QC Rerun Time 2025: It chrimbus
One of my favorite things about Cubetown is I can just make up whatever kind of Science Department I want and have it be an actual thing. This has only been for little throw-away gags so far (and one invisible emu) but I strongly suspect it will play an important role at some point in the future.
I hope everyone has a nice christmas! Or a nice day, if Christmas isn't a thing for you. I am going to open some presents and eat too much food.
Comments (51)
lol, I work for a civil engineering company. We had an in-house program where the core calculations were done in Fortran. We sold it to a software company and I think the core is still Fortran.
Those jokes were bangers. Claire is too stressed to laugh. But for a database from the '80s, I'd make an offering just to be safe.
good jokes Zlata - Claire just needs to lighten up (duh!!)
I love the fact these are *exactly* 100 comics apart.
Merry Christmas to Jeph and all the Patreon peeps. This is one of my favorite places on the interwebs, and I've very thankful for it!
Forgetting if this is before or after Zlata learned English idioms and sarcasm.
I know I used to be Claire — serious and focused. Too focused to realize people were trying to lighten me up :-)
I realised far too late that a friend was trying to tell a joke and I just Did Not Get It retroactively feel bad, but it feels weirder saying, "Hey, you remember that joke you tried to tell me once? No? Uh..."
Merry Christmas for yesterday, and Happy Boxing Day for today.
Merry Chrimbus!!
I don't like it when Zlata is sad. You need to stop doing that to her. :)
Have a happy holiday season, people. I am having a wonderful Lootmas!
As a former fluid-dynamics people, this totally tracks. We would absolutely be the people still using 1980s software for our data formats.
Yup. Meteorologist here. (Well I’ve got the degrees.) Since a lot of meteorology is fluid dynamics based, we would use 1970’s style Fortran for our programming and data formats, and data structures since weather is a lot of large data sets for weather models, which was also ran in Fortran until probably the year 2000. At least we’ve diversified our programming formats and data structures.
'Twas the night before Buttsmas, and all through Cubetown All the scientists slept, or at least powered down Their notebooks lay out by the fireplace flue In the hopes of a gift of a theory or two When out by the docks, there arose such commotion As a craft came in fast from the Atlantic ocean "Make it quick" cried Ol' Boaty, "They're right on our tail!" As a jolly old robot leapt over the rail "Let them try" he replied with a giggle of glee "If they think some old ban would ever stop me" And into the town ran the blue scallywag With gifts bundled up in a gigantic bag For Moray a hole-punch, and a big stack of cards And an offer of marriage, sent with lewdest regards And to help cheer up Liz, who's been a bit edgy A pic of him giving Von Schwarzpunkt a wedgie For his lookalike Brant up in Wacky Hijinx A premium fart app (with refillable stinks) For BT, when customers want something risky A crate of Old Bull Moose iqaluit "whisky" For the Director he brought a delectable treat Of whatever the heck pet tube worms like to eat For Regret and Violence, some real TNT (And for Evan a note, with an apology) An espresso machine for Marten's cafe Welded into the shape of a beaver by Faye Then out from the sack (who knows how they fit there), Come two dozen interns who now work for Claire "Good luck!" yells Ol' Boaty, "But I'm outta here!" As the federal agents pull up to the pier And continue pursuing the gift-giving bot "Come out and surrender, you know that you're caught!" A deafening roar comes from out of a lab Of a prototype jetpack he managed to grab And out through the window with a crash and a crack Shoots a jet-propelled Pintsize, with a now empty sack They stare upwards in awe as he takes to the sky With a mischevious smile he waves his goodbye As he shouts his farewell he salutes them with class "Merry Buttsmas to all, and to all a good ass!"
Amazing
Zlata *is* funny. And I still love "hearing" her name. Happy Solstice, everyone.
Io Saturnalia everyone, Cubetown feels like it's Wakanda for Nerds. i desperately wish i could move there.
Have a merry Crimbo and a gear new year. I was born after the Beatles broke up, so I admit that it’s weird that I make Beatles in-jokes. I don’t even listen to the Beatles anymore.
Merry Christmas!! And I love Cubetown and how its kind of a space where reality is a little less strongly defined. That way the nonsense doesnt leak to the WHOLE comic universe but is still able to do fun things. I'm really hoping 2026 has some other cast members visiting cause that has a lot of potential for fun, too...
I loved it the first time. Merry Holiday of your choice.
Merry Chrysler
Merry crisis everyone
Hmm, the Merry Crisis. Sounds like something The Joker would do.
I love Zlata, I really hope they gains some confidence. No idea what pronouns Zlata uses, but the vibes are there.
She/her as far as we know!
i like how the invisible emu wasnt even part of cubetown
Don't give anyone ideas, OK? That bird is a hazard.
That view though... I wanna work at Cubetown!
I feel for Zlata. Merry Seasonal Holiday! Enjoy your prezzies and too much food!
Merry Christmas!
Zlata does have the right idea though. Any time you have to port software you do need multiple eldritch and/or holy artifacts. A salt circle is also a must since you will have to contain whatever demon was bound into the code to make it work while you rebuild the software to bind it again.
I know this from harrowing experience.
But does Cubetown have a spell dump for discarded material from magical rituals?
It should.
Merry Christmas!
80s databases? I immediately thought of SIBAS (because I was using it in the 80s 🙂). Norwegian, not Estonian, admittedly and, out of random, I did a search on "ND SIBAS"; what should I find but a plea: “Help needed extracting data from legacy SIBAS database” from July this year! – https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/help-needed-extracting-data-from-legacy-sibas-database.1253840/ Zlata?!
I thought of porting a CISAM database to Sybase. Oh wait that was the 99's 😛
mer crimus!
Merry Xmas, QC-gang!
Merry Christmas Jeph!
Claire in panel 3 has big Rorschach energy. "Heh, heh. Good joke." (or I suppose that would be Rorschach lack-of-energy)
At Cubetown, all the Science Teams have vapor for brains!
Merry Chrimbustag!
Beautiful and scary. Some nutter has got a bee up their clacker about how evil science is. I missed this originally. Keep it up
Should have said. "some Nutter Somewhere will get a bee up their clacker"
Merry Christmas Jeph! Your comics mean so much to me! ❤️
Happy Crimbo from Luxembourg. Keep up the great work Jeph, can't wait to see what everyone's up to next year.
I want to meet the occult sciences division so bad
Not really, they reek of sulfur.
Merry chrimbus Jeph and QC fam!