Grrl Power #867 – Tour from the stars
Yeah. Earth is apparently open for business. At least some aliens seem to think so.
The first panel here didn’t quite land like I’d hoped. I think if you look at it long enough, you can tell it’s a guy leaning down to look out the windshield of his car at a rocketship that’s landed in the middle of times square. The reason it doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped is because if this was a TV show or a movie, you’d get a clear shot of the guy, then the focus would rack to show the spaceship, and neither one would be at 50% transparency.
I considered cutting the panel in half and doing a focus change, but I thought it’d be too small, and it still does work. It’s not elegant, but you can tell what’s going on if you spend a little time on the panel. Lesson learned for next time I guess.
So… a big part of me is convinced that I’ve seen almost this exact joke somewhere before, but I can’t place it. It could be one of those self-cryptomnesia events where I thought of this joke a long time ago and then when I re-thought of it, I thought I was repurposing it from something else I’d seen – or if I’d actually just recycled someone else’s joke. I hope I haven’t, but I don’t know, this feels like something I would have seen in… I want to say a Men In Black movie? But the aliens are secret in those, so they wouldn’t be wandering around. Well, if I copied this joke from elsewhere then I apologize to whoever popularized it. Or whoever did it first – honestly a scene like this could have appeared in half the books you guys recommended last time.
Speaking of which, there were a lot of great suggestions for space opera or at least sci-fi books under the last post. My wishlist has swollen considerably and I’ll be checking a few of them out at least. I should have mentioned I’d already gotten into some Honor Harrington though. Quite a few recommendations for that. I really liked the technical space battles in them, something I wouldn’t think I’d be into, but I got to something like book 7 or 8 and was like, eh, I get it, and didn’t follow through with the rest of the series. I guess I can always go back to it.
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This week’s update reminds me of Discworld’s first tourist Twoflowers offering Rincewind a handful of gold rhinu in exchange for being a tour guide to Ankh-Morpork. Terry Pratchett – The Color of Magic
Thanks! I knew that it was Discworld but I couldn’t remember which story.
Took me a moment to realize she wasn’t phasing her arm through the glass.
Didn’t the Council extended the Veil to aliens precisely to avoid this type of scenario? Or can aliens opt out of it when they arrive?
Its possible since aliens are now know to world they narowed the vail while Sid was gone
Yeah, fairly sure aliens tended to have their own disguises, and after the landing of the Alari slave-labour in Doucheistan, guess many aliens don’t feel the need to use them any more
Not sure how you’d consider it slave labor. They’re there voluntarily, as refugees. Some even work for Deus (praise be his name, amen) and I am sure are paid exceedingly well, since Deus has already shown in prior dealings with Sciona that the difference between him and the Alari is he understands the idea of your employees having good will towards you. And nothing says goodwill like being paid well for your job. :)
In any case, they’re free to leave whenever they want to, based on THEIR laws. If they require unanimous agreement to leave, that’s on them, not on Deus. Plus I’m pretty certain that Galytin is a much nicer place than the charred remains of Alari Prime, living as a ghost in a spirit container buried underground.
Yeah, all it takes for him to keep them there forever is to have one thrall amongst the Ruling Alari caste :P
Knowing how to work the system is not slavery, my friend.
And if they ever really really wanted to leave, they can always just separate from the other castes. Nothing’s keeping them from doing so except their own rules.
Also it’s not called a thrall, it’s called a willing business partner. :)
Once there’s a press conference, you can no longer be part of the veil.
Can’t say I recall the veil covering aliens, but it could be.
I do remember mentions of various other disguises for aliens, including holographic ones.
Yes DaveB, you have seen it before; “The Phantom”, 1996, Billy Zane offers a New York cabbie a pouch full of gems to hire him for the whole day.
Good call, like our esteemed author I knew a trope was in play bit couldn’t pin it down. Now I remember how it was averted with the baseball cards and stock certificates in “blast from the past” as well. Thanks for reminding me, otherwise I would have ended up diving into tv-tropes, and I have to get up early tomorrow.. :-)
There’s also the exchange of gold coins for an immediate rifle purchase in “Jumanji.” And if you’re thinking about offering a lot of money to keep a cab around all night, there’s “Collateral Damage.”
Which is true to the comic where he pulled this shit *all* *the* *time*. Despite being perfectly capable of opening a bank account or three – sure he had collected a vast hoard of gold and diamonds and it might be good in a pinch, but what would you rather take – a check or a pouch of diamonds?
Didn’t Billy play the bad guy, and not The Phantom?
Totally a villain move to offer a pouch worth of gems (stolen of course)
> what would you rather take – a check or a pouch of diamonds?
Pouch of diamonds. Definitely. I have no way of knowing that the check is good.
But you could detect real vs fake/artificial diamonds with the naked eye?
Got a window or piece of glass handy?
Explain how! Fog test or scratch test?
They are real diamonds, which is the problem. they must be disclosed as artificial, or DeBeer’s can take them to court, per their agreement.
Since they cannot be told from “real” diamonds, even the scratch test, as they are just as hard, and will scratch glass and even other diamonds.
There’s also, as has been mentioned above, Twoflower the Tourist in Discworld, handing out gold coins left and right because he’s from an empire where gold is used for currency but also hopelessly devalued.
There’s also a web-series called After Hours where one of the characters, Soren, is so bad at figuring out tips that he just hands over loose jewels to the waitress instead.
Which is why the diner lets him and his friends stay there until all hours ranting about movies and TV shows with each other.
The Culor of magic”. (color), I read the entire series.
Dad is a quick thinker.
Have you considered using in-panel GIF for this?
That really hurts the future printability of the comic. There are webcomics that have both used animated panels and printed hard copies, but I don’t know what they’ve done in those situations, other than not-Harry-Potter-magic-photographs.
Terry Pratchett did the whole Gold is Worthless to the Foreigner thing.
Just because it’s worthless to them doesn’t mean it’s worthless to us. I only accept payment in pure compositions of element 78, 79, crystaline (with visually pleasing contaminates) 6 or the variant shape with 6.0–7.5×107N∙m/kg ratings for strength, and 45, if no small omnifabrication units can be provided in leu of elemental payment.
Please have payment in standard one-kilogram masses (rounded down), and local currencies will be made available at competitive exchange rates.
So, platinum, gold, ?, and rhodium.
I’m guessing the ? is diamond (and the alternate form is probably carbon nanotubes), but I have never heard ‘crystaline 6’ (sp?) before and a quick Google is giving me nothing. Is it a reference?
The atomic number of carbon is 6, so “crystaline 6” would be carbon in crystal form, i.e. diamond.
Graphite is also crystalline carbon. Carbon has multiple allotropes, and two of them are crystals.
I’ll take my payment/tip/consideration in 500g lots of industrial diamonds. My current rate is 500g/hour.
A lot of writers have done it; it’s not a new concept and nobody in particular has the sole rights to the idea.
Oh god, it’s Space Us.
Tourist with benign but ignorant intentions, set to wreck the local economy.
Thankfully, the gold standard has been abandoned by most – if not all countries – so the impact on the economy will be limited.
But when superior alien tech, especially medicine and automation, start to spread we will see a total collapse of the economy. And then Deus will become king of the world.
Wouldn’t superior alien tech – especially medicine and automation – create a post-scarcity situation where the economy can go stick its head in a bucket?
I mean, the whole POINT of an economy is to try to provide for everyone in the society. If everyone’s being provided for, who cares what happens to the stock market?
the rich assholes who try and manipulate everyone else into thinking their over indulgent gambling halls are somehow the keystone of western civilization. But much like the end of the gilded age saw the exact same propaganda and resistance and ignorant working class who were tricked by those wannabe aristocrats; once the general standard of living increased with social programs things got better….even if the exact same scenario popped up every single time a new program or change happened and they pushed back….unions, weekends, vacation time, child labor laws, higher wages *repeat*, safe working conditions, medical insurance, availability of hospitals and medical care in poorer neighborhoods, education for all, ect…seriously every single improvement to society was fought against by many of those in positions of wealth and power fearing their self delusional superiority was threatened by it.
Just like the old serfs and slaves not being allowed to learn to read as it made available to them knowledge and communication that the power hoarders feared.
Bingo
The stock market both measures and contributes to the economy; it is (to massively simplify) a means of transferring idle resources to those who have something useful to do with it. Massive shakeups like free energy and healthcare might eventually lead to a post-scarcity utopia, but in the short term they would decimate jobs in the replaced industries, and those people would have no jobs or money until they were retrained.
In post-scarcity economy, hardly anyone has an actual job and NOONE NEEDS a job.
That’s not my understanding of post-scarcity economy, which is at this point still an entirely theoretical situation. Commodities would be cheap and human labor minimized, yes. But not eliminated, even for a majority. Even if everything is auto-fabbed and maintained by robots, someone has to be maintaining those bots. Or at least the bots that do the maintenance. Post-scarcity will not eliminate jobs so much as change them, just like computers and industrial agriculture have shifted people into desk jobs.
Someday we may have effectively unlimited food and goods, and eliminate jobs for most of humanity; my point though was that there will be some really rough transition on the way there, and therefore the stock market will continue to be relevant for a very, very long time.
Has anybody here read Freefall, where this subject is… discussed… in some detail?
Not familiar with it; this one? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39855088-freefall
Hokaaayyyy… I DID proofread before posting. I blame the internet.
Freefall. It’s much funnier, and not recommended if you think too much about the issues it raises.
Link fact-check: Success.
Ah that one! I recognize the artwork, haven’t ever been drawn in enough to dig into the archives though.
Economies have two purposes: to allocate scarce resources, and to reinforce power dynamics. Solving one problem doesn’t necessarily solve the other.
…become?
Economies do not get ruined by imports of new technologies and/or money. Now some rich folk may find themselves poor due to new competition, but the society becomes noticeably richer. They get to use better technology and sell stuff they considered worthless junk. Now, they often deem themselves poorer even when they are clearly better off. But millionaires who become multimillionaires don’t feel so rich when they now have to deal with billionaires.
If you would like to read a good sci-fi that starts in the modernish age, start with Semper Mars by Ian Douglas. It starts a whole series about US Marines and the world going into space and dealing with the challenges there. As a former military service member, its pretty authentic on how soldiers and marines act.
For the right price, everyone is a cab driver.
Hey, it’s New York, right? No surprise that the driver barely bats an eye at the obvious aliens, aside from an initial spit take.
“What the hell was that?”
“Looked like sort of a big turtle in a trenchcoat. You’re going to LaGuardia, right?”
Wow…….never ever ever thought I’d be able to see this reference be relevant and that I would get to understand it. You have made my adult me and teenager me very happy. Thank you sir.
Wooooooooow what a reference.
Never thought I’d be able to see that quote used with relevant context, nor that I would understand it. Well done sir.
I have a feeling Marble Maiden is gonna show up very soon to fight the tourists.
reminds me of an OOOOOOOLD movie “martians go home” or something like that where martians are teleporting, horny nerds that that came over because of a music broadcast …… one of the military commanders said “an invasion we could handle, but it worse than that! we are dealing with tourists!!”
Was wondering what the round thing was in the windshield (was initially looking for signs of Sydney and her passengers), can see the shape of the ship now
Dave, if erotic sexy space opera is your thing, I have 1 more recommendation to you:
The John Blake Chronicles
Merchant, who is former badass space marine, buys a warship that is retired from service, rescues girls from the space pirates, and recruits them to his crew/harem. Very sex heavy, so if you don’t like reading about it…
For super hero stuff, I’ve started reading a Japanese one:
There was no secret evil-fighting organization (srsly?!) so I made one myself!
Japanese high school boy dreams about having super powers, and to his surprise, he discovers himself capable of doing telekinesis. So of course he expects to be dragged into secret organization by beautiful girl to fight evil super villains. He prepares for it by training and improving his telekinesis, but… Nothing else happens. Before he realizes it, he has graduated high school and university and finds himself working his ass off. Then he decides to create secret organization AND villains to fight against. And he finds a like-minded beautiful woman, who wanted to be a magical girl, to help him out. To my surprise, this novel is pretty serious take on super powers and related problems: protagonist understands that if he would go public with it, his background would be scrutinizes with a microscope with all the embarrassing details he would rather keep to himself. Also the two lead characters, super powered adults who never graduated from chuunibyou (8th grade syndrome), are Hella amusing.
The correct title is “Three Square Meals” by Tefler, John Blake is just the name of the main character, and Dave already put out a recommendation post himself for it back in 2019, and mentioned it again in the previous commentary.
“Three square meals” is the first book in the series. Full title on Amazon.com: The John Blake Chronicles – Volume 1: Three Square Meals (The Unclaimed Legacy Series)
Yet the author still labels the latest chapters on patreon as Three Square Meals. https://www.patreon.com/user/posts?u=3814558
Anyway, the main point is no need recommending it to someone who has repeatedly recommended it himself.
Anyone else notice the blank-faced dude in the Hawaiian shirt in panel three?
What about the bug-dude in the thong?
“Rates are one troy ounce…”
How much is that in Rhodes Islands?
“Excuse me, sir or madam. I require assistance in operating this carbonated water dispenser. The coin slot appears to be too small for me to insert my Ningis.”
“O My god! Some gigantic rubber triangles have flattened North America!”
“Oh, that’s just my loose change.”
Best. Reference. Ever.
So methinks we’ve spotted one of dabbler’s component species.
Alien 1: (From back of car) Excuse, are two life forms here available for mouth food eatings?
Dad: (Looks back at kids, then at alien 1) No, no they are NOT!
Alien 1: Ah, apology.
*awkward silence*
Alien 2: … Are life forms available for sex touri-
Dad: NO NO THEY ARE NOT
Alien 2: *Checks Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy again* Man, they really need to update the entry for this planet.
“Sort of harmless..except during tourist season” ?
“And during mating season.”
“When is it mating season for the dominant species?”
“Always!”
“…”
rofl~ This was good. I love how it connects with Cora wanting to see the sights.
Sadly, Honor Harrington starts to go downhill after book 7 or 8. They aren’t unreadable, but if you were already running low on interest, I wouldn’t push yourself to continue.
Was going to say pretty much exactly this, so will just back up what Retief said, with a couple additions.
Two major problems develop in the series. First is that Honor starts to become a perfect being after a while; beloved by everyone, capable of doing everything (except managing her own birth control), major political figure in two governments, and high ranking military officer in both, etc., etc. Basically Weber had been writing her for too long and fell in love with his own character and just kept making her ‘cooler’, but actually made her ridiculous.
Second is the tech starts to get absurd. The series started out as the Age of Sail in space, with ships of the Line (aka Wall) lining up to blaze away at each other with cannons, and it was pretty cool. Then Manticore got some tech advantages of Haven, okay, fine… still works… and then it spiraled out of control as he kept on adding newer crap to all sides, and then created the perfect conspiracy and super duper tech of Mesa… and it all went spiraling into an abyss of ridiculous.
The series should have ended at the end of At All Costs where the battle of Manticore had entire fleets wiped out in minutes, they should have said “okay, this is out of control, time to end this” and called it a day. But… things were more silly than that.
A third problem is that Weber’s bad guys tend to be just a wee bit one dimensional, which gets tiring.
So yeah, if you’ve feel you’ve tired of the series, don’t bother pushing on.
Not even. Weber tried to kill her off, and ran into the same trap Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes: The fans wouldn’t sit still for it. So one amazing recovery later, she continues. Leaving his only way to get her off the stage was to promote her above it and stick her behind a desk.
But with you on the other stuff ;)
I’ve played too much Commander Keen. I was immediately able to read the word “Bathroom” in Standard Galactic Alphabet on her pad. :P
Is it wrong that the weird bobblehead goblin alien is kind of doing it for me?
You would probably enjoy “Oh, My Sweet Alien!” then.
I am guessing these are the equivalent of college kids going back packing across Europe who want to live on the wild side so they ignore the tourist boards and traveler pamphlets and sneak across boarders without passports and visit places that are supposed to be off limits; maybe even to send it back as youtube videos of their wild adventures (for a modern take).
Fun fact. Glibglorb has no word for ‘cab.’
One thing that might work in panels like the first: I don’t know what the term is, but those white stripes people use to indicate glass reflection glare. Have the spaceship show up very clearly in those stripes, reflecting the external environment, but be completely missing from the other areas of the glass. We wouldn’t get the full shot of the spaceship, but we’ll get the idea without the muddiness of having it semi-transparent across the entire panel, and also have a better idea of the interior of the car.
I believe the joke is very old in general. That is the basic outline. Someone is asked to do something that is completely out side of their normal or expected (as we the observer would see it) activities, but usually still legal. They turn down the request. They are offered some ridiculously high payment. Quicker than it took them to turn down the request they start doing it.
With your: “I think I tried this joke before” you probably mean:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-368-billions-of-bullions/
No.
Ok just had this crazy thought…
Imagine you live in this world/universe where this shit is happening for real. OK. Basically, character insert you yourself.
Now you have been a geeky person for a while now, dreamed up all manner of fantasy and scifi things, maybe you have a bit of artistic skill in you and you been drawing up or at least writing down the discription of your headcannon aliens.
Now imagine your sitting in your car draving to work, and coming out of a spaceship is the EXACT alien you came up with in your own mind and their now walking over towards you saying hi…
Depends on if the individual you ‘imagined’ was benevolent or not
If you care about good battles and Sci-Fi then you should get Perilous Waif.
William E. Brown is by far the best author I’ve ever read when it comes to writing battle/fight scenes.
Some rough math on the value of the fare here – the hexagonal gold cylinder looks to be about 3 inches in diameter and 6 inches long, giving it a weight of about 30.8 lbs (14kg). At current prices, that’s about $875K USD (or €738.5 Euros) for a few hours of driving, plus a great story to tell and an eye-opening experience for the kids.
Dad is absolutely making the right call here.
Given how she’s holding it, I seriously doubt that weighs thirty pounds. Assuming his eye is about the same size as mine, that looks to be more like 3 inches in length and maybe one and a half for the diameter. Convert to metric and round up you get 8cm and 4cm, for roughly 100.48 cm3 (treating as a cylinder for convenience). Gold is 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter, so that gives us 1,939.26 grams, which at current prices would be $121 thousand dollars (actually less, cylinders have more volume than a hexagonal block).
However, as a collector’s piece of alien art, the sky’s the limit.
Her hands may be far stronger than a baseline humans, and gold is really dense so the weight-for-size is really intuitive. Which irritates me no end in heist movies when they start swinging suitcases full of gold around, you’ve gotta plan ahead for and deal with that mass*, not just hand it off the the featherweight A-list actor/actress for dramatic effect. But I digress.
Anyhow, 30 lb is heavy but not inconceivable, and I was going off hand size and have huge mitts myself. But I think you’re noticeably under-estimating at 1/2 my dimensions in all directions (which tracks with the 1/2^3 = ~1/8 the value, so yay math). 1.5 by 3 is only about the size of 2 golf balls in a tiny can, and this looks bulkier to me even if her hand is small. Call it 2″ by 4″ even, which comes in at $252k, which is still more than enough for a VIP afternoon cab fare.
As to the art value… I dunno. I don’t see an alien tourist paying with rare art pieces while also asking “you take this gold stuff right?” So it’s gotta be something common and readily available on the galactic scale, and if Earth tourism is about to take off, such pieces will no longer be rare on Earth, rendering it too common to be valuable for collection or scientific analysis. That leaves only its intrinsic value (which may be actively plummeting if left unchecked).
Unless Archon (and the world governments) get a handle on things in time, as they seem to be attempting with the current mission, and manage to regulate things. In that case, yes it becomes far more collectible, and a museum or private collector like Deus might indeed pay more than its bullion value.
* i.e. modifying the cars in the Italian Job; preferably the new one; the old one had an iconic chase sequence but almost no other redeeming qualities as far as plot or coherent storytelling go.
okay, I love everything about this page
Humanity Fuck Yeah, coming to get your tourist money!!!
well, ita a nice alien invasion after all. I guess…? well depending on the country, people would have no problem in helping out
Is there no kid in the back left seat in the first panel?
Kids, if you don’t keep your eyes on them every second, they just vanish on you [except of course when you don’t want to be disturbed.
If you’re livin’ in a bubble and you haven’t got a care
Well, you’re gonna be in trouble ’cause we’re gonna steal your air
‘Cause what you got is what we need and all we do is dirty deeds
We’re the Spaceballs! Watch out, ’cause we’re the Spaceballs
We’re the masters of space
Hey, don’t mess around with the Spaceballs.
Uh!
Going cruisin’ in a spaceship, we’re so good at being bad
We’ll destroy your little planet if you ever get us mad
We’re mothers of the galaxy
You better scatter when you see
The Spaceballs! Watch out, we’re the Spaceballs
We’re the masters of space
Say what? Don’t mess around with the Spaceballs.
Watch out!
We’re mothers of the galaxy
We’re gonna take the air you breathe
Hahahahahaha!
Oh! Spaceballs!
Watch out!
We’re the Spaceballs
We’re the masters of space
Do-do-do-do-don’t mess around with the Spaceballs.
Yo! Watch out!
We’re the Spaceballs!
We’re the masters of space
Hey, don’t mess around with the Spaceballs.
Watch out!
We’ve got a bossin’ little ship
So you better watch your lip
‘Cause we’re the Spaceballs.
Watch out!
You may think that you are bad
But believe you can be had
By the Spaceballs!
Watch out!
We’re the Spaceballs!
Watch out!
We’re the Spaceballs!
We’re the masters of space
Don’t mess around with the Spaceballs.
We’re so bad and mean
We make nightmares out of dreams
We’re the Spaceballs!
We’re the Spaceballs.
You better watch out!
Hehehehahahahaha!
“I say, what’s that coming out of her nose?”
“Spaceballs!”
“Oh shit. There goes the planet.”
Alas, this doesn’t seem to be available on Itunes. Drattit. I so want to be able to play this while Ubering.
Anyone else wonder what that gold thing is? It looks like it has a button on it.
I wonder, Gold is a very non-reactive metal. It doesn’t rust. Maybe aliens use it in their Plumbing systems? Maybe it’s the Alien equivalent of a toilet plunger?
Y’know, getting over your existential shock by sheer force of capitalistic opportunity has got to be the single most American thing possible.
Also, gold would be far from useless to a spacefaring civilization. Even apart from currency it’s a great conductor, and hey it’s still shiny and everybody likes shiny nick-nacks.
Gold is a great conductor, but too dang soft to use on its own which is why we mostly just electroplate harder stuff with it. If we had vast metal reserves, there are harder alloys that conduct just as well – we already use palladium extensively on Earth, it used to cost as little as 1/2 as much but is now about the same price.
Silver has the highest electrical conductivity, of all elements, (known)1
Wow that spaceship desivn has been around a long time. I thought I had seen similar, but it’s probably older still based on the v-2 rocket of 1944.
Fantasy and science fiction july 1953
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fantasy-Science-Fiction-1953-July-Contains-Expendable-by-Philip-K-Dick-/362368691997
Something is coming to mind, but what it was from exactly I don’t remember; someone did a subversion of the trope where someone tried to pay in a gold nugget or something and the person behind the counter said something like, “does this look like a pawn shop to you?”; like yeah, you have that valuable thing but you still need to pay in currency to get something.
That’s indeed normally true for normal commercial trade, but we’re dealing with a random dad he is probably more than willing to go to sell it himself on ebay as an the first peacefully obtained alien artifact on earth.
I am remembering a scene from a movie or tv show that came to mind that I can’t place. and relating that scenario.
that said he will still need to find a way to cash it in. Problem is as an artifact it could be more valuable than its weight in gold, but only to the right buyer, and finding the wrong buyer who just wants its gold is a problem.
also the middle man scenario where he can only find a buyer who will down play him on the value but he doesn’t really have a choice as the middle man has the personal profit connections to resell it at its real value that this man may lack.
but again, not a hypothetical, relating the text of where people have seen a gag like this before to a vague recollection of a scene in something.