Hoo boy. Last Wednesday’s strip is up at last. It’s an example of what we call dovetailing and I love it when that happens. I could have skipped a week and made it next Wednesday’s comic but God damn it I owe you a comic for the 16th and I will give you a comic for the 16th. Tomorrow I have an exam so spending any time finishing the comic yesterday and today was probably not a good idea but I did it anyway just because I know how these things can spiral out of control. First you give yourself a week off then you take two weeks off and then — BAM — hiatus times. After my exam I will have finished my course — that’s right finish it — and I will have about four months of relaxing holiday. Four months. That should be enough time I think to catch up on the strips I missed last week.
So here’s how it’s going to work. You probably won’t see a comic up for Wednesday but hopefully around Thursday or Friday you should see Saturday 19th’s comic appear and then shortly after that the comic for Wednesday the 23rd. By Monday, Saturday’s comic will be in place and then hopefully I should be back on track and caught up by the 30th. Stay tuned!
Anything else going on? Well, this past story arc has been about video games and the Black-Eyed Peas. First I’ll deal with the Peas. The solo contributions of ex-crystal-meth-addict Fergie seem to be overshadowing those of her troupe of pretentious hip-hop cretins in the hate-centres of my brain. Where do I start with that one? ‘London Bridge’? That video was not filmed in London. She’s obviously in California. I’ve been to London — it’s not that sunny. And I’m pretty sure those weren’t real palace guards, not just because they were dancing around. Fergie’s subsequent single ‘Glamorous’ serves only to demonstrate her ability to spell words. I have to say I underestimated her there — glamorous is a very tricky word and she has mastered it well.
In ‘Fergalicious’ Fergie, giddy with her success, has decided to turn herself into an adjective, although the definition she provides (“make them boys go crazy”) seems to imply it’s a verb. The lexical tomfoolery doesn’t stop there: she spells her own (made up) name, bravo, and her friend William joins in the fun by correctly spelling delicious (you know, in case we were confused as to which two words Fergalicious was derived from) but then is defeated by ‘tasty’ (he spells it T to the A to the STEY). During the course of the song it is almost impossible to infer any meaning from the constant spouting of letters, and William’s pronunciation of ‘d’ was such that I mistook it for a ‘g’ (which prompts me to question what is gelicious). It was like the scene in Mrs Dalloway when the plane spells out ‘toffee’ in the sky. This sudden obsession with words’ inidividual letters — a sort of demented hip-hop spelling bee — just reminds me of my friend Liz who spells out the word ‘pussy’ rather than saying it directly because she finds it so abhorrent, just as an anxious mother might spell ‘h-e-double-hockey-sticks’. To me it suggests a deliberate avoidance of meaning rather than an expression of it. The only difference is that Liz manages to spell pussy correctly. Jesus, William (sorry, Will.I.am fucking hell), did you drop out of kindergarten or something?
Oh, I almost forgot. The worst part of Fergalicious is that it rips off — ahem, sorry — samples another song. Heavily. It’s just karaoke with different words, in fact. Having exposed this dark conspiracy I’m going to listen to some Franz Ferdinand to clean out my system, as one might eat a bowl of bran flakes the day after Hallowe’en. Except Hallowe’en doesn’t make me want pluck out my eyes. And I don’t like bran flakes.
Anyway, video games. Life on the Fourth Floor is not turning into a gamer comic, it’s just a comic about life (specifically life on a floor). Life includes video games. Video games include Crash Bandicoot. You may laugh derisively at me with your Gears and your Halos but in ten years’ time those games will be just as outdated but they will nevertheless remain enjoyable games. Thing is, I’m too young to remember Pac-man. Crash is my Pac-man. And Fergie is my nemesis. I think we have the beginnings of a religion here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Beowulf just declared that he will fight Grendel bare-handed. This I gotta see. It promises to be Grendelicious.
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