crust or with thin;
with corners poppèd or unpopp’d;
if you will or if you won’t;
if you do or if you don’t;
da, da, da
ich lieb’ dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht,
aha
ich lieb’ dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht,
da, da, da

Looks like some of the guests have already bailed on this event, and I don’t find that ironic. Not at all.

Dog Is My Copilot, Or, Suddenly Blonde

Today’s strip begins with intimations of canine brontophobia. I doubt we’ll hear of it again.

I do predict that this plot line will involve these:

A thunderstorm
A second inexplicable break in continuity (not today’s)
A change of venue
A non-sequitur from a major character
Smirking galore

I did not expect these:

The best man is a dog! The best man is a dog!
The only way this could have been better for snarking is if Buddy had been transformed into an anthropomorphic Plugger dog.
Today’s inexplicable break in continuity: Rachel is suddenly blonde.
Either that, or Wally is inadvertently marrying the wrong bride, because her profile does not match before-time Rachel (below).

For Make Glorious Post of 10 June 2014

Because today’s strip wasn’t available at editing time, I’ll go all meta and describe my SOSF workflow. If you don’t care about such geekery, feel free to skip to the comments and snark away! Cheers!

I don’t like editing posts directly in a web browser, because I don’t like rich web editors or plain text fields for writing, and I really don’t like losing a bunch of work due to a silly web error or browser crash. Also, I like working in Markdown.

I made a little template (just a simple markdown file with all the relevant bits of a SOSF post), so when I start a stint as guest-snarker, I copy that into a folder and modify it for the first strip in my series. On each subsequent day, I duplicate the previous day’s file to make a starting point for the new post.

I put the title and tags up in the markdown metadata headers so that I don’t forget them. Because they’re in the metadata, when I export to HTML, they don’t mess up the actual body of the post. Looks like this:

Title: No One Mourns the Comics
Tags: Holly, Chester the Chiseler, Comics

Because
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.nj.com/comics-kingdom/?…

I then separately paste the title, tags, and body into the corresponding fields in WordPress.

I’m on a Mac, and use Byword to edit my markdown and Marked to preview and export it to HTML. Because Byword is also on iOS, I often start a post in Byword on an iPad.

Heres what my Mac screen looks like, with Byword on the left and Marked on the right. — Here’s what my Mac screen looks like, with Byword on the left and Marked on the right.

It’s Like Winkerbean on Your Wedding Day (& Isn’t It Ironic? Don’t You Think?)

In today’s strip, a bitter Funky Winkerbean tries to crap all over cousunclin Wally’s wedding plans, because he’s a bitter man, old before his time, who wrecked his own marriage to Blonde Wife #1 with small ambition and cheap Montoni’s wine. It deserves none of our attention, except maybe to note that Wally’s first marriage ended because of two stints as a POW. Just saying—keep it classy, Tom Batiuk!

However, the phrase “bad Winkerbean vibes” did catch my eye. Vibe→Zeitgeist→this Google trends chart. Hey, it’s the way my mind works.

Also, no, Alanis, after all these years, it’s still not ironic.