A Nice Day for Pets
Today’s strip was actually a fairly pleasant strip. Despite its usual artistic difficulties in drawing realistic rabbits or proportions that made sense, the strip did have certain energy to it and the pictures of the dogs seemed to show doggy kinds of things with a lot of enthusiasm. It wasn’t a particularly funny strip, and could have actually done without its punch line and would have been better, but overall it was not too bad. It gave my character of Constable Paul Wright, finally an opportunity to snark on the Shiimsa harness bit in the Pet’s Letter from April, 2006. Howard got to talk about the dog characters qnjones had created for her Becky McGuire character. Most of the rest of the characters rhapsodized on April’s French braid. As of late, the Sunday strips have been leading the dailies in character development. For example, April’s birthday Sunday strip showed Eva with Duncan as a couple, whereas the daily strip is still struggling with that plotline. So I suspect that April may show up with a French braid as a regular feature in a little while. If Merrie is touting the ponytail look, then April will need to change to something else, in order to tell them apart on the days when Merrie is drawn bigger and April is drawn smaller.
As for other side plots, I have tired of the Howard burlesque show plot, having carried it for a long time now. So I came up with the idea of the opera “The Dentist and the Teenagers” as a takeoff on the plot that is clearly going to be carried through this next week, as we get to see Elly’s reaction to John’s speeding, and then Edgar, Dixie, Butterscotch, Grandpa Jim, and Iris all react too, in order to complete the week. I predict a weekending strip with John holding some animal and saying, “Why is driving so complicated?”
I got an intriguing post from susannamoodie posting as Zandra Larson suggesting I look at child pornography laws, and that led to another research project. There are quite a few websites that berate the Canadian legal system for taking it easy on child pornographers and I was able to find the part of the actual Canadian law that would apply to the dentist opera, which I regurgitated in a post. I don’t know if susannamoodie was trying to give me an indirect warning not to make the material too explicit. Nevertheless, I had no intention of going to those kinds of levels. Mainly I was trying to find lovey-dovey words that rhymed with words for teeth, although “bicuspid” and “love-bed” may have been pushing acceptable levels. In the future I will try to keep the love part even cleaner, if I quote any more parts from the opera lyrics.
Oddly enough, today I got the biggest reaction from the Creative Arts Class Forum, as every time I seemed to write something as Mae Thomas, other posters there were pretty active in writing something back. That was unusual, because normally when I write something as Mae, it sits for days and days before there is a reaction. Maybe it’s the new “in” place to write.
As for other side plots, I have tired of the Howard burlesque show plot, having carried it for a long time now. So I came up with the idea of the opera “The Dentist and the Teenagers” as a takeoff on the plot that is clearly going to be carried through this next week, as we get to see Elly’s reaction to John’s speeding, and then Edgar, Dixie, Butterscotch, Grandpa Jim, and Iris all react too, in order to complete the week. I predict a weekending strip with John holding some animal and saying, “Why is driving so complicated?”
I got an intriguing post from susannamoodie posting as Zandra Larson suggesting I look at child pornography laws, and that led to another research project. There are quite a few websites that berate the Canadian legal system for taking it easy on child pornographers and I was able to find the part of the actual Canadian law that would apply to the dentist opera, which I regurgitated in a post. I don’t know if susannamoodie was trying to give me an indirect warning not to make the material too explicit. Nevertheless, I had no intention of going to those kinds of levels. Mainly I was trying to find lovey-dovey words that rhymed with words for teeth, although “bicuspid” and “love-bed” may have been pushing acceptable levels. In the future I will try to keep the love part even cleaner, if I quote any more parts from the opera lyrics.
Oddly enough, today I got the biggest reaction from the Creative Arts Class Forum, as every time I seemed to write something as Mae Thomas, other posters there were pretty active in writing something back. That was unusual, because normally when I write something as Mae, it sits for days and days before there is a reaction. Maybe it’s the new “in” place to write.
posted by howard at 11:10 PM
6 Comments:
I predict a weekending strip with John holding some animal and saying, “Why is driving so complicated?”
LOL! :)
I was dismayed to see that the arc was continuing today, though not exactly surprised.
It doesn't seem like any April arcs these days are short ones. I think because she is there with John and Elly, almost every story with her in it runs 3-4 weeks, like the zits storyline, for example. It's good for April's Real Blog, because it gives your character something to work with.
I've noted some of the questions about Paul's work schedule, holidays, weekends, etc. I ran across some information about the shifts the OPP work, which could explain some of the randomness. It appears OPP shifts are comprised of four 12 hour days--the first two are day shifts (6am-6pm)and the last two are evening shifts (6pm-6am). Not sure if you had seen this information--
debjyn,
I would be glad to have a link to the information. I love including items of authenticity in Paul's posts.
I am aware the OPP works in different shifts and their workweek varies from week to week. In the beginning, that's the way I wrote Constable Paul Wright's visits to Mtigwaki to see Elizabeth, where he would sometimes arrive on a weekday or for a partial weekend, where he would have to wait for Elizabeth to finish work to visit with her. However, the strip and the monthly letters made a point of indicating that the good constable comes to visit Elizabeth on weekends only. So, part of my snark with Paul now involves this peculiarity, which does not match the real situation with the OPP.
The other thing that is different is that assignments to detachments in Northwest Ontario usually require a certain number of years commitment, apparently so that OPP officers don't try to flee from their position through transfers. Lynn made a mistake by pointing out that the fictional Otter County detachment was a new facility, so Paul could not possibly have reached the time required for staying there before applying for a detachment in Spruce Narrows.
The other item that was slightly off was even having a detachment in Spruce Narrows. I have seen a map listing detachments across Ontario and the northwest detachments are almost always associated with a majour highway system. Spruce Narrows, as indicated on the FBoFW website map, would not meet this qualification.
I had forgotten about those weekday visits you did have included in the first postings! I see what you mean about how the strip/letters keep throwing things out that don't make much sense with his occupation. I think that is what distresses me (and makes this strip so easy to snark now)is that LJ seems to just throw random things around instead of doing any research. To me, it just seems that she is going through the motions--which is an insult to readers. I'll try to remember that link--although it seems like I was ran across it when I was mentoring some grade school kids on "Careers in" kind of information--I think it was a real basic kid site kind of thing.
Bingo. Link is http://www.kidsnewsroom.org/careers/careers.asp
Cute little site--really useful if you have young kids.
Post a Comment
<< Home