Introduction To Vigilantism

My home air conditioner died last week and it’s $5400 to replace. To that end, there are 50 more custom Fancy Sketches available [actually about 25 left at this point] and all donations in August will go straight to the AC fund. Your help and support in this time of RIDICULOUS SWELTERING TEXAS STYLE BULLSHIT is much appreciated. Read more HERE and see some of the recent Fancy Sketches HERE.

Picking up from where we left off, it looks like Eli’s search for Boxcar Pete is making the opposite of progress. This is typically what happens when you venture outdoors in Texas in the summer time. Inside your air conditioned home you have all these goals and aspirations, then once you open the airlock and step out onto the corona that is your front yard, you forget everything and all life before that moment becomes but a distant half-remembered haze. You struggle to recall your purpose for leaving the safety of your cool, non-hostile environment and just as you begin to have a glimmer of a thought… your name, perhaps your mother’s face, you feel the saliva in your mouth vaporize into steam as your teeth turn to chalk. It’s motherfucking hot is what I’m saying.

Were you a fan of the HijiNKS ENSUE Podcast? Well… it’s coming back. Expect details later this week.

COMMENTERS: Have you have had big plans that were ruined, not by inclemate weather, but simply by your own refusal to deal with the temperature outside? Just today I found myself opening my mouth to offer to take my daughter to park and quickly back pedaling when I realized it was 105 degrees outside and the metal park equipment was probably closer 140. What about you Fancy Bastards that live in colder areas?

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31 Comments

  1. I live in the land of perpetual rain now, and the thing I do not miss the most from Texas is the horrible thing on top with the burning. I must now use that to describe Texas heat to my English friends. Oh, and yay for the podcast returning!

  2. Podcast, podcast, podcast!!!!!

    NYC has had it's own disgusting wave upon wave of heat, although only into the high 80's and 90's. Of course, us poor starving New Yorkers don't have air conditioning (I'm one of those lucky few that work in an office that's slowly killing me with their way too high AC.) The worst is when it rains and the humidity doesn't go down.

    I want a Josh doll! Don't draw something I might want – remember poor and starving? The Wheaton doll was enough!

  3. I frequently make plans to get up and walk at the park before it gets too hot. Then I remember that I live in Texas and the temperature is already 95 by the time I wake up.

  4. Us limeys have a melting point of approximately 29.4 degrees (25 if you're scottish). We recently had something of a small burst of sun (25+) and all and sundry started complaining of sensations akin to a coffee roasting oven. How banal it should seem now.

  5. I had the weather encourage me to go TO work for a while. When we had the heat wave here a few years back (like 14 straight days over 39C, most of them around the 42-43C mark) I had no aircon at home and nothing but a fan to keep me cool. At work, however, there was somewhat strained AC and freezers. Sweet, merciful walk-in freezers.

    • Walk-in freezers are truly a FSMsend in the summer. I worked as a dishwasher at my brother-in-law's pub for a hellish two weeks one summer break in high school. I basically wanted to sleep in the freezer, and not just because of the heat. I am NEVER working in a kitchen in summer again!

      • I hear ya. My work is damn cold in winter, but come summer I'm thankful for it, and happy to deal with losing the feeling in my fingers.

        That said, that particular heat wave, we ended up losing the AC after a week or so, had repeated power failures and then had the freezer system die on us. Was not a good fortnight.

  6. We live in Plano, I will frequently tell my daughter the park went on vacation. There is no way I'm going to play outside during 80% of the daylight hours.

  7. I live in Alberta and the summers aren't too terrible but I have been known to avoid going to the store in the winter when it's -40…I don't care if I'm out of tp and milk I will make do until the cold snap breaks or I can send some other poor sucker out for it:P

    • Here Here! Although, as a rule, I am much more tolerant of -40 than +40. I'm in Toronto, and the baking heat off the pavement and glass downtown make it easily over 50 degrees on a bad summer day, and just the walk from my office to the subway makes me want to cry, but I can't spare the water. I can't wait for Fall!

      Also, the day I have been dreading for months has finally arrived – I have officially finished the comic archive! That makes me sad…

      • Love the title, BTW, it sounds like an episode of Community! Introduction to Vigilantism is totally a class they'd teach at Greendale!

      • I'm also in Toronto, though I'm originally a Maritimer so I'm used to snow cancelling plans across the province for up to a week at a time.

        This summer most of my plans were altered because I was too afraid of leaving my rabbit home for too long because she seemed to be on the brink of heat stroke. My roommate got fed up with my paranoia and bought a cheap AC. Now Bun-Face is cool and life can happen again.

  8. Coachella Valley California, where there are really only two seasons: Summer and January. I feel your pain. I'd been fooled by TV shows that had days being brutally hot, and nights being bitterly cold… this is assuming one considers 95F to be bitterly cold (and it is a 25 degree temperature drop).
    I have also experienced a summer in a trailer with no air conditioning… no matter how many fans one has on or windows open, it would not drop below 140F inside (stupid metal trailer) until about 2am. I had to charge electronics in the refrigerator to get them cool enough to take a charge. I slept from about 4am (when it finally got cool enough to sleep) 'til about 9am (when I could no longer ignore the searing heat).
    I remember seeing commercials in other parts of the world promoting the use of fans over air conditioning… "A fan can make the temperature feel up to 8 degrees cooler!" Swell, so the air only feels to be about 112F instead of 120F. What an important difference!
    Now that I am here in New Mexico, have survived a winter (just a 100 degree temperature drop from what I was used to), I can inwardly chuckle at everyone complaining at just how HOT it is when it is 91F outside. What I hate, though, is the humidity. Stupid Monsoon season here. It'll rain for about five minutes and make the air thick and syrupy and hard to breathe.

    Oh, and I had to walk everywhere during the 120F days of summer (not owning a car, and requiring things like food to continue living). I hated it when I would have gone beyond the halfway point, and realized that walking on that particular day 'might be a huge mistake on my part'. Those days where it's 129 instead of the usual 120 made a difference.

    =(

  9. I live in Seattle and I let the weather talk me out of getting any sort of exercise just about every day. Pretty much, people here are only happy when it's between 60 and 80 degrees. Any more or less and they will bitch about it for hooouuurs! Instead of complaining, I use my weather frustrations to say things to myself like, "Well it's dangerous to bike in the rain. Do you hate yourself?" or "Biking around when it's this bright out could make it hard to see. I should just take a bus instead. Or stay home and do nothing. Yeah! That!" It is a constant struggle.

    • I am also in Seattle, and I totally agree about the complaining; it's like our personal Olympic event, complaining about the weather! And bonus, it's both a summer and a winter event!

  10. Joel, you have perfectly expressed the hell that is summer in Texas. And yet, I still found myself sitting in a drive-thru, with wonky AC, at noon, at 102 degrees, just to get barbecue. Because A) it's Texas and B) the wife demanded it.

  11. I had planned on trying to lose 20-ish pounds on a diet this summer, which would include going out and running 3-4 times a week. Then it got so hot that it was impossible to step outside without cursing.

  12. It's a billion degrees in the neighborhood,
    A billion degrees in the neighborhood.
    Won't you be fried,
    Will you be fried,
    Won't you be fried, neighbor?

  13. F^CK YEAH, PODCAST!
    There has been so much geeky goodness this year, I've been dying to hear y'all's take on everything! I wanna Sci-Five a SHARKTOPUS I'm so happy 😀

  14. As a programmer with a beard and not one but two bottles of whiskey poorly hidden at his desk (a Springbank and a Buffalo Trace) I can fully appreciate why one might mistake a development house for a hobo encampment.

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