Comic for Thursday January 22nd, 2004

"Goodbye to the Fool" Wednesday - January 21st, 2004

For some reason no matter how much I sleep this week, I'm still dead tired when I wake up in the morning. Ughhh... I hate weeks like that. It's been going pretty good. I'm trying to catch up on sleep from last weekend, but Naruto is proving to be a tough habit to kick. Every night I go to bed after watching 3 or 4 episodes. Just this week I've gone from Episode 19 to about episode 34. I am so buying the whole manga series when I can get back down to the Japanese plaza in New Jersey.

The show is getting even better though. It's the third story arc and it revolves around Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura trying to pass the Chuunin Exam to become mid level ninjas. Though the quality in animation has dropped somewhat since the second arc, the story is getting better by the second. I love how there are now a ton of three man ninja teams competing to become Chununins. Each team has its own quirky members and characteristics. Very goody goody.

Now is as good as time as any to wish that fool Joe a safe and quick voyage over to New Zealand. He leaves on Friday and will then depart to Los Angeles and then to New Zealand. He's going to be there for four years studying acupuncture and alternative medicine. Leave it to Joe to go half away around the world to study something like sticking needles into people without hurting them. I will say though that I think it's the perfect thing for him to do. I'm going to miss the fool.

Here's a pretty short story of Joe and I. Once upon a time, Joe got me playing a game of password or something like it on an AOL chatroom. Basically someone would type a word and then you would try and guess what their secret word/place/famous person was. The first few clues were always vague and hard. The clues would then get closer and closer till someone guessed the right word. Whoever guessed the word would then have a chance to come up with a secret word. There was a full compliment of people in the chatroom... about 24 I think.

So anyway we were playing and Joe by sheer luck gets one right and then it's his turn to come up with a secret word. His first clue was "beach". I do not exaggerate by saying not a second after I saw the word I typed "Pamela Anderson". The rest of the chatroom was a bit flabbergasted when Joe confirmed that Pamela was indeed what his secret word was.

Basically it kind of illustrates how well I know the fool and he knows me. One of the last times I went down to Long Island we looked through old Elementary school signature books. I don't know if they do that anymore, but they used to give out these tiny hard cover books with multicolored paper in them to the graduating 6th graders. We would then go and get our friends, classmates, and teachers signatures. Almost as if defying time, my entry for Joe simply said "Joe, You're a fool." I honestly don't even remember calling him a fool back then, but there was written proof that I had.

My point in all of this is that the old adage of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is quite true. Even if he moves halfway around the world for years, he can come back knowing that as much as we've changed, hopefully for the better mind you, we'll still be as good as friends as we've ever been. So I wish him the best of luck and hopefully Asuka gives him the Japanese influence that he'll be missing while I'm not around.

So enough about that fool, what about that comic right? And yes her name really is First name Hello, Last name Kelly. In fact Kelly's mom calls her by her real first name way back in Spirit 27. The Kelly had the hardest time with exposing Hello's real name like that, but I thought it seemed enough like a greeting that most people would skip right over it despite that it doesn't really flow well if it had been a greeting. As you can all imagine, with a name like Hello Kelly, why Kelly would choose and hide her name and only go as Kelly. She even confides her contempt about it to Key Lime back in Spirit 22 when Key Lime tried to complain about her name.

With her name being revealed a bit of the reasoning for Kelly's scathing cynicism and harsh demeanor can be revealed. I mean you better steel up your resolve as if you're going to prison with a name like that. Actually prison might not be that bad compared to the harsh criticism and socially crippling atmosphere of school.

So now what will Kelly do? What will everyone think? I think if you know what high school was like, then you can almost guess what most people's reaction will be. Then if you know Kelly, you'll know what her reaction to their reaction will be. Either way, you can just wait till Monday to find out for real.

Peace.

Vote for Ninja Spirit!!

River says bye bye.