Grimm GPS 12

This story arc is finally over. Parts of it were kinda funny. All of it had GPS in it. Score one for mapping humor!

Grimm GPS 11

More geek-speak: The FAA generally doesn't allow UAVs to fly inside US airspace. But that's quibbling with a story line were an abusive sentient GPS device is having a (rapidly deteriorating) romantic reltionship with a talking dog. Cartoons are great!

Grimm GPS 10

In case you didn't know, Google Earth isn't even remotely live. Most imagery is several years old and purchased at deep discount from one of a pair of commercial satellite companies (GeoEye or DigitalGlobe). Most of the imagery in urban areas in the US is acquired with cameras/sensors on airplanes, but it's still old stuff. But that's geek-speak. In the popular culture, Google Earth is a high-resoloution live-imaging satellite owned by Google. In fact much of the press surrounding GeoEye's last satellite launch didn't even mention GeoEye, but instead reported the satellite and launch was owned/funded wholly by Google. Of course it was the first time NASA allowed any logo besides their own (and the US flag) appear on a rocket.

Grimm GPS 09

Right, so we're back to not funny and kinda scary and basically pointless. We get it, the GPS unit is insane. But how is that funny? The "sentient GPS unit" part of the gag is done and over. Several installments in the story arc have already established the GPS unit is crazy. This didn't add anything.

Grimm GPS 08

Yes, definitely creepy. While I usually like dog sniffing humor for some reason, this one falls a bit flat.

Grimm GPS 07

Despite the fact that this Ralph-GPS relationship went down an abusive, non-funny road last week, this week Ralph continues with her and apparently still likes her. At least this gets back into the romotely funny range. Or at least humorously disgusting.

Grimm GPS 06

So the story arc has left the humorous realm and entered the boring and/or demeaning.

Grimm GPS 05

OK, so Glenda the GPS has suddenly turned somewhat abusive or at least domineering in the relationship. Time to end the relationship. Whatever the case, this installment isn't even funny.

Grimm GPS 04

OK, so this installment of the story arc is a bit lame.

Grimm GPS 03

Heavy on the innuendo (and out hte other).

Grimm GPS 02

In case you're wondering, the Ralph character is typically an idiot. I like the tree reference.

Grimm GPS 01

We had an example from Mike Peters' strip Mother Goose and Grimm a few weeks ago (during penguin week). Recently Mr. Peters went overboard and had a 2-week story arc featuring Grimm's friend Ralph the boxer and his puppy love for Mother Goose's new GPS unit. Let's settle in and have a looksee:

Super Grocery

Might as well fill out the week with one last Evil Inc. by Brad J. Guigar. This time it's the map in the last panel that gets this comic posted here. What's a super villian without a map on which to scheme?

Super BeeGees

Same Evil Inc. comic. This is sort of a running gag for this stip: The tech support operator for the Evil, Inc. company, supplying super villians with all their super villiany needs. Let's look in on this conversation which may have been drawn for training purposes:

Super Lost

Same story arc, same webcomic. Kind of an old joke. There are a LOT of comics out there related to asking for directions. I posted some already. Here's at least one more from Hagen Cartoons in Australia

Super GPS

This is from Evil Inc. by Brad J. Guigar. He has a wide array of webcomics going. Talented guy.

Too big

Appropriate for the times, here's aToo Big To Fail cartoon. Probably a visual punchline too big to pass up:

Mapquest Lagoon

This isn't the first time Sherman and Hawthorne the crab have headed north. They did it before in the summer of 2007 when Hawthorne found an alaskan king she-crab on the internet and fell in love. They went to visit her, but when he found out that she was massively huge he beat a hasty retreat. What I don't understand is how the north pole is only 11,473 miles away, but the Bering Strait is 14,326 miles away. What sort of tropical lagoon could possibly match those directions? But a bigger problem is that 11,473 miles south of the North Pole is... Antarctica. The only clear, straight-shot oceanic path from the south to the North Pole goes through the Bering Strait. So, a ring skirting around the southern continent that would place Sherman's Lagoon somewhere in the Ross Sea, a the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf (or what's left of it). No wonder Thornton the polar bear (perpetually "hibernating" in Sherman's Lagoon) feels so at home there. But THAT's not even the biggest problem...

Nowhere is 14,326 miles due south of the Bering Strait. The maximum South to North distance, from the South Pole to the North Pole, is 12,430 miles. After that one would be traveling south again.
So those Mapquest directions don't work at all, much less for trying to triangulate the actual location of Sherman's Lagoon.

.... also, there is no "I-70 North".  US interstates are given even numbers when they run North-South and even numbers when they run East-West. I-70 runs East-West, so there isn't an "I-70 North"... well at least not in the US.  There is one in Columbia, but it's an entirely land-locked road.   And the I-70 in the US has one terminus in the middle of nowhere in Utah, and the other end in Baltimore, MD, which I suppose counts as a coastal town with a lagoon.... but it's not tropical and doesn't sport the palm trees that are often depicted.  

Flat Lagoon

This is the Sherman's Lagoon take on the Climate Change debate. It connects to the flat earth temes explored in some earlier posts. And in this one by Steve Sack:

Adapting Lagoon

As the story continues Sherman looks in on his perpetually vacationing polar bear buddy, Thornton, who hasn't seen the North Pole in forever:

So this would be a good place for a global warming cartoon that involves maps. Let's see... How about this:

Google Lagoon

So the real reason I'm doing two-fers this week is that there was a recent series of map references in a story arc in "Sherman's Lagoon" by Jim Toomey. The title character Sherman the shark occasionally goes on world-tour adventures with various buddies. This time they head to the North Pole to check out Global Warming for themselves. Let's ahve a look, shall we:

This of course isn't the first time the Sherman's Lagoon crew has Google-Earth'd themselves:

Alice as Atlas

I think I'm going to do two-fers this week. First is a toon from the excellent strip "Cul-de-Sac" by Richard Thompson.

And that can reference any number of other "Atlas"- themed cartoons. Try this one by Leo Cullum from the Feb 9, 2009 issue of the New Yorker. And it, in turn, is, possibly, a play on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" book (this would be Atlas Slips), which is a book I should probably read but which I'm wary of reading because of some unpleasant experiences I've had with people who have read it and who evangelically recommend it:

Hedge Fund Navigation

Appropriate for the times, 'tis a criticism of the disaster that is the hedge funds market. Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller is always good for this sort of thing. I still like how ubiquitous navigation systems have become in the pop culture.