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“Oh, you’re making that strip that no one will get,” said Jackie, poking her head through my door while I was making today’s comic.

I had discussed doing this strip with Jackie a few weeks ago, and according to her, there’s little chance of many people relating to it.  Well, if there are any Dominion players reading this right now, make yourself known in the comments!

I don’t think I mention it often, or ever, but Jackie and I play a lot of Dominion.  For those of you who don’t know the game, basically it’s a card game where you win by purchasing victory points with treasure cards while using action cards to increase your buying power/hamstring opponents.

The real nice element to Dominion is that there are a million and one strategies to playing, all of which are totally viable ways to win.  Jackie and I, for example, are strategic polar opposites: she heavily utilizes action cards and strings them together, whereas I spend most of my time buying additional treasure cards, using the available action cards only to bolster my cash flow.

Dominion players reading this will therefore not be surprised to learn that my favorite expansion is Prosperity.  Bank is the greatest card ever.  Jackie’s favorite expansion is Seaside, (she loves embargoing my precious silver/gold/platinum), but her favorite card is Masquerade from Intrigue.

Dan, despite playing in the comic, has never (to my knowledge) played Dominion.  That said, I think he’d be pretty good at it.

Story time!  Jackie and I were out in Brooklyn Saturday night at Rich’s for “bad movie night,” where we all got together to watch an awful movie.  That night’s flick was the final installation of the Twilight saga, and oh boy was it terrible.  Afterwards we watched about half an hour of Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, which is as hilarious as it sounds.

We then saw a few minutes of The True Story of Puss ‘N Boots featuring William Shatner as the booted kitty before we figured it was time to call it a night.

We got off our subway stop in Queens and began the final trek to our apartment.

I’m not sure if this is done everywhere, but in NYC restaurants have to display their health inspection grades on the front of their establishments.  Generally I feel as though any grade less than and “A” is a kiss of death for a restaurant that lasts until re-inspection.  While walking down the street, I saw a place that had a “B.”

…which many people might not notice, considering that they have a seven or eight foot bundle of bamboo sticks right in front of the “B” rating.  Seriously, the way they placed the bamboo crap you can’t even see the rating if you’re walking down the street from the other direction.

I relayed this information to Jackie loudly while passing the restaurant, just as two folks were about to walk inside.  They totally heard me and stopped for a second, but then went in anyway.

I mean, chances are a “B” rating doesn’t mean they’re crawling with with roaches or anything, right?

Well, I took a look at the restaurant on the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website (where the rating information is kept), and it had this to say about our friendly bamboo toting pals: “Live roaches present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.”

Oh… I guess it does mean they’re crawling with roaches.

Their other major violations according to the NYCDH…whatever were listed as:

“Food worker does not use proper utensil to eliminate bare hand contact with food that will not receive adequate additional heat treatment.”

and “Hot food item not held at or above 140º F.”

And the only reason I’m talking about any of this is because of their totally skeevy decision to hide (to their best ability allowed under the law) their less than stellar health rating.

I wanted to link to the restaurant’s website and give their address and everything, but I was advised against doing so.  That said, it’s a restaurant with a “B” rating, has a bunch of bamboo outside their doors as decoration, and is super close (maybe 50 yards or so) to my subway stop in Queens, which may of may not have been partially shown in this strip.

So… yeah!

LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

A reader recently suggested that I placed the livestream updates under the main news post, so I figured I’d give it a try!  Let me know if you guys prefer them down here or up top!

The next livestream will be this Friday, March 22nd at 10pm est!

If you happened to miss the last stream and wanted to check it out, you can watch it here: part 1 part 2