Madhouse at Mayes, or a whole lotta drinking going on.

I intentionally kept Howard busy at the Mayes Midtown Motors restaurant distributing the Miracle Drink cure for the Dr. Patterson GPS units. I thought about who could visit the place and be overheard, but nothing came to me except the snark based on the Friday For Better or For Worse strip.

Qnjones posting as Becky delivered a surprisingly vicious blow to Jeremy Jones and Tangi Origami, meaning I was surprised she would have Becky be so violent to Tangi. I had been playing Jeremy as vindictive in his comments, but always leaving a verbal out for Becky, just in case qnjones wanted to call a truce. I was on the verge of dropping another verbal out for the Tangi Origami punch-out, when aprilp_katje posting as April dropped the “Becky’s in the principal’s office” line. One of the joys of working in April’s Real Blog is trying to get your snark in faster than the other person. It is also fun adding revisions as you go to make what your character said work with what the other person’s character just said. Jeremy says what happened in the principal’s office, then Becky says what happened and the 2 account disagree, until Jeremy does a revision (“This happened after I left.”) which makes the 2 differing accounts no longer different.

Becky gets punished, which is probably fair considering. I had fun researching in-school suspensions in the Canadian education system, and had even provided the supervisor, Ms. Connasse, which is a crude slang word in French, basically meaning “a women who is not nice.” The first 3 letters are kind of like a crude English word for women, to give you an idea. I thought qnjones would bite on this lead-in, but it was rejected. Sob! However, qnjones’ idea of Becky cowing wimpy Gerald and Duncan into beating up on Jeremy I found very amusing, so that was OK. I realize at this point, Becky has kissed pretty much all the boys in the strip that are her age. April needs to get on the ball. I don’t think she has kissed Duncan yet.

Something I found interesting in the Meta was qnjones' assertion that Becky was having a meltdown, because her boyfriend betrayed her and aprilp_katje’s “Poor Becky” response. It showed me how much I empathize with the character when I write it. Jeremy’s response would be: “Poor Becky? What about poor Tangi and poor Jeremy? All I said was that she needed to lose a little weight for her act and then she kicked me to the curb, even after all I’ve done for her.” Of course, Jeremy would not actually say that, but he is probably thinking it.

I remember when I was a teenage boy, that teenage boys have no real girlfriend loyalty. If another girl was interested, then so were they. Of course, what I remember was that the teenage girls were only interested in a certain subset of teenage boys that were considered to be popular, so if a boy who was not a part of that subset managed to find a girl who was interested, then there was a good chance that he would never find another one who was interested. I am portraying Tangi Origami with a specific instance in my history in mind. My first girlfriend in high school had a sort-of rival in high school. When I started dating my girlfriend, this rival, who had never expressed any interest in me whatsoever started constantly hitting on me and trying to incite arguments between me and my girlfriend. The difference between me and Jeremy however, is that once my girlfriend did finally break up with me, the rival completely lost interest in me and focused on my then former girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

This posting has been great fun, because it reminded me of all the little things that can cause a relationship to end. I had been listening to Abbott & Costello radio shows all week. The little biography that went along with it mentioned the reason why they broke up as an act. Costello did not give one of his maids a raise; she raised a stink about it, was fired, and went to work as a maid for Abbott. Costello and Abbott got into an argument about the maid and refused to talk to each other, except as required for doing their act for 2 years.

Anyway, the last part is Howard finally getting time to post and finding that Becky is all violent now. Howard has had plenty of violence in his past, so I enjoyed making him extremely sympathetic to Becky. He and Becky have a number of practical jokes in mind for Jeremy, which we find out about when someone (and this means anyone on the ARB) spots a practical joke being played on Jeremy. They need to be nonviolent and indirect (as not incriminate Becky or Howard). Have fun!