July 22nd, 2008
Intermittent plague
God, like Ming the Merciless, was big on plagues. Egypt had to endure ten of them:
- rivers and other water sources turned to blood killing all fish and other water life.
- amphibians
- lice or gnats
- beasts or flies
- disease on livestock
- unhealable boils
- hail mixed with fire
- locust
- darkness
- death of the first-born of all Egyptian families.
I particularly like ‘hail mixed with fire’, that should stop Flash… but the problem I have is that they are all a little, well, old Testament.
We know that God is keeping up with the times – The Vatican recently released the Ten commandments for drivers, and a new, modern set of the traditional ones have been cast – so why wouldn’t the plagues be updated too?
I’m no pontiff though, so I’ll only start the ball rolling with plague number 1 – Intermittent connection to the internet – I’ll add to the list as we find them.
- God, as usual, depicted with beard
Ben on 
Ty on
Death of the cell phones of the first-born?
I’m not really qualified for this, I’m not particularly modern. I don’t quite get darkness as a plague, either, lack of darkness is a problem I’m always dealing with, being in the “Sunshine State” or “five inches from the surface of the sun” as I always call it.
Darkness… before that we didn’t have ‘night’.
I don’t know how that can be considered too much of a plague. Even in the Bible it’s not so bad, and doesn’t last long enough to kill off any crops etc.
Unless it is referring to the British mock-rock outfit ‘The Darkness‘, in which case, yes that’s pretty scary.
If the Bible accurately predicted the existence of “The Darkness” (falsetto and all), I would have to rethink my atheism.
Always losing power right as you’re about to click the save button.
Server down.
aarrrggggg I HATE FLIES!
The intermittent internet is killing me as we speak.
Grrrrr
Darkness is nice. I like spending alot of time in it, very relaxing. Your other senses come to life and you can really hear and smell things.
I think Sydney just had plague of young catholics descend upon it.
our plagues so far (with the exception of joe bivins, but then he’s not particularly modern) are internet/computer related. it would seem that as the worst things we can think of involve their malfunction, they must be VERY important to us.
i was thinking more along the lines of a plague on our coffee crops resulting in plants that bear only instant coffee.
Nooooo!
Somethings we just can’t joke about… but yes, that makes it onto the list.
I really doubt that any god at any time would ever be that angry at us.
Sheesh, next you will be suggesting it will be a plague of decaf instant coffee plants.
Seriously, not funny, even talking about this gives me the twitches.
it truly would be the death of a modern society
im getting a bit nervous too
My god! What twisted your mind to think that up?
I would just take myself out with a shotgun behind a tool shed if that happened. I always say they can pry my coffee from my cold, dead hand and that sort of plague would make an honest woman out of me.
I think it’s because most of the biblical ones are still actually pretty scary if you think about them. Ours are actually just minor annoyances, which shows us how soft and stupid we’re able to be these days.
Errr…. frogs from the sky? Frogs? I’m sorry, but that’s not that scary.
You’d be surprised how many people are terrified of frogs. I’ve had to “save” several people from a frog nearby by catching it and placing it elsewhere.
So you’re telling me that if you woke up one morning, and you were just covered, like, literally your house was just infested with toads, you wouldn’t be the least bit horrified? In your food, in your bath, in your clothes…. ??
I wouldn’t be.
Dunno about elsewhere, but we get cane toads here and they get everywhere.
And they are toxic.
I could understand some ppl being scared of that, but not of normal frogs or toads.
Maybe those poisonous South American frogs, but I think most ppl wouldn’t know what one was when they saw it and would pick it up.
Weirded out, maybe, but not scared. Make like the French, eh? Free cuisine!
The Plague of Electric cords over lino. Stand on them in bare feet and ye shall knowe god’s true wrath.
The Plague of Non-cutting cling wrap – it actually makes me want to just wrap it around my face rather than have to unscrunch it.
The Plague of Blunt knives – I’d rather try to make a tomato sandwich with my fists, like Chuck Norris, than have to use a blunt knife.
wow, these are all so true! funny how the little things can be the worst! especially the lino thing… *shudder*
The Plague of Deadbeat Relatives. I’m earning above poverty level income for the first time in my life and suddenly random relatives have decided it would be swell if I paid their utility bills for them.
I would say the Plague of Telemarketers but I think that one’s in process.
a pox upon all mankind
for inventing addiction to
pralines and cream
ice cream
i’m not sure if it qualifys, but my cousin’s tween angst is incredibly annoying (she’s acting like a stereotypical 17 year old). the parental blocks my aunt puts on everything probably spawned it.
Argh, parental blocks. If they ever come anywhere near me i’m doing some serious teenage angsting in revenge!!!
Random subject, but I thought you guys might like to see a poem Roo helped me write. Basically, he said random words and I improvised till we hada poem. awesome, huh?
here it is:
You’re the sugar in my DNA
The deoxyribose that makes me who i am today
You hold me up like corrugated iron
Stronger than a tree and brown-hearted like a lion
You let me turn left when the world says right
make me feel invisible in lightest days and darkest nights
Although I have round boobies, you try nothing sinister
with such an innocence, you could become a minister*
When peeling an orange, you soon lose the skin
But when all is said and done, it’s just trash in the bin
This is a mere symbol, for all our galivanting
Cardigans and trouser suits to suit each of our outings
The words Roo gave me were: Deoxyribose, Corrugated, Tree, Brown, Boobies, Round, Sinister, Left, Invisible, Peeling, Trash, Galivanting. If I ever get a chance, I reckon there may be a fourth verse.
So, what do people think?
*Alternative line: Although you too have boobies, it’s nothing sinister,
your manboobs may be round but you’re still an ordained minister
Full of win.
Superb Maddie!
I think your alternative line is one of the best-obscure T-shirt slogans ever created.
Incidentally, I’m due to get a silk-screening set up from a friend that’s moving in a couple weeks… once I learn how to use it, who wants a T-shirt?!
(-:
::raises hand:: I’d love a shirt of the first lines:
“You’re the sugar in my DNA
The deoxyribose that makes me who i am today”
If I were the sort to get married (I’m not), those would be my vows.
Oh my! What have I done!?
Haha, it’s lovely Maddie. Keep up the good work — I’m always willing to throw word salad your way.
Haha. Word Salad. best phrase ever.
Thanks for the support, guys.
And by the way, my plague would either be the sudden combustion of all the notebooks in the land, or all the sofas around suddenly start eating every writing tool in your house.
you’ve got some real talent there, maddie.
Aww, thank you Tia!
By the way, Roo, I wants a t-shirt! Pleasles! Lolith. Obscure words makes me giggle.
And Brandy, why just keep those lines for getting married? I think they’re perfect to use say, in your local petstore. Just go up to the counter holding some species of animal and say those words, and they’ll either lock you up, or give you said animal for free. Either way, it’s always a laugh.
And Adam, kudos for using the word “superb”. It is underused in todays world.
Haha. I will have to use those lines in a random setting and see what happens.
Please tell us what happens. We’d really love to know…if there’s internet access at the place they send you, at least…
Fortunately, my occupation (writer) has an eccentricity threshold built in so I might avoid too long of a stay in a padded room.
Yay, you rock!
Whoa XKCD or whatever it’s called got all dotted line today too.
Obviously a dotted-line day… they’re like comets.
Being some many miles east of XKCD, we saw it first.
Yup TFFU FTW ova XKCD
I love internet lingo.
I don’t even know what FTW means…
Fatwa to Write.
I think you’re shitting me on that one.
Haha. Yes. It means For the Win but I like mine better.
I laughed for ten minutes over the cosine graph on that comic.
and i thought i was the only one
Math nerds unite!
The more the merrier!
Though in general, Adam trumps Randy, hands down, as an artist. That and the dry British wit always wins.
merrier indeed!
what fascinates me about randall is the level of humanity and realism that he can manage to get into stick figures!
i feel weird discussing how good someone is at drawing on someone else’s drawing-based website, even though we all know adam is fabulous anyway.
Aww shucks guys…
I have no problem with you discussing anything here, you know that right?
It makes sense that you would talk about other comicky things, after all I know you read at least one.
It’s true, he can pack a lot of humanity into those figures… combination of some visceral posing, and a good head for dialogue that appeals to us geeks, me thinks.
OK so here’s what we have so far, condensing some of them into a single plague:
Death of the cell phones of the first-born
The Great Caffeinated Coffee Drought
The Curse of Blunt Knives
The Plague of Descending Relatives
Cling Wrap Invulnerability
The Flood of Tasty Dairy Treats
The Plague of Electric Cords Over Lino
Unavoidable Censorship
We’re one short.
The Plague of Misused Quotation Marks? Or, to be more general, The Plague of Grammatical Errors?
How about the blight of the badly burnt cd’s littering the floor of the car.
The ones that skip all the time and cause you have your head stuck below the dash for atleast 3km.
That’s not a plague, that’s a sport.
*wonders how the british survived themselves*
Mostly luck and tea.