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June 27, 2007
Donehille
Mid-week status check!
Monday: Dancing Llamas!
Tuesday: Operation Swift Boat!
Wednesday: Dancing Llamas!
'Prickly City' Readership: Perplexed!
Wikipedia: Link to Shrubville gone!
Seriously, if anyone has a spare minute, make sure to catch the update on the Wikipedia talk page regarding the inclusion (or not) of a link to Shrubville on the Prickly City Wikipedia site. It's really rather amusing.
For the record, I don't know who Orat Perman is. It's not me, Furnace or Sacki. It's no one we dispatched to be our defender. But he/she has taken on this Pellucid character and defended our inclusion. Thank you. I don't use the word 'hero' very often but you are the greatest hero in American history.
It also looks like our old friend Charles "Chuck" Brubaker came out of hiding and jumped on the Pellucid/Anti-Shrubville bandwagon. Brubaker, as many of you may recall, used to be a Shrubville reader and frequent commenter until he dropped off the face of the earth. In case anyone was wondering why he left, I suppose I should publish an email he sent me in November of last year.
Let me first preface this with a big, giant [SIC]:
To Whom it may concern:You may know me. I used to comment alot in Shrubville posts early this year. I admit, while I had mixed feelings about the strip then (now, the strip is my guilty pleasure), I came across [your site] and decided to check it out on daily basis. I generally liked it and even agreed it, the same way I do to "Prickly City" strips itself.
Then it went donehille. Starting with Furnace's posts. I don't know why he's been getting under my skin with his posts, but they started to make me irritated, so I decided to stop visiting the site. In fact, I only visit the site just to see what certain strip were rated by other people (either because I really liked it or because it was very unusual).
Then few days ago, you used an masturbation fantasy to explain the surgery the cartoonist had to get. What the hell? You complain about how the cartoonist makes fun of a politician's appearance, but you use such a SICK SICK fantasy to explain the surgery the cartoonist had to get, for reasons which may not be his fault (and don't you dare to use the "but he did it, so why can't I?" excuse)
I'm sorry to say this, but that's the straw that broke the camel's back. While other people may complain about strips going downhill, I think your website has gone downhill.
I will occasionally check it out on certain strips, for reasons I already explained, but one thing's for sure, I lost my respect for Shrubville.
I don't expect a reply from you or your defense on what I have written, but rather, I am writing this to express what I feel now.
Charles Brubaker
It was a sad day at Shrubville. Our audience is small enough as it is; we don't like to lose precious readers. We welcome everyone here, from Stantis fans to Stantis detractors.
I tried to reach out to Charles that day. I wrote a heartfelt reply to his note:
Hey, Charles. Thanks for writing. We've missed your presence around Shrubville. It's nice to have someone representing rationale thought with respect to Scott Stantis. I know you're a fan of his work. And contrary to how it might seem, I have respect and admiration for Stantis' strips. I can't imagine the pressure to produce a daily strip, especially one that purports to be topical. He's got to react to current events where storylines could change by the time the strip goes to print.Anyway, in terms of your reaction to the post in question, I won't try to justify its existence or my use of shocking imagery. It is what it is. Some days I'm angry at 'Prickly City,' some days I'm amused. It's a snapshot in time.
Sorry you've lost respect for Shrubville. Frankly, I'm surprised you
had any to begin with. We've been pretty tough on and unfair to Stantis. But that's what we do.So, we'll continue to be profane, mean, uncalled for, and sick. And our rapid descent downhill will continue. All the same, I hope you do check in from time-to-time.
Best regards,
CJo
(By the way, the post in question which drove Brubaker away is here.)
We certainly harbored no ill-will toward Charles Brubaker. We welcomed his presence in the comments. We appreciated his appreciation of Stantis. We loved his l'il typos.
But now this. Now he's joined the growing anti-Shrubville chorus on Wikipedia. He's a loyal member of Pellucid's Posse. And we shall be stricken from Wikipedia forevermore.
Jesus wept.
Comments
What's interesting is that I don't believe CJo, Sacki, or I have had anything to do with including Shrubville on the Prickly City wiki page. It was always someone who read this site and thought that if someone was reading about Prickly City, they should know that there's a site dedicated to criticizing it. And for that, I'm thankful - it's nice to know that there are some people read what we say and don't immediately run screaming for the hills because we might say a bad word or something they don't agree with.
I feel bad for Pellucid - he's spent more time on Shrubville than Sacki has all year. And then some.
Posted by: The Furnace at June 27, 2007 02:20 PM
"In 269 words delivered in just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant, defined democracy in terms of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and defined republicanism in terms of freedom, equality and democracy."
Whereas "43" used 5,595 words in 49 minutes to deliver his 2007 State of the Union, which invoked boredom and espoused nothin.
Sponsored by: The Quality vs. Quantity Quomission.
Posted by: Sacki at June 27, 2007 02:32 PM
Four consecutive weekdays of the exact same joke. First Carmen is surprised by campaign fundraising totals, then Winslow wants to spend the money on something foolish. Maybe if Winslow bought a Wii and dancing llamas and a boat in the desert all in one strip, that would have been funny. But this is not four days worth of funny.
Today, Stantis just reused the dancing llamas punchline from two days ago. Does he really think changing the dollar figure from Winslow's $60 million to the combined candidate total of $1 billion makes it a new joke?
Posted by: John at June 27, 2007 02:41 PM
And btw, Pellucid is a liar.
I posted about the Saturday strip on June 23, 2007 09:57 AM. Pellucid then made this comment later that evening:
Also, did you ever consider that because there's no real punchline in this strip that it could be a setup for tomorrow's strip?
Posted by: Pellucid at June 23, 2007 11:34 PM
This was included in my response at 11:59 PM:
Oh, and I'm sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to wait for my daily comic strip punchline to arrive the following day. It's a cliffhanger! I forgot how much Stantis looooves to end his week-long storylines on Sundays.*
(*Yes, that's sarcasm. Harder to tell online, I know - sorry. But apparently you're new to Prickly City otherwise you'd know Sundays are almost always a single panel one-off unrelated to anything going on in the real world.)
Then on Sunday morning, I voiced my disappointment with Stantis not following through on the Saturday strip as Pellucid suggested.
Apparently not having read the comment I made on Saturday night, Pellucid offered up this snarky response:
If you knew anything about comic strips, you'd realize that most cartoonists break storyline for Sunday strips because some papers only carry them on Sunday.
That was Sunday, June 24, 2007 08:59 PM.
(At 9:02 pm he returned to the comments section of the Saturday posting to argue a Simpsons reference - he made no mention of the continuity issue, even though he must have read my pointing out that Sundays are stand-alones long before he did.)
Pellucid then proceeds to lie in the wikipedia entry when responding to Orat's pointing out that Pellucid was wrong, stating:
Actually, my comment was posted after midnight, so it was Sunday at the time.
Last time I checked, 11:34pm was still Saturday night.
So not only does the guy lie about when he's posting this stuff, he lied when he said I "attacked Stantis for not continuing a storyline on Sunday (something almost no comic strips do)." I made fun of HIM for suggesting Stantis would do it. Talk about dense. He's a liar, plain and simple. And like too many conservatives, when Orat called him out on it instead of defending himself on the facts, he just lied and changed the subject to the stupid carbon indulgence thing.
Pellucid, you're Worst Person In The World (to steal from Keith O).
Posted by: The Furnace at June 27, 2007 02:43 PM
To me, the most awesome quote on the Wikipedia talk page comes from "Dystropos", which is Greek for "makes kick-ass threats", who said "I don't like slapping the {{fact}} template around, but I do hope someone will try to find citations for the numerous claims made".
In the future, when Wikipedia has reached a state of perfect citation, people will make films about the lawless days, when reluctant {{fact}}-tag-slingers did their courageous duty, however grim it was.
Posted by: Marc Heiden at June 27, 2007 04:43 PM
