Anjali Mudra,

Sometimes when I run into a problem in my life I ask myself, “What would I do if I was an autonomous robot?”

For example, when my wife thinks I’m spending too much time playing sports, I get to thinking. “How would an autonomous robot respond to that?”  Well, it would think, “Cool, I’m married.  I’m totally fitting in.  All the other autonomous robots are so jealous right now.”  Based on this I am able to realize that I’m lucky to be married at all.  What to do about the sports then.  Hmmm.  Tone them back a little to make the wife happy I suppose.  Ok, problem solved.

Another example, sometimes I have to figure out how to answer questions like, “Which one of these jeans do I look better in?”  Autonomous robot me, what say you?  “I’m still married?  This is awesome.  I’ll never let my autonomous robot friends hear the end of this.”  From this I deduce nothing.  I get tired of listening to that kind of thing after a while.  As far as the jeans go, I do my best but sometimes both pairs of jeans are really really incredibly similar to each other so I say “That is an invalid question me dear” and quickly leave the room.

Regards are for girls,

Ben

Howdy readers,

My wife is sleeping on the couch right now.  She seems quite serene.  She has no idea what I’m about to do and neither do you.  It may involve a small spray bottle.

Well, I better get to it.  No point in dilly-dallying.

She looks so peaceful.  I’m starting to have second thoughts.  Maybe I’ll just kiss her on the cheek, take her upstairs, tuck her into bed, start the dishwasher and then join her for a good night’s sleep.

…a light misting could be pretty entertaining.  She might not take too kindly to that.  In fact she might wake up a bit cranky, a bit testy one might say.  I can handle it though.  I know I can win her back in five to ten minutes.  I’ll have to get her to laugh somehow about something else.  I’ll bide my time and then strike with just the right comment at just the right time with just the right tone and expression. She’ll do a snort laugh and thaw right up.  What comment will I use you ask.  I never know.  It will hopefully come to me on the fly.

Hmmm.  These things don’t always go as planned…aanh, whatever.

Ok.  Its showtime.  Putting the computer down    …quietly…     bye

I’m back. I chickened out.  That’s not like me though.  I mean, really, it’s not too late yet.  She is still sleeping.  I’m just typing on the floor now.  Why am I writing this.  I should just go ahead with the plan, right?  Ok then.  It’s back on.  Go time.  Sorry for bothering you…

Dear citizens of your various countries,

So, I’m watching day 12 of the olympics the other day (yesterday) when I start thinking to myself, it may have been a mistake to record every single Olympic broadcast on CTV (Canada) and NBC (US).  I’m a little behind.  Canada has 11 medals so far! Yay!  I wonder how many medals we’ll finish with.  I was watching hours a day during the olympics.  The moment the closing ceremonies ended (I haven’t watched them yet) my interest in the entire show was cut in sevenths.  Its been a slow go.  I shall persevere.

I’ve thought of a solution to the drug problem in olympic sports.  I’ll admit ahead of time that it isn’t a very good solution but I think it would  have some interesting results.  At the next olympics, right before the closing ceremonies, redefine winning a medal with an automatic positive drug test result.  Gold/Silver/Bronze goes to the worst three finishers in the finals of each event in reverse order.  Crazy right?  No.  Remember watching the sprint races?  Remember watching the clump of racers at the front floating airily across the finish line in the photo finish?  Remember thinking they’re probably on drugs? (It can’t have only been my wife yelling that at the tv every time.)  Remember seeing the stragglers, wondering where the pack of dogs was that must have been chasing them to make them run so crazy, and thinking, “Well, at least that guy (or girl) isn’t on drugs.  He (or she) should get the gold medal.”  They don’t tell anybody if you are going to do the same thing or not at the next olympics.  Those olympics are the ones I want to see.

Next Olympics: In the final of the 100m dash half the field finishes in just under 10s while the other half get disqualified for competing for the most realistic looking last place finish.  They don’t fool anybody due to the airy way in which they slowly float across the finish.

Comic News Update: I’m guessing that most of you have quit reading by this point.  Some of you may have worried lately that this comic is slowly dying out.  Its not.  I’m ramping up production here again.  I’ve had a number of other things on the go lately (like watching the olympics).  The comic backlog is in good shape though.  The lull is over. Until next time…

Something better than “Regards”,
B

Dear Chemists,

I actually don’t have anything to say to you chemists.  This is awkward.  Well…hope everything is going well for you guys.  Maybe we can talk again later sometime; I don`t know what about.  Maybe you can think of something.

Personally,
Benjamin Boyd

Before I say hello this time I need to define a few things:

d = day of the week (Sunday = 1, Monday = 2 … Saturday = 7)
w = week of the year (This is week #28)
y = year of the century (2012 = 12)
c = unnecessary for most of you
! = not a factorial symbol, just punctuation

Those of you who will be surviving this century are going to have to find yourselves a new equation for calculating what day of the year it is, sorry.  I’m just joking, those of you who are going to be alive in 2100 can just change ‘y’ to equal ‘year of the millenium’ and you’ll be good to go.

Ok.  I think I’m ready now.

Happy day of the year number d + 7 * ( w – 1 ) + 6 – [ y + ceiling ( y / 4 ) + 5 ] mod 7!

How exciting.  That equation will work until the last day of 2099.  Think about that for a second.  If you are having a baby this year sometime your child will turn 87 before this equation expires.  That should be mildly comforting for any autistic readers and just a little bit disturbing to the rest of you.  Sucks to not be autistic sometimes.

NOTES:
Ceiling means to round up no matter what, ex. ceiling ( 5.2 ) = 6
Mod is the remainder of a number when divided by another number, ex. 25 mod 7 = 4

How are you doing?

The other day, (3 and a half months ago), I was trying to figure out why the sky is blue.  I didn’t come up with anything new.  It is just regular old boring science.

Just now though, I was thinking.  “Blue” wavelength light comes from the direction of the sky but it is the light that is blue, not the sky.  The sky might not have changed at all but depending on where the sun is positioned, the sky “changes” “color”.  Nonsense.  The sky stayed the same.  The sun moved. different wavelengths of light gently stabbed you in the eyes.  Saying the sky changes color is like saying you are more rain absorbent when you run through a rainstorm while carrying an umbrella than you are while walking.  You might be wetter but you are just as much of a water sponge as you were when you were walking under your umbrella like a normal person.  So, what I’m trying to say is, get hooked on semantics.  You can make a good conversation out of just about any boring old topic if you can get two people to disagree about the meaning of the same word without them realizing it.  They’ll argue for minutes on end, maybe hours, come to some kind of a precarious agreement that neither of them are happy with, feel misunderstood, and both walk away thinking the other person is a bit of a dummy and wonder how they ever made it through school.

I don’t like regards,

Ben

Dobar dan!

Apparently that is how you say “good afternoon” in Bosnian.  It isn’t exactly still afternoon right now but that is too good to pass up.

I want to wish my Father a better than happy Father’s Day.  Today’s comic is dedicated to new Father’s-to-be everywhere.

About today’s comic:

If you don’t get the “Solution (boy)” part it might help to talk it over with a Scotsman, a Dutchman and an Englishman or of course you could talk it over with me, a Scotsman/Englishman/Irishman/German/Swede.

I titled this one Unnecessary Solutions 1.  Implication, there are more to come.  Reality, there are no more Unnecessary Solutions in the works.  If you happen to have any “problems” that aren’t really problems and don’t really need any solutions, feel free to send them my way.  I will provide Unnecessary Solutions for you free of charge.

Kids are creative when it comes to making fun of someone’s name they don’t like.  You can save your kid some hassle by either giving them genes strong in the areas of fast growth, largeness of frame, quick wits, and social skills or alternately you can mitigate some of the potential damage by making your child’s name hard to rhyme with.  You can check out Wikipedia for a list of unrhymable words in the English language.  There is also a nice list of words with only obscure words that rhyme with them; which is nearly just as good.  Here are some interesting ones I ran across for a girl:

Circle – What she’ll keep you running in

Purple (not recommended) – Officially only rhymes with a word unknown to small children, “curple”, the hindquarters of a horse or donkey, and unofficially rhymes with a word unknown to the English dictionary, “nurple”, unfortunately a word commonly used with purple.

Orange – Technically does rhyme with “Blorenge”, a hill in Wales, but I think you are probably safe with this one.

Kirsch (or Kirscha maybe?) – A black cherry drink

Music – Nice feminine implications but doesn’t actually sound very nice now that I think about it.  “Nice to meet you.  My name is George Major and this is my daughter, Music Major.”

Woman – the perfect name for a female in many ways but probably a bit premature for a child, though if you can tough it out until she reaches maturity this would be a great name for any woman.  Woman (your last name here). How does it sound?  Pretty awesome I bet.

Silver – Not bad, not bad.

There are others.  I’m sure you will come up with something lovely.

About the last three comics:

A few people were confused.  I once said to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the man who is always wrong were to say, ‘Don’t worry. Its not the end of the World.'”  So I wrote it down with all of my other comic ideas.  Every time I go to make a comic I look through all my ideas until one pops out at me and I run with it.  I’ve passed that one over many times because that statement isn’t all that funny by itself.  I decided it needed a lead up.  Comic #41 is just a silly conversation.  Comic #42 is me trying to come up with questions that you could ask someone that it would be impossible to answer wrong.  Comic #43 is the joke that I wrote down as an idea so long ago except it still wasn’t all that funny by itself so I let my mind wander a bit and the mini stick man sitting on a finger happened.  Just in case you were wondering, it is a normal sized flower and finger with a mini-stick man and not a giant finger with a normal sized stick man.

Enough. I say good day,

B