 Posted by Steve on December 27, 2002: Well, it's a little late, but here's this week's strip. That's a pretty accurate vision of the day after christmas in a retail store. Everyone either A) has gifts they have to return, or B) has Christmas money to spend. And, naturally, nobody has the common sense to wait a few days. No no, they all go to the stores on the same day. The result is stores usually having their busiest day of the season.
Now, about this week's comic. We've been getting pretty good at having the comic up by early Friday morning lately, but as you can see, we failed this time. I just want to say that, naturally, it's entirely Bob's fault.
Here's an interesting story. I got off work last night and figured I'd swing by Bob's place and see how things were going. As it turns out, Bob was a bit behind schedule, what with that whole Christmas thing and all. Everything was drawn, and a few panels were done, but there was still quite a bit to get done. Also, we kind of, um, didn't have an ending for the script yet. So, with the deadline quickly approaching, we did what anyone would do. We headed out to White Castle for a late night slider run. That's where this story really starts to get weird.
So, we're sitting there eating hamburgers and talking about pretty much anything but the half done comic that's due in a few hours that we still don't have an ending for, when a lady approaches the table. Now, she wasn't wearing a sign that said "I'm homeless" or anything, but she had been sitting at another table by herself since we came in, she didn't have any food or drink in front of her, and she smelled quite bad, so we're just going to go ahead and assume that she was homeless. She comes up to the table and asks us if we have a spare dollar or two. Now, I know there's some that have the "they're just going to buy booze with it" opinion, but the way I figure is it's Chicago, it's December, and it's pretty fuckin cold outside, so whatever gets you through the night I guess.
So I take out my wallet and pull out a couple singles. As I'm pulling them out, she goes "Ooh, do you have a spare five?" and it occurs to me that she's peeking into my wallet, which kinda creeped me out a little. Now, I'm trying to be a nice guy here, but I worked for this money, so there's a limit to how much of it I'm willing to just hand out, so I deny that request. So I give her a couple dollars and figure that's that. I figure she takes the money, maybe says thanks, and returns to her table. That's how I thought things were going to go. Instead, she takes the money, puts it in her pocket or whatever, and then just stands there. For like 10 minutes she's just standing there. So me and Bob are just sitting there, not really knowing what to say or do, and there's just silence. Now I'm really creeped out. Eventually she walks around us to the other side of the table and is now at the table behind us. She pulls a plastic bag out, fiddles with the contents, pulls out a giant candy cane, puts it on the table, says "Merry Christmas" and walks away.
Now I don't know about you, but eating candy from creepy strangers with a major body odor problem really doesn't get a high spot on my to do list. But, all that's going through my head right now is Bill Hicks' bit on homeless people that snap, so I politely say thanks and set it on the table in front of me. With that, she walks back to her table, where some guy happened to grab the table across from her a few minutes later, and therefore got her attention for the remainder of our stay. About 20 minutes later the guy left, and she started to say something to me from across the room. I didn't quite pick it up, but i really wasn't in the mood to find out either, so we took that as our cue to exit.
So, I guess the moral of the story is, if you're going for White Castles after say, 11 PM, make it a to go order. See you next week.
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