Not A Blog™

This is what I’ve been working on to fill the Sunday Gap. I’ve talked before about how I imagine myself to be an alien, and how other people can be strange, and how small talk and general conversation is often just flat out bizarre. Along completely different lines, I’ve also been toying with the idea of starting a webcomic for at least three years now—since college, anyway. I never got into the webcomic thing because I couldn’t ever come up with a basis for it. At least, not something that hasn’t been done before, better. Then just recently some friends and I were talking about doing the webcomic thing again. I told them what I just told you and the idea kind of stalled.

Well, stupid me. The basis for my webcomic was staring me right in the face. I should just illustrate the actual, strange conversations I have on a day to day basis as part of the webcomic. Illuminate them with some tagline, and there it is. When this idea hit me, I thought, “yeah, that’s a really good idea,” and did nothing further with it for two months. It took another conversation about webcomics to get me off my butt, at which point I proceeded to write a bunch of strips based on real conversations I’ve had.

Originally I wasn’t going to illustrate it, just write, but I figured I might as well give it a shot since I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like. It took a bit longer than I liked—and this one is only a single panel—but I wasn’t completely revolted by the initial sketch, so I decided to just go ahead and do it myself. [To Graham: sorry I cut you out of the creative process. I still think you’ve got something as good as XKCD to unleash.]

“The idea, if you haven’t figured it out already, is that I’m visually illustrating myself as an alien.”
The idea, if you haven’t figured it out already, is that I’m visually illustrating myself as an alien. I suppose you could say that’s my avatar. His name—which is also my pseudo-name in some situations, such as LAN parties—is Pulsar. He’s analogous to me in speech, if not appearance—but more importantly, he analogous to me in experiences. Many of the comics I’ve written so far are almost verbatim conversations. If they’re not word for word, they’re similar to conversational situations I’ve been in from time to time. As I post them, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out which are exaggerated for comedic effect. (Heck, I’ll do better than that; I’ll just tell you.) But even when it’s exaggerated, it’s illustrating how I feel, so there you go. You’ll see what I mean.

I’ve written enough of these to last more than two months already—I just have to illustrate them, now. Here’s to hoping I continue to have strange conversations and wrack up more ideas. I’m not thinking that will be a problem.

From now until whenever, every Sunday: Stranger.

Okay, regarding this comic in particular. This all started a while back when someone did this to me, sort of. The original conversation went something like:

Person: Hey, how’re you doing?

Me: Hello. [Note: I realize this doesn’t answer the question, however, my conversational matrix tells me that it’s an appropriate response since it’s a greeting.]

Person: Okay, glad to hear it.

Me: !??

The person said he was glad to hear that I was doing “hello”? That makes zero sense. I know what’s happening, of course; when going through ritualistic greetings everyone’s brain is on autopilot. (This answers the rhetorical question posed in the comic, by the way.) But I decided to test this by purposely answering greeting questions in ways that really just don’t make any sense at all. Hence the greeting, “What’s up?” is followed by “Fine.” which not only doesn’t answer the question, but it isn’t even an appropriate response.

No one noticed.

-Pulsar