I’d go more with sullen than pleading…but other than that I agree. I get a kick out of how she’s at least somewhat placated by the offering of coffee. 🙂
At least Brandi exercised enough compassion to brew Bud some coffee. Nice of her. Compassion coffee is vitally important stuff.
I imagine it’s a French press coffee, or perhaps a plain old-fashioned boiled coffee like my grandfather used to make.
It’s certainly not filtered coffee… some of the coffee grounds have to be left in it, for it to be truly compassionate. Brandi has certainly been around to remember what Shakespeare said: The quality of mercy is not strained…
… although, I actually punned late last night, and just left it for you to find this morning. Sort of a sleeper pun… except that wouldn’t be right for a coffee pun, would it? I’ll gave to think this over while I have my morning cuppa (Sumatran today).
This is niether here nor there, but it’s interesting that the basic programing for the GGs includes an ability to simulate drunkeness and the ensuing hangover despite the fact they’re hollow and don’t actualy metabolize the alcahol. Or anything other matter, for that matter. *CLINK* They also seem to have a built in failsafe. Bud seems to be running at normal human levels this morning. As someone pointed out yesterday, the squeaky octopus didn’t disintigrate or achive low earth orbit when thrown in yesterday’s strip, and in today’s a forceful yell didn’t level half the continent. We’ve seen the GGs use thier powers when drunk, Bud Bud’s human level governor seems to be in effect here. Maybe it operates in hangover mode to prevent accidental destruction?
I suspect normal human levels are the GGG’s default mode, and any use of their strength, face lights, or other abilities (except for invulnerability which seems to be a basic) requires conscious, deliberate effort on their part. That’s why they don’t accidentally destroy everything about them when they react with surprised reflex, and Jin and Alan could have anaerobic sex without her crushing him. 🙂
I sorta wonder whether the programming process for the GGs may have been somewhat akin to the “impressing your memory engrams onto a computer” trope used in several of the various Star Trek episodes.
If you want a golem which actually behaves like a human most of the time, it may be simpler to just transfer as much as possible of a working neural system directly into a clay-ish analog, than it would be to “write” a whole mentality from scratch and actually reproduce a living person’s memories and personality.
Bud’s reaction to alcohol isn’t the only example… they’re all functionally female (we know that Jin is, Bud very probably is, and it’s a good bet Brandi is even if she’s not settled down with a partner). May’s re-creation of human body form, via clay golems, seems to be quite accurate within its limits (very few human women have access panels, though).
In other words, the GGs may be closer to “hardware-level emulation” than to “software simulation”… and hence they may be accurate down to the “bug” level, with alcohol sensitivity and hangovers being part of the emulated package.
this talks about how to make a golem.. http://wapsisquare.com/comic/nocontrol/
to make a brand new golem, the subject must be burned to a crisp, and the ashes used as part of the clay to make the golem..
oh, and the outward apearance of the golem must be a very powerful magic ‘perception filter’.. the feel inside and out, even xrays will only show ‘normal’.. 🙂
Have any of the golems been x-rayed? I don’t recall it. And we’ve wondered before about Bud’s hatch.
On the other hand, Alan has made many close examinations of Jin and seems quite satisfied. Some men should be found to check Brandi and Bud, just for the sake of completeness.
Jin was, after May rewrote her to emulate a normal human. X-Rays found broken ribs and a broken nose. But then again, Jin is in perfect human simulation mode, with all our weaknesses. Bud and Brandi remain in thier original secondary (post Chimera) configurations. Not sure what an X-Ray would show of them.
Cheerful morning-people were the reason the Mayans created the calendar with built-in end-time. Just trying to make those cheerful spawns of a deeper Hell worry for a bit…
I imagine we’ll hear more about the vimana cells in the months to come.
This issue / sub-plot probably isn’t as urgent as had seemed, because (1) Both Bud and Brandi have decided that they’d rather remain in their current GG state, rather than taking a one-way trip to mortality at this time, and (2) the information from Shelly and Euryale suggests that the cell used for Jin’s transformation may have been a unique one-off, and that the only other vimana cells known to exist are powering the extradimensional-transport shield and that taking them for another purpose might be a Really Bad Thing To Do.
Ugh, I deal with the same thing (from Bud’s POV) every weekend, minus the exposition. Either let me sleep, OR bring me coffee w/ no commentary. FFS, some of us are NOT morning people, hangover or otherwise.
Probably. I bet the “Shelly started it” was more a refrence to Shelly and Bud going on a tear and getting rip snorting drunk rather than a refrence to Shelly’s beat down of the racist idiots. It certainly dosen’t meet the criteria of a “fight” in my book.
I just realized, Bud is hungover, and Shelly isn’t. So Shelly’s Sphinxy metabolism deals with the booze just fine, while Bud, who is an indestructable golem and dosen’t actualy metabolize anything, has to deal with a “hangover” as a consequence of getting “drunk”.
Or bud just drank a whole helluva lot more (Very likely since I would guess she would have had alcohol poisoning quite a while back) then Shelly ever could (and stay alive I mean).
I have no doubt Bud could out drink any biological being. I wonder if Shelly has a larger capacity for consumption now though. Even if she wasn’t wearing it at the time, Shelly has a few tons of extra mass to absorb the alcahol. Is she still connected to that mass or is it shunted off into an alternate reality where it dosn’t affect her. Or is she simply compacting it into herself in a way that Bud can store things and people inside herself. It would explain why she has Sphinxy powers in human form.
If she compresses that several extra tons of mass into her little body (relatively little, that is); the cement wouldn’t have to be wet for her to leave footprints
Hammerspace is clearly involved. If Shelley were merely compressed, she would crush chairs – with similar catastrophic consequences for cars, sex partners, stairs, elevators, and the like.
My guess is that it is accessible only through her human form (you can’t kick her sphinxy backside from another “direction”), and its location is comprehensible or describable only through higher math or glyphs.
as for the GG’s not metabolizing anything… hmmm, maybe they have an Atlantian version of the “Mr. Fusion” power plant from “Back To The Future”? they could “eat” anything and it is used as the fuel to power them?
That’s…the first possible explanation of what “fuels” the GGs (other than pure rage, of course) that makes sense. They all have total-conversion power sources.
not only it that a ‘golden egg’ for today’s physicists; but it is a totally plausible explanation for many of the golems’ attributes.
only one problem, though. “cold fusion”, “total conversion”, or “whatever you wanna call it” does not break down with out a nice BIG BANG and we just saw one do just that.
HUH? Which one went all “broke down and went Boom?” I wasn’t aware of any of them going Boom?!… the submarine blew up due to old explosives/ booby-traps, then there was the Golf-Ball Anti-Meteor Shower incident with Bud and Brandi, and Monica n’ Bud tried blasting some rocks in the desert, but what are you talking about?
I suspect the V-cell (or equivalent) would be just like a battery and the starter motor in a car. it supplies the “oomph” to get the REAL engine started up, then cut’s out of the system. i suspect the new V-cell was used to “boost” the normal output of Jin’s power plant in order to get enough juice to power up all the new things that
May activated when she re-programmed her, and that if that cell were to ever go offline THAT’S the day that Jin “dies”, kinda like a truck towing a big fancy camping trailer needs an extra battery to run all the stuff in the trailer, and if that battery goes, then the trailer “dies” (for the appliances that is) it may still be a trailer (ie, Golem) but there isn’t any personality inside it anymore, Jin’s Dead, and it’s back to a blank slate after reboot.
I always assumed the GGs were pulling power off the wormhole grid, giving them the virtualy unlimited power of the rotating galaxy. POITING would be a useful side effect of that .
I thought that the Viama cell was nessesary to Jump start Jin after May rewrote her software, shut her down and rebooted her. Weather she’s still conected to the wormhole grid is anybody’s guess. (except Paul’s of course)
Sure, they can take a nuke. But funny chemistry still hits them hard. Makes sense to me (but then again, I read the “Callahan” series by Spider Robinson, where this is also true for a number of characters).
Hmmm. My Clink on the above message didn’t come through. I probably should have used a Kernel, but “I know nothing, Colonel Hogan!” (Clink, Clink, Clink)
Programming. Maya apparently really likes Margaritas, so she set things up in advance so her new golem body would react to alcohol. And the priests, not having the ability to change the fine points of her spell / process, kept that in when they used it to create the GGG. Hangovers might be an unintended or perhaps unavoidable side effect of alcohol susceptibility.
Maya was being referenced in the comments yesterday for that (I may have referenced her too), but someone today referenced Tepoz. Now I do seem to remember him mentioning that he monkeyed with the GGG code a bit…maybe he did it because it helped him control the girls.
My memory isn’t that good but I still can’t shake the feeling that the line he added made it so that no ONE person could control the GGs. This was to stop abuses such as the purpose for which they were created.
Poor Bud. Just need to find the alcohol that kicks your ass the least the next day. I’m on a Steady regimen of Johnny Walker Black and Pabst. Glass of scotch and 3 pints, wake up groggy but no hangover.
Ohhh! I KNOW! After the cops came for those three guys Acacia got the nerve to talk to ‘the cop’, but saw Shelly talking with him, maybe Shelly kissed him…..So Acacia got depressed and went back to the bar and got $#*t-faced. THAT is what she means when she says “Shelly started it”.
Speaking of Justim, I believe we were having the discussion as to whether or not the officer who met with “crazy” Bud that first time was, indeed him. I ran across this recently. It seems that issue had been settled before: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/learn-a-lot/#comment-15118
The morning after the night before…
Quite the little kid pleading with mom vibe in the last panel.
nah, thats the power of morning coffee… 🙂 turns the ‘morning monster’ into a liddle kid… 😛
Brandi does act as a mother to the GGs.
I’d go more with sullen than pleading…but other than that I agree. I get a kick out of how she’s at least somewhat placated by the offering of coffee. 🙂
1. Yay! An early update! (Midnight Eastern)
2. It’s always somebody else’s fault…
At least Brandi exercised enough compassion to brew Bud some coffee. Nice of her. Compassion coffee is vitally important stuff.
I imagine it’s a French press coffee, or perhaps a plain old-fashioned boiled coffee like my grandfather used to make.
It’s certainly not filtered coffee… some of the coffee grounds have to be left in it, for it to be truly compassionate. Brandi has certainly been around to remember what Shakespeare said:
/clink/
The preceeding was an advertisement for: Mercy brand coffee. With Mercy brand coffee, there are no “Grounds” for improvement.
>Clink<
i don’t know whether that’s a win or a debt to the pun jar
They both paid the jar. That was the “clinks”.
‘Scuse me while I un-wince…
It also happens to be a win. 🙂
On the other hand, we know they aren’t Christians–after all, it’s right there in the Bible: “He brews”
[clink]
I want my money back, Sir.
[groan] Coffee puns? First thing in the morning? You are cruel, sir.
True, true…
… although, I actually punned late last night, and just left it for you to find this morning. Sort of a sleeper pun… except that wouldn’t be right for a coffee pun, would it? I’ll gave to think this over while I have my morning cuppa (Sumatran today).
Does that mean we really should be saying, “Sanka you”?
Yetch. No thanka, sanka! Instant coffee is truly vile stuff… it’s often the only thing I can get when traveling overseas, but I’d really rather not.
Having to drink something so foul-tasting really teas me off, and I spend the whole morning brewding over the situation.
Yeah, I find that I say, “It’s just not tissane!”
*chuckle*
Man, I do appreciate this forum community! Sharpest-witted bunch of humorists and punsters I’ve run across in many a long year.
I agree with Bud 100%. Cheerful people in the morning ARE evil.
ABSOLUTELY!!
This is niether here nor there, but it’s interesting that the basic programing for the GGs includes an ability to simulate drunkeness and the ensuing hangover despite the fact they’re hollow and don’t actualy metabolize the alcahol. Or anything other matter, for that matter. *CLINK* They also seem to have a built in failsafe. Bud seems to be running at normal human levels this morning. As someone pointed out yesterday, the squeaky octopus didn’t disintigrate or achive low earth orbit when thrown in yesterday’s strip, and in today’s a forceful yell didn’t level half the continent. We’ve seen the GGs use thier powers when drunk, Bud Bud’s human level governor seems to be in effect here. Maybe it operates in hangover mode to prevent accidental destruction?
Unless she made a visit to May off camera.
I suspect the line of code Tepoz added to them included an “Oh yeah, I can sooo get them wasted!” clause. 😉
It just goes to show you that Tepoz does not waste a good opportunity.
Well he dosen’t waste a good opportunity to get others wasted.
I need to stop reading the comments at 0700…the puns are painful. Pay the jar, sir.
…and madam.
*tosses an empty bottle of Knob Creek into the pun jar*
I suspect normal human levels are the GGG’s default mode, and any use of their strength, face lights, or other abilities (except for invulnerability which seems to be a basic) requires conscious, deliberate effort on their part. That’s why they don’t accidentally destroy everything about them when they react with surprised reflex, and Jin and Alan could have anaerobic sex without her crushing him. 🙂
I sorta wonder whether the programming process for the GGs may have been somewhat akin to the “impressing your memory engrams onto a computer” trope used in several of the various Star Trek episodes.
If you want a golem which actually behaves like a human most of the time, it may be simpler to just transfer as much as possible of a working neural system directly into a clay-ish analog, than it would be to “write” a whole mentality from scratch and actually reproduce a living person’s memories and personality.
Bud’s reaction to alcohol isn’t the only example… they’re all functionally female (we know that Jin is, Bud very probably is, and it’s a good bet Brandi is even if she’s not settled down with a partner). May’s re-creation of human body form, via clay golems, seems to be quite accurate within its limits (very few human women have access panels, though).
In other words, the GGs may be closer to “hardware-level emulation” than to “software simulation”… and hence they may be accurate down to the “bug” level, with alcohol sensitivity and hangovers being part of the emulated package.
this talks about how to make a golem..
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/nocontrol/
to make a brand new golem, the subject must be burned to a crisp, and the ashes used as part of the clay to make the golem..
oh, and the outward apearance of the golem must be a very powerful magic ‘perception filter’.. the feel inside and out, even xrays will only show ‘normal’.. 🙂
Have any of the golems been x-rayed? I don’t recall it. And we’ve wondered before about Bud’s hatch.
On the other hand, Alan has made many close examinations of Jin and seems quite satisfied. Some men should be found to check Brandi and Bud, just for the sake of completeness.
Jin was, after May rewrote her to emulate a normal human. X-Rays found broken ribs and a broken nose. But then again, Jin is in perfect human simulation mode, with all our weaknesses. Bud and Brandi remain in thier original secondary (post Chimera) configurations. Not sure what an X-Ray would show of them.
Morning people are the worst, I’ll never understand how I could stay married to one for almost 34 years now.
Cheerful morning people are the embodiment of evil. They make Sith look like puppies.
Cheerful morning-people were the reason the Mayans created the calendar with built-in end-time. Just trying to make those cheerful spawns of a deeper Hell worry for a bit…
Didn’t work though.
There is something worse.
I’m a — hyperactive — cheerful morning person.
Sometimes with puns.
Sith puppies! Now I want to see how that works. 🙂
Sith puppies? Is that where the Sith ladies lose their tops?
Sith ladies?
Next, you be comparing them to gentlemen. That would put you in deep sith.
The are not gentle.
Sith Puppy
“Yes, I, Darth Drooley, will be following your career with *much* interest!”
“shelly started it”
Let the ****storm begin… T_T
(Sorry for inappropriate language there)
What launguage? All I see are some @$$tericks followed by the word “storm”.
-rattles pun jar- you know the rules
Hmmm… the system does not recognize my payments to the pun jar. maybe my jokes aren’t punny enough.
let me try again… ‘clink’ ‘clink’
and for good measure… ‘clunk’
*Tosses hevily used Smith Corona manual typewriter into the pun jar*
>CLUNK<
Aww,, Brandi made coffee, instead of a carrot/wheatgrass drink or sump’tin’
For an asperger, she has quite the ability to see Bud’s troubled, or she just intelligently surmised that Bud going on a booze, has some deeper cause.
I guess that comes with having one’s bedroom in someone else’s belly-hatch… 😀
Looks like Mom Brandi is about to sit-down for a little talk with Bud.
By the by, when will we get to hear the finer details of those “Vimana-Cells”?
As morning-after gift beverages go, coffee is definitely on the kind side.
Carrot and wheat-grass juice would be in the not-so-sympathetic “Here, have what’s really good for you” mode.
“Cruel” would be a nice glass of brussel sprout tea, with nước mắm.
I imagine we’ll hear more about the vimana cells in the months to come.
This issue / sub-plot probably isn’t as urgent as had seemed, because (1) Both Bud and Brandi have decided that they’d rather remain in their current GG state, rather than taking a one-way trip to mortality at this time, and (2) the information from Shelly and Euryale suggests that the cell used for Jin’s transformation may have been a unique one-off, and that the only other vimana cells known to exist are powering the extradimensional-transport shield and that taking them for another purpose might be a Really Bad Thing To Do.
Ugh, I deal with the same thing (from Bud’s POV) every weekend, minus the exposition. Either let me sleep, OR bring me coffee w/ no commentary. FFS, some of us are NOT morning people, hangover or otherwise.
Perhaps we will now see the “fight” from Bud’s POV. I imagine there will be some incongruities with Shelly’s version of events.
Probably. I bet the “Shelly started it” was more a refrence to Shelly and Bud going on a tear and getting rip snorting drunk rather than a refrence to Shelly’s beat down of the racist idiots. It certainly dosen’t meet the criteria of a “fight” in my book.
I just realized, Bud is hungover, and Shelly isn’t. So Shelly’s Sphinxy metabolism deals with the booze just fine, while Bud, who is an indestructable golem and dosen’t actualy metabolize anything, has to deal with a “hangover” as a consequence of getting “drunk”.
That is messed up.
Or bud just drank a whole helluva lot more (Very likely since I would guess she would have had alcohol poisoning quite a while back) then Shelly ever could (and stay alive I mean).
I have no doubt Bud could out drink any biological being. I wonder if Shelly has a larger capacity for consumption now though. Even if she wasn’t wearing it at the time, Shelly has a few tons of extra mass to absorb the alcahol. Is she still connected to that mass or is it shunted off into an alternate reality where it dosn’t affect her. Or is she simply compacting it into herself in a way that Bud can store things and people inside herself. It would explain why she has Sphinxy powers in human form.
I’m overthinking this, aren’t I.
well, look at ground where she walks.
If she compresses that several extra tons of mass into her little body (relatively little, that is); the cement wouldn’t have to be wet for her to leave footprints
Hammerspace is clearly involved. If Shelley were merely compressed, she would crush chairs – with similar catastrophic consequences for cars, sex partners, stairs, elevators, and the like.
My guess is that it is accessible only through her human form (you can’t kick her sphinxy backside from another “direction”), and its location is comprehensible or describable only through higher math or glyphs.
as for the GG’s not metabolizing anything… hmmm, maybe they have an Atlantian version of the “Mr. Fusion” power plant from “Back To The Future”? they could “eat” anything and it is used as the fuel to power them?
That’s…the first possible explanation of what “fuels” the GGs (other than pure rage, of course) that makes sense. They all have total-conversion power sources.
“cold fusion”?
not only it that a ‘golden egg’ for today’s physicists; but it is a totally plausible explanation for many of the golems’ attributes.
only one problem, though. “cold fusion”, “total conversion”, or “whatever you wanna call it” does not break down with out a nice BIG BANG and we just saw one do just that.
Thus, the need for a new V-cell.
HUH? Which one went all “broke down and went Boom?” I wasn’t aware of any of them going Boom?!… the submarine blew up due to old explosives/ booby-traps, then there was the Golf-Ball Anti-Meteor Shower incident with Bud and Brandi, and Monica n’ Bud tried blasting some rocks in the desert, but what are you talking about?
I suspect the V-cell (or equivalent) would be just like a battery and the starter motor in a car. it supplies the “oomph” to get the REAL engine started up, then cut’s out of the system. i suspect the new V-cell was used to “boost” the normal output of Jin’s power plant in order to get enough juice to power up all the new things that
May activated when she re-programmed her, and that if that cell were to ever go offline THAT’S the day that Jin “dies”, kinda like a truck towing a big fancy camping trailer needs an extra battery to run all the stuff in the trailer, and if that battery goes, then the trailer “dies” (for the appliances that is) it may still be a trailer (ie, Golem) but there isn’t any personality inside it anymore, Jin’s Dead, and it’s back to a blank slate after reboot.
I always assumed the GGs were pulling power off the wormhole grid, giving them the virtualy unlimited power of the rotating galaxy. POITING would be a useful side effect of that .
I thought that the Viama cell was nessesary to Jump start Jin after May rewrote her software, shut her down and rebooted her. Weather she’s still conected to the wormhole grid is anybody’s guess. (except Paul’s of course)
In Jin’s case the cell was not so much a power source as a power regulator with the ability to bring her inate power down to human levels.
One wonders if Bud’s POV will be stick-figured or if it will be more of a clear memory (as in normal Wapsi drawing).
Bud, just because Shelly started getting drunk you’re not obligated to follow in her footsteps.
But Bud’s a social drinker. When someone says “I’ll have a drink,” she says “Social I.” How much do I have to pay the pun jar for that one?
One bottle of “Yaws”.
Stupid question of the week: they can get hit with a nuclear bomb and barely break a nail, yet they get hung over? How does that work?
External invulnerability != internal invulnerability.
Sure, they can take a nuke. But funny chemistry still hits them hard. Makes sense to me (but then again, I read the “Callahan” series by Spider Robinson, where this is also true for a number of characters).
You read Callahan? And here? Then you are a glutton for “pun”ishment, aren’t you. (c8
Hmmm. My Clink on the above message didn’t come through. I probably should have used a Kernel, but “I know nothing, Colonel Hogan!” (Clink, Clink, Clink)
“No, no!” cried Moxie, nibbling at his tieclip in a frenzy…
You think Callahan or this forum are bad?
Read Piers Anthony’s XANTH series (starting with ‘A Spell for Chamelion’).
On second thought… don’t.
we wouldn’t get any meaningful dialog in this forum because of all the ‘clinking’ in the pun jar.
I am not kidding.
I gave up around the time the trilogy got to be 3^2.
Programming. Maya apparently really likes Margaritas, so she set things up in advance so her new golem body would react to alcohol. And the priests, not having the ability to change the fine points of her spell / process, kept that in when they used it to create the GGG. Hangovers might be an unintended or perhaps unavoidable side effect of alcohol susceptibility.
Maya was being referenced in the comments yesterday for that (I may have referenced her too), but someone today referenced Tepoz. Now I do seem to remember him mentioning that he monkeyed with the GGG code a bit…maybe he did it because it helped him control the girls.
My memory isn’t that good but I still can’t shake the feeling that the line he added made it so that no ONE person could control the GGs. This was to stop abuses such as the purpose for which they were created.
You remember correctly:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/yourheartstopped/
Poor Bud. Just need to find the alcohol that kicks your ass the least the next day. I’m on a Steady regimen of Johnny Walker Black and Pabst. Glass of scotch and 3 pints, wake up groggy but no hangover.
In coffee, veritas?
In hoc calice vinces…
Ohhh! I KNOW! After the cops came for those three guys Acacia got the nerve to talk to ‘the cop’, but saw Shelly talking with him, maybe Shelly kissed him…..So Acacia got depressed and went back to the bar and got $#*t-faced. THAT is what she means when she says “Shelly started it”.
Oooo…now there’s a thought! I hadn’t even thought about Justin making an appearance and how that might have affected Bud.
No fair!!! Time Lords don’t get to ‘predict’ anything! 😉
Speaking of Justim, I believe we were having the discussion as to whether or not the officer who met with “crazy” Bud that first time was, indeed him. I ran across this recently. It seems that issue had been settled before:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/learn-a-lot/#comment-15118
Now, let’s hear Bud’s version of the story….