I get kind of like this when it’s warm enough outside that rain without an umbrella is sort of refreshing. Doubly so if I’m wearing contact lenses because the rain is a real pain when your glasses are getting water all over them, then they start fogging up and all that. But wearing contacts, warm weather, waterproof boots it’s not so bad. Subway air conditioning, not so much.
By the time you’re reading this the temperature could be in the triple digits (depending where you are of course). Or if it’s not in the triple digits, humidity could make it feel like it was well past the triple digits. Though as bad as it is here, it’s nothing compared to the heat out west that killed over 100 people, 25,000 cattle and 700,000 chickens. My guess is the people who think global warming doesn’t exist have never left their isolated climate controlled house, because just from paying attention to the last few summers it’s plain obvious that it’s getting hotter every year. The room I work in at my office has big windows so it tends to get hotter than other parts of the office. That’s the price you pay for natural light.
This actually happened, not much more to the story than that.
I accidentally do this a couple times every Summer. I’ve already done it once so far this Summer, and the worst of it was that it wasn’t even a very hot day. Whereas a day like yesterday I wouldn’t have minded it much if I accidentally left my a/c on. I think my electricity bill is pretty reasonable even during the Summer because I don’t turn my a/c on that high, and it’s only on mostly during the weekends. The only other time of the year my electricity bill gets noticeably higher is when I’m leaving my computer on during all hours of the day because I’m downloading very large batch torrents.
I always say that summer in New York City is all about extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. You wake up in the morning and either it’s sweltering hot because you have no a/c or it’s rather comfortable. Then you leave your apartment and suddenly it feels like a sauna. On the way to the subway or whatever mode of transportation you take, you pass stores which have their a/c up high enough to influence the temperature six feet away from their door.
Then either you get on a super air conditioned bus or to the steamy subway station and then go into the super air conditioned car. You get out into another super hot station and exit onto the street where it’s not quite as bad, but still pretty hot. You might pass some more stores on the way to work, just hope you don’t walk over particularly hot vents whether they’re subway vents, vents from laundromats (particularly brutal) or buses waiting in traffic. Then you arrive at work where hopefully it’s nicely air conditioned. This could also work for if you go to a movie where the average temperature is 50 degrees or so.
I think the air condtioned stores with their open doors (hah! That rhymes) are rather nice to walk past, but something is telling me that I’m really messing with my body by going in and out of extreme temperatures so abruptly. There must be a study out there on this.
I think I’ve covered the multitudes of other reasons that a subway car could be empty when all the other ones are mostly full. Someday I have to suck it up and just change subway cars while it’s in motion. I think that’s when I’ll finally feel like a real New Yorker.
Actually I do remember what they taught me in film school about wattage, amps, circuit breakers and such. Though when what you’re usually applying that knowledge is to lights where you actually know the wattage. Who the hell knows how many watts their computer, a/c or vacuum cleaner uses? I’ve actually plugged more into my computer plug than I felt comfortable with and nothing happened. I’ve plugged two computers into it, and I’ve plugged my G5 and vacuum cleaner into it and I still haven’t tripped the breaker *knocks on wood*
My apartment had an air conditioner already in the window when I moved in. I learned later on that was because it totally sucked. I got a new one when my sister moved away and replaced the crap one with the help of a friend. There’s a metal support installed on the window so that the a/c isn’t just being supported by the window.
There’s just something unnerving about an object that weighs 30lbs where most of the weight is on the side you don’t want to fall. I live on the top floor of my building, but it wouldn’t even have to fall that far to kill someone. Probably the only height you’d need is practically enough height to just be above the person’s head.
Friends from my freshman year of college will get this one right away, though I’ve changed the product in question. It was early on in the year and one of my friends needed a power strip, so we went to the nearby Radio Shack (first mistake). We get inside and I guess we didn’t look focused enough because one of their annoying salesguys asks us what we need, so we said we were looking for a powerstrip. The guy kind of smiles and walks us over saying “Oh! Well this is what you need here!” Shows us this $50 power strip. My friend is like “Oh, that’s kind of expensive.” The salesguy doesn’t hesitate for a moment, points the label that says something like 5000 joules and then says “That’s a lot of joules yo.” At that point another of my friends sees some cheaper ones “Oh look! Two for $10!” And those are the ones he bought of course.
Radio Shack sucks so hard. How do these people live with themselves? That store is only really needed for the specialized things you can’t find anywhere else like ohm resistors and the salesguys there aren’t going to know what the hell you’re talking about if you ask for that. What kills me is when they ask if you need help, then just go over to the general area they know it’s in (and you probably did too) then search around just as aimlessly as you would’ve. This seriously is not helping or extra person worthy.
This one was just a throwaway comic for me to complain about he weather at the time. One of the advantages of doing a webcomic that is usually written/drawn at midnight is that you can do things that are specific to what’s going to be happening the day after. Though I try to make the comics stand up on their own as much as possible, because in the long run the humor of these comics won’t come through like they did on that particular day.
This isn’t really a pun that I like which is why I have one of the other characters say it. I’m sure this one has been done in Fox Trot before since Bill Amend likes to do comics about how cold it is in the house and exaggerating it in various different ways. There are very few puns that I will actually laugh at, and only two come to mind at this particular moment. The first is a Far Side strip where a guy is in the middle of nowhere, an alien comes down in a saucer, hits him and then leaves. The caption is something to the effect of “Gary never knew what hit him.” The other one is from the movie UHF when the bad guys open a supply closet to reveal Kuni and his karate school yelling “SUPPLIES!” Yes, it’s pretty bad, but I still laugh at it.
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