The universe is a lonely place. Within the past few years we’ve discovered that not only are we totally alone in our sector of the universe, but we’ve come to the sobering realization that we will never, EVER be able to escape this lifeless quadrant we call the outskirts of the Milky Way, at least not within the next hundred years or so. All attempts at exploring the universe are limited to the speed a rocket can travel through a limitless vaccuum measured against the average lifespan of an astronaut or adept monkey. Even our farthest-reaching satellite has yet to escape the sun’s gravitational pull, and is probably recognized as a Kuiper Belt object at this point. It has yet to find anything remotely resembling life anywhere outside of Earth.

In Tokyo, the most populous city in the world, you are never more than 30 feet from another person at any given time. Try and find someone to talk to on the train or at a convenience store, however, and you’ll be met with empty air as your would-be-friend leaves you for less intrusive pastures. And that’s assuming you speak Japanese, which is a language that seems intentionally devoted to separating people from one another. If you don’t speak Japanese and try to talk to someone while in the most populous city on Earth, not only will you be left alone, but you’ll probably get weird stares from everyone around you. And for you cultural supremacists out there, it’s not just Japan. Nearly every American citizen has become ostracized in his/her own country because they don’t understand the local dialect. I’ve been completely ignored because I didn’t understand what was meant by “What’s gone by you?”. Of course, it’d have gone differently if I’d understood the dialect; to me it sounded more like “Whaz go bah yoo?”

If you’re wondering, I answered “salmon”.

The point is that the entirety of existence is parenthetized by an abject, crushing loneliness; unfortunately, that’s the best part. You see, when things aren’t awful they’re flat out belligerent, as is the case with such things as quantum tunnelling. You see, there is an infinitessimally small but non-zero chance that an atom will, for all intents and purposes, simply cease to exist in its proper form. No one knows where it goes, but according to Newton’s laws it can’t disappear from the universe entirely, so some scientists attribute the cause of cancer to this phenomenon. Yeah, that’s right. You could wake up with a tumor simply because the universe decided to flip out on a quark. If that’s not awful enough, check this out: there is an even more infinitesimally small but non-zero chance that you will literally blink out of existence. Wow. This place sucks.

I said all this to state one important thing: While Thedar’s behavior seems intense, it could be worse.

He could be in Japan.

-Chris

Dear Ominous Knifers,
 
       Hi, thanks for taking my question–ltr, ftw.  Hope things are well for you; everything is chilly on this end, but otherwise okay.  You’re not here for the pleasantries, though, so lets get on with the questions.
 
1)  What do you do for Halloween?  I had a Jack O’ Lantern, but it rotted well-nigh a week ago.  I guess I jumped the gun.
 
2)  Speaking of things with vowels and apostrophes, do you have any good recipes for Cock A’ Leekie?
 
3)  In honor of the Phillies’ victory, if you were baseball team, what would your ERA be?
 
4)  Come up with a question for this answer: Because hamster can’t juggle or Vlad the Impaler said so.  Otherwise the interesting part is that spelt wasn’t indigenous to the region after all.
 
Keep up the great, well, keep it up,
 
      Adam

Calvin: Hooray for segmented questions! What do the acronyms stand for?

Victor: Step aside, old man. Today’s hip internet lingo is too difficult for your elderly brain to comprehend. It obviously means, “Leno Talks Ridiculous, Fax The Wookiee”. I don’t know how you could have missed that.

Warren: Two things, Vic. One, you’re only three years younger than Calvin, and two, those letters stand for “Look To Rehoboth, Fight Titanium Wrens”. It’s obviously some sort of code.

Walt: Yeah, I think the code is, “how long can I get these dummies to talk about letters before they answer questions?” Anyways, I was a solar flare for Halloween. If anyone looked directly at me, I’d break all their electronic equipment and then blind them.

Mick: I was originally supposed to be a zebra, but everyone kept guessing that I was the Doppler Effect.

Calvin: I went as Mecha-Shaft.

Victor: I was the spirit of George Lucas. Anytime someone had a good idea I’d suggest numerous revisions, rewrites, and re-imaginings until the original idea was lost in a sea of stereotypical accents and lost Mayan artifacts.

Warren: I went as the GDP of Astoria, which is essentially bales of hay and shoddily-made M.A.S.H. figurines.

Calvin: What a glorious culture. On to questions two.

 My favorite Cock A’ Leekie recipe is two pounds of skinless, boneless chicken diced into half-inch pieces, half a cup of fresh leeks, 3/4 clove of garlic and two tablespoons of salt, all stewed for 30 minutes in a chicken-based broth.

 Walt: And we’re moving on. If I were a baseball team, my era would be “Medieval”.

Victor: Definitely “1950’s, post-apocalypse”.

Mick: I don’t think that’s what he meant by–

Calvin: my era would probably be Tokugawa Shogunate Japan. Oh, the swords I could buy!

Warren: When was child labor criminalized? About an era before that.

Victor: You can’t see this Adam, but we’re all glaring at Warren. Now let’s get to that final question: Why would the Turks attempt a mountainside invasion of Wallachia, knowing that the Romanian army was particularly adept at high-altitude, treacherous battle? Alternatively, why do we, as an English-speaking society, continue to abide two different spellings of one concept? Include geographic limitations in your answer.

Well, it looks like we may have bit off more Cock A’ Leekie than we could chew, this week! Come back next week, or maybe later because we’re lazy!

Before we go any further, I’d just like to say that Optimus Prime would be the best president since Washington. I’d have voted for him if it weren’t for Harry Potter being on his ticket; he’s just a kid for crying out loud! He has no real world experience. On the other hand, T-rex has been around since the Jurassic period, and his running mate is a naval captain. They’ve proven themselves time and again, both on the high seas and throughout pangaea. Don’t mistake me for a Park supporter, though; I’m far too worried about senator Park’s stance on devouring humans, which is why I voted Independent. I’m hoping that my vote will be the one that puts senator Mario and governor Frylock into the offices of president and also president.

Ominous Knife has always advocated social responsibility, which is why it pains me to find out that Walt didn’t vote. Seriously, folks. As Americans, we have literally one responsibility to our democracy, and that only comes around once every four years. Let’s forego all the mayoral, senatorial and gubernatorial stuff and cut to the quick: If you can’t find the time to vote for the next leader of the free world, then you’d probably be better off in Midgar. Yeah, that’s right. I referenced an eleven-year-old mediocre game. Whatcha gonna do about it? If you can’t get up to vote then I’m sure you won’t get up to defend yourselves against my stinging barbs. I bet you non-voters enjoyed Final Fantasy X-2, didn’t you? Had enough? You probably find new episodes of Family Guy absolutely hilarious. Yeah, that’s right. Now cry for daddy.

- Chris

P.S. I can’t believe I got to use the word “gubernatorial”.

We will soon have a place on our site to view all the Ominous Knife renderings we find out and about. If you’d like to contribute a picture, or song or poem about Ominous Knife we will gladly post it up in that section as well (just keep it PG!),just e-mail it over to OminousKevin (located at) gmail.com.

Here we are at the end of Thedar’s amazing “get into school without getting arrested” adventure, and I must say that I think the boys are better for it. I really believe that at least Walt learned how to love because of this. Or maybe he’s just found a kindred spirit in a kid who wants to set things on fire. I really, really don’t know how to interpret that.

In other news…

So, the boys live a stone’s throw away from Philadelphia, a city known for two things: a murder rate rivaled in frequency only by word-a-day calendars, and insane fandom. I, being a Philadelphia resident, would feel remiss if I did not acknowledge what happened in my city on the night of October 29, 2008:

- The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series, which is an ironic name considering the fact that the “World” in the World Series only means “North America”.

- The streets of Philadelphia flooded with bodies too large to support their own masses, thus causing a flux in gravitational pull in the immediate area. This gray hole caused a mass crushing of multiple cars.

- A bunch of loonies confused the word “victory” with the word “riot” and kicked a streetlight onto another human being.

Look, we’ve been over this before, but seriously: these are actions taken by sports fans. I ask you: have you ever seen a chess fan hurl a bucket of glass onto a passerby after a win? Have you ever witnessed a Mancala afficionado flip over a car? Of course you haven’t, because those people have electrical impulses in their minds that prevent their brains from going stupid. Apparently, however, sports fans have the ability to shut off those impulses, and they use this ability to go crazy in the middle of the city for which they just cheered. That’s like this website becoming famous, and then us going to each fan’s house and punching them in the face. Not that we’d ever do that, of course; the most we’d do is bring you guys a steaming hot peach cobbler pie. Or maybe Key Lime. It’s up to you!

- Chris

An Excellent Mash-Up!

Ht:Marko

We love it! Taking a page out of Evan’s book we will soon have a place on our site to view all the Ominous Knife renderings we find out and about. If you’d like to contribute a picture, or song or poem about Ominous Knife we will gladly post it up in that section as well (just keep it PG!),just e-mail it over to OminousKevin (located at) gmail.com.

What can I say? These boys are lazy. One time Walt and Mick tried to decide who was going to do the dishes after dinner. They ended up moving into a different apartment.

Calvin doesn’t wash clothes. Instead, he buys multiple identical clothes and burns them whenever they get dirty.

Both Victor and Warren have been known to invite friends over to their houses in order to have them change the disc in the DVD player. They hate getting up that much.

That’s not really the point of this strip, though. No, this strip marks the penultimate stop on Thedar’s road to educational dominance. It’s been a crazy ride, but the final stop is right up ahead, and soon things will go back to normal. “Normal” being machete darts and churro-eating contests. I must admit, I’m going to miss the kid a little, no matter how much he wants to light us all on fire; but a good run’s a good run. We skipped over the undersea mission and trip to the Shaolin Temple though, because really, who’d want to read that?

- Chris