Grrl Power #855 – Close encounters of the worst time
Thongs, Sydney. The ladies wear thongs. Or… at least some of them do. Or… at least they claim to.
Those are ziplines coming off the top of the tower, because why wouldn’t there be?
Hmm. Not sure what else to say about this page. It’s really just a transition to show Cora and crew coming back. I suppose I could have had someone look out the window and said “Oh, hey, Cora’s back.” without showing it, but it’s the second time a spaceship has landed in public in the Grrl-verse, so it seemed significant.
General Faulk is 50, BTW. That sounds old when you’re 20, admittedly. It sounds a lot less old when you’re in your 40’s. And it sounds even less old when you realize that Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves are in their mid 50’s. Honestly as a career military guy, Faulk could probably scale that tower faster than most of the people reading this comic, I’d bet. Sure, he’s probably been mostly riding a desk for the last few years, but he’s still up and doing some sort of exercise at the ass crack of dawn every day still. I would have put that Sydney almost beat Sandy’s time, but I figured most people wouldn’t remember who she was without additional prompting. (She’s Arianna’s assistant.)
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Sydney just can’t catch a break.
Lets hope not! Those arms are important to not break.
As long as its a clean break most likely a non issue.. Doc has healing powers if she can regen eardrums blown to hell she can most likely re-fuse a bone.
Actually she can’t. Jigg’s still going to have some permanent hearing loss. Just not as much as she would have without her.
Her healing powers aren’t perfect. Remember, Heatwave lost a toe… (though Brooke said it was because it was necrotic, which isn’t exactly what I’d expect from massive electrical damage).
Say, I bet Cora’s ship has the medical tech needed to fix both of them up!
Or maybe they aren’t. Final ball, no whammies!
Her luck is min-maxed. She gets all her good luck for critical plot relevant stuff, and suffers on the day to day.
Not bad news, I hope.
Sydney should get to call foul at the ship ruining her time. It’s not a standard obstacle to the course.
I am sure the instructors will allow her to start at the beginning to try and get a better time :)
Expect the unexpected, you must.
Especially as a superhero.
Yoda i thought you were dead.
Lives on and is chatty as a force ghost, he does.
To be honest, Sydney wasn’t expecting Fashion Ninjas…
So every object equal to or less than Sydney’s weight in almost 1km of that ship was just flung into nearby buildings and people, not all of which can take damage …
Yeah even on a (mixed-use) military base, this is pretty irresponsible piloting. I hope the local authorities cite her, perhaps for littering.
Cora gets a lot of littering tickets.
Team Rocket, blasting off agaiinnn!!!
Wobafet!!
Wob a wob. Fet wob wob!
Buffet fet buff wob fet buffet…
Wob.
And now I’m absolutely certain there’s a Woba Fett character out there in some Pokemon / Star Wars crossover fanfic. I’m far less certain it’s any good, but I’ve been surprised before.
There’s even some cosplay : https://i.imgur.com/Z6i3UwH.jpg
Because of course there is!
Rule 34 is for porn; what number is the one stating there is cosplay for everything somewhere on the net?
Didn’t need a prompt to remember Sandy (did Daphne ever replace her lost phone?)
The phone wasn’t lost; it just got wet and stopped working.
Sandy “Unless you want to dig it out of the toilet, it was lost!”
heh heh, was hoping someone would say something so could make that line :D
Hm, yeah, speaking as someone in their 40’s.. I already feel fairly old, but don’t expect 50’s to feel all that different. Probably just a bit more wear and tear, that’s about it. I can still scale rock climbing walls, especially ones with the super easy jugs like that one had… my friends and I would do challenges like ‘lost arm’ or ‘lost leg’ or even ‘no leg’ on some of those. Well, back when I was in my 30’s we would, anyway…
I’m 61. At this point, the problem isn’t the wear and tear, it’s that it takes so bloody long to recover from any fresh wear and tear. Well, that and the fact that arthritis runs in my family.
Ah, a baby buster.like me. Did they close the schools the year after you went through, or the year after that?
Yep, arthritis and bone spurs, they truly do suck.
Wouldn’t arthritis tend to make your family less likely to run?
Heh! Ha!
…
Okay, maybe that one fell flat.
Try being 68, Just 2 years to 70!!!
I’m only 39, but I never scaled a single wall. Probably because I’ve never tried. So, no reason not to feel young. Which I do.
For the record, even the officers in military have to meet PT minimums. Twice a year on the regular for PT tests… or that was the standard at least in the last 8-10 years. It’s not exactly hard to meet those tests though. The BMI index that they go by could really use an overhaul though.
BMI always made me furious. It has no adjustment for HOW you’re built. It’s all “If you’re heavy, you’re fat.” Well NOW I am. But I’m old now. But when I was in the navy (Former FMF Corpsman) I was in better shape than when I played football in school. But I was constantly on weight control because they didn’t want anyone my height to weigh over two hundred pounds. I’m pretty sure my bones weigh that much. I am thin at 235 lbs. They got me to “radically underweight for my frame” at 214 lbs. And when I was actually working in the field with marine units, I was a slab of beef at 260 lbs. When I was finally medically discharged for being obese, I had a 54″ chest and a 38″ waist, Because isn’t the first word that you picture when you see someone whose waist is 16″ smaller than his chest ‘obese’?
THAT is why BMI annoys me.
Yup, they ought to have an alternate fat measurement for people with blocky frames. BMI is handy for general use, but 12% body fat should qualify regardless of weight.
In the army, we did have an alternative test for people who score overweight, but turned out to not be fat. So if you fail the BMI but pass the Tape test, then your good to go. I knew a couple of friends and a few NCOs that had to get Tapped every time. One of them wasn’t very tall, but bulky, and looked like he could pick up and throw his pickup if he wanted to. I had the exact opposite problem.
My pops knew a guy who was an instructor for the people without names (before he was assigned to that). NO FAT. Literal slab of muscle. Short, fast, and completely underestimated every single time. The day they had 3 navy guy’s looking for a fight my pops blinked and missed the fight. He was 4’8″. He was 210 lbs. He could not swim with extremely valid reason. His best challenge ever was running the mile around the track. Think “the cameraman chasing the olympians” kind of activity. The only difference is he would fireman carry one of the other grunts to prove his strength. This included the standard carry weight they were drilled with. This included the other grunt’s standard carry weight they were drilled with. They still say he finished second every single time. Primarily because what else would the drill instructors say? Granted this is how you teach an entire group of recruits to not laugh. This is also how you learn exactly how many swear words a Scottish man who just got carried a full mile without being asked by a tiny asian man can say.
Those of us who remember Sydney’s first verbal assault can picture half of it. Protip: Sydney can win in that regard.
I’m 5’8 and 175 lbs. I’m also fit and kind of busty. Every time, every single time, I fail BMI and pass Tape. Quite a few of the other ladies have the same problem. Most people know that muscle weighs more than fat, but hardly anyone takes into account how much boobs weigh.
You looked like your pickup could pick up and throw you? Is your name Soviet Russia?
Nyet. She is Natalya Trukhina.
Amen.
In High School I was 5′ 10″ and weighed 210 lbs. Based upon BMI, I was overweight. Didn’t matter that I had <5% body fat, could leg 300 and curl 200.
They had an alternative measurement. Most of the time we had to do a “rope and choke”. They’d measure your waist, minus your neck, versus your height. It was pretty horrendously inaccurate, at least for me. But they also had an occasionally available other method. Once a month or so, I could go to the base gym and be weighed twice, once next to the pool, and once IN the pool. Fat floats. So the wet/dry weight tells you an accurate body fat. Mu chart would be three weeks ‘rope and choke’, then a dry/wet, then more ‘rope and choke’, then another dry/wet…and so on. It would give the impression I magically lost and regained maybe 45 lbs of fat every few weeks, because I was. pretty steady with 22%,22%,22%,9%,22%,22%,22%,9%,22%,22%…
And I wasn’t ever fast. But I also ran one of our distance runs carrying an angry and foul mouthed marine.
He was the second largest guy in the platoon, besides me. And I finished the run under max time with him on my shoulders the whole way. Apparently that’s a popular way to prove that the big guy isn’t out of shape, just differently shaped.
I have seen a picture of a body builder with his arms outstretched and FOUR pretty girls in bikinis sitting on his arms like they were on a park bench. The caption to the picture: “The army says this man is out of shape.”
When I was in, there was a semi-official way to beat that problem: have your CO or First Shirt do a workout with you. Waiver: signed.
Note: the doctor who came up with BMI specifically stated that it was no good as a measure of health.
he should be somethinged in effigy for creating this monster that will.not.die.
So… why did they come up with it? :thinking:
It was seen (originally) as useful in population studies, not individual evaluation. However, medical “experts” with a high mental BMI liked the simplicity of the calculation for preliminary diagnoses, but couldn’t summon the energy needed for more rigorous methodology.
Late to the party, but the BMI was created by a mathematician. Between 1830 and 1850. Based on white men in the French military (IIRC). When food wasn’t quite so abundant, or easy to preserve. It’s kind of useless, on an individual level. I mean, really–everyone in ArcSwat is obese, according to the BMI.
It makes you wonder what Andre the Giant’s BMI was.
Young Andre looked more like Kevin Nash than Big Show
Yeah, that BMI index caused me no end of problems too. I’m just over 5’10” but I dieted & exercise myself down to 5lb. under the proscribed weight category for my age group back then, but was also consistently fighting against the upper BMI index for my category.
I think one of the main problems is that I don’t think they take account that as a person exercises & loses fat, they also gain more muscle…After all, that’s one of the reasons for PT in the first place. But fat is less dense than muscle so you’re weighing less with fat than you do with muscle, even if you’re overall volume stays the same.
I feel your pain…
My Dad was 6′ 4 3/4″, he weighed 245. His Doctor told him he had Adult Onset Diabetes and had to get down to 190. At 210 we went back in and the Doctor said “lose 20 more pounds”, to which I replied “How? By cutting off his head? He’s down to zero body fat!”. Needless to say, Dad never lost another ounce (not surprising: he was already 12 pounds lighter than when he went into the Army in ’41, at the age of 20).
The best-looking sheilas have a BMI of 25-30.
Let’s see how long Hiro’s shirt will survive this time.
Panel ten… already gone
Cora’s ship “misfired” the cloth disintegration ray.
By ‘accident’ ;)
They thought they saw a giant moth hanging around Hiro, it turned out to be just Sydney
Cora may have just wanted more beefcake- its less fattening than cheesecake.
That’s Hiro? Didn’t recognise him with the shirt on!
Where IS General Faulk? I don’t think we’ve seen him since the press conference. I think we may actually have seen more of Sandy than we’ve seen of him! And that’s terrible, because he’s awesome!
He’s probably riding a desk somewhere. Without a saddle, because, y’know, he’s just that damn good at desk riding.
We last saw him when some other feds were trying to claim the crashed spaceship.
She got to the top. What was left of the course to complete it?
Pressing the button.
Somewhat disappointed that it’s not shiny or candy-like.
Also….. not shaped like a service station emergency pump shutoff.
Forgot to say something similar last night
She reached the top, Hiro confirmed her time, and then she was blown off
As somebody that retired from the military in his super-late 40s, I can confirm that even deskbound, we stayed pretty fit compared to the general population.
Given her job and civilian status, I’m actually pretty impressed that Sandy completed the course at all – after all, she’d have no requirement to, so that means she thought it looked like fun and wanted to try it. Good on her!
Are you working on the assumption that Sydney is still a civilian? I don’t think that’s true.
Sandy indeed is a civilian. Sydney was not mentioned.
I misread, sorry. I had forgotten Sandy existed.
Sydney: Dagnabbit!
She used the flight ord so her time shouldn’t count.
She used the flight orb as an emergency anti-fall device to avoid falling to her demise when she was knocked off the top.
No, she *SQUEEP*ed off the top and used her blue ball (bet that’s the first time blue balls saved someone’s life :P ) to catch herself, she then let go of it to mid-five Hiro, and then was blown off (you can just see the blue ball flying back to her hand in the last panel)
But she DID reach the top without using the Flight Orb…Indeed, Hiro even confirmed it. Now if Sydney were to use her Orb to get back to the same point she reached before, then I don’t think it should be counted as “cheating” or to add any “penalty time.” Even without any penalties Sydney’s already got the worst time ever.
She hadn’t pressed the button; her time wasn’t “official”. But she should get a redo; she WAS blown off the platform.
I must say that I’m impressed that none of the windows in the buildings “popped” though.
Huh. Lucus has a better time than Sydney.
That Anti-gravity landing might be using thrusters (air turbines I hope) like the engines on the Hindenburg.
Needed for orientation and attitude control.
The movies like to show ships silently gliding in but I would bet that anything capable of supporting a couple of hundreds of tons of spaceship and moving it around is going to cause some local disturbance. This might be her first up close and personal experience with Cora’s ship coming in to land. She’s been on the ship of course, but not outside it as it was maneuvering.
Let’s make that about 20 thousand tons, because fuel and power sources. Given that it has to cross interstellar space, maybe 90 thousand is not an overestimate. But we’ll stick with 20,000 for now.
And we all know what happens when the attitude control thrusters fail.
That safety harness (that was only added in one image and left out in the rest) seems to have vanished again.
Is that the one in Panel 6 of the previous comic? The one that would have crippled the user?
Also, if you look closely, that was not Sydney wearing the harness. In the panel, there were 3 people on the wall. The individual with the harness as below Sydney and the other girl.
Yes, we never did find out who he was (and ‘the other girl’ is Jabbers)
I believe it’s Shawn – he has a few passing appearances, most notably for me panel #9 – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-268-vehemence-revealed/
Yeah, he was top of possible suspects
Cora is back!! I hope she lets Sydney know what she’s been up to…
The only one Sydney, will be seeing is Frix.
uh, cora is back!
Why mention Faulk here? He’s not even in the comic today. Did some panels get cut or something?
Look at the, not sure what to call it, the tagline? The quip at the bottom left of the page. It states/hints that General Faulk is the one with the slowest time which Sydney almost beat.
Is it the Valient?
Nah, look, get it right: Thongs go on the feet. Not in your crotch. Big slabs of rubber won’t fit in the crotch.
Gah! Can’t even speak English!
>Big slabs of rubber won’t fit in the crotch
There are quite a lot of men and women who would disagree with that.
Yup, go check out ‘Bad Dragon’ (search at your own risk)
… I hate being curious.
It seems obvious to me that the underwear/bikini thong got its name from the footwear thong. The cloth or string between butt cheeks resembles the part of the footwear that lies between the big toe and the others. It rises up to spread to either side of the body or foot. The rest of the material is out of sight from this angle. No need to compare the big rubber part to the front of the suit thong.
Thongs {\sl do} go in your crotch. Just not {\sl that} crotch. Originally, “thong” means leather-strip. Methinks more modern would be redefining “thong” to “strip (of whatever) for being in crotch.” Any thongs not covered? toethongs in toecrotches, grointhongs in groincrotches,,
Just to clarify with the time card calculator, thongs are typically worn on the feet as a type of footwear.
What most call flip flops Aussies call thongs, however to the rest of the English speaking world thongs are the underwear that is literally 1 size up from dental floss string.
only the fancy ones…….
I never understood either underwear thongs or footwear thongs.
Apparently, the word “thong” is used worldwide to mean stupidly uncomfortable clothing.
The correct name is ‘Jandal’, it was invented by Kiwi’s who stole it from the Japanese (which is what the name refers to: Japanese Sandal)
Aussies (like the thieving bastards they are) stole it from us (along with Pavlova, Crowded House, Fred Dagg, and Phar Lap {they can keep Russell Crowe :P })
And bloody Kiwis won’t accept Fred Dagg back — we made a mistake with him, it was accidental.
Punishment for stealing Phar Lap’s heart (literally)!
Canada refuses to take back Justin Bieber, so…Well, don’t feel so bad about the Kiwis, okay?
You’re right. We’ve still got one of their islands, it won’t go away.
Yes, well, the US stole Edison, about half of Hollywood, The engineers who designed over half of NASA’s stuff, the inventor of Basketball and about 200 other things.
so you’ll take Justin Bieber and like it. You can’t claim “backsies” and keep the rest XD
Edison? Thomas Edison? The deaf guy born in Milan, Ohio in 1847? If so, the only way you could make the case that the US stole Edison is if you mean that the US stole Ohio (which we did; from some Europeans who’d sort of stolen it from the Native Americans).
Or were you meaning the US stole Edison’s work? That would be hard to prove… Now, you could make a case for Tesla (the Feds seized 48 trunks upon his death and has returned about a dozen or so).
Edison is overrated anyways. He invented few things himself*, but was mostly the figurehead of a think tank, and took out all the patents in his / the company’s name – and took all the credit in the marketing.
*Notably the electric chair, which was mainly an attempt to discredit AC and thereby his business rival Westinghouse. The light bulb he’s famous for was neither the first nor the best, just the best marketed.
Fun fact: Japan invented socks in sandals.
I thought a thong was thomething that people thung.”
Hey, thomebody had to thay it. ;)
https://cellar.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=58051&stc=1&d=1475171086
Thumbuddy thay thumbthing!
Sydney, don’t put my heart in my mouth, like that, again!
And *that* is the Real Reason most supers wear thongs, Sydney…
Only in the shower, to prevent infections in the feet
Getting back to the BMI argument, I lost a lot of muscle mass when I had to stop riding my bike and went from 215 to 194 which got me to obese on the BMI scale. The bottom of obese at my current height is 166, which I haven’t seen since some time in Jr. High.
I think I might have mentioned once or twice that I have fallen out of trees, out of buildings, and been hit by cars and trucks numerous times with only soft tissue injury, and my first major broken bone took a truck hitting my leg at roughly 60 MPH, mainly because of bone density. BMI doesn’t take into account those of us with literal “Big Bones”.
What exactly did you do to piss of the non-existent gods such that you’ve been hit by cars AND trucks “numerous” times?
Or did you just decide to pioneer traffic dancing?
Opus – just a word to the wise.
When your friends spoke of a traffic jam, they did not mean you to stand in moving traffic while playing a guitar.
Hey, lots of bikers like to jam in traffic. Maybe he just needs to work on his timing.
Opus sounds like one of my people. I really should have just gone ahead and died any number of times growing up. But simple Irish stubbornness kept me going. Aside from two items as an adult in the navy, this list is only from when I was school aged (five-ish to seventeen) I’ve been run over by a tow truck and a tractor (different occasions) I’ve been bitten by a rabid dog, a venomous snake, and a javelina (also different occasions) I blew up my leg with a chicken water bottle., A house collapsed on me once. , I was in four major car wrecks and six minor ones. While I was i the navy, I fell out of a helicopter. And the one time I was hospitalized for being sick, in stead of hurt, I may have met the president. But since I was delirious and it was President Reagan, neither of us remembered.
Someone who has attained the rank of general has been riding a desk for quite a bit longer than a few years. Pretty much major and above is effectively desk bound, I have worked with captains that are desk jockeys.
I’ve worked with NCOs and enlisted who are desk jockeys. Outside the combat mos there isn’t much physical activity for someone in, say, logistics or military intelligence. Some can be split, such as communications which has people right alongside/inside combat units and who therefore aren’t doing much if any desk work at all, and then there are rooms full of people monitoring stuff who are very much desk jockeys.
why is sydney doing that wall in running shoes and not proper climbing ones? for having tried to do it in HS its 2 whole different worlds
Kyle Hill would flip out over the shoe choice.
Some types of climb and/or styles of climber, it’s easier in something that has a good sole with an edge on it. Or maybe the Powers that Be want the team to train using the gear they’re likely to have on hand out in the real world, rather than relying on overly specialised items that aren’t much use for anything else. There’s much to be said for being able to solo an unexpected crag wearing the boots you walked in with.
I think pretty soon we’ll get to the day that Anvil’s shirt asks about cookies.
I am still setting the record for ‘slowest person to get to the top of a climbing rope’ in gym for my old highschool.
…
For context, I went to college, and have a job now. And I am DEATHLY afraid of heights. As in, I cannot climb my own height up a ladder, and froze when I went diving once.
No one is gonna beat my record!
Pretty sure you’re disqualified once you graduate, but if not then yes you’ll hold the multi-decade record so long as you do actually complete it before your demise.
Really? My old high school had a “worst” record dating back to 1936 (5 years after it opened) when I attended… Of course, since I graduated in 1972, it may have need dropped or even (shudder) superceeded.
Hiro: “Your fitness level HAS improved, recruit.”
Sydney: “YUSSS!!” *does happy Sydney dance*
H: “HOWEVER, your tendency to GET DISTRACTED FROM YOUR GOAL has not improved ONE BIT!”
*gestures pointedly towards the as-yet-unpressed Big Red Button*
I really don’t think it’d be a good idea to train Sydney to press big red buttons…
Another opportunity to swear up a storm, lost. At least that ship should be put on her List, ferchrissakes.
I like Sydney’s hat. Also, what’s the swirling vortex between the two forward ship’s pylons?
A Chenzeme zero-point reef.
Sandy does the assault course? I’m starting to think that Archon is more like the Mobile Infantry or the Imperial Cadre than the regular US military. Everyone drops. The cook, the band and the old man’s writer.
Climbing a rock wall is “the assault course?”
I gotta say, I’m REALLY liking the last few strips, and what they imply. This is Sydney’s training montage! This is how she turns into a properly professional and competent hero! :D
Cora: What th- Galen, what is Sydney DOING out there?
Galen: Appears she’s climbing up the side of a… very wet… building, ma’am.
C: But… why? Her orbs let her fly…
G: A test, perhaps? Or maybe a strength workout?
C: Mmm… Slyv, status on our maneuvering thrusters?
Slyv: ? They’re A-OK, ma’am, but we don’t need them with the grav… OH. *grins* That’s… pretty evil, ma’am.
C: Heheh, yeah. *presses button*
Well, your current time depends on how old you are now…I’d have to use a calculator to get my own current time, but just from the top of my head, I’m close to 40 years & still counting.
Dangit! That was supposed to be a reply to Mr. Cloak (above) when talking about rope-climbing.
I used to wall climb a lot, normally they have fall arrest for anything over 10ft high, harnesses, ropes, etc. Sure sure most supers don’t need it, but Faulk, Sandy, etc would need it. Also Zip lines are a quick way down, either than or rappel down on the aforementioned fall arrest equipment.. nobody “climbs” back down… ok rarely.
At our old primary school (ages 5 to… 11?) after they turned our bull-rush field into an adventure playground, one of the ‘buildings’ they made for it was about four stories tall, top level had a fireman’s pole and the third level had a flying-fox (what you call a zip-line)
Originally, the paths had stones, years later they replaced the stones with bark chips, which was a morons idea, because the stones had more ‘give’ in them when you landed from the pole, and you didn’t get splinters if you fell down
He’d CERTAINLY beat MY time. I’m 16 years older than he is (well, only 8 if we’re still in 2012 in the strip) and have had a bad back since before I was his age.
This page of comments didn’t even make page two? :thinking: