Author / zbicyclist

by zbicyclist

Beware the Ides of March!

Beware the Ides of March! We all know that phrase, but it seems odd that it has crept into the language, since we know few other facts about Roman history. The meaning of “Ides” is a bit confusing to us in the modern world, as these comics show.

Interestingly, the Ides of March were notable in Rome as a deadline for settling debts.

by zbicyclist

Anthropomorphic Mosquitoes

Dale sends in this one.

There’s a poor color choice — cartoon blood is always red!

There’s the fact that mosquitoes don’t overeat and burst. (“In simpler terms, when the ventral nerve cord is severed, a mosquito has no sense of being full. It will continue to consume blood until it quadruples its body weight, whereupon it explodes. So unless you or a friend have the capabilities of performing neurosurgery, you won’t be seeing a mosquito “explode” anytime soon.”)

Even if we allow latitude for cartoon science and mentally color the blood red, what’s the joke here? Is the name Corelli a clue?

by zbicyclist

It’s All Here in Black and White

(in this case, CIDU stands for Coloring I Don’t Understand)

Kilby writes:

I have mentioned Macanudo’s gray scale problem at Arcamax several times:

It’s too early to be sure where this will go, but Liniers has started a story arc related to color loss:

So far, my favorite strip was on Tuesday, but Wednesday was good, too.

I am guarding my optimism, but nevertheless still hopeful that when their colors do return, the color will also return to the Sunday strips at Arcamax.

That first comic above in color, on ComicsKingdom:

by zbicyclist

A few bugs in the system?

I’m guessing GoComics accidentally posted a prelim version of this comic, and then because it was Sunday didn’t replace it. But if anyone wants to fill in some dialogue, feel free!

As I write this (2/20, 11:30am) it still hasn’t been fixed, although the author commented yesterday that GoComics had been contacted. Update: fixed as of 2/21, 5pm.

Oddly enough, it seems that they’ve also retroactively messed up the previous two Sundays (because there are no comments on that one indicating anything is missing, and I remember reading these previously).

by zbicyclist

Double Geezer Alert

So, what holiday is Nancy refusing to appear on, on February 22, 1950?

Some choices:

  1. My parents welcomed me into the world. I’m sure it felt like a holiday to my Mom, after a 3 day labor. As I am now a Geezer, that’s Geezer Alert #1. Bushmiller was probably unaware of this.
  2. It was also Ash Wednesday, which it is also is today. That’s more of a holy day (but not a Holy Day of Obligation) than a holiday, though.
  3. February 22 was then the national holiday of Washington’s Birthday, until that was moved to the third Monday in February in 1971. That’s over 50 years ago, so that’s Geezer Alert #2. And, while the national holiday is officially Washington’s Birthday, it’s more commonly known now as Presidents’ Day.
  4. Lastly, if we were asking a ten year old George Washington what day he was born, he would have said February 11, 1731, not February 22, 1732. The British Calendar Act of 1751 to adopt the Gregorian calendar was applied retroactively to some dates, changing both the day and the year. Therefore, the fact that this was rerun on January 31, 2023 seems appropriate.
    • Why would they have changed George’s birthday? The answer may lie in this passage from the British Calendar Act of 1751: “no Person or Persons whatsoever shall be deemed or taken to have attained the said Age of one and twenty Years, or any other such Age as aforesaid, or to have completed the Time of such Service as aforesaid, until the full Number of Years and Days shall be elapsed on which such Person or Persons respectively would have attained such Age, or would have completed the Time of such Service as aforesaid, in case this Act had not been made”. To make the proper calculation of when young George would turn 21, his birthday had to move.

That’s your (over)dose of trivia for today.