Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Actual conversation from earlier in the day

"That new tote bag is great! I bet you are rolling in money, John. Give me some of your money".

"I have sold 7."

"I bet this never happens to the man who draws the stick man comic about mathematics."



Actually, I did that wrong, didn't I. Drawn correctly it's more like this:



(The brutal compression applied to these images is indicative of disdain.)

31 comments:

Roman said...

Include an obscure in-joke about Linux, and the verisimilitude with the comic in question would be complete.

Gareth said...

Such a shame. It's a great bag. (Yes, I did buy one!)

Similar sentiments were expressed in the current Webcomics Weekly I notice.

Laura said...

I was one of the seven! I bet more will come.. (hopefully!)

mordicai said...

Aw, sour grapes! i have enough room for both of you. but i only own your tshirt...

Oliver Brackenbury said...

There's some truth in this, to be sure. I'm a regular of both comics, but (in my opinion, as opposed to the others I have) Mr. Allison's deserves a bit more business on account of the vast difference in effort.

Unknown said...

Actually, what you need is a wordless rambling existential storyline of the stick girl and boy trying to find each other across vast, decently rendered backgrounds. "Is love . . . possible?"

guladana said...

i had no idea this was on sale already! i just bought the applecat shirt like a week ago, now there's this. As soon as i get home from work i'm giving you more of my money. who needs groceries when there's a cute bag to buy?

fontgoddess said...

I would just send you money, skipping buying something this go-round, except I currently am jobless and uninsured [not meaning this to be a plea for sympathy, just a simple statement of fact]. I would be happy to send you artworks (unless the shipping costs are obscene to the point of just sending that amount to you as cash through PayPal), hand-knitted garments, or do tasks for you that can be done remotely (adding metadata and descriptive tags to every image you have ever produced, composing and sending a valentine email to all the special people in your address book, the stuff that these people do). The barter system *can* work in the internet age.

Dear Lord it's late and this post is possibly creepy, but it's not meant to be and definitely not creepy like this.

John A said...

Please note, blog commenters, that as I have stated before, the people who comment on the blog are the most likely to have bought things early and my gripes are aimed not at you but at myself for my failings.

Old stick-man maths is more than welcome to his success, his millions of dollars and his extremely light work schedule. He had an idea that a lot of people liked and in that sense, his rewards are just.

It's all about ideas! You know, for kids!

O

Graham said...

I may have got this all wrong, but aren't tote bags primarily for girls? I like the design but can't imagine buying one because I can't imagine using one. I'm sure you have plenty of female readers but they must be heavily outnumbered by males.

John A said...

Many men have girlfriends, I mean not every man, but when I am stepping out with a lady I like to get her a present on a regular basis to show my head has not been turned by the beautiful Czech violinist who moved in down the street and may be an assassin.

Some men love other men, that is fine!

Some women love other women, that is fine too!

Some people love both but come on can there ever be too much love in this world? DON'T ASK MIKE HUCKABEE.

(Hermit Guy: I base sales projections on sales of similar items in the past, both on my site and those of my close allies. Also read my comment one up for why you shouldn't worry about things like this.)

John A said...

PS It is a 1/3 -> 2/3 split in favour of gentlemen I think, although I could be wrong.

R. E. Moola said...

You probably have better numbers than me John, but the strip Achewood actually has more female readers than males, and The Scary Go Rounds is (In my stinted male opinion) more "feminine" so your statistics surprise me.

I mean I love it but Achewood's lack of female characters is an actual joke.

Also, fuck XKCD.

Anonymous said...

I actually bugged you about colors in the wrong location and then completely spaced purchasing the tote. Not to worry it shall be remedied in approximately 17.83 seconds.

Capital job on the xkcd comic, though. Can't go wrong with the maths.

Unknown said...

Ooh! It's Wednesday! New Xkcd today.

Well reminded.

You have the artwork, the storylines and the Lovejoy references, but xkcd covers the maths and programming stuff very well when it covers it. I can't imagine it has that many readers who actually understand 80% of what is going on in the comics, although they probably pretend to in order not to look uncool. The obscure reference in SGR are at least comprehensible to the entire population of Great Britain.

Unknown said...

i use a tote bag for shoppings. Men can use totes, it is OK. I grew a beard just to make sure though...

stefan autsa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stefan autsa said...

The true irony would be if Randall Monroe himself bought one of your tote bags.

Graham said...

I feel bad now. I didn't think about girlfriends - I am so undesirable to the female gender that such unions are not foremost in my consciousness. By way of apology I have just purchased the bag. No really, I did.

I may try to use it myself. I may store it carefully in the unlikely event of future female attention. I may even allow my hamster to take refuge from Amy Acker in it. Whatever the outcome, it's sure to be an adventure!

MrKneebone said...

Ahhhh, The Hudsucker Proxy. An underrated piece of genius!

Have you considered putting a box in the top right of your page, (maybe in the space near the Chapter heading) showing a random store item?

If I visit a page everyday I become complacent when it comes to visiting the store page.

It's a little more enticing than a "Store" button up the top with all the other buttons. Jeph Jaques used to do that, but not any more... don't know why.

Reuss said...

Aiee, I didn't realise the bag was on sale already.

John A said...

Mr Kneebone

there is such a box and it's about 5x the size of the QC one! People get blind to site elements like that after a while. For instance, if I see someone wearing a unitard or high waisted shorts, that part of their body appears to be invisible. Also I can't see pizzas any more.

MrKneebone said...

I meant something more like a small ad box that shows a random item.

If it was at the top right, everyone would see it with every page hit, and they could see older items as well as the new stuff. Because your news post is only updated as needed, some don't scroll down every visit.

Your layout is quite nice though, so maybe it's not worth fixin' somethin' that ain't broke.

fingle said...

But you gotta admit that the "River Tam beats up EVERYONE" comic was a scream...

And, hopefully soon, not many people will be asking Mike Huckabee anything.

gordon said...

I may be just be about to make your day.

For i have bought TWO! Yes, read it and weep, TWO! tote bags. The economy is saved.

Admittedly this was due to problems with paypal, and the shopping cart remembering a previous click, but then I rationalised it by thinking of up coming birthdays and how much I was saving on postage.

Question: Should men ever buy a tote bag?

John A said...

Mr Kneebone, TOP RIGHT LOOK UNDER THE CHAPTER NUMBER

Unknown said...

I, as a man, would buy a messenger bag with some SGR type design on it. Not really into toting. Or pizza hut so much either.

MrKneebone said...

Sorry Mr A. For some reason my browser just shows your "ad box" as a tiny little squished up line. I'm using IE 6 here at work, where i normally check your page.

What's everyone else seeing?

MrKneebone said...

I just emailed you a screen dump of how your page displays on my browser. Not sure if I'm the only one who's not seeing anything "UNDER THE CHAPTER NUMBER" but I'm guessing it's unlikely. :)

The link works though, if i hover the cursor exactly over the little line.

John A said...

Oh dear Mr Kneebone well I am very sorry, I have seen this before but can't actually recreate it on my own machine.

David Streever said...

hey there mr john a yes that is the case on ie6
but please don't be alarmed
almost no one uses it & ms will force users to upgrade to ie7 (eventually)

in the meantime, i think you just have to set "line-height" on that element, to something like 100%