7: Based on a True Story

Before now, I’ve been kind of reluctant to develop Mr. Pardalis’s student as a character in these comics, since he’s intended to be based on me, and I don’t want myself to be the focus of them. But at this point, he’s the only remaining character who I haven’t developed, and I think my comics are well-enough established that there isn’t much risk of them becoming self-indulgent.

As the title suggests, the event he’s describing is something that actually happened to me, at the same school where this story takes place. I’ve even considered visiting Kent Hovind in prison to bring this up with him, but I don’t think it would be worth going to Florida just for that.

In case anybody doesn’t get the reference in the last panel, it’s something Hovind claimed when he was trying to give a reason for his refusal to pay employee-related taxes. Quoted from Wikipedia: At the time of the indictment, Hovind's defense appeared to be that although there were 30 people working for him, all of whom received remuneration in cash, none of them were employees. According to Hovind, "Nobody's an employee, and they all know that when they come. They come, they work ... The laborer is worthy of his hire -- we try to take the purely scriptural approach. We do the best we can with helping people with their family needs. There are no employees here."

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