Friday update what

The Mythbusters claimed they busted the myth that you can get electrocuted by peeing on the third rail of a subway. But they didn’t use a real human subject in their methods so I’m still keeping the torch lit. The Straight Dope couldn’t really bust it either. There’s still hope.

Reminder: Follow me on Twitter, become a fan at the aLp page on Facebook, hang out on the official aLp forums.

Lots of bullet points today:

- Sorry for being a day late this week…

- I never got me my Shamrock Shake, but I did get a lot of folks sending me versions of this recipe that allegedly makes a perfect clone… thanks! I’m gonna wait ’til next year, but if I still can’t find me the gin-u-wine article at McDonald’s, I’m gonna have me my own homemade SS party.

- Yes, I did see the AvP spoof ads New Zealand’s Sky TV created, thank you internet. Not only did 100 of you send it to me, but all of you said, “I bet 100 other people have sent this to you already.” All those sites that posted these and said, “Haha the Alien and Predator are friends, AWESOME”… tell ‘em about me pleez.

- The aLp fridge magnets are back in stock… GET YOURS TODAY

- Do you play Killzone 2?

- Related links for today:
    – P-Mate portable urinating device for women
    – Mothers Against (Men) Peeing Standing Up
    – Do We Need 3-Ply Toilet Paper?
    – MORE aLp comics tagged “pee”

No, I’ve never taken food in with me to the bathroom, but yeah, I’d say the weirdest thing I’ve taken in is my laptop. Is that really any weirder than taking a magazine in there? Soon there’ll be no such thing as print media and THEN where will we be? That’s right, IMing, Skyping, Twittering from our laptops while on the throne. Who’s with me?

By the way, Follow me so you can keep track of how many times I go to the bathroom every day!

The bathroom at the coffee shop that I go to (i.e. my office) has a urinal with a defective auto-sensor – it flushes right in the middle of you doing your business, every single time. Fortunately it’s a pretty weak flush, so it’s not a real problem; it just makes me chuckle at how consistently it messes up the one job it has.

Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the toilet stall in this bathroom has the exact same problem. Only instead of just being a trickle of water coming down the sides like the urinal, it’s one of those tornado-like power flushes, you know, the kind that can suck down an entire farm animal, and then gets the seat wet so you have to dry it off before you leave lest the next guy who uses it thinks you pissed all over it. Yeah – these flushes happen randomly, while you’re sitting on it. So imagine how stressful it is, wondering when it’s gonna happen again and when you’ll have to spring to your feet, pants around your ankles, to avoid getting soaked. Also imagine how being stressed on the toilet does not help you finish your business.

Remember, with me, there is no such thing as too much information.

WOOO, a chance to use my pee and poop tags again. Feels like it’s been a while. Don’t anyone dare make that association with Chinese food though, cuz Chinese food’s the greatest thing in the world to me, yes it is. The joke just happened to be there, though. No I’m not proud.

The Monkey King is a traditional folk hero in Chinese culture, and one of the stars of Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese, a terrific graphic novel that I can’t say enough about. In fact, I’m just gonna point you to Fleen’s glowing review of it, which is basically how I feel. Oh yeah, it’s also the first graphic novel ever to be nominated for the National Book Award. Do yourself a favor and pick yourself up a copy!

(Sorry for the late post; server was down this morning when I wanted to update and then I had to go to sleep)

All I have to say about this episode is that panels 2, 3, 4, and 5 are pretty much directly from real life. Which means, yeah, I once thought for a second that an air freshener was detecting my smell and spraying me in an attempt to rectify the situation.

Two reminders:

1. The aLp Art Contest II – Deadline is Monday, Feb 6 (a week from this post). Get your entries in!

2. UberCon VII – I’m the “Webcomic Guest of Honor” at this year’s Ubercon in Seacaucus, NJ, the weekend of Feb 10-12 (2 weekends from this post). Come out and play.

This is the rare comic that’s from life experience; brace yourself for some more toilet humor. During a conversation involving such imponderables as “Why can’t you tickle yourself?” and “Did you know you can’t keep your eyes open when you sneeze?”, my brother brought out, “Did you know you can’t pee and sneeze at the same time?” And that sounds like a challenge to me.

The problem is, it’s kind of hard to prove or disprove this theory. Try it – it’s hard to tell if you’ve succeeded or not. One thing I was undoubtedly successful at, though, is alluded to in today’s comic.

Speaking of Why Can’t You Tickle Yourself, there’s plenty of answers to be offered on the internet. Among them are descriptions of an actual tickling robot they built to see if you could at least tickle yourself by remote control. All I can say is, I hope this technology doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Are you women aware that often, in the men’s room of some bars, there are ice cubes in the urinals? Females that I’ve told this to are invariably astonished. I don’t know why exactly they put ‘em there, or how often they have to refill ‘em – all I know is that it is a LOT of fun to melt them. Truly one of the great pleasures of being a guy. If I ever own a bar or a restaurant – who knows, it may happen – I’m installing ice-cube makers in my bathrooms so there’s never a shortage of ice to pee-melt.

One day last week I noticed a whole bunch of visitors (several thousands) from domains in the Czech Republic. Upon investigation, I found the referring page (http://www.novinky.cz/04/44/23.html) which had tacked on one sentence about aLp at the very end of the article. Using a quick online Czech-to-English translator, I determined that the word “novinky” means “news” – maybe this is like the Czech cnn.com or something. Running the aLp blurb through, I get this:

Plus in conclusion: moving comics within Invader plus Predatorovi, whoa jointly ziji within mono newyorkskem sublease plus prozivaji differentiate strapace.

Not a perfect translation job, but I get the gist. Then, I get this great email from one of our new overseas friends:

Hi, i am Your big fan. I’m from Czech Republic, don’t mind about it. But i’d like to translate your great stories to czech and put it onto czech websites, if You allow it. I think it’ll be really huge raft of shit which must kick every lazy ass that will read that >O]]]]]]]]]]]] so please respond soon, see ya….. Yours Somta alis Funny bye (english grammar don’t mind me :OP)

This message is all kinds of funny, not the least because it gave me my new favorite expression, “huge raft of shit”. But also, something tells me that in my neverending quest to make it big in the Czech Republic, it’d be a lot funnier if I went with this guy than a guy who actually knows English.

Behind the scenes – to get the girl to sit cross-legged I had to tie a rubber-band around her legs real tight, and then erase it afterwards.