**Ahem**

[Arthur Writer]

Talk about flashbacks from "The Life of Brian"...

Bones knit, bruises heal and chicks dig scars is best translated as:

Osses reparant, sugillationes curant et femellae cicatrices amant.

Oh the marvels that 5+ years of Latin can produce...Bleh. I'm still trying to dump the snooty attitude I picked up hanging out with the Latin clique at my high school. On the other hand, I have a new respect for the subjunctive mood and the English language in general.

[RHJunior]

I had to, of course, resort to an online english-latin dictionary... couldnt find an english-latin babelfish, so the grammar wasnt even doable.
Then again, a school for *stuntmen* wouldnt exactly be filled with Latin scholars either....

[UncleMonty]

-And that's why I keep coming back to read this comic.

[UncleMonty]

-And that's why I keep coming back to read this comic.

[Jamestox]

-And that's why I keep coming back to read this comic.

You can say that again, UncleMonty....oh, yeah...you DID.

J (well, somebody had to do it) T

BTW. Whose bright idea was it to change the Keenspace forum program YET AGAIN? My FAST computer "times out" on the download and gives me an error message most times, never mind the system on the dial-up connection!

[Solarfox]

James - if you're getting timeout errors, its most likely a problem with the Keenspace server, not with your PC or your connections.

And I agree - I do not like the new board system one bit. The best thing to do, I think, would be to complain directly to the Keenspace administrators about it.

[Jamestox]

James - if you're getting timeout errors, its most likely a problem with the Keenspace server, not with your PC or your connections.

And I agree - I do not like the new board system one bit. The best thing to do, I think, would be to complain directly to the Keenspace administrators about it.

{sigh} Quite right, solarfox...the question was more rhetorical than anything else. What we have here is a problem of the "good" being sacrificed for the "better" - when there really wasn't ANYTHING wrong with the "good." And yes, I lay this entire mess at KeenSpace Admin's feet. If it weren't for Ralph's strips being here........

J (frustrated) T

[Andrick]

Well, KeenAdmin must have been under pressure to "improve" their services from somebody. No bussiness people change a winning product 'just because'. I figure other people in other forums and comics of Keenspace (2984 total sites, 1693 with at least one comic) had been asking for stuff and KeenAdmin responded to the demands. I hope they got what they deserved for putting us happy clams through that!

Anyways. Woot! We're back!

[UncleMonty]

(Peering in, cautiously)" This thing isn't going to multiple-post me again, is it?"

Everything looks OK, (taps on the floor) seems stable enough...

Okay, I'll try a post. That Sasha sure is a tricky one, isn't she?
As for perfumes, I can only wonder what scent a fox and an opossum would both find appealing. Sorry, that was too real. Blame it on perfume frustration - based on my complete inability to tell similar floral perfumes apart when a woman asks which one out of dozens of scents I prefer. Gadzooks!

[Andrick]

Okay, I'll try a post. That Sasha sure is a tricky one, isn't she?

That's why the saying goes: Youth and skill loses out to old age and treachery, every time.

I have to admit that I'm at a loss for something of Ralph's vision. We know that foxes are hunter/scavengers and opossums are omnivorous foragers. But these things do not seem to carry into the three main titles under Ralph's hat. Despite the variety and abundance of species in a community, there are no bones made about who is one species versus another yet every family introduced is single-species only, both parents and offspring.

Is something like Thelma & Tuck's romance commonplace or is this something which would tread the waters of taboo?

Quite a jump from the scent of sandalwood but that's just the way my mind works.

[DrDestruction]

Ok, here's another motto:

It don't hurt till the bones show.

What would that be in Latin?

[Andrick]

If you can wait on the answer for a few days, I'll ask a friend of mine who's taking a college course on latin. If she doesn't know, the professor does. Think you can hold out that long Dr. Destruction?

By the way, in what do you hold a doctorate?

[DrDestruction]

Sure.

Gaduate degree in Art, doctorate in World Domination!

[Mothspiral]

"Andrick"Despite the variety and abundance of species in a community, there are no bones made about who is one species versus another yet every family introduced is single-species only, both parents and offspring.

Is something like Thelma & Tuck's romance commonplace or is this something which would tread the waters of taboo?

Perhaps only same-species pairings produce offspring; this may seem like an obvious statement, but it is not true in "The Class Menagerie," for instance. Maybe Tuck & Thelma--or Ben & Lily, for that matter, or even Gus & Beebee (God and RH forbid)--could form unions, but would have to adopt if they wanted children.

[Random George]

in a world where possums wear spectacles and bunny rabbits sell auto parts, i'm pretty willing to suspend my disbelief about cross-species mixes, frankly. if we start looking too closely at biology, we have to face the fact that foxes have been known to kill and eat possums in the wild, and that boars of any variety are significantly larger (by an order of magnitude, really) than bunnies or squirrels. any pretense to real biology would at this point be ludicrous.

geo

[Squeaky Bunny]

He don't know about Kevin and Kell, do he?

http://www.kevinandkell.com

[Chaser617]

probably don' wanna bring in other comics, but hay, a squirl and a wolf had a baby together in Sabrina Online, sooo I think it is possible, heh, just leave it to the creators imagination

[Andrick]

Yeah, but those come up with mixes and it is a taboo in K&K for mixed species. I was just pointing out how the families seem to be all one species but the current relationships and romances are extra-species. I was looking for clarification on this instead of just assuming the pretenses as laid out in K&K/SMT, SJ or PDI.

I'm not trying to be dense, I just refuse to assume something the creator, Ralph, has not elaborated on.

[RHJunior]

Well, i'm thinking of taking it one of two ways.
The "crossbreed" version...
or the "sons are like dad, daughters are like mom" version.
Perhaps both, alternatively, depending on the situation.

[Rennen]

Well, suspension of disbelief is a powerful thing.

If one starts to question how a 'possum and a fox can have offspring, one must then begin to question the typical size variation (a 'possum is usually less than half the size of a decent fox) and then you start to wonder why are some families only now starting to interbreed and eventually one starts to wonder why they're walking upright, talking and wearing clothes in the first place.

In The Class Menagerie, a very early strip at the beginning bases a joke on it: One character asks another if she knows that pairings between certain species cannot produce offspring. She answers yes, so he asks why she has birth-control pills in her bathroom.

Though I believe the character in question is a fox/dog mix, which while both are canids, I'm not sure such a pairing is possible.

In all online comicdom, really the only "hybrid" that really makes me wonder is Zig-Zag from Sabrina Online. I mean, a Siberian Tiger/Skunk mix? That tiger musta been one horny dude.

Philosophical discussions aside, we draw "funny animals" because, well, they're funny. Nip & Tuck would, for the most part, work just as well if the characters were entirely human- for example, where in this past week's "race" series did species enter into it in the least? - but they're better still with animals.

Walt Disney found this out most of a century ago; using an animal for the star allowed a little more artistic freedom; if one accepts a walking, talking mouse, it's not that much of a stretch to accept the rest of cartoonity; everything from anvils to moon rockets powered by a small firework tied to one fin.

Species and interbreeding only enter into the equation, since, when one uses animals in a strip, the natural inclination is to use a LOT of animals- different species and their interactions can even be a "PC" way to replace hotbutton topics. In Kevin & Kell, Holbrook essentially uses cross-species unions as avatars for homosexuality, race, religion or other topics, as a way to discuss them without getting the NAACP or ACLU involved.

We're used to only dealing with "people". A human. A single species. In 'worlds' populated by sentient animals, each animal deals with a multitude of other species, and so naturally there will be some interaction, interrelations, and interbreeding.

Heck, if one questions interbreeding, why not question predation? Why hasn't Lily eaten what's-his-name with the glasses? Presuming, from the facial coloration, that Lily is a cougar/mountain lion sort, well rabbits are the primary prey for them. In K&K's world, why would a sane "prey" species- not necessarily just Kevin- want to live in the same town as any major predator species, let alone a large corporation devoted to "Herd Thinning"? How could they possibly mix so many diseperate species in their highschool?

Nah, asking questions leads to too many other questions, which leads to not enjoying the comic(s) as well. As long as the authors handle the topic- any of 'em- carefully and reasonably plausibly, sit back and enjoy.

Rennen