Okay, so “getting up with the chickens” means getting up early. I have a feeling knowing this gets me about 25% there, but maybe not.

My first interpretation was “Nobody’s going to get excited about it since we already did it 50 years ago.”

(Wait a second while I get my head around that… fifty years ago…)

But Arlo’s also mentioning a permanent base, which is a pretty new thing and still quite science fictiony and therefore something people probably would get excited about.

This ran Friday.

My first thought — and the one I’m going with until persuaded otherwise — was that this refers to the death of somebody famous three weeks ago.

First thought: “This isn’t mine.”

Second thought: I wish the third and fourth panels had been reversed, so I could have used the subject line “The Bad News Bras.”