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Abby and Norma
A Webcomic for the Weirdo in All of Us
by Erika Hammerschmidt
May 15, 2021
Abby and Norma: 2006-2018
Small update: I've just completed the process of restoring the blog text that was accidentally erased from many of the strips when I adapted them to html.
I am just learning how to make site-wide changes by editing multiple html pages with grep commands... and sometimes I make mistakes... and that one slipped under my radar.
Luckily I had backups of the text, but I am not yet good enough at grep to figure out a quick way to put it back in.
So I was pasting it manually, starting from the beginning. I've finished, tentatively, but may be making finishing touches for a while.
As I've more-or-less shelved the attempted revival of Abby and Norma for the time being, I figured I should finally get around to pinning some sort of explanation to this page.
Basically, bad political stuff happened ... bad life stuff happened ... bad emotional health happened ... frantic attempts to bury my life in millions of different projects happened ... and this comic was one of several projects in my life that was not having enough of a satisfactory payoff to make it worth doing.
This is probably the work of mine that most completely encapsulates who I am. For the years of 2006 to 2018, it was usually the first place I thought of putting any random thought or insight I happened to have. It has catalogued a lot of changes in my own personality, and my own awareness of a lot of issues in this world. Plenty of my old dirty laundry is here; I'm not hiding it. It's all part of what made me.
If you were gonna take some of my writing, 500 years from now, and try to reconstruct my dead consciousness from it so you could stick me in a robot body ... well, I somewhat question your life choices, but this comic is what I recommend you start with.
Still, for a variety of reasons, it's just not a priority for me at the moment.
I am now in a MUCH better place, in terms of my life and my health. I'm still working out the details of being settled into this new place, and may be working that out for a long time. But my attention, right now, is not focused on this website.
The comics are still here. You can still read them, if you scroll down or click on the archives. But otherwise it's on the far-far-back burner for the foreseeable future.
(Foreseeable future, what a weasel word. I think Abby once called it an oxymoron, and she's pretty much right. I have no idea what the future holds, for this or anything.)
If you want to see a page that I update sometimes, go to erikahammerschmidt.com .
Thanks everyone!
Comic #0057
June 8 2019
MOUSEOVER TEXT: By the time they were a mommy and a daddy, they no longer loved each other, and that is why no secondborn children could be made
Another all-new one!
TEXT OF COMIC:
So, Mom, I've been wondering. How did you make Sharon and me?
What? I told you that before, remember? When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much...
Yeah, I remember. You said exactly those words. That they have to be "a mommy and a daddy" ALREADY, before they start the process.
What? No, I didn't mean....
We're your first children, Mom. That obviously wasn't about us. When you and Dad started making us, you WEREN'T a mommy and a daddy yet.
Why won't you tell us how FIRSTBORN children get born?
I'm guessing it's a secret too horrible to speak aloud.
Comic number: 0056
Date: Jun 6 2019
MOUSEOVER TEXT: fun fact: there is no legal border defining where blue becomes green, or red becomes purple or whatever.
Another all-new one!
TEXT OF COMIC:
My printer is out of ink.
I wish I could just replace the color that's out. But it's one of those ones where you have to replace the red, yellow and blue all at the same time.
Printers don't actually mix red, yellow and blue, you know. It's a myth that those are the primary colors. You can't get all the possible colors from just red and blue and yellow.
Printer ink actually comes in cyan, yellow and magenta.
Um... cyan IS a shade of blue. And magenta is a shade of red. And yellow is yellow.
When I said "red, yellow, and blue," I never once mentioned which shades I was talking about. YOU somehow assumed I was referring to the shades of red, blue and yellow in a standard five-color crayon box, because I guess you think I'm eight years old.
How specific do I have to be when stating a color name? Do I have to specify beyond "yellow" too? Saffron? Ochre? Canary? What, do we work in a wallpaper factory or a cosmetics shop now?
We use HTML tags, Norma.
Comic #0055
Date: Jun 1 2019
MOUSEOVER TEXT: me too, abby
TEXT OF COMIC:
Why don't you have a desktop computer?
I prefer to have just a laptop. Any other kind of computer causes conflicts between my instincts and my reason.
How so?
When a computer starts misbehaving, I usually feel like hitting it.
With a desktop, my knee-jerk urge is to punch the monitor-- even though my mind knows that the computer box is the part that's causing the problem. It's a "kill-the-messenger" response. I don't like that kind of contradiction in my thinking.
With a laptop, the part I get the urge to smack is pretty much the part that deserves it.
That's a lot of logical reasoning for an essentially illogical desire.
Well, that's a type of contradiction I can live with.
Original version here .