October 14, 2003
6:05 PM
Strong Bad held up the book.
"It's called Time Travel For the Hopelessly Lame," he explained. "This is a very old book, and I can't let anything happen to it. No one's gettin' their mitts on it."
"Except you, Gaw Bah," reminded What's Her Face.
Strong Bad examined his boxing glove.
"Er...yes...well...indeed...except me."
"Yunnow," said Coach Z, "I once knew a guy from Mississiper that had a time machine. He used to go up and down and—"
"Coach, for the sake of civilization as we know it," said Strong Bad, "ya gotta cut it out with the ramblings about grody creeps who disowned you at a young age."
"Hey, that was because of political disagreements!"
"What politics? Free Country is barely in the USA as it is! The city hall is the swimming pool that dried up because we couldn't afford a filter. Or a roof."
"Yeah, but Mr. Sipper didn't know that, now did he?"
"Yeah. You keep on thinking I'd have some way of knowing that."
"Uh...you were saying something about the book?"
"Indeed I was, So and So. Guess who wrote it."
"Bill O'Reilly?"
"Uh...no."
"Charlie Rose?"
"No."
"Larry Sonkooper?"
"Geese, has everyone around me turned into a genius lately? None of those people! It's the Poopsmith, alright?"
"Ooh, I don't like him," said the Ugly One. "He's creepy—he has shoulders."
"The Poopsmith," said Coach Z. "Isn't that Bubs' cousin?"
"No, you're thinking of the Blacksmith," said Strong Bad. "Come on, man! You know, the guy you almost ran over last week?"
"Oh, yeah! That guy! How is he?"
"Reclusive, mysterious, and elbow-deep in whatsit."
"That sounds like him."
"I heard on the pipevine all the kids try burglarizing his shack," said So and So.
"Yeah, cuz you just know he's got the big borcks!" said Coach Z. "He used ta have all kindsa fancy jewels. Kids usta rob him all the time. Boy, let me tell you, he took care o' them, if ya know what I mean!"
"No, we don't."
"Oh...you don't? Well, he installed twenty locks and latches on every door and window in his house and became a total recluse. Truly a hero!"
"Who can blame him?" said Strong Bad. "This town is a dump. Not counting the science lab I rent out every Saturday, our town's university is an empty fridge box."
Coach Z wiped a tear from his eye. "Semper fi!"
October 16, 2003
7:31 PM
"So, Guh Bah, about this Phonecar guy."
"Uh, I think it's Homestar, actually."
"Whatev. How much times have you seen him?"
"Four. For now..."
"Can anyone else see your imaginary friend?" asked The Cheat.
"No, no one can see Greg," replied Strong Bad. "But Homestar is a different matter. Only I can see that guy."
"So he's invisible to others?"
"No, he does that early nineties fantasy-comedy movie thing where he disappears right when someone comes into the room."
"So...you're the only one who can see him, communicate with him, or sense him?"
"He's a people person."
"Why do you think he only appears to you?"
"Dunno. They just tune out of the regular signal and come in on me. Luckily, I cover my rabbit ears with tinfoil."
"They? More than one? Bet Homestar's in a cult."
"Well, I don't know if he's by himself. All I can tell is that with that stupid costume, he's definitely not got a girlfriend. You know, that guy Strong Sad says he's a sign. Guiding me towards—"
"Suicide."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"So anyway, about this sign. I think it's on a post, while Strong Sad's going for a billboard stance—"
"A sign...but whom from?"
"Who from."
"Huh?"
"Who from. Interrogative, not subjective."
"Did you just correct my grammar...?" said The Cheat. He then added, "You know, not in song?"
"Yeah, I couldn't think of a tune. Sounds weirder, I know."
"So anyway, about Homestar and his infatuation with bunny suits—"
"The Poopsmith!"
"What?"
"Sorry, just changing the subject. He wants he to see the Poopsmith."
"Uh..."
"I have a book. He gave me one."
"The Poopsmith?"
"No, I haven't talked to him yet."
"Homestar?"
"It's my physics teacher."
"Homestar's your physics teacher? I thought you said no one can see him."
"Yeah, no one can see Homestar, but—"
"He doesn't sound like a very good teacher."
"He's not my teacher!"
"You don't have a physics teacher?"
"I do have a physics teacher! Homeschool."
"You're homeschooled? Is Coach Z your teacher?"
"No, Homeschool is his name."
"Coach Z's name is Homeschool?"
"No, no, no! I do go to school, I'm not homeschooled, my physics teacher is named Homeschool, no one can see Homestar, and Homestar wants me to talk to the Poopsmith, who wrote a book that the physics teacher at my school named Homeschool gave to me!"
"Okay, I understand every part," said The Cheat, "except the stuff that you said."
"Okay...let's see...a book is one of those things," said Strong Bad, pointing to a nearby bookshelf.
"A book is a shelf?"
"No, books are the things in the shelf."
"The shelf is hollow?"
"Look, Homeschool gave me a book about time travel. That the Poopsmith wrote. And Homestar asked me if I believed in time travel. I think.Well, he kind of mixed Old English with rapper slang, but I got the jist of it. That can't be a coincidence."
"Neither can this!" said The Cheat, hurling his cup of gummy bears out the window and smacking the King of Town in the head just as he walked by.
"The other day, the Poopsmith said the creepiest of creeps to me," said Strong Bad. "He said enola seid htrae no gniht gnivil yreve."
"Uh...you had your brain set on backwards again, buddy. I think you mean every living thing on earth dies alone."
"They do? No wonder family members end their visit to terminal patients five minutes before they flatline!"
"Yeah, it's weird like that."
"It reminds me of my old dog, Minutiae Allotment. She crawled under the fridge right before she died."
"To be alone."
"What? No, to eat the crumbs from the toaster. But that alone thing would be cool."
"Are you alone, Strong Bad?"
"No, you're right here."
"I mean in your life."
"No, I know Strong Sad, and Coach Z, and the squad of teen girls, and—"
"Obviously, you don't get my meaning."
"You're a meaning."
7:49 PM
"What is that?" shouted Coach Z. "He just ran a fifth in the down!"
"I hope he gets home before the shooter gets a card," said that Ed guy from chapter two.
"Well, the bases are fielded in the box."
"What the kind of game is this?" muttered Strong Bad.
Over in the kitchen, The Ugly One was saying, "That Mista Bubs is so dreamy! I can't believe he hasn't sold a hog to Farmer McGuggit and done been hitched to his daughter Mary-Lou!"
"Not the hillbilly phase again!" said So and So.
"Go for the hole! Go for the hole!" shouted Ed.
"Second down! Open the bases!" shouted Coach Z.
"Give him a path to center! Take the first down!" shouted Ed.
"He's on the right! Cover him, he's going for the net!" shouted Coach Z.
Strong Bad groaned the groan that one groans when one feels like one is having a battery dropped on one's head every three seconds.
"Now, you see," said the commentator on TV, "what he did was at the beginning of the game, he wasn't doing very good, but then now he's improved. That means he had what we in the business call an 'improvement.' It's kind of a technical term, but you can find it in most glossaries."
"This is so boring!" cried Strong Bad.
He glanced over at Coach Z.
Something was wrong.
Something was floating in the air in front of the Coach.
It was like a thin stick of watery gel, hovering right in front of Coach Z, stretching out a few feet forward.
"What in the crap...?"
The spear of gel began stretching out, and curving to the side on a corner, to the right.
Coach Z stood up and turned to the right.
The spear continued stretching out, all the way to the minifridge at the end of the room.
Coach Z walked up to the fridge and took out two cold ones.
"Hey, Eddy! Cold one?"
"No thanks, there, Z," said Ed, as his own spear stretched out to a bag of nachos a few feet away from the coach. "But I will—"
Strong Bad tossed the nachos to Ed on the couch.
"Hey, how'd you know that?" said Ed.
"Coach," said Strong Bad, as Coach Z sat on the couch, "it's not a good idea to open that closet. A big duffel bag always falls on your head."
Coach Z frowned, having not started to follow his spear's new path yet.
"And you!" said Strong Bad as The Ugly One and her spear drifted into the room. "You're going to—"
He paused to watch the path of the teen girl's spear. It headed towards a wall. He waited for it to turn. It didn't.
The Ugly One walked into a nearby wall.
"Er..."
Coach Z's spear led out in front of him again, towards a door next to the TV. As Coach got up to go to the door, Strong Bad jumped in front of Coach Z's spear path and said, "Hey, Coach! Walk into this wall why don't you?"
"No, I think I'll stick with doors there, Sub," said Coach Z.
As the spear hit Strong Bad, it quickly diverted to the side to avoid him. Coach Z followed the path and sharply turned to the side, walking into the wall.
"Oh, man! Who knew predestination could be so funny?" laughed Strong Bad. "Whoa, what the..."
He could now see his own spear had begun tracing a path through the room, down the hall. He paused for a few seconds to watch it. Then, it stopped, turned around, morphed into the shape of a hand, and smacked Strong Bad on the head. He quickly hurried after the trail.
It eventually led him into Coach Z's room.
He pushed open the door, and watched as the spear led him to the closet.
He pulled open the closet.
The spear stopped short and moved down to an old Freshley's shoebox on the carpet.
Strong Bad pulled open the box.
Inside was a television remote control.
He picked it up. It was unusually heavy. He noticed something felt wrong.
He turned over the remote. There were no batteries. And the battery cover was missing. And so were the two battery socket springs. The remote control looked immediately useless.
He pocketed the remote.
October 18, 2003
9:08 AM
"Now class, today is normally the day," said Marzipan, "when we would examine the latest passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but thanks to some poor wording and a lot of bandwagon-jumping, anyone caught with a copy of the book as of 3:30 today will be shot on the shot, or suspended. While I find this annoyingly unfair, we were at least able to get the King of Town to reconsider his book-burning policy."
The King of Town was then heard to say as he walked past the classroom door, "Stupid school board...I'll burn what I feel like burning..."
The students slowly shuffled up to deposit their copies of the book on Marzipan's desk.
Strong Bad, unnoticed, pulled off his copy's dustcover and slipped it over a similarly sized O. Henry book, giving the fake at the desk and slipping the real one into his binder.
"But you shouldn't worry," said Marzipan. "Someone has already left a stash of several dozen paperback copies at that abandoned concession stand by the field.
"From now on, we'll be reading another classic tale of rebellion, Watership Down."
She began passing around copies of the Richard Adam novel.
When Pom Pom saw the rabbit on the cover, he laughed, turning to Strong Bad and saying, "Hey, it's Homestar!"
Strong Bad glared at him.
"Oh, uh, I mean...um...hey, it's Homest—oh, right."
12:32 PM
Strong Bad walked along the sidewalk towards the pizza place over at Skatetown, USA, passing what he called the Graffiti Wall. He looked over his tags from the past, like the large JOB from when he tried to teach Coach Z proper English, the large THE from when he tried to teach Homsar English, the large ANY LETTER, WORD OR PHRASE from when he tried to teach Pom Pom speech.
"Lookin' good, wall," he said. He then looked over and saw an irate Strong Mad next to him.
"LIAR LIAR! PANTS WITH A WIRE!" shouted Strong Mad.
"Pants on a what?"
"YOU SAID I FLOODED THE PLACE WITH THE PEOPLE!"
"The school? I said no such thing!"
"THAT'S NOT THE WORD ON THE PIPEVINE!"
"Well, what're you worried about? You didn't do it."
"HOW WOULD YOU KNOW THAT! IT MUST HAVE BEEN YOU!"
Strong Mad picked up Strong Bad and hurled him across the street.
"AaaaaaaaaaaaaIcanseemyhooooooooouseohnowaitIcan'tbutIwishIcouldthat'dbecooooooool!"
2:31 PM
Strong Bad sighed deeply as he took his seat in physics class.
"Made it..." he murmured.
The bell rang.
"Class dismissed!" announced Homeschool.
"What the...?"
"Oh, geese, did you get beat up?" asked Strong Sad.
"What? No! Of course not! Every part of that question is wrong. Except what you said."
"Come again?"
"Nothing."
"Remember class," added Homeschool, "tomorrow will be our meeting for the All-Wide Science Fair. So you'd better have a six thousand word essay on the intention, equipment, hypothesis, and semantics of your project on my desk by 9 AM."
4:15
"Uh, yeah, uh...I'll...uh...have, uh, one, uh, fruit smoothie."
"Real or artificial?"
"Real," said Strong Sad.
"Oh, lah-dee-dah," mimicked Strong Bad.
"Change comes to 68 cents."
The guy handed Strong Sad 67 cents.
"Uh, you only gave me 67 cents."
"What?" shouted the guy. "Sorry, sunny, I'm terribly deaf in both ears."
"Fine, forget it."
Strong Sad and Strong Bad left the ice cream stand and continued down the street.
"Hey, are you afraid of anything?"
"Only one thing—velvetine paintings of goblins, especially gremlins. I have to carry a pitcher of water whenever I go into a gallery."
"Are you afraid of the dark?"
"No. Darkness fear is for nerds and their derivatives."
"Well, babies cry because they're scared of the dark."
"Among other unmentionable reasons."
"Maybe that's because they don't know any better, and they think their life might be dark forever."
"Stupid babies."
"No, don't you see? There has to be some way of replacing those memories with better things other than just black."
"What? Like...gray?"
"No! Things like a tropical sunset or some big hill or something! Then they wouldn't be scared. If we work on this, we could be famous!"
"Of course...we say this is what our invention does, and then when parents believe us, we'll make millions, but by the time they realize what's happened, we'll be lying on a beach in sunny Mexico!"
"W-what?"
"Oh, sorry. Wrong plan."
"Maybe this could be our science project?"
"Well, I dunno...it might get stolen."
"By who?"
"Trust me, man, there are spies everywhere."
"Oh, come on, that's just—is that a camera?"
Strong Sad glanced up and noticed a large CCTV camera routed into a nearby tree. A distorted microphone voice said, "No. Go back to your conversation. May I suggest you discuss the engine that fell on the masked one's room?"
"Hey, the FAA's spying on us!" realized Strong Bad.
The voice, now quieter, as if from a distance, said, "They're on to us, Marty!"
After the sound of some equipment being dropped to the floor and the sound of two sets of footsteps running away hurriedly, the light on the camera stopped flashing and the microphone fell silent.
5:06 PM
Strong Bad had decided to try one of those real fruit smoothies for a change, but on his way to the stand, something caught his attention.
A wallet.
One the ground.
With an ID card in it.
Strong Bad picked up the card and examined it.
BUBS CONCESSION STAND
FAMOUS ENTREPRENEUR
HOME PHONE: 412-555-BUBS
WORK PHONE: 1-800-OOHWATH
426 WORTHINGTON LANE
T his means "Out of Here With All That Fear," which is the name of my infomerical. Remember?
"Heywassup."
"GAAH!" howled Strong Bad, seeing Homestar right next to him.
"This is awesome! Now you know where Bubso lives!"
"Um...Homestar..."
"I mean, that's really lucky, you finding his wallet and all."
"Homestar?"
"And with his ID card and everything."
"Um...look, Homestar..."
"And with his address on it!"
"Look right over there, Homestar."
"That's really fortunate."
"Homestar!"
"That's my name! Wear it out as you please!"
Strong Bad grabbed Homestar's bunny suit covered face and turned it to the side.
Homestar now saw the house he was in front of.
It was a large ranch-style mansion with a huge B above the door. All the windows were in the shape of B's, and the gate around the house read BUBS MANOR in gold letters. There was a large plaque with Bubs' image carved in marble on it, with the caption THIS IS BUBS' HOUSE. NO ENTRY UNLESS YOU ARE BUBS, OR HAVE PERMISSION FROM SAME, BECAUSE HE LIVES IN THIS HOUSE, WHICH IS 426 WORTHINGTON LANE.
"This is awesome! Now you know where he lives!"
"Hey, there's like $50 in here!"
"Yup, this is a lucky day."
"And a credit card!"
"Lucky day indeed."
"Some family pictures? Could be worth something on eBay."
"Lucky, lucky, lucky!"
"Shut up already!"
"Yes, ma'am."
7:34
Back at Strong Bad's house, him and What's Her Face were carving pumpkins.
"I hear you made a new friend."
"So? What's it to ya?"
"What's his name?"
"Oh, Coach Z's gonna be all up in my face."
"I don't talk to that guy."
"You told him I was back on the sauce. Literally."
"That was an exception. He's still worried about you."
"I'm off it now you know."
"No, the other thing. Even though it was kinda funny what you said to the King."
"I was just sticking up for what I believed in."
"Well the world doesn't work like that. You can't just go around believing what you want to believe. You have to go by what others say it's cool to believe."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Not much does anymore."
"Got that right."
A metaphorical brick wall fell on Strong Bad.
"His name's Strong Sad."
"Strong Sad? Tough and sensitive? Like Robert De Niro."
"Feh. More like Robert—Smith—Da Zero."
Strong Bad realized he had unsuccessfully combined two insults at once.
"What?"
"What?"
"Huh?"
"Stop talking nonsense."
"Er..."
"That's right, er."
"What are you...? Nevermind. Let's see your pumpkin."
Strong Bad turned his jack-o'-lantern around. It was Homestar's face, complete with bunny ears.
"What is that? A chocobo with horns?"
"What? No! It's a—hmm...I can't think of a proper ending to this sentence."
8:14 PM
"Thanks for meeting me here, Z."
"No problem, The Chort. What's up?"
"Strong Bad."
"How did I see that coming?"
"I'm his shrink."
"Oh, right."
"I think the problems Strong Bad's having is from his inability to cope with reality. He's trying to manifest what he perceives as the threatening things in his life into anger and mental illness."
"Ya sure he doesn't just want new glasses?"
"Coach, let me explain. Strong Bad has a lot of stuff in his life he sees as scary or intimidating. He's trying to understand this intimidation by inventing things in his mind. For instance—has he ever told you about Homestar?"
"What?"
"Homestar."
"Strumstar?"
"Homestar."
"Stairmaster?"
"Homestar."
"Ramrod?"
"Homestar!"
"Humphel?"
"H-O-M-E-S-T-A-R!"
"Hommisster?"
"HOMESTAR."
"Oh, now I get it!"
"Has he ever told you about him?"
"About who?"
"Homestar."
"Hamstray?"
The Cheat chucked his mug at Coach Z's head.
"Homestar!" shouted Coach Z. "Now I get it! Nope, never heard of the guy."
"He's this five foot tall guy in a bunny suit."
"That sounds like him!"
"I call it a manifested hallucination."
"What does that mean?"
"No idea. I just made it up. But it sounds impressive, huh?"
"You're sayin' that Strong Bad has an imaginary friend?"
The Cheat stared blankly at the Coach.
"Oh! I mean, another imaginary friend?"
"The problem is, I don't think Strong Bad knows he's imaginary."
"What's your medical opinion there, The Chort?"
"I say I pop him some pills and make him cluck like a chicken."
"Medication and hypnosis?"
"Those are the technical terms, of course."
12:39 AM
Strong Bad wandered into the bathroom and watched the mirror with tired eyes. After a few seconds, Homestar's face appeared.
"Hey man, good times a-rollin'?" he asked in the mirror.
Strong Bad curled his fingers around the thing he had brought with him.
He picked it up and hurled it at the mirror.
Homestar screamed and started to duck down.
The thing made contact with the mirror, which rippled furiously and finally settled down and returned to solidity. Homestar was gone.
The thing bounced off the mirror and fell to the ground.
Strong Bad watched it as it fell. He still had no idea why it didn't have batteries.