Grrl Power #1313 - Da Ba Dee

Thank you for the support! You guys are awesome!

The exception to exotic skin colors applied to pre-sexy people is that baby-shit yellow color that major appliances were in the 60s and 70s. You can call it "Harvest Gold" all you want, but it's baby-shit-yellow. On humans that just looks like advanced jaundice. Almost any other color is fine. 

Sydney is being pretty peak ADHD here, explaining a thing to someone without helping them connect to the 3-steps-down-the-road conclusion her brain already jumped to.

"Of course the old Russian Czars were six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon'ed to Caesar. Why else would the Space Shuttles' booster rockets be constrained by the width of two horses' butts? Duh-Doy!"

Did you know "Czar" is Russian for "Cesar?" Because I did not. It seems super obvious in retrospect, and now I feel a little dumb.

And just then, one of Cora's arch-enemy bounty hunter rivals (probably named something like "Forrestal" or "Bellosh") breaks into the Archon cafeteria and attacks, thinking blue Peggy is Cora! 

Honestly, with Maxima and Sydney right there, it'd be a pretty short god damned fight. Cora is somewhere around Iron Man levels of tough, where as Dabbler is more of a Spider-Man. (As an aside, why is Spider-Man hyphenated, but Iron Man is not?) That is to say, Dabbler has less out and out firepower and gold-bricky defense than Cora, but is much more flexible when it comes to ability selection. Actually, I guess Dabbler is more like Batman, if Batman had Spider-Man's powers, but also used all the gadgets. And also knew magic. And his gadgets were crazy alien space tech. But didn't have the vehicles... Look Dabbler is in a weird category. 

Speaking of Forrestal, did you know he was not only a rival of Dr. Jones, he was a professor at Princeton? Can you imagine, showing up to class one day and being told that your professor was impaled on an ancient (somehow light activated) spear trap? Sure, you might get some kind of bereavement bye on your mid-term, but at that moment you'd also learn that not only is field archeology harrowingly tedious, it is also occasionally winnowingly dangerous. I just like to think of the ecosystem of 1930's academic archeology having annual "In Memoriam" newsletters and a 30% churn rate in Ivy League professors because they were all getting slaughtered exploring booby-trapped catacombs looking for a moderately-sized gold cross or the foreword page to Beowulf. 

This is entirely unrelated to this page, but allow me to digress for a moment. I always find it amusing when Indiana Jones or Lara Croft or that guy from Uncharted or the Goonies stumble across a Rube-Goldberg trap made of hemp rope and wooden gears that is 4,000 years old, and that shit still works? Absolutely not. If Master Chief or Daniel Jackson stumbles across some ancient alien tech that's 1,000,000 years old and it all still works? Fine. Super advanced aliens obviously have super advanced material sciences, maybe even self-healing alloys and quantum circuits and what have you. Maybe repair drones or nanites. Maybe they were so advanced, they didn't have planned obsolescence and contractors using the cheap concrete so they can pocket 35% of the cash and don't care if the building will fall over in 40 years. And look, not to disparage humans of yor, maybe they had some great tree sap/wax/bug squeezing combo that was incredible varnish-slash-twine preservative, but come on. There is a limit. 

Okay, yes, I know One-Eyed Willie didn't set up his cave 4,000 years ago, but the Indikipedia (not what it's called) says the temple at the beginning of Raiders was 2,000 years old. And... sure, the locals could have been maintaining it... without disturbing the dust and cobweb buildup. Obviously there are service tunnels behind the dart walls and under the pressure plates. The entrances to which are clearly marked with back and yellow striped doors, via OSHA. They're super obvious, but for some reason, archeologists always approach the temple from the other side. BUT STILL. It does make me laugh.