STW Calendar Revisited, Part VI
February 13-25
More February days…
Ugh. I mean, it’s not bad but it doesn’t make me not cringe a little.
The holiday is based on the last day of the Peanuts comic strip? Ok, that’s a clever holiday title then, I guess.
Ugggh. Ok, let’s just flip the calendar early, the next day can’t be worse.
UGGGGGGH. I was wrong, keep going, keep going.
Ok, a comic that I’m not suffering through when I look at it. This was originally for my parents’ wedding anniversary, and so it made sense to post it on the same day.
The holiday is based on a patent for a tree, apparently? I don’t know why Blitzen Trapper’s “Furr” is the soundtrack song but it’s a very good song at least.
We made mugs with this statement on them! I never got one for myself (I don’t think?), and I can’t drink caffeine anymore anyway.
I was looking through so many online lists of baby names to fill out the cloud names - I can’t imagine anyone actually naming their child Valkyrie but it was on the lists! And the holiday marks the first superhero, the Phantom, apparently.
Pretty sure I’m a dusk armadillo. And it’s more slander from me aimed at morning people as a whole. The soundtrack song being Best Coast’s “This Lonely Morning” further emphasizes that.
The holiday is about the planet Pluto? That’s clever! Good job, past me.
The basement periscopes was inspired by my office for several years in grad school being in the underground basement of the chemical engineering building, and given the northern latitude, would mean that we would some days not see the sun at all. As for the torpedo tubes, I think I just want to take a ride in one myself.
Xenobia was a character in a Christopher Durang play that I directed. Xantus is not quite Xanthus, which was the name of a loyal horse in a Greek myth and the name of a hampster I had for a couple years. The holiday refers to a censorship board, so my spreadsheet tells me.
Solid flowchart, no deeper insight here.
The holiday here seems self-explanatory too.
Ok, so this was STW #5, this one was the comic that probably truly made STW popular. Just enough into the archives that people would have glanced at at least a couple before coming to it, but distinctly early enough that it helped drive a bunch of readership once people started finding this comic a year after it was published. I think it’s also the first comic that was truly original and separate from the written script source that had inspired STW in the first place, too, so it was pretty reassuring to me from a creative standpoint.
This was shared repeatedly on reddit over the years, and my favorite part was that most of the commenters would focus on the fact that the dependent and independent variables are flipped, not on the content of the comic itself. So many emails commenting on the same concern, including the guy who created Liquiglide, which I found particularly funny. And I would respond the same way everytime: “The punchline doesn’t hit in the right order if they’re flipped. It’s a comic. That’s the point.” Unsaid was, ‘get over it’. The comic got memed a number of times too, but thankfully not to the degree that I see it come up anymore, unlike ones with my pets in them.
Well, it doesn’t make me cringe, but it’s nothing spectacular, either. Aren’t you glad you don’t force yourself to review all the various jokes you made years ago? Just the ones that your brain made sure to hold onto and bring up whenever you’re just about to go sleep again, I guess. Anyway, why am I doing this to myself?
The soundtrack song being Randy Newman’s “Political Science” is a pretty good match.
More multiuniversal hypothesis (MUH) comics! And given the revelations I’d come to about six or seven years after this comic, this one particularly seems like a message from my subconscious!
Not sure what the word-of-the-day theme is now, with ‘art’ and ‘book’. Is the holiday about Bobby Knight? (checks) Yup! The soundtrack song is the Cave Singers’ “Swim Club” for some reason… a decent song but nowadays I’d probably pick “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny (with Tegan and Sara).
I remember making this one! It was in Olin 255 as usual, and I tried multiple times to start the 10 second timer, run to the front of the classroom, and throw my legs up in time to take the picture, and eventually had to go and ask my friend Henry to capture the photo for me. One of the few times I needed someone else to take the picture.
I do have monkey feet and monkey toes, though. My toes start when my wife’s toes end. They’re useful for the most part - I can grip a doorknob and open the door with them when my hands are full - although finding shoes can be a little more difficult.
Angry Trowel = steam shovel, that’s kind of clever.
Alright, that’s kind of a perfect one to end this review on, given the pages we started with, huh? So long for now, past self.