I've seen a lot of descriptions and demonstrations of the "enhanced interrogation" technique of Waterboarding, and from what I can tell, you don't so much experience pain as much as you mostly "just" fear for your life for the few seconds you can stand it until you "break". I'll definitely allow for the possibility that there IS actually pain involved, and that you can suffer severe lasting psychological effects, but it seems to me that, at least with the way our government's reportedly practiced it, it's specifically designed to be as effective and efficient as possible while causing the MINIMUM amount of pain. No matter how you feel about it, it's not like the CIA are sadists.

This isn't a defense of waterboarding, but rather an excuse for me to link to the Medieval Torture Museum in San Gimignano, Italy, which was one of the most haunting experiences of my life. THIS was how to inflict intentional pain. Elaine and I visited for our 2nd anniversary (we did other less macabre things in Tuscany too), and we both paid for admission, but Elaine had barely entered the first room when she said, "Uh, I'll wait for you outside". I'm glad she did. This illustrated online tour does a good job describing the nasty devices they used in the Medieval times... it's nothing compared to standing face to face with an Iron Maiden like I had the "pleasure" of doing, but if you have any sort of imagination, that link will freak you the hell out.

How many of you knew that the Iron Maiden was an old torture device and not just a metal band? Ok now how many of you knew that Uday Hussein used to put underperforming Iraqi athletes in one as recently as like 10 years ago?

Tags: alp

I was gonna make a Mitt Romney joke. But then I thought a lot of you wouldn't get it. Then I was gonna make a Schrodinger's cat joke, but then I thought even less of you would get it. Then it turned into a Schrodinger's LOLcat joke, but that was just getting stupid. And that's been done already.

So I went with what you see now; not my best work but it took me like 2 weeks to come up with two words that mean the opposite of each other, both of which you can be at the same time. There's credible and incredible, but they don't make for a good joke. Then there's flammable and inflammable, but as you all know, they actually mean the same thing. Here's a video of Marina from HotForWords.com explaining why.


Obviously her looks are the big reason Marina's so popular, but she does know her shit, as an actual philologist. She's not my type, but hell, put ANYONE in front of a camera telling me about the etymology of words and I'm hooked.

Regarding this old comic, here she is explaining the origin of the phrase "gird your loins" (God, these stillframes are making my site look all smutty).

Tags: alp

Here I go, breaking another promise. Sorry, the new comic won't be going up today after all, cuz I got hit by a nasty cold and I felt like crap both yesterday and today. But you'll see it next week for sure.

Tags: alp

Pretend this comic went up last week, when the pope was still in NY...

Those of you who've been waiting a while for your shop orders, I'm reeeeeally sorry. I had t-shirt shortages as well as printer problems but we're all good to go now so your orders'll be going out in a day or so, if they haven't gone out already. Note that I'm all sold out of fridge magnets for now (though everyone who's ordered already will get 'em). I know I should've at least let you know about the delay but I think I have some sort of aversion to good manners. Sorry...

If you're a fan of photo webcomics - though I'm not sure why you would be - you'll want to check out my buddy Chris Yates' new book of collected Reprographics strips!

Tags: alp

No new episode today... hey, I made it 4 whole weeks before I missed an update. Taxes killed me this year - seriously, I had to amend six prior-year returns before I even started on 2007's - but now my life is much, MUCH easier. Is that worth anything to you? No, but it makes me feel better saying it.

The new comic will be up any day between tomorrow and - WORST CASE!!! - a week from today.

Tags: alp

No real blog post today; our entire block had a short power outage today (a transformer down the street blew with a huge, really cool VZHHEEEEWNRRRR noise) and taxes are kicking my ass. Enjoy the new episode...

Apropos of nothing:

dean: this is one of the things about war. you take what was probably a person with repressed but very controllable violent tendencies, and you leave them completely amoral and fucked up
bernie: i finished Call of Duty 4. it's so fun killing people in that
bernie: when a grenade lands at your feet, a message appears on the screen: "PRESS MIDDLE MOUSE TO THROW BACK!"
bernie: i wonder why anyone gets killed by grenades out there in iraq
dean: they have the old two-button mice

Tags: alp

While poking around the net reading about pheromones, I came across this article, with the following excerpt:

In a study to be published in the journal Biology of Reproduction, researchers collected samples from the underarms of men who refrained from using deodorant for four weeks.

Yeah. And then:

The extracts were then blended and applied to the upper lips of 18 women, aged 25 to 45.

First of all, I can think of about 9,000 less ridiculous ways of trying to get a woman to fall for me, including running her over with a car. Second, even if my "experiment" above is successful with one of the women in the "study", no matter how many times she washes her face I am NEVER letting her kiss me.

Tags: alp

Remember, I'm back and I'm WEEKLY. Shout it from the rooftops, but be careful while you're up there.

My sister-in-law's new boyfriend accidentally dropped and broke my camera. WAY TO MAKE AN IMPRESSION DUDE! I'm only kidding, he feels bad enough about it and is helping me pay for a new one, even though I wasn't gonna hold him responsible. He's just lucky I'm lazy and wasn't gonna shoot new footage for this week's update. Shhhhhhh! Don't tell him that I like NEVER shoot new footage.

My logs tell me that you guys have been clicking on a particular ad that you may or may not see over to the right, the one for Sugardaddie.com... "Dating for the Elite: Successful Men & Gorgeous Single Women". I'm glad you're all thinking pretty highly of yourselves.

Hey, here's two new(ish) fan merchandise pics! Craig looks way hot in his t-shirt, looking out onto the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and Eva is a double threat, with her signed print and fridge magnet (frame and Alien plushie acquired elsewhere).

craig		eva

Tags: alp

I TOLD you I'd have a new episode up this week. And when I say I'm gonna do something, 2 times out of 10 I DO IT.

AND I'm going back to a WEEKLY SCHEDULE. What day of the week? Not sure. Thursday feels kinda weird to me, so we'll see if I can gravitate towards another day; if I do, we'll see if I can do it without going more than a week without updating.

I just gotta say, how DARE Eliot Spitzer betray the vows of his marriage and have sexual relations with a call-girl? Prostitutes are filthy, unholy people. I mean, LOOK at the girl he was caught with. Her name is Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Just LOOK at this picture of her in a bikini. LOOK at this picture of her where she's topless and barely covering her breasts. No, don't go to her Myspace page; the photos _I_ have of this terrible, lecherous woman are the RACIEST you'll find anywhere. And don't forget to DOWNLOAD her new single, so you may HEAR what the music sounds like of someone who we are TOTALLY SHOCKED is a celebrity now. Let me ALSO now give EXTRA PUBLICITY to that awful man Joe Francis who is responsible for GIRLS GONE WILD because he SAID SOMETHING RELATED TO this girl.

Tags: alp

Today's "deadline" aside, I'm gonna have a new strip up this week. And then I'll be going back to WEEKLY.

The "more ambitious" project of mine needs to be postponed, cuz of course nothing goes as planned. But until I get that to where I want it to be, I'll keep doing strips on the ol' weekly sched.

See ya later this week.

Tags: alp