Further observations:

I've just realized I got the phrase "burst of pussy-nougat" (complete with hyphen, which isn't in the strip) from the general format of a line of shampoos I used in my youth. "Burst of Cherry-Almond" was one.

I don't listen to much classical, but I have been listening to a Bach motet during this reading and posting process and it is pretty much perfectly inappropriate.




Lately it seems that all Achewood does is remind me of childhood things.

I'm totally pleased, but man, this is a moribund winners' board otherwise innee? Love & Rockets is still publishing? (Sure, it's worthy, but I don't get this unless it's the comics equivalent of the apology Oscar.)

Also I was shocked to find that Alison Bechdel's Fun Home didn't take graphic novel until I remembered it came out last year. Then I was shocked to find that it didn't win last year. What is this world in which we live? Mom-Mom's weepin' eye will not stop weepin'.

Yep Roc is from Chapel Hill! My friend Bryan works for them.

wait, dying? what are y'all talking about?

la di da *skips off into distance*

Tell your friend he can do no wrong, and totally works for the only label which might positively influence me to buy a CD based solely on their logo. Their taste is that aligned with mine; we are like bam, bam, bam.

Or don't, because I am a stranger on the Internet.

This comic terrified me. It reminded me of David Schwartz' "How Much Is A Million," a picture book of my childhood - I think it's pretty famous, maybe you've read it too. It's designed to teach children to comprehend huge numbers using concrete examples, and there's a particular sequence where all the characters (there were a bunch of children and a wizard, for some reason) are shown in the process of trying to count to some enormous number and aging and dying in the process. They show their progress over a period of several labeled years, and in each year they are older and more die until at last only tombstones are left.

It was my introduction to the concept of futility. It seems the book has stayed with me all these years, because when I saw today's strip I blurted "How Much Is A Million!" and I also totally lost sleep over it.

Completely apart from that it was, on its own merits, the most scarringly and deliberately depressing thing I read this week, and trust me when I say I had to read a lot of literary theory so there is competition. I truly, truly don't know which is worse: Ray lingering on and on and ON, Phillipe eternally five, the Johnny Cash Beef business (yes, totally also thought that) or the living horror that is Teodor's abrupt wasting-away (it's probably meant to be read as "he gets in shape and then bites it" but knowing he's about to die, his skinniness looks sort of horrifying anyway. Besides, I prefer the theory that he just suddenly gets cancer, because it would mean his dad was right to worry, and that's the kind of continuity I appreciate).

Anyway, somehow SO MUCH WORSE than "Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus."



EDIT: "Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus"

http://www.herkolson.com/names_r/robyn_hitchcock_songs/ye_sleeping_knights_of_jesus_lyrics.html

So I don't look all pompous with my music references that 100% of readers will not get instinctively. Plz check out the album this comes from, "I Often Dream of Trains;" it's due for a desperately overdue reissue soon on Yep Roc. I am not affiliated with Robyn Hitchcock or his vast publicity machine.

And yes, with the tune this is a quite upbeat little song. Only way to do something like that, isn't it?

"A baseball cap can hold the average puke" is length and meter-perfect for one line of a heroic couplet or the last lines of a sonnet, I think.

Trivial Pursuit is my game too. I always bring it out after losing at Scrabble.

Aside: I don't know if this is true of any of the other subject GRE's, but the subject GRE in English is very much like Trivial Pursuit in the tone of the questions and the way of thinking you need to crack them - mostly in the sense that

a) most questions on obscure subjects are really just tests of your ability to read context, and
b) when relatively unread literatures come up with one relatively widely-read figure, it's that one (ergo "which Aesthetic writer's work espoused [pointless elaboration on obscure theory of Socialism which you don't even bother reading because it's going to be Oscar Wilde - not just for reasons expressed above, but because Oscar Wilde is right up there with Marvell and Emily Dickinson on the list of Safe Bets On The English GRE]).

My score on the English subject test didn't merit my offering advice, but on the other hand the Princeton Review would tell you just the same for $20.

Do you find modern editions of Trivial Pursuit significantly worse than the 80's editions? My brother and I do. Unfortunately this means we can spend some time in search of the Entertainment wedge as our knowledge of television from twenty years before we were born is pretty much nil.



Oh, and the questions are just poorly written, it's a major flaw in the game and I acknowledge it. Boo!

What I like about this storyline is the previous strip's very newspaper-comicky feel (an excessively circuitous setup, in the service of a weird anticlimactic punchline full of excessive emphasis)...followed by this one, which just bloody-mindedly explains that setup and punchline, in incredible depth, to the point where it actually becomes funny. Neither strip really works without the other; together, they make you really admire Onstad's dedication to being a smart-ass.

I really dig this pedantic approach to humor, possibly because I am pedantic.