Auspacken, Einschalten, Garantiefall – Chapter 7, Act 4, Strip 16

Great, the cat is clean again.

For the most part, En’ilef clean themselves in the same way as any cat: with their tongues. And, for obvious reasons, they usually do that off-screen. But there are union rules concerning what you can ask of an nekomimi actor and what not, and § 384-7 (b) clearly states that nekomimi actors cannot be required to clean themselves with their tongues if they end up covered in several layers of semi-dry demonic vomit in the course of shooting within an 80 mile radius of the studio on any other day than the 23rd of every other month during a full moon. (Yeah, those contract negotiations took quite some time, why are you asking?)

So, since there wasn’t any real alternative to stuffing K’ip into a washing machine, why not work it into the plot while I’m at it? Gregory’s magic hat, after all, makes the presence of a washing machine in a fantasy setting perfectly believable…well, perhaps not believable, as such, but technically not a plot-hole. And since magic-users need high INT, but not necessarily high WIS, it is entirely believable that Gregory would think it’s a good idea to stuff a dirty cat into a washing machine.*

K’ip himself didn’t know any better, of course, never having seen a washing machine before. But he survived the experience without any major damage…in fact, he didn’t even get dizzy. He’s been going in circles so much in the course of his adventure, the trip in the washing machine even felt vaguely familiar to him.

So K’ip’s now clean, dry, cozy…and just, perhaps, a little bit fluffier than he normally aspires to be. And, yeah, Gregory better conjure up a brush for this, unless he wants to use his tongue. XD

More on Thurs…uh, Monday.

*Disclaimer: which isn’t really a good idea in real life.

4 Replies to “Auspacken, Einschalten, Garantiefall – Chapter 7, Act 4, Strip 16”

  1. Ya, that’s the problem with contract haggling. You start with, “once a year” and then get countered with, “once a full-moon” (because that’s 13 times a year rather than just 12) but then THAT get’s countered with, “on the 23rd of a month DURING a full-moon” and the conditions eventually spiral out of control until the contact conditions get so confusing you just agree to the last, understandable version of the contract terms no matter how silly even those were.

    1. Yeah, and the contracts between Hollywood studios and their labor unions have the added problem of having been re-negotiated over and over again over decades. The “studio zone”, which determines whether a studio has to pay studio rates or location rates for a shot, was originally a simple circle with a 6 mile radius – then it became a 30 mile radius, and since then locations were randomly added to it, giving it its current, pretty amorphous shape. Adding some location to it will always be a big fight with the unions, but can mean millions in movie dollars for the city in question.

      Buried deep in the contracts are also special rules concerning the “Phantom stage” on the old Universal lot, since it’s one of the few indoor shooting locations where weather can stop or delay shooting – the stage’s roofing is corrugated sheet metal, and therefore you can’t record sound on this stage during heavy rainfall. By now the stage is nearly a hundred years old, I’d think it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble and negotiations if they’d just replaced the roofing some time within that century…

  2. I only saw the name of this comic on the next page, when it appeared as a link – somehow I missed it the first time, but it amused me so much that I just had to go back and comment on it. If that is the standard interpretation of the AEG acronym, maybe I should give their products a somewhat wide berth…

    1. There are quite a few sarcastic interpretation of the AEG acronym out there – they kind of brought that upon themselves. “AEG” is actually short for “Allgemeine Electizitäts-Gesellschaft” which sounds kind of archaic and boring…so, in the eighties, they launched the slogan “Aus Erfahrung Gut” as an alternative interpretation for their name. It was quite successful as a marketing campaign, but of course it prompted countless jokers to come up with other, disparaging interpretations of the letters…this then quickly spread to other German companies, e.g. claiming that “Siemens” isn’t the founder’s family name, but rather an abbreviation for “So Ist Es Meistens Eher Nicht Sinnvoll”. XD

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