I’m not going to mention any names, but…

When I see, in a major comic strip, a gag I’ve never seen before, and then about a month and a half later I see the exact same gag in a lesser-known comic strip, I have to say Hmmm…

I imagine this sort of shenanigans — of shenanigans it be — is a lot less common today than it would have been 60 years ago, when the likelihood that one person would follow both strips was negligible.

So it goes

tral

Kilby sent this to me asking whether Tralfamadorian is mainstream enough to be used here (leading to my question of what a “Tralfamadorian year” is)

(By the way, this post was actually supposed to go live before B.A.‘s question — but that’s easier said than done when you’ve lost track of days of the week. Maybe we’re all on Tralfamadorian time now)

And that led to whether Calvin and Hobbes had any business using “Weltanschauung” some years back.

And likewise the Washington Post’s recent use of a long German word (redundant, I know), without italics, which apparently both he and I noticed at the time although neither of us remembers what the word was.

 

[OT] Fiat lux!

My wife needed a new desk lamp, so we ordered her one with “5 Color Temperatures with 7 Brightness Levels, USB Charging Port, and Memory Function”

Remember when you turned on a lamp and there was light? Now they come with an instruction manual. Seriously.