“I’ve been doing lines since the weekend. How do you think I feel?” Why lie? Duane knew that there was no way that Dynamax Corporation could fire him. He straightened his tie, turned around, farted, and walked off.

For those new to this groundbreaking space dramedy, here’s the blurb from season 1

This is the story of the Good Ship Faakensheize and its maverick commander – Flip.
Commander Flip is a man on a mission; not an important one, but a mission nevertheless.
He captains the Good Ship Faakensheize and its crew as they explore space and time, though not necessarily in that order.

The ship’s computer knows that, in fact, there is no-one on the ship other than Commander Flip, but does not tell him this.

And now in season 2 the cast and crew return after an extended leave of absence, due to protracted contract negotiations and rehab, ready to rock your galaxy.
Unfortunately the show’s producers couldn’t agree on terms with the ship’s computer (undisputed star of season 1) and therefore he hasn’t returned in season 2. But don’t worry! The cast has been amended with several thrilling new characters, including the delightful Skinny Intern, and the writing remains at an acerbic genius pitch.

So strap on your starship goggles as we head back towards the inner reaches of outer space!

Yes, so there it is – I’ve finally picked up my old online comic again. I struggled for a long time with how to go about writing a second season for this series.
The premise is simple, each season has twelve episodes and each season I intend to each season use the same (poorly)drawn panels and to just change the text. We also always only see one character on the screen (Commander Flip) which means that the other characters have to, somehow, be able to plausibly remain off screen.
A few weeks ago I happened on the thought that if season 2 (in the absence of the Computer character) was about the making of the TV show (which is what season 1 was) I could get away with the other characters being off screen as they are the crew that produce the show (the director etc).
I’m also explicitly linking seasons 1 and 2 to bounce the two sets of jokes against one another, but I’m taking a lot of care to not just re-phrase the same jokes in a new context. The first two episodes of season 2 do mirror season 1 closely, but from episode 3 onwards I’m looking to broaden my horizon and rely less on the spaceship angle and more on Commander Flip’s struggle as a daytime TV actor.

Oh yes, and there will be even more fucking swearing than in season 1 – and sex.

Some time ago I wrote about a short-lived fad to hack Garfield cartoons by removing all of the cat’s speech bubbles – thereby rendering him ordinary. The result is a subtle yet subversive twist on Jim Davis’s bloopy take on the relationship between humans and the cats they live with. I’m really not into Garfield anymore but these hacked cartoons have something wonderfully existential[1] about them. Now I’ve found another source of existential cartooning – the fridge at work.

It appears that the Dilbert merchandising behemoth produced Dilbert fridge magnet kits – like the fridge poetry magnets that we all know but in the form of individual panels of Dilbert cartoons that can be shuffled around. As with fridge poetry the magnets invariably end up being clumped together and ignored while people hunt for milk and Tuesday’s lunch. But while waiting for the shiny espresso machine in the kitchen to expertly steam my half-cap-single-americano[2] I’ve started reading the cartoons as individual panels. It turns out that they’re funny in an entirely different way to a complete cartoon strip.

In an interview some time ago[3] Scot Adams was prompted into some comments on the existential nature of Dilbert.

Reason: Dilbert has emerged as the new workplace Everyman. This is a change from the traditional workplace Everyman, who was often an assembly line worker and whose greatest obstacles were the pace of the machinery and grinding repetition. Dilbert’s biggest problem is basically bosses who keep him from getting his work done.

Adams: It’s about futility and absurdity. But he’s got a different problem, too. If you’re on the assembly line, at least you’ve made something. Whereas Dilbert is like I was in my career: work 17 years and never do anything for anybody. Nothing tangible came out of anything I ever did. There’s a lot of people in that boat. They’re working on something which, if it were ever actually completed, it would be tangible. But nine times out of 10, things get canceled or delayed. You change jobs before it’s finished. You never really get the feeling that you’ve done anything useful. You feel like you’re bluffing all the time. It’s the big difference.

Reason: That’s the existential angst of the knowledge worker?

Adams: Yeah. You have no traction with the real world and you lose any correlation between your efforts, your paycheck, and what you are doing in the world. Those three things are thoroughly unconnected.

While I’m not a regular Dilbert reader I relate to this in a big way. The closest thing that the knowledge working team that I work in produces are internet banking sites hosted on far-away servers and marketing glossies printed on far away presses. These individual panels reflect my working days more closely than the cartoon strip; there are no punchlines in my day, just a series of mundane or absurd panels that blend together into a fridgeful of passing time. Reading Dilbert panels individually more closely reflects the disconnected nature of an average office work day[4] where no build up or payoff is guaranteed.

The introductions were brief; ‘This is my sister Louise, and he’s the guy she fucks’. It was accurate and accurate is all I wanted for people who I’d never again deal with in anything other than an administrative context. She introduced Ricardo as ‘the guy holding the cocaine’. I dumped my silly christmas hat as we headed for a store room where we would spend the next few hours chewing boozy ice and talking past one another’s mouths.

family-backed loan

Borrowing from your parents.

Oh yeah, don’t worry – I’ve got a family-backed loan on this one!

Source: Xxxxxx Xxxx, Cape Town[1]

Here I am! Comma get me!

If it gets rejected I’ll start a petition. If it gets ignored I’ll puke.

Update: 9 November

Family-backed Loan has been accepted into urbandictionary. Somehow the thrill of it all has worn a little thing. At least I can still sit back and await fame and fortune from my achievement.

[1] more on this later