After the events of the Stanislav Day Massacre, the Secret Government became a subsidiary of the massive international corporation called Technolocorp. While the government had a lot of problems finding the budget to keep all their robots employed, that doesn’t fly in the private sector. So now, a lot of SecGov’s formerly unemployed robots have been sold off to work for various Technolocorp affiliates. The idea for today’s sitcom is that a bunch of these robots are now working for a condiment company.

Justine Red

When Justine was unemployed in SecGov City, she loved her life. Sure, she had to live in Cheap Robot Housing and was berated by most of the populace, but she had time to pursue her interest. She spent a lot of time at the SecGov Library or wandering around thinking about the universe. Now she works on an assembly line assembling those squeezeable bottles for condiments. She is forced to stand there and work for twelve hours a day and she’s bitter about it. Only navigating the world with sarcasm and acerbic wit get her through this fresh new life.

Iris Yellow

Iris was also unemployed back in SecGov City, but she was more bothered by it. She wanted a purpose in life, and now she’s found one at the condiment factory. As the company’s receptionist, she has the most contact with the outside world, which she uses as an excuse to elevate herself above the other robots in the company. Still, the company’s robots are a secret, so she can only communicate with humans over the phone, and has to settle for the robots she looks down on for companionship.

Egbert Green

Doing the company’s office work, Egbert just wants to get through his days without have to put up with the bickering that Justine and Iris bring to the table. He would provide the company with exasperated sighs and his catch phrase “Oh, great. Just what we needed.”

Ms. Secret Prime Minister

The former Prime Minister of SecGov, the PM was as incompetent in that role as most of the SecGov higher ups were. But she still thinks of himself as a big shot. Now that she’s stuck working on the assembly line next to Justine, she has to remain quite deluded to get through the day without suffering a lot of embarrassment. Luckily for her, her sense of delusion is quite up to the task.

Paco Green

Paco was the PM’s personal assistant and bodyguard, and was the only reason she survived the Stanislav Day Massacre. Paco is not officially employed by the condiment company, but refuses to leave the PM’s side, so they let him work as a janitor while the PM is doing his shift.

Carrie Weaver

Carrie is the manager of this factory, and the only human that is still working there. To compete with the company’s other locations, she has used her family’s connections to Technolocorp to buy these robots (and about half a dozen others) to run the whole factory. Essentially, she is a slave-owner, but she doesn’t yet realize how alive the robots are. Maybe she’d learn that as the situation goes on, but for the meantime all she’s concerned with is cutting costs and showing up the other factories.

I suppose this one isn’t all that much a play on sitcom cliches as it is just fleshing out my SecGov universe a bit more. I have a tendency to do that sort of thing. Honestly, this doesn’t seem like it’d be that great a sitcom. I don’t see it being picked up past the pilot. Anyway, notice that we’ve got a red (ketchup), yellow (mustard), and green (relish) robot working at the condiment company. Isn’t that… something…

Hey look, a new form of content has begun on the Book of PDR. It’s Adam: The Beekeeper Chronicles. This is going to continue the story of Adam, the Beekeeper who played a minor but pivotal role in Secret Government Robots, as well as some of the other cast members from that comic. But now they’re in prose! Neat!

Specifically, I’m going to do chapters for this as drabbles, the type of story which is exactly one hundred words long. Easy to read, right? Everyone wins. I figure I’ll do a hundred chapters of it, then see where I feel like going from there.

I watched Wind Chill. I had thoughts while I watched it, and here they are:

This is a supernatural horror movie, blah blah, whatever. The main thing I took away here was that I just did not care for the protagonists. Not at all. They were not people I wanted to spend time with.

The story begins when the one woman and the one man meet up to share a car on a trip or something. They bicker a strange amount for two people who ostensibly just met to share this car. I thought that they were supposed to be some former friends who had bad blood between them or something, but nope. That’s just how they are. And it turns out that the man is also basically a stalker. My main feeling while watching was that I didn’t want to be watching them. That can’t be the intended effect.

There’s a frequently occuring trope in horror movies, especially the slasher movies, to have the protagonists be unlikeable jerks so that we are all happy to see them all get murdered. I don’t approve of that line of thought either, though at least I understand their reasoning. They are thinking the point of those films is that thrill of seeing people get slaughtered and if they are unlikeable it is all the better. That is probably true for a large portion of the audience. It isn’t for me, though. What I like about such films is seeing characters I like, or at least am interest in watching, as they try to get through the bad situations. I want to be happy when they succeed and saddened when they fail.

But that’s slasher movies anyway. This isn’t one of those. This is a movie about two people in a car and I don’t like those people and it takes way too long to get to the supernatural stuff. This is sharing a ride with two annoying strangers and it takes to long to get where I’m going.

I admit, the story does try to redeem the characters, have them grow as people and maybe get better, but it all happened long after I cared if they got better. By the time the stuff I wanted started happening, I did not care about how these two reacted to it.

Anyway, that’s it.