Fine and sometimes bear.

April 12, 2004 7:23 PM

Penny Arcade remixes Penny Arcade remixes. A Japanese high-school English teacher assigns his students to fill in the captions of Penny Arcade comics. The results, predictably, are often really funny.
posted by abcde (17 comments total)

More than one student mentions in their comic about whether one of the characters is really female Maybe something about the drawing style.

I was gonna post this a while ago, but the guy was at the time swamped bandwidth-wise. I've decided arbitrarily it's been long enough.

Sorry about the duplication of the link. You see, I'm, uh, blind. I'd say "I'm tired" but that's a cliche, and no excuse ;)
posted by abcde at 7:28 PM on April 12, 2004

403 FORBIDDEN
You don't have permission to access /comics/paremix/jesus/lastsamurai.jpg on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
posted by Grod at 7:32 PM on April 12, 2004

Well, sorry. They worked for me, so I can't claim fault (perhaps hit enter in the address bar again, that often works for hotlinking-forbidden sites). At least the URL works.
posted by abcde at 7:37 PM on April 12, 2004

he is a beast : >
posted by amberglow at 7:39 PM on April 12, 2004

I get 404's off all but the main link.
posted by dobbs at 7:42 PM on April 12, 2004

...perhaps hit enter in the address bar again, that often works for hotlinking-forbidden sites

I'd never heard that, and it seems to work here. How does that happen? My theory (by which I mean wild guess): the server is configured to block requests originating from outside. When the address bar URL is resubmitted, it somehow counts as being referred by the 403 page, so the second request is not blocked.
posted by crunchburger at 7:54 PM on April 12, 2004

They aren't 404s, he's just checking the referers. Copy and paste the link URLs into your address bar and you'll be good.

Or alternatively just go to the main link and click through to the individual strips.

[this is great.]
posted by rafter at 8:01 PM on April 12, 2004

I laughed a lot going through all the scans when they were originally posted at PA. I sometimes wonder if Gabe & Tycho are members here. I love Penny Arcade, it's absolutely my favourite online comic. (Calvin & Hobbes on ucomics.com doesn't count)
posted by riffola at 8:15 PM on April 12, 2004

crunchburger: Almost; The 'referer' header only gets sent if you click a link on the page (barring some very ugly browser bugs). Hitting enter in the location bar treats the link as if it was typed in, and so your browser doesn't send a referrer at all. Some more aggressive referer-blockers don't allow requests without referrer specified either, but this locks out everyone who doesn't send referrer info at all (unknowingly or by choice) too.
posted by fvw at 8:38 PM on April 12, 2004

Heh, these are far funnier than the originals.
posted by gyc at 10:30 PM on April 12, 2004

This is the best thing I've seen on Mefi in a while. Some of the comics are excellent. The "high price of breaking up" is gold. Also liked the very random "authentic PA style".
posted by chunking express at 7:10 AM on April 13, 2004

Great stuff. Since the linking doesn't work, I'll just say that you ought not leave this site without viewing the one entitled "Comic Meta-Humor." Classy.
posted by .kobayashi. at 7:19 AM on April 13, 2004

I do wonder how intentional some of the nuance is, but a lot of these had me giggling.

What a charming idea.
posted by chicobangs at 8:03 AM on April 13, 2004

nothin' funny 'bout a 404...
posted by NationalKato at 9:44 AM on April 13, 2004

after following the main link, i realize that the '404' is actually funny in comparison.

my tastes lean more towards the red meat construction page.
posted by NationalKato at 9:55 AM on April 13, 2004

For those in the 403 crowd, this link appears 403-free, drill at your leisure.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:00 PM on April 13, 2004

This guy has pretty clearly taught his students that the English for "baka" is "fool", judging by the high frequency of "fool" punchlines.

I think my favorite was also "fine and sometimes bear" from "Today's Forecast is...", along with "I am... yakuza" from "Gabe and Tycho's Day Job". These are genuinely funny jokes, even without the slightly-fractured English.
posted by vorfeed at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2004