Back to School
Posted August 27th, 2007 by Howard TaylerThis morning the smell of fall was in the air.
It was a trick, of course. We had rain last night, so the smell this morning was actually “wet summer,” but here in the Great Western Desert that’s as good as August gets.
My kids are back in school, and so are more than a few of my readers. For those of you NOT in school, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Kids these days? They read webcomics at school ALL THE TIME.
Yeah, I see you in my server logs. I see your campus proxy servers. I see your frat home-pages. I see your digital footprints, as you sneak around the musty Schlock Mercenary archives…
Your soul is mine. Want it back? Oh, that’s easy… BRING ME MORE SOULS. Hook your friends on Schlock. Find a favorite strip and share it. Loan them your book. (Buy a book, and THEN loan it to them.)
Need help? Here’s a page full of link banners you can use in sigs. But the best way to recruit your new flatmates or fellow dorm-rats is to laugh out loud while you read. Don’t hold it in. That’s not healthy.
Explore posts in the same categories: Cartooning, Business
August 27th, 2007 at 8:20 am
I see. We’re gathering souls now, are we, Howard?
August 27th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Well, yes. But I promise to only use my powers for good.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Well I guess that makes it okay then, Carry on.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:41 am
So, souls for good power….hmmm….Does this make you Howardthulu now?
August 27th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Todays comic was excellent. I loved the double waldo.
August 27th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I read it at school, but I’m a teacher, so it’s OK. :->
August 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
It makes sense. Honestly everyone should read your comic wherever they are at all times…
…so school is included.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
he he… in my night class atm…
August 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
@Howard Another Verboten in your images directory. . . If I raise your monthly stipend to $10, will you be my friend?
August 27th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
After this semester… 5 more classes. I’ve been going to school so long my schools gonna be a university, and my degree is gonna change from Computer Science to Computer Engineering. (same program, just accredited as an engineering degree)
All this time I’ve been reading this comic, and telling all that they should to. Not only is it darn funny, but the guy happens to live within 1 digit of my zip code… somewhere in this city… some where….
August 27th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Dev Dot Nul: What’s the URL that’s giving you the 403?
zible: Come see me September 8th at Dragon’s Keep. They’re throwing their 20th Anniversary party, and you’re invited!
August 27th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
The one that’s supposed to have all the links in one spot. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/images/
DDN
August 27th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Yeah, you see school servers, but do you see me accessing it from hotels all over the midwest? :D
August 27th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
So, you’re an Infernal now, Howard? What are your deals on teleportation and general Revenge ™ getting.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
The_Gun_Nut: Teleportation is fine. Revenge a la cart is not. Served cold as part of a Justice Salad, though, Revenge is tasty and high in fiber.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I’m totally checking from school right now. Five minute break, and I’ve got to do SOMETHING to make my time in the Mac lab less painful.
My mouse has only one button! Grargh! I feel dirty…
August 28th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Those who say revenge is best served cold have never tried enemy en flambe. Nothing wins an argument like setting your opponent on fire. :P
I’ve tried getting other people to read your comic, Howard. Really, I have. I show it to people all the time, but I think they’re too uptight to get into reading a webcomic.
Oh, and if you ever have a surplus of souls, I know a few places you can unload them. McDonalds, for one. Ever wonder why the fries taste so good? That’s souls you’re tasting.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
@Nekokaburi
Mon canard es en feu!!
August 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I have a friend solidly addicted now. In a way, I envy him… he’s got so many wonderful treats in store.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
It would be a lot easier for me to get my colleagues hooked on Schlock if you would do more math jokes. The best one I can find is April 8, 2006.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Howard, dunno if you’re interested or not, but Kris over at starslip crisis is trying to start a sort of comic crossover/all out war that seems really cool. I’d love to see the touch-and-go, or perhaps even petey (the ORIGINAL petey even) involved!
August 29th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Howard is now an Infernal?
McDonalds serves Necrotite fries?
Teleportation is just fine?
… man, there’s something not right about all of this.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Teleportation is fine WITH ME. I should have clarified…
August 29th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I’ve tried to get a friend of mine addicted, but no matter how much he likes each comic I show him, he just won’t commit to reading another webcomic regularly.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I’m at a university.
Fibonacci: “Math jokes”, huh? Are your colleagues hooked on xkcd?
I remember the 2006-04-08 comic originally had a mathematical error in it, which was fixed the same day. Unfortunately, the transcript still has the error.
There’s another problem with the transcript, besides being wrong. It’s declared to be in ISO-8859-1, but the apostrophes are character code 0×92, which isn’t even in ISO-8859-1. (It’s a right single quotation mark in cp1252, which Microsoft likes to pretend is ISO-8859-1.) That could be why Firefox shows them as �. It doesn’t help that when I loaded it just minutes ago I got a Google ad on the same page that’s in UTF-8.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
An “x” between two numbers comes out as “×”. Huh. But if I write the “x” as x I get “0x92″. {’} is character code 146 in cp1252 anyway.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Hey, where’d my post commenting on what WordPress did to my previous post go?
August 30th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Sam: it got eaten by Akismet, probably because it looked like gibberish. I’ve fished it out.
August 30th, 2007 at 8:20 am
@Sam
Though in all fairness, to those who are less than literate with character code script, that post essentially is jibberish.
Teleportation? i hope you mean teleport β and not teleport α. With the latter, you have to have a running start, or else your entire party turns a nice charred black. So while it’s gonna take some power leveling, i’m going to opt for the slightly more expensive β, simply because the guy who can use it is named Poo.
(Yes, Earthbound reference…curse the internet and its ability to provide me with classic roleplaying games and emulators.)
August 30th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Can’t you just run in tight concentric circles on your own? I found β mostly worthless after I figured out α, and spinning your thumb on the d pad is more fun anyway.
I can’t really figure out why you have to get a running start if you’re using your brain to get to places, though.
By the way, if you check, there’s beef flavoring in them french fries. I think that’s what you’re referring to when you taste souls. The souls of slaughtered cows.
Mmm…..souls.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:30 am
Nope, the souls of small children. McDonald’s is evil, I tell you! EVIL!
Funny story, one of my friends overheard the phrase ‘baked sole’ one day, and turned to the person to say “Silly, you don’t bake souls, you eat them raw.”
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Eaten by a gibberish filter. Fair enough. At least I’m not a Perl programmer! Although I do plan to learn Perl 6 sometime…
The transcript I was talking about still says three million.
And it’s still got that encoding problem. I checked to see whether it was just Firefox being pedantic, but no, IE shows “?” where Firefox shows “&65533;”.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Oops. I left out the “#” in the character reference. I meant to say Firefox shows “�”.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I’m trying to explain an error in the post that Howard fished out (i.e. what did I actually type to get the “x”?), but apparently an HTML-encoded ampersand followed by a hash, the number 120 and a semicolon trips the filter even if it’s a small part of the post.
Or, if this doesn’t get through, I’ll assume triple posts are blocked.
If this does get through, don’t bother fishing out the two I just lost then, I’ve described it now.