Bastard: The High Cost Of Surling


So, if these direct-marketing databases are so accurate, why am I getting spam telling me I could win a dream vacation in Florida? I'm in Florida. I'm less than an hour's drive away from the pure, only moderately polluted beaches of the gulf coast. The thought that I might win a vacation to a place where I already live is amusing. The fact that they keep cheerfully telling me about it is maddening. They probably mean southern Florida, too, which is a god-forsaken wasteland where no man ought to tread.

Northern Florida, of course, is a much nicer place, in the same way that just about anywhere is nicer than the steaming brimstone pits of Hell. Unfortunately, we sit on a network of limestone caves generally filled with water. Exploring said caves is a full-time occupation for dozens of cheerful, well-equipped people who aren't at all put out by swimming for miles underground, occasionally stumbling over the dead body of a previous explorer. Well, generally, anyway. Recently, what with the lack of much water around, the limestone caves are sort of emptier than normal. This is, as you can well imagine, bad. The water sort of helps hold them up, after all.

So there have been many interesting incidents of bits of the area disappearing into yawning holes in the earth as the limestone caves collapse into sink-holes. Including part of our local airport, much to their chagrin. Then again, with the pathetic throughput of Tallahassee's airport, they probably didn't need that extra runway anyway. Also, there was the Amazing Disappearing Lake. It's still gone. The locals are still working on clearing out all the massive amounts of crud that have piled up on the lake bottom. In fact, not only has the lake been sucked away into the ground by the disappearing water table, but brave, or, more accurately, foolish scientists have ventured into the "drain" it disappeared into.

Far into the drain.

Many, many, meters down into the drain.

Where, unexpectedly, they were all eaten by a giant cockroach. Aaah! No, actually, they just sort of poked around in the muck and pronounced it "remarkably funky". Included in this funkiness are clumps of bacterial colonies which dangle around and are known, officially, as "snotties". Some scientists really need to get out more.

We're not sure when the mole-men will start returning our water table, but we're hoping it'll be soon, before a giant sink-hole eats the governor or something. Well, actually, that would be kinda cool to see... But I digress.

In other news, if you weren't able to access the animated Mr. Cranky reviews yesterday, you can get the non-plugin versions at www.mrcranky.com. Sorry about that. Damn Windows-specific plugins.

And now, a few comic book notes. From last weeks, it has been requested that I provide a scan from Gate Crasher to demonstrate the butt-before-face appearance of a main character, but that will have to wait. Soon, though, you will see what I mean.

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