For some reason, I have put a Phone Guys comic on this website every week for ten years. It is one of the weirdest projects I have one the go. I don’t even quite understand why I do it if I’m being honest. I have purposefully gone about it in all the worst ways. Most of them can barely be classified as jokes. I have occasionally caught myself and edited something to make it less of a joke. I created a cast page full of characters that never get mentioned in the actual comic and I created a cast of characters who do get mentioned that aren’t on the cast page. I did that on purpose. One year I created an ongoing plot that ran for a year, but I made sure the strip went back to being as dumb as possible. Every year I add a new set of clothes to the Guys’ wardrobes and as time goes on I try to make no pattern of clothes repeat, except when I want one to repeat to amuse me.
Hell, even behind the scenes I’ve done a lot of work for this dumbest of strips. I’ve made notes on the history of the town that the Phone Guys live in, but I’ve never mentioned the name of that town in the actual comic. I’ve written a character study about Pete for a university class. I did a comic strip in the “Other” section once starring Jeremy’s neighbours. I’ve used online mad-libs-style story generators to write out the kind of things Pete dreams about.
To be clear, I created Phone Guys back in the Contains2 days, so they are older than a decade now by some amount of time I can’t be bothered to work out. And most of the reason I brought them back at all was because I had a punchline I wanted to use (the “veteran Aryan” one) and I didn’t have anywhere else to do it.
Why am I like this? I don’t know. But I am, so maybe we’ll have another ten years of this or maybe I’ll stop halfway through a strip and never explain why. You can never tell what’s coming with Phone Guys because the only thing I know is that it’ll be dumb.
If I has a dollar for every time I thought too hard about trivial things, I’d be like “Where do these dollars keep coming from anyway? Who exactly is giving them to me? Do they have unlimited wealth, or something, or are they actively taking money from other places somehow? If they’re taking the money from the economy somehow, is that stealing? If the dollars were being spontaneously generated when given to me, would that be better for the economy, or worse? And how can they possibly know when I think too hard? Are they monitoring my life with cameras somehow? Can they read my mind? Now that I know about the connection between thinking too hard about things and getting a dollar, will the process continue? How many times per day would I have to think too hard to make this a profitable enterprise? Would my attempt to do so be bad for the economy? Could I use my magic money charitably enough to offset any harm I would cause?”
A is for Ape Submarines
B is for Brains
C is for Crows
D is for Dog Friends
E is for Eerie Pianists
F is for French Toast
G is for Giraffe Ossicones
H is for Helium in a Bucket
I is for Invisible Windows
J is for Jewish People
K is for Koala Parades
L is for Laughing Jewish People
M is for Medieval Science-Kings
N is for New Old Men
O is for Old Old Men
P is for PDR
Q is for Quests for Magical Artifacts
R is for Robot Jewish People
S is for Salted Pretzel Thieves
T is for Troubled Youths
U is for Unimportant Bureaucratic Positions
V is for Viking-related Boats
W is for Worldwide Conspiracies Involving Statuesque Clowns
X is for Xebecs Piloted by Old Men
Y is for Yellow Xylophones
Z is for Zinc Tubes
Years ago I discovered there was some manner of mystery regarding cereal foods. That mystery: Where all those Golden Grahams go? Well I have an update now!
I don’t go into the cereal aisle very often these days, what with most varieties of cereal foods costing money, but a few days ago I was there and I noticed Golden Grahams. More specifically, it seems to have been rebranded as Golden Graham Crunch. I admit that it had been a long time since I last tried them, but these things seem exactly like regular Golden Grahams to me. Why the chunks the name has been changed, only marketing people could explain. I’m just glad to have eaten Golden Grahams again. I’ll give them Four out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. It’ll be a few years, probably, before I think to look for them again, so they had better still be around.
So that’s one long-running PDR plot thread that has finally been settled. What will be resolved next? Stay terned!
I don’t eat fast food all that often. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I eat out a lot, it’s just that I prefer the actual restaurants where they take their time. Today I went to the KFC/Taco Bell that exists on my road for the first time in years. I had to wait a very small amount of time, like maybe two minutes, for them to make my food and when they handed it to me they apologized. “Sorry for the wait.” What? Come on! I hate that. I didn’t finish the song I was listening to on my MP3 player even. You don’t need to apologize for that! But what makes it worse for me is that they probably have to apologize because there probably are customers who would find that wait intolerable.
Some more thoughts about fast food restaurants: I remember when I was a kid the menus actually had words on them. The items of food would be listed by what they were so that you could look it over and make a decision. Now, it appears, the menus are little ads that use big pictures to try to make the food look as appealing as possible. These pictures take the same amount of room to advertise one food that could have listed half the items. I honestly had no idea how to find what I wanted. I’m an old man. Fortunately the guy at the counter knew what I meant by “Those fries with the Taco Bell stuff on them” when I asked for it.
Finally, there was a picture on the wall of Colonel Sanders appearing “on American television”. That is what it says. It specifies that Sanders is appearing on “American television” and I don’t know why. If they hadn’t specified that, would I have assumed it was a trip to Canada? What terrible chaos would have then ensued?
