I have a question: In this stars-are-drowning-children scheme, what do the Big Stars mean? Bigger families?

Everywhere you go, with every word you say, Stephen Fry is giving you a freaked out glance.

In that case, I am required to notify you that Messr. is actually a sarcastic way to call someone conceited, Messrs. being the appropriate plural of Mr. Good day, sir.

I think the Stephen Fry avatar is particularly appropriate since he recently admitted to having manic depressive disorder.

Or rather, I recently watched a documentary about it which could have been made years ago. Who knows.

Well, I knew he was manic depressive, but... How... how is that appropriate? Is it appropriate for, like, me? Or the situation?

I suspect he realizes that any foreign person trapped in an argument with Stephen Colbert would be so crushed by the overwhelming superiority of the United States of America that he would be cast into the utmost dysphoria.

Considering Stephen Colbert's wonderous grasp of things that are excellent outside of the U.S. and his acute self-awareness of the U.S's horrific foreign policy, your comment has the worst synergy with your Avitaricon ever.

That or you're missing: [sarcasm][/sarcasm]

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but I thought the "he" in gormster's first sentence referred to me.

...pretty retarded, in retrospect.

More like [incharacter][/incharacter]

I missed a subtle joke on the internet?! Me!

*sigh*

My name is Philippe. I am 5. I am learning about Hobos!

We should have an Achewood convention at the Omni Austin Hotel with guest speaker Stephen Fry....this could be a thing.

No.

Woo, yeah! Looks like Waco is the children-drowning capital, though. Austin moms need to get to work...

I was thinking it looked like Dallas had the big star... HELL YEAH, METROPLEX!

Dallas is not that far south...yay!

Mississippi and Louisiana are pretty much the black holes of the US. I'm surprised to see there are no screaming children in LA, not even in the northern regions.

Well, not on that particular day, at that particular time.

or maybe it is just hidden by Beef's speech!

who knows, there could be drownings happening in upstate New York as he speaks and we will never know. :[

Nah, upstate New York is all mountains and frozen bodies of water.

They just leave the kids to freeze there.

Same in the Northwest -- anybody remember Diane Downes?

You're thinking of the South, or possibly the Midwest.

I was actually kind of comforted by that.

Hilariously, I at first thought this was a reply to Straw's post. Oh ho ho.

the line in panel five made this one Great Great Great!!

Last two panels are the funniest panels with just text I have ever seen.

Beef really cares, things about the bigger picture... but it also makes him throw up, so...

Er... how?

he meant panel 11... his upper lip, specifically. I noticed it too. It's weird. Also, what the hell are you doing responding to a year old comment? How could you have the audacity to assume someone would reply? Well... you got LUCKY this time...

Whenever I wake up too early, I also start thinking morbid thoughts. "I wonder if anyone I knew died while I was asleep."

Poor Beef :(

that is exactly what i thought.

:-(

hopefully he will recover soon w/ Molly snorgles.

austin!

Moving there next year! Good to know Achewood peeps will be around.

Yeah I'm going to just hazard the guess that Austin has one of the highest percentages of Achewood readers for American cities.

Yep. I read it, and so do a lot of my friends.

Let's all give a round of applause for Austin.

Austin's a good town. Very few children drowned by their mothers. That's Houston.

apt description

Stats don't lie. You can't just go around putting bug stars on maps without some kind of science, and we all know about science.

The funny thing about people from Austin is whenever they are gathered together there is basically always a spontaneous applause for their treasured city. We are a people who love ourselves and each other and have this amazing pride in our choice of location. And right we should in some ways; I for one have never felt at home anywhere else.

PS:I think I got some lames up there for implying that Onstad might have ever done something someone didn't like. Sweet.

Well, here's a chub for posterity. For Austin.

I talked about Austin before I scrolled down.

I feel left out of this, because I wasted my whooo.

That's cool and all, and rest assured I wasn't the one who lamed you, but writers rarely make fun of cities in direct proportion to their dislike for them. If that was the case here, Onstad's most despised city would be Austin, and his second-most despised city would be Clovis, NM, which seems unlikely. Not that I know what he was up to, but many writers make fun of the cities about which they have mixed feelings, not which they stone-cold despise.

P.S. Your city keeps West Texas and the Louisiana Coast in poverty that it might experience the power of Manhattan-priced beers.

We... We're making the South poor by drink decent beer? Is that it?

So you admit that people from Austin are yankees? You'll never beat Perry with that attitude.

I still have no idea what you mean. At all.

I was being hyperbolic, and the Yankee-Perry business was purely a joke, in case that was unclear. I assumed that Texans would have some idea what I was talking about, and your question was poking fun at how overwrought I am. Please feel free to consider me overwrought when I've explained myself, as I intend to get bored before you do.

First, Austin is a technological hub, which is fair enough, though that's not as big a slice of the economy as it used to be. It also has Texas' big State University (I know you know these things, public forum and whatnot). Because of that University and (to a much greater degree) the fact that it houses the massive and wealthy state government, it attracts all sorts of investors, but especially real estate investors who wish to work in the state of Texas, with its leasing laws so famously biased towards landowners. These real estate investors will live in Austin, and buy land in rural, especially west, Texas. We then have money flowing "up" from impoverished west Texas to further stimulate the solid Austin economy.

As for Louisiana, I refer to the oil investors of Austin, and the partitioning of the oil resources of the Gulf of Mexico unfairly in Texas' favor.

Both those things are also true of Houston, with one huge difference being that Austin is actually a pleasant place to live, and Houston isn't even a pleasant place to smell from a distance. And the University of Texas at Austin does stimulate the economy statewide, as well as make a legitimate contribution to world knowledge. Parents throughout Texas send their bright and ambitious kids to Austin, where they pay 50% more for a Newcastle than they would in Albuquerque, money that comes at least in part from their parents, elsewhere in Texas. That's a small scam, and those parents know full well they're coming out ahead with UT. But again, it's money flowing "up."

Okay, I sort of get it now, but you got to admit, it is indeed a long and winding road of logic from talking about beer prices to the real estate, oil partitioning, and University-funded industries of the South and Southwest.

US 290

baZING-G-G-G-G-G

That's spinynorman! He's funny! He's not usually in my bedroom, though.

Wow. I think my head is going to explode with all of the information I'm currently trying to process.

That's such a perfect encapsulation of the 4:32 AM experience. Unless you're in college, in which case it means you should get to bed before the fucking sun comes up.

I think that at least two times most days, more if I take a nap. (First post-midnight, second at seven AM, and from then on upon waking.)

It's also what I think when I wake up on every day that doesn't start with an "S".

Connecticut: the best place not to drown your baby.

Connecticut women have the maid do it.

Zing.

sign me up for so much spam!

Just a little tweeking, and you've got youself a haiku:

Damn fucking weather
Coming into our country
Taking our jobs

Holy crap... I wrote that before I saw your next post about haikus...

I'm totally freaking out right now!

Your picture is a dude with his head up his own ass! It took me sooooo long. To find out. But I found out.

Before I thought it was a ninja in a black mask with a turd on his head.

Oh! Oh, I see it now! Man, maybe you shouldn't have made it a black background? That's really hard to see.

15 points to the first person who figures out what or where my pic is.

"Mondrian ceiling" would be a good band name

Hooray for the Beatles!

One way ticket, yeah

I love baffling sound.

how does a child scream if he or she is underwater?

insta-chubbied

errantly-lamed
I accidentally clicked the lame link rather than its chubby neighbor, and now I want a do-over.

I seem to get a lot of accidental laming on Acheworld nowadays!

But it's all right, you get a chubby for owning up to it.

that is a sound of nightmares

'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!' being screamed hysterically from the door is also a sound of nightmares.

69 now. Freud might have something to say about this.

hedonismbot>>pro ASAP ago

...masturbating furiously

Got your back HB.

YES.
Forgive me for posting a lol-dog, but I sort of always imagine this sound:
[IMGS OFF]

yeah, i'll chubby that.

Ha ha ha, oh those Wise Guys...

All coming from Chicago on Mafia business, all dunking people's heads in deep fryers, all getting lame shows on HBO...

No mothers drowning their children in Kentucky or Tennessee? Is it because of the lack of indoor plumbing?

As a lifelong Tennessee resident, I would like to point you to the above comment about Louisiana.

I hate it when it's 15 seconds ago...


forever.

hella 1401 stylez.

As a man of science shouldn't Beef make a noise blocking device to put over his head so he can heave in his own bathroom. Some sort of Barf Bowl. Like a divers helmet, but bigger. Oh but where will he keep it. I guess it's just too much hassle.

this is classic beef, man.

Have you guys read Chris Ware's stuff? Onstad talks about him a lot, and I think his influence is really shining through in these all-text panels.

I love this book

sorry, messed up the link. the book is Ware's "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth" and it's stunning.

I think "tiny green worms on invisible threads" might beat out "cellar door".

Yeah but it wouldn't look right on Drew Barrymore's chalkboard.

And quite a heat it is.

I thought the car bomb was the preferred method.

Las Vegas, Nevada not Las Vegas, County Cork.

best achewood in a while for me

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/newstreetlaw/lisa_faulkner.shtml]Damn you, wise guys[/url]

You know what I meant

Onstad must have watched the movie "Scotland, PA."

Putting a dude's head in a deep-fryer is never wise. Not ever.

"Oh no it's today"

We've all been there. Only difference is that Beef is always there.

Doesn't live up to the last two. I can't wait to see Lyle's, though.

yay molly has smurf-butt.

I watched "Goodfellas" right before i read this strip. Wiseguys prefer ovens over deep-fryers for sure.

It looks like a lot of children are being drowned in Dallas.

Looks more like Austin to me. Hence my fiance's discussion above. Austin is a really awesome town, you wouldn't think of so many children being drowned there, really. I mean, Dallas I could understand a little more. Houston, definitely.

I wonder if I know any of you!

You do prefer your hot radio DJs head-on collisioned though right?

when i'm between them, yes.

it's 4:32 am. have you drowned your child yet?

Double-wall plastic bags. The dude is Prepared.

WAS prepared.

when are they going to get married?

Did you know that I want to commit suicide

I don't really like...meals

Both of those strips were way back in Achewood's early days, before most of the characters had been strictly defined and given a set role in the strip. As such, you can't compare them to strips today.

People are probably going to disagree, but I have to wonder whether Beef's character has really changed that much. He's found true love, moved out of his grandma's house, participated in the GOF, and yet he's still the same nervous wreck he's been before all of that happened. It's not character development if the changes aren't permanent.

The comic wouldn't be very interesting if it were just two completely normal, well adjusted cats talking to each other in Paulo Alto.

Paulo Alto cleans my pool sometimes.

That's an embarrassing typo!

He's getting married soon--plus Ray's been acting up at him--he's got plenty of stress. I think that's why he's freaking out stronger than normal.

I don't see any deviation from his character development so far here. The dude is from Circumstances. In addition to his depression, which ranges from remissive to crippling (very true to form, I think), he has pretty massive anxiety issues. These compulsive ruminations on the horrors of the world don't seem like parody to me. In fact, they're almost too accurate to be funny.

I've been having real awful dreams about giant apocalyptic machinery just mowing us all down.

Wait a minute, what the fuck, when did it become "Current Kid Status" ?

I look forward to a decade from now where it's "Current Teen Status"

"Current Crotchety Old Lady Status"

"Oh no it's today" is classic. Oh my.

I've been having real awful dreams about giant apocalyptic machinery. Just mowing us all down.

Oh shit! I didn't see this until after I made the same reference. I gamble, I lose.

But you linked yours, so it is better?

Boy Howdy, they're a rowning 'em in Orlando! Check into a Disney World hotel and do it there or head for one of the two convenient water parks -- or he many ponds and moats of the Magic Kingdom! So says this Florida boy.
Maybe Disney allows this under some weird set of rules. They have their own government, after all. (Google "Reedy Creek Improvement District" if you don't believe me.)

This comic had very slightly more weight before I realized that panel nine did not say "Oh god the heavens"

So did anybody notice the tiny star in the northwest corner of Arizona?

That's the location of Colorado City, one of the two border towns populated entirely by members of the Reformed Church of LDS.

Why is there a Colorado City in Arizona? Colorado is pretty far away from Arizona.

They're both Four Corners states, so that's a rather silly statement

In any event, I would venture a guess that it has to do with the fact that the Colorado River runs through that area.

Well, it's far enough away that the one city can't overlap both states.

But the river thing makes sense.

Beefs parents were not good parents.

rereading this strip, i realize this is the way i've been sleeping lately. wake up before sunrise. think paranoid thoughts, hear noises, panic that there might be a spider in my ear, feel sick and lie awake thinking about terrible things before i drift off to strange nightmares.

I single-handedly created the one star for Alabama! Well, I had to use both hands, but you know what I mean.

This is how my day starts too. Yay for manic depressive anxiety disorders!

Mine has been starting like this for a month now .. But that's because I have had typhoid. :(

that is pretty terrible. i'd chubby you if it wouldn't be considered a dick move.

I chubbied you for the implied chubby. :D

(i don't think 'implied' was the word i meant to use there, 'intended' maybe?)

He has double-wall plastic bags hidden there, too.

NEAT BACKGROUND FACT: Ray is so rich he has a golf shoe cleaning system. That implies multiple machines, working in tandem, to wash his golf shoes.