A Date With Density: Prologue

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The Script For Today's Comic!

A DATE WITH DENSITY

A Date With Density: Prologue

(Tom and Karla are at home, washing dishes. We’ve evidently stumbled here in mid-conversation.)

KARLA: So she's always wanted to be geeky, but she's never had a group of friends who'd let her.

TOM: So you're thinking of introducing this Izzy person into our social group? What's she like?

KARLA: Lord of the Rings and reading roleplaying books.

TOM: No, I mean, what's she like? What's her personality?

KARLA: Really cosmopolitan. She’s done everything except nerding out. (An idea dawns.) She’s also sweet – and Tanner needs to date someone aside from that awful on-again, off-again girlfriend of his!

TOM (making the “throat slit” gesture): Karla, do you want to have a new friend?

KARLA (uncomprehending): Yes…

TOM (dead serious, the way you’d tell a friend not to drive that car after their seventh beer): Then you don’t set up the date. The date is death for a new friend.

TOM: If it goes well, she takes Tanner away from us and we never see him again. If it goes badly, then suddenly it’s awkward for her and she vanishes. Either way, we lose.

TOM: Give her time to integrate herself.

(Karla thinks about this seriously for a moment.)

KARLA (going out to the kitchen to make the call, and perhaps even picking up the phone, acknowledging the threat, but cocky enough to think she can pull it off): I can make this work.

TOM (agitated): You know what killed the monkey? Bad dates, Indy, bad dates!

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Ferrett Says

I have a bad habit during movies. In every film, there’s a point early on where one of the lead characters informs the audience of how things are supposed to go. “We’ll just go into the base and take out the central computer!” the hero will say, or the female lead will say, “We’ll just stop at this hotel for the night.”

At which point I lean over to my wife and whisper, “…And everything will turn out juuuust fine.” And of course, they always do. After all, characters inevitably devise successful plans in the first third of the movie, right?

I have no idea why I’m telling you this, except that today’s strip kicks off a new plotline, wherein Romantic Entanglements begin. Home on the Strange has spent enough time on setup – it’s time to let the plotbunnies loose and see where these characters wind up.

Also, I should note that yes, Friday’s strip was intended to read, “Song of Ice and Fire,” the books by George R.R. Martin, and not Sword of Fire and Ice, which is a card from the game Magic: the Gathering. Unfortunately, I edit and webmaster a large-scale Magic site for my daily paycheck so I got confused, and Roni doesn’t read the series so she didn’t catch it, and we wound up with a blatant error. My bad.

Also to the also, the new Song of Ice and Fire book came out November first, which should tell you how well in advance we’ve been writing some of these strips. I was very excited at the time, let me tell you, but five months later the bloom is off the rose. (And not a whole hell of a lot happened in that particular book, either, leading me to wonder whether Mister Martin is coming down with RobertJordanitis. But that’s a strip for another day.)

Incidentally, if you don’t get the media reference at the end of today’s strip, I have no hope for you. But one day, after a much-needed DVD rental, you may become a real boy.

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