Chapter 21 – The Hero Fails

The plan devised by the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) was set into action. The cabbages were grown in a secret facility three houses down fro m the flies stronghold (while the facility would be more secretive in a more remote location tsetse flies are notorious for being unobservant and close proximity greatly reduces the transportation costs) meanwhile a team of top scientists were devising a device to place the cabbages in that would look like a fruit basket to the untrained eye (while fruit baskets were available for comparison purposes they could not be used in the final design as it is a fruit basket and cabbages are not fruits)
Despite minor setbacks the project was progressing well, until disaster struck, due to rising cost of ingredients the tsetse flies stopped having optic soup except on special holidays. The plan seemed destined for failure until the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) devised an even more brilliant plan than originally devised: the Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) could declare next Snerzo to be “Tsetse fly appreciation day (not a diabolical plot to evict the flies from this universe)”. Due to the flies’ generally trusting nature (and inability to read parenthetical statements) they would suspect nothing. With this new amended plan the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker)prepared for “Tsetse fly appreciation day”. The basket was created and carefully filled with nitroglycerin cabbages and then cleverly disguised as a fruit basket by placing a rotting banana peel on top. The Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) took the “fruit” basket to the door of the flies’ stronghold and rand the door bell.
Ding-Dong Splat!
The door fell open like a wet sponge and a tsetse fly wandered into the doorway.
“Ahoit!” greeted the fly “Are you interested in buying this fine encyclopedia set? It’s made of 110% chocolate and in the shape of a vacuum cleaner, every dollar you spend profits us two!”
“Uh” stammered the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) “How about you take this delicious looking fruit basket instead of trying to sell such silly stuff?”
“But today is ‘tsetse fly appreciation day’ how could giving us free first be an act of appreciation? It seems more like some sort of diabolical plot to ruin us!”
“Uh this can’t be a diabolical plot because this fruit basket is 100% non-cabbage, just look at the label” said the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) pointing out the “No cabbage guarantee or the food fights on us” tag.
“Well if it’s on a tag it must be true” conceded the fly as he reached for the basket, unfortunately his recent intake of optic soup had left him with such impaired vision that when he attempted to pick up the basket he instead grabbed a fistful of leaves form the nearby bush, thanked the basket and slammed the soggy door with enough force to cause the “fruit” basket to explode. The resulting explosion knocked the Hero of the Universe (and the candy store worker) unconscious resulting in missing 5 shifts at the candy store which the Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) declared to be not good enough thus the world was not saved.

Chapter 20 – The merger (with the candy store owner)

The creation of the giant radioactive tsetse flies and the recent slew of typos spoke to the current disarray of the universe. Even the communist force of gravity had not been resisted. The poor management of the universe seemed to have a negative impact on all aspects of life. The speed of light had fallen 5.8% in this quarter alone, the kilogram has dropped to just under 930 grams, the lowest point in 40 years (65 if adjusting for the inflation of time, which has been quite rampant recently) , and the universal mass deficit is at an all time high. All industries had felt the effects of this universal chaos, except for one that is. The candy store (and its owner) had not only experienced no ill effects but were actually doing so well they were looking to expand and branch out into new fields, however the candy store (and its owner) were doing so well and the rest of the universe’s economy was in such disarray that everything else seemed small and insignificant in comparison. The revenues from the candy store (and its owner) were so vast that the entire universe could be purchased, and that is precisely what was done.
The economy swiftly recovered thanks to the expert management from the new Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner). Constants across the board were up to all time highs, typos had been eliminated in all but the most remote areas. The only issue that still remained was the scourge of the radioactive tsetse flies, but there was a plan in place, a grand Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) had been found to rid the land of the menace of the flies. The Hero of the Universe’s (and candy store worker’s) plan was a simple one; a special crop of cabbages would be grow, ones watered with not water but nitroglycerin, resulting in a very explosive vegetable. The modified cabbages would then be delivered in a fancy fruit basket to the flies’ stronghold on optic soup night. Upon seeing the massive fruit basket the flies would assume it to contain fruit and would thus save it for after their main course, upon finishing their meal the basket would be opened , and upon seeing cabbage and not fruit only one logical things could result, a massive food fight. Normally tsetse flies have rather good aim and thus the food fight would result in exploding cabbages exploding on indestructible radioactive flies which would not accomplish anything other than minor annoyances. However the basket would be delivered on optic soup night which would result in reduced hand-eye co-ordination of the flies, thus the cabbages would end up hitting everything but the invulnerable flies. Thus the food fight would result in the total destruction of the flies stronghold and because the flies’ insurance does not cover “destruction by exploding cabbages*” the flies would be forced to relocate to another universe with more affordable property and thus the universe would be saved.
The only thing to stand in the way of Hero of the Universe’s (and candy store worker’s) plan was that time off from work (at the candy store) needed to be requested two weeks in advance, by the tsetse flies’ dinner menu was only posted one week in advance. No way to rectify the situation could be found, one couldn’t just shirk the responsibilities of working (at the candy store) just to save the entire universe. The plan would have to be scrapped and the tsetse flies would win. But then the Hero of the Universe (and candy store worker) had a brilliant idea: the basket of exploding cabbage could be delivered after work (at the candy store).

Chapter 18 – A Typo (or tow)*

*See Appendix γ for a mostly non typoed version
**In reality the speech by Tim was so riddled with typos that its original meaning has been forever lost.

The mop of angry fries surrounded the tall malls of the lace. Seeing know way in but up the fries took fright and quickly landed on the Tod of the building.
“Please don’t harm me” pleaded Tod “I’m only here because of some bizarre transcription error! I am completely !uuocәuti”
“You chain innocence but we believe you ton!” The wrench fries proclaimed “We shall make you day!” At this door Tod exploded in a rash of light. Tod winched as he started scratching his light. “Your feeble attempts to bash me will only end in you sailing!”
“That is what you thank!” Retorted the lead fry, “Your gracious attitude will end in room!” At this the fries tried to board their fail boats but it only resulted in sailing. The fries attempts to invade Tod were being thwarted by the intermittent typing mirrors. The mirrors made quite a daunting light, not as light as the rash of Tod, but right enough to offend the left handed fries who rolled out their weapons with the intent of mashing the mirrors. The mirrors, however, were to quack for the fries and with their new found duck-like reflexes they voided the attacks of the fries.
While the fries and mirrors were preoccupied trying to bill each other, Tod tried to sneak away without being caught in the accounting nightmare. Sadly his sneaking was two loads of a noise which attracted the attention of the fries and mirrors onto Tim.
“Wait!” wailed Tim “I’m a victim of the same circumstances that surrounded Tod, except that I am truly innocent of propagating the repeated typing errors. You need to help end this cycle, remember who you once were, you were not always fries but were flies until this random error struck. Continuing to spread these errors will only result in more chaos and disasters. This vicious cycle must be stopped and that starts with the last people to be affected.**
“Stopping these errors is a more difficult task than you say, one never knows when they might appear, burning the simplest phase into on of the upmost befaffelment!” staided a fry “revolsting against the errors is tudder intupidy!”
“Psag!” cried Tim, “The typos are becoming more sever than I ever thought possible!”
“Is there sonything that can be done to pretop these errors that won’t ensult win devestruction?”
“Do you not see that these errors have brought forth more destruction , more devastation, then they could ever cause if forced away. I have freed myself of such errors and I am perfractally pine!” at this Tim transploded into a typogramatical mess spluttering the ground with punctuation and unintelligent characters.
“Avost!” cried dumb pirate Andy “how arrre I getting here?”
“Ye fool” intruded stupid Joe the lesser of the Joes “Everyone knows pyrites ‘Avast’ and not ‘Avost’”
“It wasn’t Andy’s felt” medieval Mel the maniacal non-alliterative person stated “It doth be the cloth of the typos!”
“Then we doth need to shimber the tivers and buckle the swash of these vile typos, Arrrrhoy!” At this the three unintelligent characters rushed upon the typos with enough lack of knowledge to not know that there was no physical manifestation of a typo to destroy.

ka-Plum

And thus the typos were destroyed (for the mast part)

Comic #30

This is the last comic for the 2009-10 academic year. It’ll start up again next Fall.

Just about everyone I’ve ever met has had a dream like this. Perhaps it stems out of a general fear of looking stupid in front of our peers. Whatever the cause, it’s funny that so many people share this particular irrational fear. Seriously, you’d have to be pretty out of it to walk or drive all the way to school without pants on. It’s far more likely that, like Bob, you’d wake up from a vivid dream to the sudden realization that you’re late for something terribly important.

FPB_Comic_030

Chapter 18 – Spewing of the Multitudes

The angry mob of flies marched across the countryside, destroying everything in sight. Fortunately for the non fly populous, due to poor lighting conditions everything in sight consisted of a dead tree stump and one of the flies’ own houses. Such matters did no deter the angry mob, they kept on marching towards the dim glow of civilization over the hill. However when they reached the peak they discovered that the glow originated not from civilization but from their own torches being help by future versions of themselves. The flies past selves conferred with their future selves and determined the best course of action would be to send the future versions ahead while the other group waited for their past versions to arrive (this was mostly determined by the future flies shouting “we’re older, thus listen to us!”). With the minor distortion to the space time continuum cleared up the future flies continued their pillagious march down the far side of the Mound of Temporal Anomalies! becoming ever closer to fulfilling their malicious intents of revenge and desire for chocolate dipped water.*
“Wait!” wailed Cobbler “Couldn’t we resolve this minor grievance without resorting to such ancient forms of barbarism?”
“Whatever do you mean there Cobbler?” inquired a well aged English looking fly “We were just aboot to stop in for a spot of crickolo**”
“What happened to the plot to punish the people for practically pushing use past alliterative possibilities?”
“Less alliterative possibilities? Surely such a savage scenario would result in storage in synapses.” Suddenly such a realization sunk in. “The truth you doth speak, to battle henceforth!”
And thus Cobbler fulfilled his destiny of restoring the tickle and ushering in an age of darkness, despair and laughter; for the second time this week!
The mob continued now with renewed determinations and re-lit torches towards the actual dim glow of civilization coming from the nearest pickle-purchasing place with torches held aloft chanting various war cries such as:
“Down with flooding, out with water!”
“Dis-tractors are devious!”
“Where’s my luggage?”
And so with much enthusiasm and a little confusion the mob loomed closer and closer to the ever diminishing dimness of light. As the mob grew close they saw the flowing sign:

place sign

Sadly due to the surrounding dimness the flies could only manage to decipher the anti-floral announcement. And so having received no message to deter them (all their flowers had been destroyed in the flood) the mob of angry and mildly inconvenienced flies moved onwards past the dim glow and into the light of the

place

Comic #29

The idea that generated this strip came from a newspaper article I read about a month ago. It was about how yawning heightens the senses by cooling the brain. This means that it really has little to do with how tired or bored you are. The same article went on to postulate why yawning is contagious only among humans. One theory is that yawning was a way for a pack of hunters to heighten their senses all at once. While contagious yawning is seemingly unique to humans, domesticated dogs will also yawn if they see a human yawn. Interesting, no?

FPB_Comic_029_C

Chapter 17 – The Tickle Returns

*Cobbler’s mind tends to regress when under stress; in this case his mind is now running in the medieval ages.

With a flash of nauseating puce, Migraine Man staggered in carrying de-toasted dog stuffed into a frosted water bottle. Once again Migraine Man had saved the day using his amazing possession of power of painful pressure present on places placed over potatoes (i.e. brains).
“Greetings mere mortal flies, normal flies and the occasional immortal fly” boomed Migraine Man “I have brought back your stolen items and restored this land back to a state of peace, prosperity and putrid stench.” At this Migraine Man descended amidst the flies cheers and hoorays handing out the reclaimed spoils of the war that was not a war, but rather an armed robbery, without the arms. “However I must hasten off to my hideout, the Headache Hovel, Huzzah!.”
“Who was that terribly mysterious masked fly?” Fred asked around. “Indeed, I think that Migraine Man can completely solve several persistent problems of ours!”
“Foolish Fred,” Robert retorted “Migraine Man didn’t dispose of old Gooda Gustav judiciously just to torture us using his horribly pathetic-problem-solving skills! We watched how his supposed skills destroyed dozens of our favorite farms!”
“Really Robert?” Fred fumed “I irrationally thought that Gooda Gustav wasn’t wasteful, uninformed, uneducated, bean-brained…”
“Hey Migraine Man was trying his best!” interjected Cobbler who had mysteriously and suddenly appeared after Migraine man suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.
“Migraine Man certainly could have handled things tons better, but he hardly tried” Timothy said “shouldn’t he have made modifications to that Migraine Man name? Nothing could confuse more multitudes of ordinary people.”
“What are you talking about? Migraine Man’s derives his name form the same place he derives his power” Cobbler cried “Migraine sounds a lot like migration, and birds migrate and everyone knows that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ and a feather is what he uses to tickle people”
“Wait!” Wally exclaimed “Everyone fully forgot how helpless everyone effectively becomes because of old-fashioned feathers! Quick we must cast of this silly speech pattern and head to the chicken coops, a feather for every fly and the world is ours!” At this Wally and the others rushed towards the farms gathering all the flies from the village forming a mob full of flies carrying torches, feathers and the occasional flaming feather.
“Forsooth, alack and alas!*” Cobbler wailed “We shan’t revolt against our masters, it doth not be right, nay it doth not even be left, it doth be an affront and abomination to all mankind it doth be a disgrace for all that we stand for!”
“But we are tsetse flies not men.” protested a random fly “so who cares what mankind thinks.”
“Alas ‘tis true, such logic cannot be bested by word or sword. Avast let loose the feather of WAR!”

Comic #28

This comic was inspired by stories I heard from friends who had gone to another college coop for dinner (I won’t say which one). The drawings in this comic are less refined than in previous ones. It’s probably because I’ve been so hard-pressed for time recently. For instance, Jay’s yawn in the first panel looks more like a scream. The drawings of the cabinet are also a wee bit muddled. My goal for the next school year is to further refine my drawing.

FPB_Comic_028

Chapter 16 – Bad Aftertastes

While Cobbler’s village was drying out the grand overseeing council of tsetse fly met to listen to what Cobbler had discovered. The rest of the tsetse flies in the village went to work cleaning out that nasty taste of wet drywall which tasted like dry wet-wall and the dirt was all muddy. The flies developed a mixture or frozen water and melted ice that would alleviate the problems but it would wear out and the problems would return.
Suddenly from over the hill came an almost familiar sound. It sounded like a tractor or two but there was a strange sound that made it hard to tell what it was. The other sound seemed to come from somewhere else, it was so distracting that nobody noticed when two tractors appeared over the horizon and rolled into the fly’s village.
“Vahoy!” Cried the person on the tractor who may or may not sound like Gustav Da Gooda, “I have come to peddoole my wares and wear some poodles. I have come to show off my new and improoved tractors. Take a look at dis tractor” at this the person jumped off his normal looking tractor and pointed towards a very abnormal looking tractor, it had bells with whistles and whistles with bells all sorts of twings and deets. “Va, dis tractor is amazing it’s got big wheels, it’s got bigger wheels, it’s even got dis amazing internool comboostion engine dat makes things go ka-booma! It doth be vay better dan dat tractor over there” gesturing towards and even more no-descript tractor that looked exactly like a normal tractor, except for a diabolical looking man wearing a name tag that said “Hello my name is: not a robber”.
As all the flies “ooohed” and “wowed” over the amazing automatic dog-buttering and global spiciness indicator. They were so enthralled with it’s de-flossing attachment that they didn’t notice that dat tractor was roaming around the village pillaging and pilfering everything it could reach. And the flies were certainly to preoccupied watching dis tractor and it’s self cleaning de-toaster to see dat tractor leaving with everything but the kitchen sink (being tsetse flies sanitation is not highly sought after and thus indoor plumbing is not an amenity in most every tsetse fly village house). Suddenly dis tractor exploded in a spectacular display of color, sparks and slightly flossed, toasted buttered dogs (which increased the spiciness of the world by 3). The explosion caused such dense smoke and butter that the flies couldn’t even see their houses. After the smoke cleared and the butter mostly solidified the flies realized that they couldn’t see their houses because their houses weren’t there!
“Gasp” cried a fly, “they took my automatic dog flosser!”
“Nooo! they got my self frosting water bottle maker!” cried another.
“Not my automatic de-toasting machine” whined a third.
“Have no fear!! Migraine Man is here!” boomed a voice that sounded obviously not like Cobbler. “Up up and away…ow my head!”