Grrl Power #305 – The Harem relay
There are probably some regulars who would make for better part timers than Olivia. Sydney’s only known her since yesterday. Her half brother slash cousin (their dad made it with their twin sister moms for those of you haven’t been here since the beginning) would count as a regular but he wouldn’t be a good choice as she’d be flustered around him all the time. Honestly Sydney may be thinking of hiring Olivia just to ensure her conversion to the comic side.
Harem makes a pretty good supplemental communication system considering she can’t be disrupted or interfered with, at least as far as anyone up to and including Dabbler knows. You can even just tap on one of them to use morse code. She’d probably find that annoying though.
BTW, assume the picture in panel five has been up for a few hours to accrue that many notes. That’s “Vogue” in the picture. Before that Harem was Vogue she was “Cowgirl” and she decided to go retro today. Her closet is probably pretty big. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had multiple stories. (Her shirt says “Luck out with your duck out.” It’s her favorite selfie shirt.)
I’ve got a NSFW Dabbler fanart for you by Steven Stahlberg.
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just hire someone right now here on the spot.
It appears that Cpt. Obvious has competition.
From who? Corporal Self-Evident?
its all a conspiracy by general transparent
Which can all be solved by Private Hire Inc.
By the time you get through all of the bureaucracy to find who can ultimately finish this, you’ll find that Major Paine is in charge.
I think Specialist Services Inc. would also offer their services.
Well, that explains how Olivia ends up gaming with Sydney at least.
It was certainly the fastest path to start off their friendship’s development at a rapid pace, yes.
Dont do it Sydney, Resist the ADHD…
If you hire Olivia to cover the afternoon shift, then your chance to meet (With no ulterior motive) will drop to zero as Bro will only come to shop when sis can give a staff discount…..
Things just work out sometimes.
Well in reality it would take much longer with much more paperwork but for convenience sake the comic leaves all that stuff out
Actually the paperwork can be finished up once she is hired all you need to start is a basic contact between her and the comic shop that takes about fifteen minutes after you hammer out the pay rate. It would be similar to this.
I (state your name) hire by agree to work for Halo’s comic shop at a rate of X.XX dollars per hour. Halo’s comic shop agrees to pay (restate name) at a rate of X.XX dollars per hour for their services.
Benefits and everything can be hammered out in another contract after she is working uncommon yes but the contract is simple and fast and legal if it is written down. The whole need for background check and everything is nice because it lets you vet the person but you can do it this way as well. Arianna can throw one together in about ten minutes I suspect she has one on her computer already attorneys are like that.
In many places (Texas being one of them) even a verbal contract is binding. You write things down because it’s hard to prove a verbal contract. of course, there are all those cameras there…
Don’t they have to at least make copies of state ID and SS card to prove that an employee has a legal right to work in the US?
Does she honestly look like a illegal citizen to you?
Nope, since if they’re illegal they are by definition not citizens. Also you can’t tell by looking if someone is legal to work in the U.S. or not.
Not all illegal citizen’s are dark skinned, racist
When was skin colour brought up? For all you know Lisdian was talking about body language.
I suspect we are all just a bit over-sensitive about the issue at the moment. So our minds are less likely to go to charitable interpretations. I did something not dissimilar yesterday. But you are right that there are several of alternatives. Amongst which is the fact that Olivia’s brother is a long-established regular.
Not that illegal immigrants can’t buy comics, but it does give an indicator that he is living comfortably enough to be able to afford luxuries, and has been doing so for some time. Plus she will have noticed if he always pays cash (implying that he may not have been able to get a bank account, which is harder for illegals to do nowadays).
So knowing family history, assessing mannerisms, accents, and other subtle clues like choice of clothing, can all help add up to making a judgement. And factoring ethnicity into the mix is a fair technique, as part of a balanced appraisal.
I would mostly associate somebody with Olivia’s complexion with having been from Southern Europe. Which, all other things being equal, reduces the odds of her being an illegal, given that, even if she is not born in the USA, Europe and America tend to be fairly friendly to allowing their citizens work visas.
Ok there are plenty of assumptions going on there, which could well be wrong. But, if you are making a snap judgement, you have to go with whatever information you already have, and make an informed guess.
Mind you, given that Texas (and the US in general) mostly has illegal immigrants from Latin America, I guess that there are probably quite a few alternatives to Southern Europe. But that is where using it as part of an overall assessment is important. The accent being a big clue to narrow it down. Which Sydney would be able to pick up, even if it is lacking for us.
Mind you, even if the various clues point to an applicant being from a country where there is an illegal immigrant problem, that does not mean that she is one herself. But it should ring alarm bells to be more cautious, if having to make a snap judgement. Either way though employers need to be diligent and check staff bona fides. But, as Deof Movestofca points out below, they are allowed time to do that.
I was talking about body language. And the fact her father was a college student in the U.S. And she was most likely born in the U.S.
Also, she’s willing to stand around casually talking to people in front of TV cameras. Most of the (3) illegal immigrants I have known were not even willing to enter stores that had visible security cameras. (The third one wasn’t very bright, and got rounded up by the police and shipped back to the USA after he was seen on TV.)
Personally just by observation I’d say the most racist people are the ones who pull the racist card. Take a good long look at those who call others by that name and the language they use. No, really take a good long look at them and the language they use, especially when they call someone a racist. Right there you usually end up with a case of the pot calling the kettle black as they used to say, and still do say. Often though the person their calling racist is actually a lot more tolerant than they are. I personally have an issue with illegal immigration, but then I had a great uncle I never got to meet because he was murdered by the mexican mafia because his parents couldn’t afford the cash to get him back when he was 10. Am I racist in this case, no, I just happen to be a firm believer in the law.
Personally I am all for full freedom of movement. In the EU, for example, it strengthens the economy of every country within the free movement block (including non-EU members).
Ok, certain limits need to be set, if a country’s social services infrastructure is slow to adapt. But the increased revenues brought in by taxing any immigrants easily allows those to be brought in line with the population levels. So any restrictions only need to buy time for such changes to be implemented.
Whilst some folks worry a lot about the change in culture, I personally do not see that as being a big problem. If a culture is enjoyable, the immigrants will join in. If they have practices which are more fun, they will introduce them. The mixing of multiple cultures is good.
Just so long as it is handled in a way where any culture clashes do not result in the indigenous culture feeling too hard pressed. In those circumstances the immigrants are the ones who need to mend their ways (this spoken as an immigrant myself).
For instance I now take care not to dunk bread into soup. Weird though that may seem, that can be taken as a gross insult to your hosts here. Well, if in a Bulgarian household, rather than a Turkish one.
The Turks conquered and ruled Bulgaria for centuries. And there is still widespread resentment and dislike of anything too Turkish. Big or ornate beards are a no-no, for example. Even a well-trimmed one marks you out as a foreigner or someone a bit rebellious. So they are cool.
But dunking one food into another? That is considered very Turkish and simply not done in polite company!
As regards ‘the law is the law’, yup, that is very important, and I ensure they are followed diligently, for any that are relevant to me or my job. And checking that staff and customers are who they claim to be is very important in this day and age.
Ever since heightened restrictions were put in, to limit money-laundering and the like, I always ensured that I cross-referenced every name. Despite the fact that you would have different lists from different agencies and countries.
And if your job is on the wholesale side of things, any one item of business crossing your desk might have thousands, or tens of thousands, of customers behind them. And if the regulations did not place the burden of checking them on the source company, then you have to do that yourself.
Or pretend you do, and hope that nobody notices. Given the impracticality of doing the former, most companies I worked at pushed the burden onto the staff. Who simply could not be expected to do that, on top of their regular jobs. So they simply nodded their heads and did the pretending. The companies feeling that they were safe, because they had instructed their staff to do it.
Whereas I did not pay lip service to the regulations. I ensured all my data was provided in searchable formats, so I could input them into databases and cross reference them. Still time consuming, and a pain to the clients too. But I never contributed to terrorism or money laundering in my career.
Of course I always encouraged the companies I worked at to adopt such policies universally. Not all were so inclined. I felt suitably vindicated when I recently saw that one of them suffered massive fines for their practices!
Serves them right for trying to shift the burden to staff, and not giving them the resources to do it, plus not enforcing that the rules were being followed.
Just how does one tell just by looks alone whether someone else has a legal right to work in the US?
Although I did learn that Olivia would have three business days to provide the proper documentation.
most places I’ve worked at would extend that if there was a delay like say, a computer breakdown at the Department of Records (or whatever it’s called in your state)
Well, if it comes right down to it, Tony could just shift his own pull list to Olivia’s name, then give her the money to actually make the purchase; this way, the purchase is being done in her name. She uses store discount then gives the books to Tony later. Olivia’s already in a prime position to make sure the pull list gets filled quickly…
;)
Hire someone, brilliant Harem. They obviously should have hired someone already since yesterday night
I think if Harem thinks that, she’s forgetting not everyone has five bodies doing different things at once. I mean, her partner didn’t even know about the whole thing until this morning…
(I’m still bitter about skipping the WAIT WHAT phase of the reveal )= )
Her partner at the comic store looks kind of broke in. I think his Wait What button might be worn out.
Here, let me help neutralise that.
*makes some extra-sweet tea for scurv*
See the lemon will stop the flavour clashing with the bitterness. But the extra sweetness will take away the bitterness. And it has the added benefit of vitamin C. I suspect you could do with a top-up!
I’ll have to consider getting lemon juice for my tea, thanks to you. But when I add the sweetness, it’s honey instead of sugar…White sugar is far too processed to have any nutrition value left to it (Brown sugar is closer to sugar’s natural form, but honey usually isn’t processed at all before packaging).
Also keep in mind that the honey has a second purpose, it helps you build up tolerances and immunizations to forms of hay fever. no really, eating honey from a certain really can immunize you to forms of hay fever among other things. Much like getting a vaccination for a cold.
I meant from your local area, or an area your going to go to, etc. The Bees collect pollen, which they turn into the honey, which in turn when you eat it immunizes you to the pollen types in the area.
I love bees. And am a fully trained bee-keeper. Mind you, I never did put ‘Bee Wrangler’ onto my CV, it not being that useful to office jobs. But…
Yea ha!
Oops. It was a bit crowded in here. I misheard who said that.
*makes enough lemon tea for everybody, but ensures that Lilet gets an extra large cup*
Hey, what kind of modeling program do you use?
If they, meaning the ARC leadership, had taken even five minutes to do some actual thinking about the situation they might have realized that a newly recruited civilian was just involved in the largest known super battle the day before. And as a recently former civilian might have needed some time to just absorb that, as well as the expected lead time for hiring someone not being “within 3 hours of opening.”
…. To say nothing of the aforementioned newly recruited civilian’s place of business having suddenly become a MAJOR focal point for ARC’s PR campaign. Get real, guys.
And even if she did hire someone right this second, and just skipped past paperwork on the understanding Arianna would square any liability issues, she would still need to train them for a minimum of 20-30 minutes, and probably an hour, based on their prior knowledge, just to keep the store running for a few hours (avoiding things like closing, ordering, etc), and they might as damn well just wait for Joel to return from lunch.
Though getting Halo out of there would significantly reduce the crush of people and make for a slow day.
What they REALLY should have done is to just get Max/Arianna to buy Joel some fancy takeout lunch and have Harem deliver.
Olivia only needs to cover the shop until Joel gets back. If she has till experience, she can do that untrained. If not, she is personable enough to conduct public relations. Letting customers know that an unexpected delay has occurred and that somebody will be along shortly to take their orders.
And she can advise any who were more interested in autographs to come back in the morning, when Halo will be back on duty. Joel will just have to handle any other training on the fly. Having the extra pair of hands this afternoon will help. Even if this is a bad time to be doing any training. But the sooner it is started, the sooner they will be fully staffed again.
Temperairy ‘help I need a cover now’ is not the same as full on hiring someone though
Though it’s a good step
The one place it will not work is in Montreal and Quebec. The general public are now becoming conditioned to look around, for the hidden cameras, and ask, “is this a Just for Laughs Gag you are trying to set up?”
The fact that there are a bunch of cameras, right there? That would not be helping, in the least.
Those guys n gals do some AWESOME stuff, i watch them on youtube every so often when i get bored…
I wish there was a like button for this Oberon, because honestly, this is a bit unreasonable. Hell, “Joel will be back in like, 15 minutes, hiring someone will (realistically, I know that doesnt apply here) take way longer.”
SYDNEY: “Olivia, are you free for half an hour?”
OLIVIA: “Yea, why?”
SYDNEY: “Could you man the counter, and stall any customers, until Joel gets back from lunch? And, if you want a full-time job, let him know, because we are looking. I will be back in the morning myself.”
OLIVIA: “Err sure? Where are you… holy f**k, she can fly!”
OLIVIA (Turns to reporters): “Did you know she can do that?”
EVERYBODY IN STORE: “YES!”
That’s way too irresponsible, even for this world.
This IS Sydney we’re talking about, though…
And even Sydney would not do that.
That’s reasonable and unreasonable at the same time. It’s just that I think Maxima can wait for fifteen minutes while Sydney ensures her shop is being taken care of.
On the other hand though, you’d think there are customers in the shop that are regulars (if the girl I bought comics from every week suddenly showed up on the news as the biggest thing ever, you can bet your ass I’d be in the store the next day, special comic day or not) that would be better fits
Sign at the door: “We’ll be back in fifteen.”
Maxima: “Harem, I need you to deliver a message to Sydney.”
Harem: “Sure thing M. Do you want to ask her how is she after all the shit she had to go through yesterday?”
Maxima: “What? No, I want to hurry her up, she is fifteen minutes late!”
Harem: “Right, silly me.”
Yea, both you and Oberon make good points. However Maxima’s dialogue might equally have been:
“Make sure that Sydney is not showing any symptoms of P.T.S.D..* If she is, get her to the Doc asap. If not, don’t bring it up, as she might fixate on that, and start freaking out.
If Sydney seems ok, just tell her I want to know when she will be in.”
* Note that Harem is the unit’s medic so is more qualified than Maxima is, in this regard. The right person has been sent, to check up on Halo. Not that I am suggesting that the brief time Harem has been in the comic would be enough for a reliable assessment like that. But if Sydney was exhibiting some obvious signs of distress, Harem would be the one most likely to pick up on them.
I am sure the military has protocols for how to handle post-battle situations. But doubt they involve hanging around a comic shop.
Well this seems like it would be an interesting shotgun job interview. Having someone as good looking as Olivia behind the counter would be great for business in general.
Pirta from The Whiteboard comes to mind as well…
Interesting name and very nicely matching avatar. Plus it grants increased Hebrew lore. Quite magical!
And, yea, Olivia would be a great hit with the nerds. And has shown an interest in comics, so may be a happy employee too.
Thank you very very much. Always glad to be complimented on it and to have my choice in avatar be recognized. I am unaware of any Hebrew lore it grants and would honestly love to hear how it does.
On a comic related note, would be neat to if Halo asked Harem to have one of hers hang around there for a bit as well.
Abracadabra.
Yea, if Harem has some slack in her schedule, it would be a way for Sydney to stay in touch with Olivia, in case she needs to ask questions. Which is bound to happen. But, equally, exchanging cell phone numbers can do that.
Of course having an extra pair of hands would be a big help. And it would also keep the groupies happy too. None of them will complain, about having to wait for service, if they can hang out with a super.
Harem can do like she is doing with Max and Sydney: one Harem goes to the store (hey, why not? unless all five are required, she can be there to help keep the store from going bankrupt) and one stays with Sydney and can relay any needed information in almost real time, no need for *vorp*ing back and forth
Shyamalan Twist: Sydney hires the moustachioed news reporter instead.
Sydney Twist: Sydney grabs Shyamalamalamalamalamadingdong with the Lighthook and drops him outside the door so that he can’t screw anything else up.
I’m down with that. Guy should have his director’s license revoked.
Shyamalan was good once. Remember Sixth Sense and well…..Sixth Sense.
I liked Sixth Sense and enjoyed Village, most of the rest are “meh” and Airbender needs to be buried with those Atari E.T. cartridges.
What’s wrong with that game? Loved playing that as a kid, recently got another Atari 800XL just to play E.T. again (shame wasn’t able to get hold of the original Star Wars game :( )
Even for Atari cartridge games, it’s blocky, buggy, and and completely user-unfriendly. Several times, the items you need to collect will be at the bottom of “wells” (Those black oval things in the ground) and if you didn’t “levitate” out of them JUST right, the game would drop you right back in the moment you got out, which, if you’re not twitchy enough to start “levitating” again before you hit bottom, drained your health in a hurry, and that’s if you went into them deliberately, several of them would be half-off the screen’s edge so if you go from one screen to another left to right, you could find yourself warped into a well, half way down before you can react.
Don’t even get me started on how cheaty the FBI agent and scientist are on higher levels, both of whom can simply WALK OVER THE WELLS while they chase after you.
The ending: Ugh, it doesn’t matter how well you do. Elliot just runs around his house while the ET avatar is at the bottom of the screen, raised neck, standard, or dead.
We put up with it as kids because there really wasn’t anything better.
To be fair, it probably [b]would[/b] have been better, but Atari wanted the game to be out in time for Christmas. They gave the programmer just over [b]five weeks[/b] to write the entire game. That may [b]sound[/b] generous, but it really is not, because of how complex the Atari 2600 was to program.
To keep a long story short:
(1) The Atari 2600 did not have a frame buffer. You had to fill a 40-pixel bit pattern into a register just before the television scanned that line, with the right half of the screen being a mirror image of the left half. If you wanted the right side of the screen to [b]not[/b] simply be a mirror image, you had to change the contents of the register [b]as the line was being drawn[/b]. Needless to say, this required some very precise timing, or you got visual artifacts.
(2) You could only access a maximum of 8K of ROM at a time; through bank switching, you could access up to 32 KB, in segments of 1K, 2K, or 4K depending on who made the cartridge; for example, Parker Brothers used 1K segments, most other developers used 4K segments. The vast majority of the cartridges were 2K or 4K. Less than two dozen games used a 16K cartridge, and even though the theoretical maximum is 32K, [b]no[/b] games used 32K (as far as I know). For the record, E.T. was an 8K cartridge.
(3) You had only 128 bytes of RAM, and that [b]includes[/b] the call stack*, which means that you didn’t have a lot of room to store variables, such as the score. A few cartridges had an extra chip that added RAM, such as Atari’s own “Supercart” (which added another 128 bytes of RAM) or the CBS RAM+ chip (which added 256 bytes). Only 10 Atari games and 2 CBS games used these chips.
The TL;DR version is that the Atari 2600 was extremely complex to program, and Atari didn’t give the programmer nearly enough time. Had he been given more time (say, three months) the game might actually have been pretty good, and not ended up with hundreds of thousands of cartridges buried in a landfill.
* The non-programmers out there might be wondering, [i]What is a call stack?[/i] Well, when you are writing a program, every time you call a subroutine, the CPU has to have a way of knowing where to return to. I’ll give a short example in BASIC:
100 GOSUB 1000
999 END
1000 PRINT “Line 100 sends us here.”
1010 GOSUB 2000
1999 RETURN
2000 PRINT “Line 1010 sends us here.”
2999 RETURN
In the example above, line 100 jumps to a subroutine at line 1000. The CPU needs to know where it needs to go back to, when it sees “RETURN” (or “RTS”, which is the machine language equivalent). So, a two-byte address is pushed onto the [i]call stack[/i] that tells it to continue at the first line after line 100.
Then, line 1000 prints a message, and line 1010 jumps to a subroutine at line 2000. Again, a two-byte address is pushed onto the [i]call stack[/i] to tell it to continue at the first line after line 1010.
The more nested subroutines you use, the bigger the call stack gets, up to a maximum of 256 bytes. The call stack shrinks after each RTS. Obviously, on the Atari 2600, since you only have 128 bytes of RAM, if you have too many nested subroutines, the call stack can literally overwrite your variables. Remember that this example is for 8-bit processors with a 16-bit address bus, back in a time when RAM was really expensive; modern CPU’s are not nearly as limited.
Last Airbender, The Happening, After Earth, need I go on? He’s very much a one trick pony. Seriously, how do you ruin Avatar: The Last Airbender? That shouldn’t even be possible.
He managed it. From what I hear, that takes real genius.
The impression I get is that MNS did a couple (?) of very good movies early on, but then started reading way too much of his own publicity and decided he’d never have to learn anything more.
Happens a lot to people in that line of work, but seldom so quickly.
Unfortunately, the script he put together for the movie was based mainly on an interview with an irate cabbage vendor.
LOL
look up Nostalga Critic: Last airbender review on Youtube and you’ll get one of the best examples and rants about the subject. “Sucker of talent and good!” indeed.
Near as I can figure, her thought the satirical play they ran into in the third book was an ACCURATE recap, and based the movie on that instead of bothering to actually watch the series. That’s the only excuse I can see.
Ack, typo, ‘he thought’
The thing to remember about Shyamalan is that every one is half as good as the previous one.
I liked Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and parts of Village, but that’s about it…
I was so pleased that I never heard of the Village before watching it. And therefore did not know it was by the same writer as Sixth Sense (the name would mean nothing to me). As such I really enjoyed it. I found piecing together the mystery to be intriguing, and loved how the apparent inconsistencies and twists all made solid sense, with hindsight. As per Sixth Sense.
Last Airbender I likewise had no prior experience with or preconceptions. So saw it on the basis of “oh well, kids movie or not, it looks like has some cool effects, so I may as well watch it”. Having low expectations meant it did not disappoint me.
Mind you it did not impress me either. And I was seriously surprised to find it was written by the same guy! Although the rest of the team can significantly change a writer’s vision, so it is possible that it was down to the director and/or editor, that the story was not as compelling as it might have been, in the script. Maybe.
But have great sympathy for those folks who had the setting ruined by unmerited changes. I find that to be a cardinal sin in writing. It is one thing to adapt a story for the new medium, but it is totally unacceptable to mess with the established lore!
I’ve never see Sixth Sense (in its entirety — I’ve seen parts of it), but I have seen Unbreakable, which I thought was pretty good. It wasn’t an epic story, but it was definitely a unique take on the ‘superhero origin story’ idea.
But yeah, other than those two movies, it’s like MNS has the Midas Touch, except instead of Gold, it turns things to Crap.
Being a massive fan of the Avatar Nick TV series I practically wanted to slap Shamalon upside the head with a 2×4, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a violent person but lets face it what he did with that airbender movie was and is a capital offense. as for burying Airbender, no, they need to be collected and used for a fire with Sham on a post in the center of them. He went in with his idea of Airbender after watching one or two episodes with his kids and just butchered it, had no idea what the show was about, or the characters. Turned Aing into the kind of monk not allowed to have sexual relations which means his people die out with him throwing the entire world of Avatar out of whack and he didn’t even complete the dang story of the series. That so called man has a lot to answer for. Although I will admit that Sixth Sense was pretty kickin. But he went soooooooo wrong when he put his nose into the Airbender world.
it seams a bit over the top its just after noon why are you not here yet? has max not heard of a commute time or a lunch brake. if i was scheduling that i would expect her at one maybe half-past (taking noon to mean 12:00 some dont)
You have obviously never been in the military…
true something about being half blind and having a bum leg for a childhood accident meant i never had that as a carrier path
Let’s just say that the military makes you get familiar with the phrase, “hurry up & wait.”
Yes. Punctuality is very important to the military. The enemy is over-running your position, do you want to wait for the artillery support to show up at its convenience? Or the air support? Or additional troops?
all this is true. but they do budget the time they need for things. an army marches on it stomach so it makes seance to stop for lunch. in this case max knows Sydney would be working the morning shift. a lot of businesses count the morning shift as ending at 1 and she knows Sydney will need to eat. add to that is says that Sydney has said that today especially would be a busy day at the store
In the military if you are supposed to be somewhere by 12:00. You will be there a minimum of 15 min early or else.
and then you sit waiting until 1400.
I am very sympathetic with your position. As a fellow civilian. But part of boot camp is getting used to a 6 am start (or whatever time the arse-kicking sergeant sets). If Sydney wants to be able to manage two careers at once, she is going to have to learn to get up early, if she wants the civilian one to succeed.
Because the military side is not going to be the one that looses out in the equation. Maxima is setting the boundaries on day one, before any bad habits slip in.
This is only her second day as being an outed Hero, she hasn’t officially started at Archon yet
When she signed the contract, she officially started. First official duty, Press Conference. She’s signed, sealed and delivered. Better get used to it.
When a new recruit signs their enlistment paperwork s/he is typically issued orders. Said orders typically involve a place and time to appear for service. Said place and time are not typically “tomorrow morning” or even “tomorrow at noon”, instead they are typically fed into a schedule of basic training, which could mean that they have weeks or even months to put their affairs in order.
After all, signing the paperwork doesn’t mean that you suddenly don’t have a dog to feed, a job to resign, bills to automate or other arrangements to make to ensure that enlistment doesn’t end up wrecking your life. And the Army at least is very big on ensuring that their members meet their real life obligations.
While ARC is a very different organization than the Army the assumption that it would require Sydney to ignore or neglect her prior obligations just to start her training the day after she signs up is quite unrealistic.
Thanks for the informed insight, and I wholly appreciate it is merit worthy.
The one mitigation, in this circumstance, being that Maxima is in an unique situation here. Whilst she can cut Sydney slack in some regards, in others Maxima has to give her less leeway than regular recruits would get.
In this case, Sydney lucks out, due to operational priorities. Archon is at a critical stage. Doubtless there will be heavy opposition to the operation of a gendarmerie on US soil. Let alone the concept of allowing super humans to police regular folks.
Plus the religious backwash, in general. With the additional fun of questions being asked about Dabbler. And, justifiable, reservations about allowing an oddball like Sydney on the team.
Along with the usual inter-service jockying and rivalries. In this case doubled up by including both law enforcement and the military.
Maxima has to have all her assets to hand and operational immediately. And Sydney is one of the most critical of those. Waiting a few weeks is simply not a viable option in these circumstances.
It is one of the reasons why Maxima has clearly taken Sydney directly under her wing. She needs to keep her close, so that she can correctly assess when she can take liberties, with such normal operational procedures, and not have it backfire on her.
The flip side being that Sydney is being allowed to get away with extraordinary things, like being able to dictate terms such as working part time in the shop.
And I bet we can find very similar war-time analogies. I have no doubt there will be servicemen who have had the normal rules torn up, due to a pressing operational need. And no say in the matter.
*sigh*
“In this case, Sydney lucks out” = “In this case, Sydney does not</b luck out."
I think I was toying with phrasing it as "Sydney's luck runs out", given that her breaks have previously gone the other way. But explaining that would have slightly extended an already over-long post.
But the mash-up I actually typed, inadvertently inverted the meaning.
Yes its not like she had done anything to merit a little slack on her first real day of training like saving Maxima’s life and the rest of the team for that matter…
You make a strong point, that appeals to the heart. But this is the kind of thing where a military commander has to make tough judgement calls. And here I recognise a point where my lack of command experience will make my opinion less valid than anyone who has such. But here is my reasoning, nonetheless.
If what Sydney did yesterday means that Maxima treats her just as a friend and not as a military commander, she will be encouraging slack behaviour and ultimately putting everybody’s lives in danger, including Sydney.
If today, Maxima does not make the distinction clear, then she is letting Sydney slip into the friend zone, and it will be harder to pull her out of it, later, without hurting her feelings and potentially alienating her.
Whereas if Maxima sets clear boundaries, which say “you are my friend, but if I give you an order you must obey it without hesitation or deviation” then the correct relationship is being established.
Maxima is clearly attempting to form a unit with informal discipline (note ‘informal’, not ‘lax’) and one which will use bonds of friendship to strengthen their unity, in moments of crisis. However she must balance that with not loosing the respect and authority that she must also have at those very times.
Finally, from Sydney’s point of view, she must learn strong self-discipline. It will not be doing her any favours to give her the impression (even on day one), that her easiest way to get out of obeying the command of her superior officer is to negotiate some slack.
The “budgeted time for lunch” is budgeted for “the entire unit,” not an individual. So if you had 30 minutes for lunch, that meant that everyone had darn well better be finished and standing out in formation ready to go at 25 minutes from the start of lunch time. If you were at the back of the line, that meant you were eating on your way out the door. In a lot of training environments, the military is supposed to allot you 8 hours for sleep. There is an 8 hour period designated for that, but good luck actually getting 8 hours of sleep.
In basic, my unit was late for a class once. Our drills made it clear that it would never, ever happen again, which meant that our company ran everywhere, all the time. We really sucked at marching, but we could run anyone else into the ground by the end of the cycle. ;-)
l0wten, as someone who *did* serve in the military (as did my father and my uncle), I can verify that the military has a hard-on for punctuality… something my father drilled into me from a young age. As he always said:
“To be early is to be on time.
To be on time is to be late.
To be late is to be left behind.”
Translation: Show up 15 minutes before you’re supposed to be there, or your resident Drill Sergeant Nasty (if you are a new recruit) will chew you out and/or assign you extra punishment details.
Even my cat, Cat (yes, that’s her name… Cat. Don’t blame me, I didn’t name her) is a big fan of punctuality. See, I adopted her from a military family who had just been reassigned to another base, and their new landlord didn’t allow animals… She insists on being fed at 0500 on the dot. Usually if I don’t feed her on time, she’ll sit on my face and smother me until I wake up gasping for air.
Oh, almost forgot the obligatory “first time I’ve commented on Grrl Power” post:
Absolutely one of the best webcomics out there. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of web comics that I dutifully read every time a new page is posted. Grrl Power is one of them.
(And if the “Drill Sergeant Nasty” comment in my previous post wasn’t enough, all I can say is TV Tropes really will ruin your life. Or at least make you stay up far past your bedtime reading.)
Yay, another member of the community. I would give you a hug, but don’t want to alarm you too much.
If they have read most of the comments from previous episodes, they will know you are “Mostly harmless” :)
Shh!
Despite the ladies denying it, we all know they go for the bad boys. Don’t ruin my image!
As a guy who has worked in a federal job tied to the military I can say the military mentality definitely permeates all it comes in contact with. “Hurry up and wait” wasn’t as bad as the two words I hated to hear “Look Busy”. Meaning if someone can see you look like you have lots to do even though we have nothing for you to do.
The old saying “Hurry up and wait” does come to mind, doesn´t it.
“Hurry up and wait” beats the hell out of “Dude, I know I’m 20 minutes behind-I just forgot about how travel takes time and thought getting out the door right when I had to be here would be enough, knew you wouldn’t mind picking up my slack! LOL!”
Simply expecting things to work out the way they ‘easily’ should on paper, then being dumbfounded every time when they don’t may be enough for civilian life, but history has shown it can cost you everything if a war is on the line.
Also, it continues to be obvious that Harem frequently enjoys sneaking in opportunities to satisfy her attention-grabbing tendencies while staying on top of her profession. Fancy that.
She can fly
she still needs lunch and flying takes time
She can fly faster than Max, and earlier they had them cover several hundred miles in literally 5 minutes in the air. Let’s just go with be there in a minute, maybe literally one minute…
Not necessarily faster. Max has tested Halo up to subsonic speeds – 400 mph if memory serves right – and can easily go supersonic herself (which wouldn’t be a clever move in the urban idea, by the way).
Your memory is correct.
Too bad Sydney gets lost flying still… Max will be lucky if Halo makes it in at all today.
That makes me wonder if Arc SWAT (being officially a branch of the military) follows the same regulations regarding supersonic flight that the Air Force does. Specifically, during peacetime, military flights cannot break the sound barrier except in a handful of cases:
(1) If they are in specific High-Altitude Supersonic Corridors (HASSC) (such as the one in Southern California, which passes through the R-2508 Special Use Airspace Complex that includes Edwards Air Force Base, the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, and the Army’s Fort Irwin). These HASSC corridors are used by the Air Force and Navy for training and flight testing.
(2) If they are flying above the limits of controlled airspace (60,000 feet, which is ~11.3 miles or ~18.2 km), or
(3) an emergency situation, such as fighters performing combat air patrols over the U.S. as part of Operation Noble Eagle in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks (they broke the sound barrier on occassion to catch up to airliners).
Something tells me that, since Maxima formerly served in the Air Force herself, she would (probably) enforce these rules on ARC members with the power of flight, even if ARC itself does not. Although something human-sized breaking the sound barrier would generate a smaller sonic boom than, say, a fighter.
[P.S., in regards to (2), there are only three publicly acknowledge military aircraft capable of flying at that altitude, and one of those has been (mostly) retired from service… the SR-71, F-15, and F-22. Just thought you might like to know. And even then, the SR-71 had to get special permission to fly cross-country at that speed.]
I am sure Dabbler will have the inside scoop on whether they are using any captured UFO technology.
“I don’t care if it is part of your ultra-secret project, and if Aunty did die in the crash. My cousin is her sole beneficiary, and you are to hand it back!
Besides which, you have it all assembled wrong. The ‘joystick’ is not a controller, it is part of the power source!”
*laughs*
Of course, I was referring specifically to supers like Maxima, or to Sydney’s flight orb, not to experimental aircraft, though I would not be surprised if ARC has a few of those too. Dabbler probably has a UFO lying around someplace which she built “just because”.
Dabbler also points out that the “joystick on the chair” is actually a Succubus Sybian Machine :P
Hopefully Maxima is allowing more travel time than that. Although she has probably been flying since adolescence, so may have forgotten how disorienting it was at first.
But Sydney is not particularly familiar with Archon, or it’s location. Nor is she an experienced flyer and aerial navigator. Bear in mind she even managed to get lost on the way from home to work (albeit with fair mitigating circumstances).
So I suspect it will take somewhat longer than you are thinking. But, Sydney will almost certainly have recharged the pip-boy by now. So can use the GPS to guide her. Once she has figured it out. And it also has the comms gear to give Maxima a realistic e.t.a. on route.
But if she flys at 400+ mph, within a city environment, she would pose a serious threat to power cables, other air traffic and anything else unexpected. Which, as an untrained flyer, is just about everything!
The last thing Archon needs at the moment is for all the flying heroes to be grounded by the FAA, until they are fully flight certified.
Actually that’s something they could use as it would be a great laugh. I can see it burning up ten pages easily of pure humor. Flight orientation the Super way, it could be great in so many ways…
If you think flying at street level through a city environment is tough, try flying NOE (Nap-Of-the-Earth) at 600+ mph with Nagging Nora screaming at you to “Pull Up!” the entire time. (If the voice is male, it’s Barking Bob or Hank the Yank)
As far as being a threat to power cables… depends on the city and how low she’s flying. Most really big cities, at least in North America, have their power cables buried underground, where they’re safe from bad weather (read: three feet of snow and ice) and gnawing rodents. I’ve had squirrels chew the insulation off the “drop” between the electric pole and the house at least twice. She might still be a threat to street lamps and traffic lights, though! Suburbs, rural areas, and small towns are more likely to have above-ground power lines.
* Nagging Nora is Air Force slang for the aircraft warning system. Actually, the USAF uses a slightly more vulgar term. Nagging Nora is what they call it in the U.K.
Typically those air forces normally have more than fifteen minutes flight training and experience before allowing their pilots to solo at 600 mph NOE though. Let alone going supersonic through a city.
Which is probably why Maxima sent Harem. She isn’t just here to tell her to be there, she’s going to vorp her to where she’s supposed to be this instant. This is her first day after all. Next time she’ll be expected to fly there in advance enough to arrive on time, possibly say goodbye to her stake in the comic book store due to schedule conflicts, etc.
Harem. Can’t. Teleport. People.
Word of Dave is she has a weight limit (That was just enough to vorp that stupid powerfull rifle thing) and can’t teleport living things.
This is going to be the new “Sydney should put a shield around him and suffocate him” isn’t it?
Specifically, she has a weight limit, and she “probably” can’t teleport living things.
Her weight limit includes herself and all of her bodys – if there is no fundamental no living things teleport rule she should be able to teleport other people if she “unteleports” a few of her other selfs. If it´s distributed evenly she should need 2 or 3 unteleported to take Sidney along (Sidney seems lighter then Harem). If she can chose the distributen then she only needs to unteleport one.
Word of Dave. No living matter, at all, not even plants. I suppose bacteria don’t count, but hey, no law is all inclusive.
They never said no living matter from what i remember. Show the pagecwhere that was said by daveb, either in the comic or in comments by dave. Naybe im wrong but show where it says that. All that was said in the comic is she has a weight limit, and daveb said in the comments that the weight limit was about 50 lbs.
Of course stdneh weighs more than 50 lbs so its a moot point.
I hate typing on my phone
Well, way back in the early days it started out with Dave saying definitely no people and possibly nothing else living in his blog on this comic.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/345
I think he may have made a further comment confirming that he was going with the no living thing but as he proved with the shield’s airtight nature anything is subject to change until mentioned in the comic.
Also its getting REEEEAAAALLY hard to find stuff buried in the comments unless you can think of the right phrase to search for. A bunch of words like teleport, harem, living and matter might not do it. (maybe they went with “organic” that day or typo’d… )
So unless Dave feels like making that comment again or a F.A.Q page… (possibly subject to in comic change?? )
From the way you phrase it, it sounds like there might be a way to search through the entirety of the comments history? As opposed to just using the browser search option, which is just on the current page.
The nearest I can do is to go on the archives listing, and hit Ctrl-F to search through that. But such is limited to the titles of the comic pages, and would specifically not include any comments. So that is clearly not what you are referring to.
Am I missing some general trick that folks can pull, with HTML searches or something? Even going in on the RSS feed only brings up the current stuff for me.
Or is there a great big “search” button I have been missing, for years?
“https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/?s=whatever you want to search”
It searches into titles and sub-comic text (Dave comments).
IIRC you already know this other one but just in case.
Google:
site:grrlpowercomic.com whatever you want to search
Doh. Now that you say it, yea, I remember that coming up before. Trouble is I am lousy at typing in commands (where they need exact formatting like that). There is no way I would remember it, if I was not using it very frequently.
Clever plot twists, nice lines of dialogue, scientific developments and stuff like that can stick in my mind indefinitely. But technical things, which I am not using? Sadly, they quickly fade from memory. If the comic had not provided the tag command list, in such an easy to spot way, I would have never gotten into using them.
Thanks for restating it though. I will try actively using it, as the opportunity arises, whilst I can check the formatting using your comment. Maybe that will help it stick. Up until new pages of the comic come out, and it gets harder to find your comment …
Hang on, I am detecting a flaw in this plan!
Perhaps living matter already inside Harem gets a free ride? So we just stretch a Harem’s skin out with a force fed Ho Ho regimen and the suck out all the fat and make a pouch that cute little Sydney can ride in. Bad guys will never see it coming and once they have seen it will stab their eyes out to stop the nightma-err, heh, I mean will swear to stay on the straight and narrow path rather than face the craz- um in the face of the inspiring resolve of America’s Heroes! ^_^’
Eww eww! And there I was thinking that Harem burger was about as bad as it could get. Nope. How silly I was.
Well, it makes sense that this would be an exception although this loophole combined with Harem’s weight restriction probably means this loophole was more or less “designed” to help her if/when she gets pregnant.
I guess we need a particularly light weight person with dwarfism AND super powers that complement Harem’s to go in that living skin sack.
Or if Dave was kind he would right in a new recruit with dimensional powers involving shrinking/density and they would ride in Harems closed mouth. That wold give ARCswat some decent infiltration power.
“write in a new recruit” I am the Alpo and the Omegle of typhoons
No passengers, possibly no organic anything, check. My bad.
Halo can always complain about the Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History-assed pacing of Maxima’s expectations when she gets there, but chances are this may be partly her way of saying “Welcome to Boot Camp, Golden Rookie, where all that potential you displayed last night is going to get TAPPED”
Even if she could do living matter in the second science corner, it tells us her max carry weight is roughly 25% her body weight and while it increases when she has fewer copies out ranges from roughly 25 to 50 pounds
Problem: Weight limit and non-living matter only.
Solution: Kill Sydney, cut her up, and take multiple trips. There, was that so hard?
Hey, the comic is called “GRRLpower”, not “Sydney Power”. Hmm, we will need a new lead character. Coming next week, The Adventures of the Amazing Olivia!
(Gotcha. Happy soon-to-be initial day of the fourth calendar month)
NOOOOOOOO!
(Not even as a Halloween it-was-all-a-dream special!)
Well you only need users basic intuition to find the “Settings -> Advanced Search” on the Google home page. This generates an advanced search form you can fill out. One of the blank fields you can choose to fill in is the “site or domain” field. Here you can paste the general address of the site you wish to search.
So if you forget the Google search command “site:someurldotcom” you can navigate to that form and accomplish the same effect. It then generates a results page with that command at the top which is how I learned it in the first place. :)
However as the number of comic pages increases, each with 1d6 pages of comments + author’s blog, the chances of satisfying Pander’s need for links to WOG comments (pander to da Pander?) depends on you being able to think of a key phrase Dave may have said. Ironically the more times people repeat what Dave told us the less likely you are to find the original.
Maybe I will have to go back (yet again… TT ) and make a copy of everything Dave has ever said since the beginning? (oh the joy)
Mmm, thanks for the extra feedback. You would have just as much trouble as me, if you were forced into using the Bulgarian version of Google Chrome. It is hard enough to try and convince it to keep the interface in English. But you get literally no options other than the search box.
Thanks to your hint that it should though, I have now figured a way to force it to navigate to the UK Google home page. And can see the option easily enough there. Which I can find my way back to, in future.
So thanks. :-)
You’re welcome. It also shows up in the settings options of the Google home search page (settings is also available on the side of search result pages actually) no matter which browser you are using. (OK I’ve only checked two. Hang on a second… checked three browsers) At least it seems so. So if you can get an English version of any of the popular browsers you should be able to find it either on the start page or in a results page.
It used to be hellah useful but in the modern era every page with any traffic generates soooo many comments… to much chit-chat-chaff messing up your targeting lock on. (unless you have a good enough memory to remember exact phrasing and basically just using search to find verifying links. Mine is not such a memory! XP )
Didn’t you pay attention to the fight? Harem has a weight limitation on how much she can carry and lift while teleporting. Although a few of those weapons would mass about the same as Halo… But can she port with living organisms?
Actually I’d say she can teleport organic material then, some of the clothes I’ve seen her wear would be considered organic material and if she ported with them on and couldn’t port organic material then the shirts, or even pants wouldn’t make the trip so she’d get to her sites naked as the day she was born. A lot of the things I’ve seen her wear are cotton blend in some cases, cotton being organic, or as with her selfie personification wearing a hat made of of STRAW, yeah, that wouldn’t port if she couldn’t handle organic materials. So going by what is actually shown in the comic she can port organic materials, maybe even organic compounds, but, she can’t handle the weight to port anything bigger than that sniper rifle which was at the max of her weight limit. Such rifles in RL though weight between 50 – maybe a max of 65 pounds. I’ll be generous and sya its a 50 pound gun though, either way its the max of her port amount.
There is a distinction between something of organic origin and something which is living. In quite a few ways. A couple of examples being the presence of active metabolisms. Another, for more advanced organisms, being electrical impulses, or similar mechanisms for transmission of nerve impulses and other command and control functions.
Let alone the philosophical or religious concepts of anime and soul.
Any one of which might be interfering with Harem’s teleportation ability. Or, even worse, if it does not interfere, but is rather disrupted by it. Having your metabolism rendered inert is not conducive to having a good day!
That said though, it is all a moot point. As DaveB has not made up his mind, so it is only that Harem ‘probably’ cannot carry living things. For most purposes the weight limit is all that is needed to stop passengers, for now. Only if a teeny passenger comes onto the scene, will Dave will need to make a binding judgement call.
Who takes noon as anything other than 12:00? What do they take it as?
2pm?
That’s early afternoon.
Thats noon. Somewhere…
If only things worked out that easily in real life. How will Joel react when he comes back though and finds Oliva behind the counter instead of Sydney. Then again, this is Sydney we’re talking about, he might just sigh and chalks it up as another Sydney moment.
I think most guys would like to come back to the store to see olivia there…
+1
Down side is that Olivia is untrained. Plus side is that Joel already knows that Sydney would not be there this afternoon. So, if things go according to the plan glimmering in Sydney’s eye, he will have an extra pair of hands this afternoon, that he had not been anticipating.
Tomorrow morning Olivia’s training can get up to full speed, as Sydney will be there, and it will be easier to fit her training into their routine.
Ah but you don’t need Sydney there to train her. Joel could give her some hands on experience on how to do things such as take peoples orders, bag them and simple till work etc.
I think that most co-owners of a store might be just a bit upset to find that the other co-owner of the store (and only other employee) had left the cash register and all duties (on new comic day, no less) to an untrained and almost unknown person whom he had not even had a chance to speak with or interview beforehand.
Joel would be well within his rights to be frothing-red-hot-angry about a situation such as that.
Very much so.
Unless Sydney’s instincts prove to be justified, and Olivia handles the job well. There has got to be a reason why level-headed Joel decided to partner with an oddball as Sydney. And perhaps he did so because he knows that “the feminine intuition is strong within this one.”
Sorry just had a mental image of the scene in Star wars where Darth Vader is flying along the trench chasing Luke’s X-wing
The Force is strong in this one.( I always kind of wondered why the ‘good’ side of the Force would still be called The Force, shouldn’t it be ‘The Allow’?
Maybe just “the light side”, since the supposedly good jedis sure didn’t “allow” much to their members. No marriage, no commitments to family or friends, no strong emotions of any kind whether normally considered to be positive or negative, and all the other ascetic BS which goes along with a monk-like life.
Sounds like pushing individuals into acting in an unnatural way. And could result in unpleasant backlashes. Far better to find natural, healthy activities and outlets, than to deny such, and bottle up any resentments for doing so. Somebody might find a way to pop the cork out, after all!
And its a small wonder why they turned to the “Dark Side”. According to the stuck up Jedi’s having any feelings for another is “bad” and needs to be punished, talk about change the natural order of things.
Actually you were allowed to leave the order, THEN you could marry and have kids, but as long as you were an operating JEDI, which was a government job if a military nature, you were not allowed to marry or have kids. This goes along in some ways with a subject brought up in another movie, at least partially. Robbie’s odd man Hypothesis. I which it states that a single non married man should have control of the firing or ability to stop the firing of a nuke as the unmarried single make can better handle such situations compared to the married man. Jedi takes that a step further because you also have female Jedi. I would suggest you take a look at the older version of a movie called, “The Andromeda Strain” in which they have a situation where the Odd man hypothesis is put into action. The newer version also covers this to a point but the original was really much better written than the remake. They also changed several details and went anti government and anti military in the remake which really wasn’t very cool. Often in such movies the original is almost always better than the remake. That and the remake was turned into a two part miniseries that takes an extra 3 hours or so to watch compared to the original running time.
Personally I would prefer it to be in the control of a married mother. That reduce the odds of me being turned into a pile of radioactive dust.
“As long as you were an operating JEDI, which was a government job if a military nature, you were not allowed to marry or have kids.”
There were exceptions; for example, the Cereans had low birth rates, a 1-to-20 ratio of males to females, and male Cereans aged faster than females, which made polygamous marriage a necessity. Male Cerean Jedi (such as Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi) were allowed to marry, and in fact, he had five wives.
How about “Well, she has half of the money which I need in order to open a store, and with me there I can at least moderate her spastic nature.”
:-P
I am sure Sydney has many fine qualities, which would contribute to their business, without needing to reduce her to just being a source of extra financing. I was just suggesting that this could have been one of the positive ones, that Joel would have recognised.
I’m pretty sure Dabbler could interfere with her.
If y’know what I mean.
Wink.
I actually asked something along this lines WAY back…
I think it was in the comment section of the Pain Reaction gag?
Anyways, I basically worded it as “So, is it safe to assume that ANY sufficiently…distracting sensations will carry-over between multiple Harems? With funny antics to follow?”
Yes, yes it is.
Considering tasting something crosses over…
Taate does cross over for harem. Remember that she aaid so in the restaurant when ordering food because of “negative flavor combinations”
There’s even precedent.
HaremPhone: more expensive and harder to use than a regular phone.
Also likes to play practical jokes, and has, in fact, pulled off the “Telephone” gag before.
I thought she couldn’t pull off the “Telephone Gag” due to being born with a gag reflex :P
It’s also totally secure! Well as secure as her ability to keep a secret anyway.
Still more secure than Dabbler’s pants.
Not our fault she freely acknowledges it’s a minimal security area
Um, Dabbler’s pants don’t have a security rating, it’s first come first serve, literally I’d say….
Somehow I do not think Sydney will be relying on that too much. Harem has already found her way into The List, for that offence.
But the buttons….
Ok, that then got me thinking of what sockets she has. So I am totally not to blame, for then realising that she would be the ultimate cellphone for sexting.
…and a limited range of apps…
You mean you can’t play Angry Birds on Harem phone? Booooo! It’s trash now. I’m buying an Igalaxy 6G Droidphone!
Although she does a superb Candy Crush.
Well, Candy probably does enjoy being ‘crushed’ between Harem’s thighs :D
If Harem has mastered the Thigh Master to that point, I’d much prefer NOT getting MY candy crushed…
Whi the heck is Candy and why is she a masochist?
And back in Dabbler’s Science Corner #2, we got to see that Anvil is better with the thigh-crushing technique than Harem is…
;)
I don’t know, I always liked that one lass from the James Bond movie who killed guys using her legs and snapping their backs while having them in position thinking they were about to have fun… Only she got to have fun and they just died….
I still say getting twins pregnant would’ve been a perfect storyline for Two and a Half Men. The old one with Charlie Sheen.
you mean the funny version of the show.
Kris didn’t say that.
You saying the failed season and a half with Kootch is the funny version? If it was so ‘funny’, why has it failed quicker than “That 70’s Show” without Grace?
The thing with the Charlie Sheen version is that his character had a lot of vices. (drinking, whores, gambling..ect.) That made him interesting to watch as you wanted to know if he’d overcome them to become a better person. Plus it was a great source of comedy and in natural conflict with his brother Alan’s straight laced uptightness. And Jake brought an innocence as a child that forced him to take a mature role for once in his life. Now I didn’t really watch the Kutcher version but from what I saw he wasn’t that guy. He seemed generally nice and responsible by nature which kind of changes the dynamic.
Used to enjoy watching “TaaHM”, but stopped watching when Kootch took over, having Charlie’s daughter showing up wasn’t even enough for me to keep watching
I didn’t say that, either.
You’re assuming both Kris and I believe there is a funny version of the show, which is a big assumption. It seems that Kris did find that version funny, despite not saying so originally.
TaaHM wasn’t my favorite show but I did like the older season more. The point I was trying to make was that getting twins pregnant is something you could see Charlie doing and not Ashton Kutcher’s character regardless of personal preference.
“hey olvia…we are friends right? fancy working in a store with a super hero?” hehe
answer “is there a EXTREMLY good insurance?” hehe
You’d need both ‘dental’ and ‘mental’…
8-)
and preferably ready to be exposed to raged journalists hehe
Hazard and Life more likely.
Dental, Mental, Hazard and Life. The new girl band, starring Harem.
i think you forgot “fireproof and lazerproof” in that mix
Harem, not Halo. Daphne has no special defences, other than teleporting away.
• Dental – Nice smile.
• Mental – Dubious ethics (see restaurant faux pas).
• Hazard – To anybody not expecting her teleporting.
• Life – Harem lives five lives, at once.
What about the fifth Daphne? Or is she the roadie slash manager?
she’s her own groupie? (sorry, I had to say it)
What, and miss out on the opportunity of making out with a groupie, whist the rest of her are on stage?
There are a whole bunch of reasons why Harem would be wise never to commit all her bodies to a single enterprise. But I won’t list them all, because the list, and the accompanying explanations, would make for a heck of a wall of text.
But I am sure several will have already sprung to mind, for anybody reading this comment.
i am NOT sure i consider halo a “regular” hazard in life sincerly
EVEN if she didn’t have her powers hehe
“I don’t do selfies. Well, not in the usual way.”
https://davebarrack.deviantart.com/art/Harem-Playboy-Shoot-Topless-354162310
(NSFW: You must be logged into Deviant Art to see this version of Dave’s artwork)
…The mind boggles at the possibilities…
That reminds me of an old conspiracy about there being a 6th Harem that Daphne keeps secret.
#ThereIsASixth
I am curious as to how Harem set up that photo. It is most likely white-hair Harem taking the photo, and blonde Harem in the shot. But how did she get the outfit together so quickly? My only guess is that she has a system where multiple copies all vorp into the wardrobe at once and perform a kind of NASCAR pit crew makeover on the chosen copy.
Perhaps all her outfits hang losely on ropes and she vorps into the clothes, then pulls the rope out.
Or there might just have been a minute’s delay in between frames.
Or maybe Blondini was already wearing that gear (the rule is, that at least one Harem is in uniform at all times, not that they all have to be in uniform)
Well that photo is supposed to be from a professional Playboy-esque shoot.
Based on what we saw before this flashback, we can assume it was a good ides to hire her…
…but that doesn’t mean that Olivia (& Syd & Joel) didn’t suffer some “bumps in the road” before she became a smoothly-running “cog” in the store’s employee roster. Some of that story might even be mined for its comedy potential…?
Wow – when I started to write this, only 3 entries were above me…
…the rest appeared when I entered this post!
note that this is only the second time meeting her from Sydney’s point of view. the only resign she is even considering it is becose of her brother. as good as it probably works out it would be a bad distion to make atm
About the morse code option. I suppose annoying vs. distracting all depends on which button you’re tapping… :P
Considering that it’s Harem we’re referring to, there’s a lot of buttons to be tapped.
;)
That comment had me thinking about Harems sexual nature, I mean do all versions of her share libido or what. I mean we learned they share sensations, so if one of them is having sex are the other four in there bunks as well. And are they all horny all the time. Ohh and how are her monthly working, are oall her versions in perfect sinc or is she suffering five times as much as any other woman?
Regardless it would be five times as much, I think, given that simultaneous would just be five times the misery all at once. In her place I’d toss the spares in storage those days…unless that just sets them up to continue the period when they come out…..
Unless storage messes with the timelines on such, I would assume they’d be in sync, if nothing else for the same reason women who live together ( or spend most of their days together) wind up in sync. I strongly suggest that hormonal matching up is a survival mechanism, so the men don’t go insane with someone always pms’ing…
Yea, I think community unity does have a strong survival element to it, which could well influence evolution.
The other aspect that could also feed into that side of things is harmony amongst the females. If a woman is jealous that her guy might go chasing after one of the other women, in their circle of friends/ associates, whilst she is having her period, that could be a serious cause for disharmony. And that could threaten each and every relationship, several times a month.
If you have two competing tribes, one of which has a genetic adaptation where the periods are in synch, and the other lacks that, then the former is bound to be more harmonious, for various reasons. Even if it means that the latter kinds of tribes have just 5% more break-ups and teams refusing to co-operate, those kinds of numbers can influence long-term survival.
the bodies are “frozen in stasis” when they are recalled. so for recovery from a wound (or something like her “Cycle”) the body in question HAS to be “Active” so she’s got 5 bodies going through it at once, or an extended one as she cycles them in and out.
Depending on the length of period for her, that would mean ‘continuous’, not ‘extended’ ^_^() It’s not uncommon for a period to last 5-7 days fro some women. Those for whom it is only 2-3 are EXTREMELY lucky.
Gotcha.
[Makes mental note to self: Do not mix that up with werewolves, that is 3 nights.]
I’ll admit I’m working on an assumption of a 4-6 day period. (my last roommate commonly had 10 day ones X_X)
If Harem did it that way, her “that time of the month” would likely be pretty much ALL the time…
:(
Hiring Olivia would be a hit… she’s an Upcoming Comic Geek and would definitely help increase sales no matter how new to the business she might… the customers would be flocking in to educate her!
Maybe the store should join up with Pixie Trix Comics? :p
This Pixie Trix Comics?
https://www.ma3comic.com/strips-ma3/no_questions_asked%EF%BC%9F
X-actly! :-)
… and if you haven’t read the rest of the strips yet, where there’s more shenanigans at the store… get to it!
Word of warning for those unfamiliar with them: They are NSFW.
Sorry. I mean the overall comic the link goes to.The specific link is safe, but be careful with browsing.
Don’t forget the two spin-off comics :D
Ahh yes, mustn’t forget them.
Don’t be silly, Pixie Trix Comics is fictional!
*rolls eyes heavenward*
Not really, the people who own the IRL Pixie Trix are the same people doing the comic(s).
:-)
That angle did amuse me. The comic shop called “Pixie Trix Comics”, as per the link, is fictional though. So I could quite honestly give a straight forward reply to the (most likely) intended meaning.
Whilst the little devil on my shoulder was chuckling, due to there being a couple of other interpretations, which could be laid on my reply.
Sydney may be thinking of hiring Olivia just to ensure her conversion to the comic side.
She should offer milk and cookies (based on the number of guilds/super groups/teams, etc after players) it must work
That is Harem’s priorities for you.
1. Make a picture for the client.
2. Deliver the message that brought you here.
Heh. Just so.
Pro tip though, don’t mix up “client” and “customer”. Professions which have clients have a legal duty of care to them. Whereas customers have far more restrictive rights being subject to such terms as “buyer beware”.
Mostly it is just a matter of semantics, so I would not have bothered mentioning it. But there are grey areas where elevating somebody to “client” status, by referring to them as such, can accidentally be granting them more legal rights. That is, of course, assuming you are the one providing them with goods and/or services.
Dave had replied to prior comments that he was going to return Olivia to her original ‘olive’ complexion. Had he already completed this page at that time, or does the newly hired colorist have some ‘splaining to do?
As far as I know, he hasn’t chosen which of us he’s hiring yet. Or if he has, he hasn’t told us yet.
He would have had to tell at least one of you if he did.
‘Chosen’ and ‘hired’ aren’t necessarily the same thing XD He could be intending a whole big announcement thing, and planning to have the new hire find out at the same time as everyone else. Given that he already delineated the pay and all in the hiring post, if we weren’t up for that pay scale and work rate we wouldn’t have applied, so he can be fairly certain no-one would back out AFTER the announcement.
Impulsive hiring decision never go wrong! Never! So says Impulsiveness!
Are you familiar with the serial novel Citadel? https://unillustrated.wordpress.com/monster/
One of the characters is also a duplicator with a somewhat shared mind, they quickly came to the same conclusion in the story as uses, and have copies of him stashed all over the place (no teleporting, but no limit to the copies) to be used as emergency, uneavesdroppable communication. Since when any of the copies dies it breaks down and vanishes, and he can make more, they also are… using him extensively in training everyone else.
Sounds like the Sydney definition of a ‘bad power’. In order to make most use of it he has to be placed into situations where he is likely to be painfully injured, mutilated and even killed!
Personally I will stick to wormhole creation. Just as flexible, but way less traumatic.
And Olivia is oblivious to what’s going on right now…this’ll be good!
She’s just that much into the Sunstone book that she is lost to whatever goes on :p
It is a good story, that said I’m surprised she isn’t blushing more.
Or to encourage her brother/cousin (that always sounds like a hillbilly reference to me) to spend more time at the store.
So, was ‘selfie’ a common term back in 2011?
*ducks*
If wikipedia can be trusted on this:
“The earliest usage of the word selfie has been traced to 2002, when it first appeared in an Australian internet forum (ABC Online) on 13 September in a comment written by Nathan Hope: “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped over and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1 cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
or even less so “knowyourmeme”:
“Origin
While it is unclear where the term selfie began, selfy spelled with a y was used as early as 2004 on photo-sharing site Flickr[23] to describe self-taken portraits. The term was also popular within the teenage population on the social networking site MySpace, as exhibited by the first definition for selfy, submitted to Urban Dictionary[24] on April 22nd, 2005.”
So probably yes.
Also, from Wikipedia:
Hmm… marginal, I’d say. They’re all cutting-edge in ‘Event Horizon Comics’!
Just think, by the time Grrl Power gets into it’s second in-setting year, it will be getting fans who are saying “But I was not even born in 2011”!
:P
That depends on how much Dave intends to skip over/speed past. He did mention that the fight scene went far ‘slower’ than the comic as a whole was likely to.
Yea, I suspect it will whip by quite a bit faster than I am taking it there. I just could not resist saying that, once the thought had popped into my head. I guess I am somewhat like Cordelia Chase, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in that regard.
I doubt it will ever catch up to real time though. Unless Dave gets all the early relationships and dynamics set up, then decides to do a big skip forwards, to see how things progress in the longer term. Given that it would be hard to catch up four years, from this pivotal time in history, without taking that approach.
If my assumption is right, he will always have to keep an eye to movie release dates, and the like, to avoid continuity errors. Although he does have one trick he can pull. An industry with super workers could develop things faster than in our world. If you can hire one guy to do all your special-effects, in real time, and just film it, then you can cut years off a production schedule, for example.
Close enough for super hero web fiction and horseshoes.
Also Harem probably picks up a lot of stuff early. She really gets around and has five times as many eyes and ears to hear and see it with. If any character was going to bust out a new buzzword early it would be her surely?
I can’t speak for Shirley, but agree you make good points there.
So many reasons why hiring Olivia would be a good idea for Sydney.
As in every new hire situation if anything happens it’s the new guy/gal ‘s fault.
Anytime she has a problem with a customer she can call Olivia over and even nerd girls will stop and stare.
Olivia will draw even more customers to the store.
Sydney’s crush will be around more often and Olivia can fill her in on all the important stuff.
Do it Sydney! Do it now before the gym hires her to sell memberships.
All good points, except for
Firstly, as with any hiring, such a failure reflects badly on the manager who hired them in the first place. Secondly, any loss will be coming out of Sydney’s pocket (and Joel’s), given that she is the co-owner.
Blame assigning is a typical game, and it got the suitable wry smile from me. And I guess you said it tongue-in-cheek. But, whilst, all your other points are solid, for that one, it would be self-defeating for Sydney to think in those terms.
If they do the blame thing internally it’s bad but if it’s just an excuse to the customer to get them to not be as upset it works.
True. Customers are often more forgiving if they know that somebody is new on the job. So it can help with the PR. Sometimes.
Well from my experience it’s always been a kinda joke/karmic thing for two reasons.
First the newbie is usually inexperienced and will make mistakes probably small ones.
Second in any group there will be a minimum level of hazing before someone is accepted into the group. If you cover a small screw up by a fellow employee while new, (everyone expects you to mess up a little when you are new) no one gets in trouble and you make friends.
Sound thinking. And Olivia does seem smart enough to do just that. As opposed to “COMIX!” guy. Who would just have Sydney looking around for her shovel.
Also in most cases the “new” guy/girl won’t be new for long especially in todays job market.
Yes. Just hire someone on the spot with no real idea of what they are capable of or what they might do. Like burn down the place or run off with the money. :p
Up to now, I think they were possibly T-H-I-S close to considering insurance fires anyhow. ;)
Her brother is a well-established customer. So Sydney will have some means of judging her reliability, if only by association.
Mind you, you are wise to be cynical. However I would trust Olivia, from what I have seen of her (and assuming that Sydney has a positive opinion of her brother/cousin, for more than just having a nice butt).
Since we’ve seen a bit into the stories future, I’d say it’s a sign she’s to be trusted, but I wouldn’t just trust anyone right then and there.
If she was a smart business owner, she’d tell Maxima to hold on, be patient, the deal was her business didn’t suffer and that means she can’t be held to Maxima’s time clock :p
The smart [anything] will not risk pissing off someone who can shoot nuclear blasts out of her hands!
Don’t forget that Sydney has signed her life away (potentially quite literally). Some choices are now out of her hands. Lieutenant Colonels are not known for taking lip from raw recruits. As the song says “You’re in the Archon now“.
“Honestly Sydney may be thinking of hiring Olivia just to ensure her conversion to the comic side.”
This is probably one of those times where knowing what the author thinks actually takes away from the comic. (I’m OK with that occasionally though because overall I prefer behind the scenes “making of” knowledge and I had a few seconds to enjoy my version first.) I believed Sydney was a mad genius for a few seconds because I thought she was thinking of hiring Olivia because she was Joel’s “type”, or maybe all reasonably intelligent/witty attractive women are his type *shrugs*, and she knows Joel well enough that she was hoping this would diffuse some of his anger that she left him in the lurch at lunch with an untrained and uninterviewed/background checked person running the store. Certainly he wouldn’t be able to get angry at the new hire or say anything derogatory about her being chosen for the job in front of Olivia if this was true.
“You can even just tap on one of them to use morse code. She’d probably find that annoying though.”
Knowing Harem that probably depends on the who and the how of the tapping.
I wonder how Harem feels about being used as a phone when people reflexively yell at her like she was the person who’s messages she is relaying?
Sydney tell Maxima, through Harem, that you thingie is powered down and you can’t find your way around in the sky yet (left the car behind etc…) and could she please use her super speedy flight to come lead you back to HQ. She’ll probably just have Harem take you another device to find your way but there is a small chance she will come down in person thus making for a three superheroine appearance (really close to the cameras as well) at your store early in the first full day of this media explosion. That should help keep your store a little visible despite the juicier footage of the fight. Might have to hire security.
Huh, I knew she would have to hire someone eventually but when I saw Harem I thought maybe she would stick her there till after Joel got back from lunch in a short while.
That can get annoying.
So annoying that it could make someone considering double or triple agenting ;P .
As anyone who’s worked a help desk (as I have) can tell you, you’ll get yelled at simply because the customer is upset and you just happened to be unfortunate enough to be the one who picked up the phone. I was a sub-contractor for the XBox Live! Tech Support center for a few months. I lost track of the number of times I got yelled at just for being the messenger that had to relay bad news.
It’s something that you learn to expect in most messenger-type jobs (and especially in jobs where you are expected to try to provide phone support to people who are not employees of the same firm you work for). The trick to survival in these situations is to learn not to take it personally. It isn’t you that they’re mad at. They’re frustrated with a product that is produced by the firm you represent, and they’re taking it out on you because you’re a target of convenience.
Also, any firm that does phone support under contract to other firms, usually has strict rules regarding things such as verbal abuse… which usually translates to “You can hang up if [x] happens [y] number of times.” In my case, if the customer swore at you three times. I was pretty lenient if they were just swearing in general. If they made it personal, then I would start giving warnings. I had one call that basically went something like this:
Customer: “About time one of you dumb ers answered the phone. I’ve been on the phone for eight whole minutes!”
Me: “We’re experiencing an unusual call volume; I’m sorry you had to wait so long. By the way: one.”
Customer: “One? One what?”
Me: “One warning for swearing at me. I get paid to try to help you, not to take verbal abuse.”
Customer: ” you! I should be able to curse whenever I want!”
Me: “Two.”
Customer: “Man, this ! My ing XBox is broken, and you’re warning me about my language? you and Microsoft!”
Me: “Three. Goodbye.” *hangs up*
Whoops, forgot about not using angle brackets. Insert [bleep] where appropriate.
Duly inserted. :-D
God I would hate having to bite my tongue at somebody being rude to me like that! I am really thankful that most of my career I spent dealing with other business professionals, rather than members of the public. Which makes it a lot easier to ensure things remain civil. I honestly cannot remember one occasion where a client lost their rag at me. Some were not happy with the company mind, but it never came my way.
The only incident I can remember with swearing (in insult terms, as opposed to just being used in casual speech) was in one company when a taxi rank, next door, had their radios interfere with our phones. That happened a few times, and took a fast-talk, or diplomacy, check to resolve!
However that was at the one company where I did deal with the general public. Thankfully though it was in a role where I had (quite literally) unlimited authority to act on my own discretion. Had anybody been so silly as to be unjustifiably rude to me, they would abruptly find themselves as ex-customers!
Which would have been a very costly mistake for them. Even if they could find an alternative, it would be many times more expensive for them to do so. And the company always backed our decisions absolutely* so any appeal would fail.
* In justifiable circumstances, needless to say.
You were in a very, very fortunate position. One which is probably not shared by 99% of CS jobs.
I have luckily never held such a position, but I was on the NOC team for a regional ISP and one of my co-workers was dating one of the CS agents. Several times when I was at his place after work she would arrive home and only then break down in tears, having managed to keep her composure for the entire day of taking calls from angry customers. After all, people only call CS to complain (even if it is about a legitimate issue), never to thank.
I was lucky in that the NOC did not take customer calls, and only very rarely did we even get an issue escalated to us which required customer interaction. In fact I can only recall one such incident, where the CEO asked me to call a customer who had placed several Tech Support and CS calls previously without receiving any satisfaction. Prior to placing the call I read the call logs to see if I could figure out the issue. I didn’t get any information which would help me solve his problem, but a good many of the call logs included references to him yelling, swearing, and ended with “And he hung up on me.”
So I wasn’t looking forward to the call. But I had to make it. He answered, I introduced myself and said I would try my best to resolve his issue. As it turns out he was technically savvy enough to describe it to me, and I was technically savvy enough to be able to say “We need to provide secondary DNS for your domain. I will make the necessary configuration changes and it may take up to 24 hours to propagate.” Throughout he was calm and even friendly sounding. But while I can understand his frustration in placing call after call and not being able to get his issue resolved I can’t forgive or understand his screaming, cursing, and hang ups. Hanging up on someone who is trying to help you, even if it isn’t moving fast, is self-defeating behavior.
I have never had to work for tech support or similar, but I did spend two years as a cashier at a truck stop, which has some similar problems. At least on the phone you don’t have to smell them (some truckers apparently shower about once a month) when they’re reaming you because their company messed up and they don’t have money for fuel.
That is, of course, only the secondary problem with working at a truck stop. There is a reason most female hires are put to cashiering – they’re about the only women truckers see most of the year. So it can get pretty bad…When I was working there, I’d get thinly-veiled or blatant propositioning attempts a few times a week, and so did the other cashiers. Unless they tried something physically, you were ‘unofficially’ expected to just put up with it.
Yup. But “there’s now’t as queer as folk”.
Yea, I appreciated that at the time. It was the perfect storm. The customers needed us more than we needed them (individually speaking, that is).
The other side being that the firm needed staff who they could trust with the unlimited powers which were vital to the role. Any one of us could commit the company to a potential loss of millions of pounds, by simply saying “I agree”. Normally not going higher than that, but we needed the capability to do so, if the situation demanded it.
And it would be totally binding on the company. Similar to the comment Tom White made above, we were in the situation where our verbal contracts were backed by the force of law.
So the company had to implicitly trust our judgement. And took great care not to undermine our confidence. Providing we were making sound calls, they would back us to the hilt. The downside being that any staff observed to be making poor decisions would probably have been shown the door (or be demoted to a less responsible position) with as little hesitation.
YESSS One of my favorite movies XD Have you every tried watching it in the alien language with subtitles?
No.
*cries*
There was some issue with my DVD which meant I could not. I can’t remember if it was a bug, or simply that it was one of the less friendly Bulgarian ones. Sometimes they override the normal options with “here are the settings you shall use, and be grateful that we have not dubbed it into gobbledygook.” *
Regardless of Galaxy Quest being a parody, I rate it as one of the best science fiction films made. I would not hesitate to put it in my top ten list. And not low down either.
* Bugsy Malone being the worst example. They chose to dub it in such a way that you could not turn off their dub soundtrack. And the clots decided to translate the songs. You could not actually hear the singing, due to their monotonous dialogue! It must have ruined the film even for Bulgarians.
Oh no…Well, it might be just as well. You can get a headache trying it, with all that screeching. But they subtitled the parts that were originally in the alien language too, which made for some extra jokes.
Stargate
Alien
Star wars- first trilogy
Star trek 2 – the wrath of khan
Terminator 2 – judgment say
Back to the future 1-3
ET
Planet of the apes (the original ones)
The time machine (either original or remake)
Serenity
Yeah i can think of quite a few scifi movies that rank well higher than galacy quest as best scifi movie ever
Oh yeah and guardians of the galaxy. To ad some comic book scifi also
Obviously such lists are personal, so my list would not match someone else’s. So I would not critique your list, as I don’t know your judgement values. But I clearly make one distinction which you do not. I have a separate list for things which are good the first time you see them. As opposed to ones which have fairly regular rewatch value.
To illustrate the difference contrast Alien to Aliens. The former is clearly the better movie for the fist time watch experience (especially as it was a seminal movie which influenced the industry). But it is one that gets it’s greatest impact from the suspense, fear of the unknown and similar elements.
Which is not to say that it lacks in other areas, but that is why I contrast it to the sequel, as they share many of those strong points (good acting, production values, pacing etc). But the latter does not make itself so reliant on the surprise factor. Which makes it better on rewatchability.
Not that Aliens would get into my top ten either. I have a bunch of other criteria. But ultimately I must feel passionately about the entirety of a movie, for it to get on my list.
With that in mind only two of the films you listed would make the grade to be considered in the company of Galaxy Quest, on my own list. The rest are good movies. But individually each would bore me if I had watched it as recently as a few years ago.
But everyone’s tastes are different. One (mainstream not art-house) movie manager I knew would happily have played the Sound of Music, in one of his auditoriums, once a week, indefinitely, if the company had let him. Thank God they did not!
Hiring Olivia is smart. Disappearing before Joel gets back is Wheatly level dumb.Olivia needs time to settle in and find her feet. She needs orientation and direction at least for her first day.
True. But Sydney has dropped the ball on this one, by loosing track of time. Or misunderstanding Maxima’s instructions. Either way though, the ship has sailed. Sydney has made a mistake, and needs to fix it, fast.
Although, technically, Sydney started work yesterday, today is the first day that she is showing up for work. Rule one of being a good employee is “Don’t be late on your first day.”
Sydney now has to do crisis management. She did the sensible entrepreneur thing, of trying to talk her way out of it. And has clearly realised that Maxima is not going to let things slip. With her ADHD enhanced multi-tasking, Sydney will be realising that it would be very very bad for a recruit to piss off a lieutenant colonel. Especially on her first day in boot camp!
Hanging around is no longer an option. No matter how impolite or inconvenient it may be. Sydney is just looking around for her best option to mitigate the damage.
True, but leaving the place before joel gets back is equally bad. This is their livelihood. (I have no idea what sort of pay a recruit for a super squad gets) And honestly, this is the sort of thing thats a miscommunication or lack of forethought on both sides. They know that sydney is co owner of a business, they know she has to work there because there is only one other employee, and having a noonish cutoff makes sense, but it ignores the need for a break of her coworker who will be stuck there all day alone dealing with this mess while she goes off to training. Perhaps next time will be, “Hey joel, how about taking your lunch break at 11:25? That way I can book it at just before noon and get there on time.” There, problem solved. There are always bugs with a new system and things need to be tweaked and adjusted.
Personally, I cant wait to see what will go on at archon. Will this be mainly scientific/magical testing and analysis of her orbs? Or will she get the drill sergeant from FMJ in her face the second she lands at the entrance and be pt’ed so hard she wants to die?
For your first paragraph forget that Maxima is a nice friendly person, who views Sydney like a wayward daughter or sister. Rather think of her as a tough-nosed, battle hardened lieutenant colonel, who is efficient enough to be chosen to spearhead the most important military unit in her countries history.
Then appreciate her counter to all your points.
“Not my problem.”
If Sydney wants to play at being a shopkeeper she has to learn to do it on her own time and not to impact on the efficiency of the unit. Starting now.
It is Maxima’s problem, since she apparently agreed with Sydney’s “one condition.” We don’t know the exact terms agreed upon, but Sydney appears to have a difference of opinion with Maxima on what they were. Given that Sydney showed up a but past 0900 we might assume that the shop opens then. And if that is the case then “show up for training at noon” isn’t even giving Sydney a half day at the shop.
Incorrect. It is giving her exactly half the day. Sydney just needs to get up earlier.
And, despite the way I phrased it, i don’t think that Maxima will behave in a harsh way. She will not be a dick about it. And will likely handle it in a diplomatic way. As seen by Harem’s “which is Maxima’s polite way of saying”.
But it really is not Max’s concern. She has got a very important job of her own, with many people dependant on her. Not just the members of ArcSwat, but the greater community beyond.
She cannot spend time looking after Sydney’s civilian problems. You are right that she has agreed to allow Sydney the time to do that herself. But Sydney must learn that it cannot be allowed to leak over into her military time. Nor can she push her problems onto Maxima or the unit.
Sydney is already late reporting for duty, and has also required another member of the unit to go fetch her. Making the unit two members down. At a critical time, when they need to be training and getting the unit operational.
Fortunately the comic probably does not need to focus on that issue unduly, as Sydney is smart enough to pick up on what Harem is saying. Mind you she is a civilian, and the transition to military thinking and habits is not an easy one. However that is what boot camp is for, as Sydney will be finding out shortly.
Something to keep in mind Yorp, is that you are entirely correct in a pure military training capacity, thats exactly how maxima would likely react. But we have seen EXTENSIVE proof that this is hardly some super spit and polished marine detachment here. For gods sake, maxima dispensed punishment on a subordinate who embarrassed her via WEDGIE. Admittedly, it has been a long time since I was in basic training, but I dont recall that being an accepted method for behavioral correction. They are only formal when they have to be, the rest of the time, they are friends and coworkers who gleefully devour pounds of popcorn and gallons of soda watching craziness constantly unfolding around them. So while maxima certainly wants her there asap, I doubt she will pull the full scale rank card on her and ignore reality by saying its not her problem and that sydney has to get there now. That said, I was exaggerating a bit with the “PT TILL YOU DIE FROM IT!” response, but I bet she will face something like that as punishment for being later than maxima scheduled her for. I am picturing sweat and exhaustion in her immediate future.
Yup. I totally agree with you. Maxima will handle issues like this in a relaxed way. But she will ensure that Sydney gets the message, however she goes about it. As others have suggested, she might feel that today is not the most tactful day to do that. Although there are risks with letting it slide.
But if she fails to ensure that her team understands the distinction between having a relaxed and fun working environment, versus the need to have strong self-discipline and responsiveness to a superior’s orders, then she will have a serious problem.
Because that will inevitably result in lax discipline and all the nightmare scenarios that follow from that.
DaveB has set himself a tough tight-rope to balance. The relaxed environment is very very good for a fun comic. It is also believable that an elite unit can operate in that way, with a suitably skilled commander ensuring that the fun enhances operational effectiveness, rather than detracts from it.
But, he has also attracted a lot of readers with military and law enforcement backgrounds. And if the tone shows that the underlying discipline is lacking, then the whole ‘real world’ and realistic vibe will be lost.
I do not feel that has happened though. And have every confidence that Dave can continue to manage the trick.
Unorthodox though the super wedgie was, it shows that Maxima will not tolerate undisciplined behaviour. In this unit you do not get a month brushing the toilets with your toothbrush. Maxima is far too creative!
You are making an argument based on exactly zero evidence. My position has at least the weight of reason on its side. If Sydney said she needed to work half days at her shop then that means half of the time the shop is normally scheduled to be open, not half of a 24 hour day.
The evidence it that Maxima said midday. Quod erat demonstrandum.
In practical terms any business has a lot that needs doing both before it opens doors for business, and after they shut. Sydney will just have to ensure that she takes the burden of the former. Plus any over-spill from the latter, which Joel and Olivia cannot handle.
Everybody has stuff they need to do in their day to day lives. But it really does not matter what the details are, if your orders are “report for duty at midday”. You do that, or face the displeasure of your commander!
I like the amount of freedom being an officer of ARC allows. I remember hearing in the news once that a cop posed for a picture at a party once. He was summoned due to a noise complaint, and someone had asked for a picture with him. He obliged, it made the news, and he got in trouble for it.
No really, this made the news, and he did get in trouble -_-;
Besides that, I just realized panels 8 and 9 are Harem communicating as middleman between Halo and Maxima. That’s really subtle, and really cool.
Um, does Dabbler really have 2 bellybuttons?
“…panels 8 and 9 are Harem communicating as middleman between Halo and Maxima. That’s really subtle, and really cool.”Totally agree. Whilst DaveB could have handled it by cutting to Harem and Maxima talking, the way he is showing it here is how it would come across to anyone on one end of the conversation. So conveys the true feeling very nicely.
It being quite funny that it plays well either way. Fist read through I took it as Harem just pausing to think, and maybe being a bit taken aback at Sydney’s aggressive stance. It was only on the re-read that I made the same connection as you did, and it suddenly fell into place.
Especially with Harem’s eyeline going upward. Her other self is having to look up to Maxima, and this body is unconsciously mimicking that action. Really really subtle!
Yes Dabbler has two bellybuttons for reasons that will eventually be explained.
Also Harem was careful not to use an in uniform body for the selfie.
Whatever disciplinary action taken in such situations might depend a lot on the individual officer’s captain. You might remember a few years back, a video that went viral of an RCMP officer that came across some guys partying in the bush. Instead of being all “cop” about it, he jammed with them, and the RCMP got the kind of good PR you can’t buy.
*looks closer at what Olivia is reading* that looks awfully familiar no idea where I’ve seen it before though >_>
same book she was reading last comic, daveb put a link to it in his blurb on that page.
Didn’t even notice it last time, I blame the clowns under my bed and gnomes always the damned gnomes…
From what i can see its sunstone from Stjepan Šejić another quite active user of deviantart
and its good end of story i just noticed it today and went batshit crazy looking for someone noticing it as i rarely read comments
Aww, and we go to all that trouble to make it cosy and inviting here.
*eyes mist up, and gets a catch in the throat*
Still, not everyone has the luxury of time to spare. I … understand.
I like that he’s doing the art for Rat Queens, now.
Yea, I hate those gnomes too. Always stealing your underwear.
But cmon… Its part of the plan!
Step one – get underpants
Step two – …
Strp three – PROFIT!
What are you to disparage that? Some kinda commie?
He he. I approve. Olivia can stay on staff as long as she likes!
Joel really should have listened to commentators’ dire warnings about him leaving the store. Not that anyone predicted that Sydney would go AWOL, whilst his back was turned.
Look, I appreciate that max wants her there to start work, but harem is being kinda stupid. Just the hiring process would, in any real world, take longer than 15 minutes. Teaching her replacement to use the register and all that jazz? That takes even longer. Making her capable of holding down the fort with no support till joel gets back? Uhhh, most places wouldnt do that for a very long time. New hires arent exactly the most confidant of people, and there are often questions that pop up when you first start working. Seriously, “Wait 15 minutes Max, Joel left a half hour ago, he will be back soon.”
Oh, and sydney, dont forget to ask for directions or something. You got lost trying to find your own damn store. You only saw archon once and spent the whole trip there screaming. Maybe your wrist thing is charged up enough to use as a gps.
Harem is trying to remain calm while having to face an irate Golden Elf of Doom
If Max was really that fixed on Sydney showing up, she could go pick her up personally (she could arrive there almost as fast as Harem, remember, she got back to HQ from the bank in less than five seconds)
Maxima is the commanding officer, you dont send the commander to go wrangle recruits for training.
The archon building is easier to spot from high ip than sydney’s comic book shop
i’m not usually up this early in the morning…it’s not even 7 am yet…still i like how everyone expects someone to be different in real life vs how they are on camera. i’m guessing they weren’t expecting sydney to be that big of a spaz all the time…they obviously haven’t been to the store before or they would know. yay for new customer.
i mean 7 am my time…2 hour difference between my time and post time…
Someone has kidnapped Joel. Thats why hes not back…..
Maybe he got involved in a bank robbery.
Heh. I am a bit slow on the uptake. I thought that Halo was just using the tentacle to hold onto her fan’s arm, like you might wrap arms around each other’s in a photo. But, taking a second look, I realise she is repeating “the rocker” that she is forming with her fingers. And also giving a call-back.
I think it would have been funnier if she did “The Shocker” since we didn’t get to see that earlier. That, or
(stupid not being able to edit if you mess up link coding)
…”The Su-Fi”
ME ME ME! HIRE ME! ME ME ME! ME AND YORP! WE’LL RUN THE SHOP! WE’LL DO A GOOD JOB! RIGHT YORP?
Heh. I would be up for it. Not sure that I would be very suited to retail mind. But to hang with Sydney? Yuppers.
I’ll take care of pretty much everything (15 years of retail allows me to do that. Seriously, I can run a small store by myself with ease). You can just sit outside and draw people in by being a good dog, and if they walk on by grab them by the pants and drag them into the store.
Oh, the adorable doggy routine I am very familiar with. It is a great ice breaker, and even works with non-smokers.
Not that I have trained my Jack Russell to do her cute doggy routine with any passing pretty girls! Well, obviously not, she cannot tell which ones are pretty.
…I actually had something similar happen once. Neighbor guy was taking his dog out to scout out a piece of grass to do their business, said dog (german shepherd, pardon my spelling) did the whole cute and friendly bit right up until I tried to walk away, whereupon they seized me by my coat. Their owner was less than pleased with them XD But it makes me wonder where and why they developed that habit.
Mmm, either endearingly charming, or deeply worrying. You seem tickled by the incident, so probably you were picking up vibes that it was all innocent, and supporting the former.
But their respective body languages, the owner’s tone and intonation towards both you and the dog, plus the manner of any rebuke to the German Shepherd are all things I would weigh in such circumstances.
I always opt for giving the benefit of the doubt. But anytime that there is something which could point to the contrary, my mind goes into total overdrive to check if there are any supporting signs of sinister intent.
If there are none to be seen though, then life is best served by going with the flow and taking it as harmless fun.
I rather doubt it was intentional. Someone less animal-happy and with less experience for dogs probably would’ve been scared half to death.
Your life experiences probably would not lead you to the same dark places my mind can go at times. I have seen police dog training, where the dogs get taught to restrain fleeing subjects.
This was in South Africa, and needless to say the bloke wearing the big puffy safe-to-bite outfit was a black* guy. That being the presumed fleeing criminal. So the training was ensuring that a dog could be put in attack mode and could single out a black person in a crowd of whites.*
A real touch of racism at it’s height. **
But I also see the same training being inadvertently conducted by civilians. In South Africa this would happen with blacks. In Bulgaria it is with gipsies. Every time an undesirable is turned away at the gate, with harsh words, this is actually training the dog.
If it can spot a pattern it will. And dogs, as you can see from my first example, can attune to ethnicity. If the people being turned away are always just the black (or gypsy) visitors, then the dogs will likewise discriminate. Many gypsies here are very frightened of dogs as a result.
And dogs are just as capable of identifying the gender of humans as their ethnicity.
Like I say, no need to read anything sinister into it. If the rest of your instincts were saying ‘this guy is ok’. So I am not attempting to alarm you. Just enlighten you as to the alternatives.
Namely you could have been experiencing a part-trained (or ill-trained, or accidentally trained) dog enacting a restrain command. Which, given the circumstances, had been triggered by a female moving away from that guy.
Or, much more likely, it may have been pure co-incidence. Dogs do tend to grab with their mouths (and a lot more frequently than you might get accidental training of such a specific nature).
* Apologies for using the term, if it gives offence to anyone. Whilst caucasian does not seem to offend, the alternatives for ‘black’ really make little sense. African American is highly localised. for instance. And really silly when you consider that I am an African Englishman. But it conveys nothing about my skin colour.
If anybody can suggest a suitable alternative, I would be interested. But, barring one that I feel makes sense, I use the word that conveys common meaning. Given the history of discrimination, I can well see how it would offend. But both South Africa and America have far worse versions, which are used when such is intended.
Whereas black is simply a not very accurate approximation of ethnicity. Not hugely different to how inaccurate white is, when actually meaning various shades of pink. But it conveys the meaning far more concisely than skipping around the bush, with politically correct terms.
** Although, to be fair, technically they were trying to ensure that fleeing was the key part of the training. If, on days I was not present, they used a white guy in the suit too, then they would be properly training it to that effect. In that era though, I doubt it very much.
Actually, hiring Ophilia because she’s not into comics might be the right choice
Bah, get a Harem to run the shop for 15 minutes.
that or call Joel and explain the situation and that she’ll have to close the shop till he gets back from chow. in fact trying to talk a Harem into running the shop for a few mikes would be my second choice given the situation.
Sooooo…. somebody is reading Sunstone XD
Olivia is my new favorite, behind Co-ed and Peggy.
Oh wait, you mean Abbey? The white-haired Daphne with the glasses? What about Bodie or Gothamer?
Yes, the one you call Abbey. I don’t know which is Bodie, but the Goth one is too gloomy for me. I know they are all Daphne under the different skins of Harem, but she also acts a little different in each of her bodies. Vogue is the posh one, all sex appeal, fashion and glamour. Punk has that pugnacious glint in her eye, that “bring it” mentality that makes her special. The strawberry Original has a slacker, couch potato air about her that reminds me of too many young people I know. The Co-ed you call Abbey, with her glasses and her clip board and her slightly stuffy, prim and proper librarian intellectual airs, is the one I’d want to date the hardest, if I was younger, taller, and had a chance.
Bodie = Punk. Here’s a discussion.