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Toonbots archive: episode published 2 September, 2004

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The meteorological theme continues unabated, providing a trivial parallel with Frances' strength, while Mao's irritation with the childlike exuberance of the metafictional Frances ego/id-memetic pararepresentation points and counterpoints that parallel, the underlying script structure indicative of an amusing quasipositional posturing on the part of the metacartoonist, all this being of course a sort of tempest in a microcosmic teapot, itself a sublime commentary on the Republican National Convention in New York City, the currency boursen in Southeast Asia, and the ecological niches assumed by hermit crabs; the obvious conclusion to be drawn by the serious reader is of course that all things are both interconnected and essentially meaningless, that all meaning is a construct of our own fevered imaginations whistling past the graveyard of the immense vastness and silence of the physical cosmos.

The script used to make this toon:

<cartoon height="900" width="700" rowformat="1">
<panel>
  <character name="mao"/>
  <caption location="bottom left" size="12" fgcolor="red">Hey, Frances!  How was San Juan?</caption>
  <character name="frances" aspect="2"/>
  <caption location="bottom right" size="12" fgcolor="green">Dude!  Totally cloudy -- I didn't even stay.</caption>
</panel>
<panel>
  <caption location="bottom right" size="12" fgcolor="green">So I think maybe Florida, it's the Sunshine State and all.   </caption>
</panel>
<panel>
  <caption location="bottom left" size="12" fgcolor="red">Frances, there's really something you need to under--</caption>
  <caption location="bottom right" size="12" fgcolor="green">What?  What?    </font>
</panel>
<panel>
  <caption location="bottom left" size="12" fgcolor="red">Ah, heck.  Say hi to Jeb for me.</caption>
  <caption location="bottom right" size="12" fgcolor="green">Totally!  Ciao, Mao!    </font>
  <character name="frances" action="leaves"/>
</panel>
<panel/>
<panel>
  <caption location="bottom middle" size="12" fgcolor="red">That boy really needs to wake up and smell the coffee.</caption>
</panel>
<panel>
  <character name="dot"/>
  <caption location="top middle" size="12" fgcolor="blue">Hey, Mao!</caption>
  <caption location="bottom left" size="12" fgcolor="red">Dot, I'm starting to gain a new understanding of your essential rage with the inanity of our existence.</caption>
</panel>
<panel>
  <caption location="bottom left" size="10" fgcolor="red">"Ciao, Mao," my nonexistent dead a--</caption>
  <caption location="bottom right" size="12" fgcolor="blue">WILL FRANCES FIND A SUNNY BEACH AT LAST?   <br/>WILL MAO BURST A VEIN?   <br/>TUNE IN NEXT TIME AND PLAY....  <br/>NAME THAT TROPICAL DEPRESSION 9!</caption>
</panel>
</cartoon>