Maggie, that would be Richard Thompson, best known for Cul de Sac, though this comes from a different project of his known as Richard’s Poor Almanac . See a retrospective appreciation / obit at https://www.tcj.com/richard-thompson-1957-2016/
Necrotizing fuchsia could also be considered a weak pun (necrotizing fasciitis).
@ Mitch – That was a wonderful article about Thompson; thanks very much for sharing the link!
P.S. @ Maggie – I thought the question (@1, and the answer) sounded familiar, but that was nine weeks ago. :-)
Ah, I see. I showed this to Mom, and she said it reminded her of our flower garden.
The appendixitis cartoon reminds me of the title of a book: “Index, A History Of The,”. I spent most of my career indexing and doing database searches, so I really want to read it.
JG Ballard wrote a short story called simply “The Index” – which comprises only the index to a now missing (or suppressed) book about one Henry Rhodes Hamilton:
“…the book itself no longer exists. From this remnant, arranged according only to arbitrariness of the alphabet, one can still discern the outlines of the story of a man who, like his biography, has been expunged from history.” http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0093.html
Here’s F:
Fairbanks, Douglas, 281
Faulkner, William, 375
Fermi, Enrico, reveals first controlled fission reaction to HRH, 299;
terminal cancer diagnosed by HRH, 388; funeral eulogy read by
HRH, 401
Fleming, Sir Alexander, credits HRH, 211
Ford, Henry, 198
Fortune (magazine), 349
Freud, Sigmund, receives HRH in London, 198; conducts analysis of
HRH, 205; begins Civilization and its Discontents, 230; admits despair to HRH, 279
The CIDU expert searchers and researchers in some past thread helped identify and track down a meta-written novel that I described but could not identify. It turned out to be Encyclopedia by Richard Horn (1969). Or rather, probably I remembered the title but had trouble looking for it, as Amazon and GoodReads and others would always return endless lists of The Encyclopedia of This And That for unsophisticated searches. (I think the situation has improved.)
There is an underlying fairly simple story with a stable set of characters and their relationships, to each other and to the wider culture of the Sixties. But the storytelling is roundabout, split into short “articles” (encyclopedia entries), presented alphabetically in the book and with cross-references.
I wonder if there is a constant CIDU drift rate built into every thread? I wouldn’t call it entropy, as the topics will sometimes right themselves… ahem, and would like to add Stanslaw Lem’s book of book reviews on non-existent books, A Perfect Vacuum.
I’ve been putting off viewing Sabine’s video called something like “Entropy isn’t what you think” but maybe it’s time to catch up with that. Confession: where I first heard of entropy was not in a science class or text or even popularization, but just Thomas Pynchon’s novels.
This was Sabine on Entropy.
Not that much new and informative
Things tend towards increasing disorder. Which my house demonstrates.
@ Berber – Thread drift at CIDU is a very old issue, but almost never a problem. As long as the discussion is interesting (and everyone maintains that remarkable standard of decorum that is and remains a hallmark of CIDU), then it really doesn’t matter if we all drift a bit from one comic topic to another.
P.S. In recent weeks I have noticed that the level of post drift has become unusually low. Almost all of the 15 most recent comments tend to be within the current or the second-most recent post, only rarely have recent discussions stayed active in parallel in three or four (or more) posts.
Do people know about and use the Recent Comments list widget? Should it be moved to a different location? Made shorter, or longer?
@ Mitch – Anyone who might be unaware of the “Recent Comments” list (tucked underneath the “Folder” icon in the upper left corner) can still use larK’s Comment Index, which is linked underneath the primary “Three Lines” icon. While it would be wonderful if “Recent Comments” could provide more than 15 links (larK’s index provides 30 by default), back when Bill looked into expanding it, he discovered that 15 was the maximum allowed by wordpress (or perhaps by the WP plan that CIDU has).
If you are interested in simplifying the “Folder” menu, I would recommend getting rid of the meaningless “clouds” near the end (neither the “categories” nor “tags” are all that useful), and clean out the “blog roll”: Jimmy Johnson’s blog is dead, Bug Martini is highly irregular, and with Funky Winkerbean gone, I think we can dispense with the snark.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Who is the artist of the flower planting cartoon?
maggie: looks to be Richard Thompson’s “Richard’s Poor Almanac”
https://www.gocomics.com/richards-poor-almanac
Maggie, that would be Richard Thompson, best known for Cul de Sac, though this comes from a different project of his known as Richard’s Poor Almanac . See a retrospective appreciation / obit at
https://www.tcj.com/richard-thompson-1957-2016/
Necrotizing fuchsia could also be considered a weak pun (necrotizing fasciitis).
@ Mitch – That was a wonderful article about Thompson; thanks very much for sharing the link!
P.S. @ Maggie – I thought the question (@1, and the answer) sounded familiar, but that was nine weeks ago. :-)
Ah, I see. I showed this to Mom, and she said it reminded her of our flower garden.
The appendixitis cartoon reminds me of the title of a book: “Index, A History Of The,”. I spent most of my career indexing and doing database searches, so I really want to read it.
JG Ballard wrote a short story called simply “The Index” – which comprises only the index to a now missing (or suppressed) book about one Henry Rhodes Hamilton:
“…the book itself no longer exists. From this remnant, arranged according only to arbitrariness of the alphabet, one can still discern the outlines of the story of a man who, like his biography, has been expunged from history.”
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0093.html
Here’s F:
Fairbanks, Douglas, 281
Faulkner, William, 375
Fermi, Enrico, reveals first controlled fission reaction to HRH, 299;
terminal cancer diagnosed by HRH, 388; funeral eulogy read by
HRH, 401
Fleming, Sir Alexander, credits HRH, 211
Ford, Henry, 198
Fortune (magazine), 349
Freud, Sigmund, receives HRH in London, 198; conducts analysis of
HRH, 205; begins Civilization and its Discontents, 230; admits despair to HRH, 279
The CIDU expert searchers and researchers in some past thread helped identify and track down a meta-written novel that I described but could not identify. It turned out to be Encyclopedia by Richard Horn (1969). Or rather, probably I remembered the title but had trouble looking for it, as Amazon and GoodReads and others would always return endless lists of The Encyclopedia of This And That for unsophisticated searches. (I think the situation has improved.)
There is an underlying fairly simple story with a stable set of characters and their relationships, to each other and to the wider culture of the Sixties. But the storytelling is roundabout, split into short “articles” (encyclopedia entries), presented alphabetically in the book and with cross-references.
Related CIDU threads:
Oct 10, 2022 – “Title of not-quite-CIDU post” – https://cidu.info/2022/10/10/title-of-not-quite-cidu-post/
Mar 02, 2022 – “They don’t know it happens for real” – https://cidu.info/2022/03/02/they-dont-know-it-happens-for-real/
I wonder if there is a constant CIDU drift rate built into every thread? I wouldn’t call it entropy, as the topics will sometimes right themselves… ahem, and would like to add Stanslaw Lem’s book of book reviews on non-existent books, A Perfect Vacuum.
I’ve been putting off viewing Sabine’s video called something like “Entropy isn’t what you think” but maybe it’s time to catch up with that. Confession: where I first heard of entropy was not in a science class or text or even popularization, but just Thomas Pynchon’s novels.
This was Sabine on Entropy.
Not that much new and informative
Things tend towards increasing disorder. Which my house demonstrates.
@ Berber – Thread drift at CIDU is a very old issue, but almost never a problem. As long as the discussion is interesting (and everyone maintains that remarkable standard of decorum that is and remains a hallmark of CIDU), then it really doesn’t matter if we all drift a bit from one comic topic to another.
P.S. In recent weeks I have noticed that the level of post drift has become unusually low. Almost all of the 15 most recent comments tend to be within the current or the second-most recent post, only rarely have recent discussions stayed active in parallel in three or four (or more) posts.
Do people know about and use the Recent Comments list widget? Should it be moved to a different location? Made shorter, or longer?
@ Mitch – Anyone who might be unaware of the “Recent Comments” list (tucked underneath the “Folder” icon in the upper left corner) can still use larK’s Comment Index, which is linked underneath the primary “Three Lines” icon. While it would be wonderful if “Recent Comments” could provide more than 15 links (larK’s index provides 30 by default), back when Bill looked into expanding it, he discovered that 15 was the maximum allowed by wordpress (or perhaps by the WP plan that CIDU has).
If you are interested in simplifying the “Folder” menu, I would recommend getting rid of the meaningless “clouds” near the end (neither the “categories” nor “tags” are all that useful), and clean out the “blog roll”: Jimmy Johnson’s blog is dead, Bug Martini is highly irregular, and with Funky Winkerbean gone, I think we can dispense with the snark.