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Good point here

amen

this was just wrong.

The Parking Lot Is Full is also good.

PLIF .

The parking lot is full, here.

http://plif.com/archive/wc167.gif

Plif used to rock. He needs to stop doing those damn sock puppets and do more stuff like this : Anubis

He does do a good job at skewing idol worship, fer sure.

The day people can't abuse corporate figurheads, the terrorists have already won!

plif, God Blessm 'em : (go to http://www.plif.com/archive/search.htm and search by character)

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc263.gif

Yeah, you saw it on PLIF first.

Well, maybe not first, but it rang a bell for me.

-grendel drago

We need an enemy to make ourselves feel better and killing becomes addictive after a while.

Reminds me of one of my favorite PLIF comics :
Bet you thought the world was round, didn't you? Bet you believed there were 'Bad Guys' and 'Good Guys' and people out there like us. There are no people like us. There is nobody else. We are stranded in space, waging war on ghosts to feel less alone. Welcome to Planet America.

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc158.gif

Hi. As you may have noticed, the strip promised last week did not actually appear. The reasons for this are obvious, and it may be of some interest for you to know that I was actually putting the finishing touches on the short story which was supposed to run in this space when I heard about what happened. Jack e-mailed me, not soon after, wondering if maybe now was not the time to update the page. I agreed with him fully.

We're living in a scary time, my friends, and not for the reason most people believe. In a MSN Messenger conversation I had with my stepfather, I listened to him express his feeling that the world was now a less 'innocent' place, and that's a sentiment I've heard echoed. I think many people share his view. I do not. The world is no more or less innocent than it was last week or last year or ever. Terrorism and violence are a fact of life for people the world over, and I think North America's exclusion from that could charitably be called willful naivete rather than innocence. Arbitrary, horrific atrocities happen all over. You could say that it's now just America's turn.

It's strange, being as far removed as I am from what's happening, living as I do in Asia and relying on a single English-language TV channel for news from home. Since Tuesday, that television channel has been relaying 24 hour, stateside coverage from American TV, skipping back and forth from the relatively responsible axis of the major networks and CNN to the appalling yellow journalism of Fox News. I've been watching as much of it as I can. During the first few days, I was moved by the images of people leaping from the burning towers, by the tearful faces of people searching for loved ones and the images of two colossal buildings crashing down. I was there, in a sense. I think everyone was. It took until the end of the week before people seemed to accept what happened and start to decide what to do next... and I have to say, that was when I started to get well and truly afraid.

Take a deep breath, clear your head, and look, really *look* at the current media coverage of the disaster and its aftermath. It isn't news anymore, is it? There's no objectivity, nor any distance. There's no rationality. There isn't even a hawkish discussion of how to maximize the effectiveness and practicality of any retaliation that America might take. There's just propaganda. Obvious, vicious, clumsily effective propaganda. On NBC, I saw a former Nixon advisor talk about how, if Bush is going to reverse the decree banning overt assassination as a tool of foreign policy, he'd better do it now before the momentum is lost. The journalist nodded his agreement. On PBS, I saw a journalist ask Colin Powell why anyone would attack America, attack 'the good guys'. Powell said that terrorists hated America because America is free. On CBS, I saw Newt Gingrich talk about his efforts at creating a 'domestic security agency' (which, some would say, is just a euphemism for 'secret police') which would combine FEMA, the INS, and elements of the FBI. He said that nobody had taken his efforts seriously before, but that they would now. I believed him. On Fox News, I saw an anchorman mangle the names of arrested terrorist suspects, then add 'I'm probably saying their names wrong... but I don't care.' I saw all this, and on all the channels, all the networks, I saw little video montages beginning with images of the attack, ominous music, images of Palestinians celebrating and burning American flags. Sudden cut to stirring, patriotic music, George W. Bush talking in steely but ultimately abstract terms about 'punishing good and evil,' and crowds of people chanting 'USA! USA! USA!' Leni Riefenstahl could not have done better herself.

I saw all these things, but nowhere did I see any informed discussion of why so many people hate America so much. Terrorism is never justified, and what happened in New York is truly an atrocity, but to imagine that America did not throw fuel on the fire of international terrorism on many occasions is, again, not innocent. It is frighteningly naive. America did not 'get what it deserved,' because no civilian population could possibly deserve this. Make no mistake, though: America has done bad things. Sometimes out of malice. Sometime out of cluelessness. Sometimes out of the uniquely American desire to solve problems without actually understanding what those problems are with any kind of depth. Sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad... but America *has* done terrible things. There are people, groups, perhaps entire cultures with legitimate grievances against American foreign policy. Only a small lunatic fringe feel compelled to redress those grievances by violence, but for America to sit there, wondering 'How could anyone hate us so much when we're the good guys?' is dangerous to everyone. Especially if the answer America gives itself is as reductive and false as 'They hate us because we are free.'

Does this mean that America should not strike back? Probably not. The desire to do so is natural and perfectly understandable. My concern is that America will strike back without asking itself hard questions and without even trying to understand in any real way why this has happened at all. I'm afraid that America will strike the wrong target with annihilating force, decimating countless innocent people without even really managing to hurt its targets... no matter even if they manage to get at convenient bad guys like Osama bin Laden or not. I'm afraid that America will further radicalize even moderate Arabs, and open the door for an endless series of attacks on America and the entire western world. I'm afraid that this week's horror will push America to the Right, unleashing the fascism, militarism, and zealotry that's always been latent in the American psyche, usually kept in check by the good American qualities of anti-authoritarianism. I'm afraid that America and the Arab world will end up locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of hatred and violence that will go on and on and on... and all the while, allow the people who would do things like pilot airplanes into the World Trade Centre to sit back and congratulate each other on a job well done.

This is a scary time to be alive. I am worried. You should be worried too.

This week's Parking Lot is Full comic was written and drawn before we all started down this path. It'll be a while before Jack and myself can start reacting artistically to the events which are to come, and when we do, we'll probably alienate a good number of you. I hope that we won't, but that may end up happening. On the other hand, it's occurred to me that our comic has always been, in a sense, an attack on western culture. Will there be any place for us in a world in which others have attacked that culture in ways much more drastic than anything Jack or myself could even imagine? Only time will tell. Judging by the social climate that seems to be developing, satire may become a dangerous business again, especially for the satirists. Even for bad satirists, which we may well be.

This week's comic has nothing to do with any of these concerns, nor will next week's. I'm not sure how long that will last. Enjoy it while you can.

Hmm, mabey the pillars look like this

Sooner or later they need to be able to handle all the bad shit out there anyway, why not help them while you have the most influence?

All in moderation of course.

what really excites me the most is the prospect of cloning only parts of animals for food.

Why stop at animals?

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc263.gif

excellent cartoon on the dangers of cloning.

Clearly, the judge has good taste in comics.

Exhibit A

Here's a bonus.

The Parking Lot Is Full
--

Clearly, the judge has good taste in comics.

Exhibit A

Here's a bonus.

The Parking Lot Is Full
--

Clearly, the judge has good taste in comics.

Exhibit A

Here's a bonus.

The Parking Lot Is Full
--

Warning: Not for the easily offended.

Don't forget some of my favorites:
Penny Arcade
The Parking Lot is Full
Pope Alien

And many others that just don't pop into mind now.

A much better commentary (IMHO) can be found in Waren Ellis's Bad World.

As a side note I found this fantastic column from the recommended readings section on Parking Lot Is Full.

Just look at this, from my favorite internet comic (although it's usually pretty twisted so not exactly a comic.)

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc221.gif

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc221.gif

This just says it all.

Rami
--

Absolutely. Not only that, but news programs on TV seldom cover what I'm interested in.

Also, the sanitization is (I hesitate to use this word, but...) offensive. I find it really insulting to my intelligence. They should either report a story in it's entirety, or stay away from it.

I've seen pictures from genocides taking place in Africa. I didn't enjoy seeing them, but just one picture said more than the hundreds of news stories that were showing stock-footage of peaceful villages, and making sure everything was politically correct. How can one expect people to grow up properly adjusted when they don't even have a clue what's going on all around them?
Arrrrgh!

Heh, there was a Parking Lot is Full comic about that once, but I can't find it. Grr...

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc207.gif

Cat haters will understand.



Observe, reason, and experiment.

While I don't really care for UF as much as I used to, it's still nice to see an online comic getting some mainstream publishing so that non-onliners can even pick it up. I think the biggest problem today with online comics that are published in bookform is that they are not mainstream, but self-published or published by small houses like Plan Nine. I'd love to be able to walk into my local Barnes&Noble and pick up a copy of Goats, PVP, PLIF, or GPF.

The main points here are:

The S/390 is a superb, multi-user, highly secure stable machine; very scalable and powerful.
Linux is very popular and getting ever more so with Microsoft's security faux pas; it is fairly stable, and fairly secure so people are turning to it in droves for database/app serve/web serve type uses.

Put the two together and you get a powerful machine, which is no longer esoteric and scary. It becomes more 'everyday' and easily accepted. Okay, this will lower the average salaries of an S/390 tech, but it will open up the S/390 to companies who wouldn't have thought of it before.

Oh, and sources at IBM say Red Hat is working on it.

The Parking Lot Is Full

--Fesh

Good Question. I dunno. I've never heard of Macdonalds. I have heard of a fast food joint called McDonald's though.

But seriously, McDonald's does suck. (I used to work there - for 4 years - and I was a manager for 2 of those years). They advertise to children so mom and dad have to bring in the little rug-rats for a happy meal just to get the fucking toy. Fucking toys like beanie-babies. Those things are pure evil! Yes, I fondly remember the 'beanie-hell' that gripped us poor employees at McDonald's. It sucked. I quit over a year ago and haven't been back yet. Burn in hell Ronald, burn in hell!

Check this out. This is what will happend if we don't take action quickly. If your reading this from a country that doesn't yet have any McDonald's, please make it your full time work to keep them out. It isn't worth it.

By the way, the only reason I am posting as an AC is becuase I don't want to tarnish my reputation by admiting that I worked at McDonald's. Please understand.

As soon as this article appeared, I thought "Great merciful crap, he's at it again, time to filter JonKatz"... but then I read it. Surprisingly free of the usual grammatical/spelling errors, this article was also written in a much more rational tone than some of your previous work. Of course, I might think this just because I completely agree with you or because I haven't slept enough lately. ;) The cheap trick of using "innocent children" as a ploy to pass censorship legislation is as disgusting as it is unAmerican. It's not just in the Linux community that information wants to be free; more info = better choices not just in operating systems but in all aspects of our lives. Arbitrarily preventing children from watching movies is not going to have any positive effect - all it does is try and cut people off from some aspect of human experience. No one is born with morals - they must be learned, by seeing what goes on in the world and being taught, and deciding for yourself, what's right and what's wrong. Two relevant urls: _The Parking Lot is Full_ on 'protecting' children Salon article on teens using the internet to make informed decisions about sex

A favourite Parking Lot Is Full cartoon on this topic... www.plif.com/archive/wc161.gif