Straight and Narrow

Another indeterminate span of time, another comic. This one I like because it at least sort of comes close to answering previous questions about the Polytopes' obtainment of objects--Otto's chair, Puppy's bed and toy, Puppy herself for that matter...I feel it only makes sense that a compass and straightedge are the power tools of the Polytopes universe. Plus there's this totally bitchin' website that lets you play with said tools interactively online.

For those interested in director's commentary and other such metamedia, I have some visually verifiable tidbits: the compass is open to a width exactly equal to the length of Ike's edges, and that mark on the straightedge is set a similar distance from the nearest edge. The process taking place on the wall is the construction of an equilateral triangle congruent with any of Ike's faces, and the black "chalk" is the same width as the dots on the wall, but not the lines, for some reason.

Continuity errors? Well, there's no drawing tip on the compass, for one, and for another Ike's coloration scheme is totally sporadic. I color her by making the "important face"--either the front or the back--the lightest or darkest respectively of the five shades of grey that are her palette. Then the faces that share an edge with the important face are the next shade along the progression, and the ones adjacent to those get the next shade, et cetera. Except that for such a scheme to work uniformly, I actually need six shades of grey. Luckily, I have a strict "do not fix continuity errors, fix the universe instead" policy! Let it be known from this day forward that Ike has some crazy cuttlefish abilities going on, balanced out by the fact that she can only manage shades of grey.

So basically, Otto gets a taste of--well, it's not really his own medicine in the way the saying usually implies, but it is something of his own making. The source of his problem with puns lies in his resentment for them, after all; if he'd just chill out a little, he would not currently feel so ill. Even so, that's a pretty shitty way to learn a lesson, and I don't even think he's learned it. Poor guy.

Is everyone doing well? I've got some high levels of Awesome going on. Just yesterday some young child and I played collectively with my Rubik's cube--he liked turning its sides, and thought it was "cool when they don't match up". I solved it for him every time he couldn't put it back, but I balanced that out my encouraging his enthusiasm for the tiny, meaningless chaos that is an unsolved cube. Hopefully this will take root and blossom into a lifelong appreciation of states other than the accepted norm. Hail Eris and suchlike, I've done my piece for the day. Also, that kid was a motherfucker at finding relationships; the grass was like the green side was like the stone on my ring and I didn't even have to point that shit out to him. Way to go, Jack.

I wonder if it's really fair for me to use these commentary-boxes to make up for holes in my blog.