Reposted: Walking Through Novel-Writing: November’s Last Step

And now to close out my recycling of my every thought about National Novel-Writing Month. As ever, this was a piece to exorcise some my pet peeves as a reader, settling mostly upon how sometimes a character doesn’t have a name.

---

Hi again, folks. I suppose this is the last of the walkthroughs here before National Novel Writing Month ends. I’d like to think people who’ve made it this far in NaNoWriMo without declaring “look, it’s just been busy, all right?” are going to stick around after November’s over. But I know better. Still, hope this’ll be a good sendoff. Let’s see, where had we left last time?

Oh, yeah, protagonists. I’ve left them with the default names so far. That’s not because I like the default names, I just haven’t figured a name that fits them more exactly. When I have one, I just — here, see, you right-click above either’s head and there’s the option for renaming them. There’s first, last, nickname, familiar name, alternate nickname, there you go. If you’re doing fantasy you might want to use the option about True Name that does magic stuff.

Yeah, nobody ever spells out True Names in full, for the obvious reason. You don’t want an eleven-year-old reading the book to try ordering the character to appear. That just spoils the whole illusion that your magic scheme could be real and you don’t want to deal with a kid getting angry at you on social media. You never want to deal with anybody angry at you on social media, but against a kid? Mister Rogers could probably thread that successfully, but he’s been dead a long time. He lived back when tweets were sent by Morse Code to a back room of the local Post Office, where they were ignored.

Now, you see the option here of “no name”? Yeah, don’t use that. Nobody likes books where nobody has a name. The only time you can kind of get away with it is if you’re doing first-person. The logic of that works as long as nobody who’s standing behind your characters needs to get their attention. If you have characters who can sometimes not face each other then you’re stuck. No, it does not count if your character is a detective or spy and gets referred to by profession. Then, like, “Spy” or “Detective” or whatever is their name.

Yeah, there’s novelists who tell you withholding names gives characters a sense of universality. Or it conveys a sense of modern society’s detached atmospheres, or an unsettling air of unreality or whatever. Nobody likes it. You’ll never get to be the subject of a coherent book report if nobody’s got names. You won’t get to be anyway. But that’s no excuse to add another reason you won’t get to be to the ones already there.

Now — oh, good grief, now these guys are flashing back. That’s a mistake. They only just met earlier this story, though, and I don’t want it revealed they used to know each other. Couple fixes for this. First is in the flashback change the name of the secondary lead. Then I can make something out of how the primary lead keeps attracting the same kind of person into his life. You see where that builds a score on thematic resonances and cycles of life stuff. On some settings that also gives you points for deep background.

You can swap deep background points out for fan bonus content, though. Like, here, if I snip out this whole flashback? OK. I put in a line referring to it, and then dump the scene on my book’s web site as bonus content. This way readers can discover this and feel like they’re in on a secret. That’s how social-media networking works. You want to put something out so everybody thinks they’re in on something nobody knows about. An accident like this is perfect. It doesn’t even have to fit logically the rest of the book because it’s an alternate draft. If you do it right any scrap text you can’t use, you can use. It’s a great time for writing.

OK, I suppose that’s about everything important for this step. Before I let you go let me name the Comment of the Week. That goes to ClashOSymbols for his funny dissection of every author-reader interaction on the Internet, everywhere. He’s not getting any less wrong about second-person. But remember what I said about engaging with eleven-year-old readers? That’s explained in great detail under section 4.4. Enjoy and catch someone later, sometime. But when can’t I say that truly?

---

About The Author: are a couple of pillows, a John McPhee book he’s had to renew from the library already even though he hasn’t started reading it, and several glass vases he’s worried he’s going to knock over if he sits up or back even the teeny-tiniest bit differently from how he’s sat every single time in the past.

60s Popeye: Camel Aires, a sketch of a cartoon

Today’s Popeye cartoon has a story by Carol Beers, previously noted for Popeye’s Museum Piece. Direction is by Hugh Fraser, who’s had a bunch of credits to his name. And the producer was Jack Kinney. From 1960 is Camel Aires.

You know when you hear that “Popeye, you’ve done it again” music that the cartoon’s gibberish. It’s amiable gibberish, yes. But so far as it makes sense it’s because the characters and situations are familiar enough. Of course Popeye and Brutus are competing over something and it turns out to be Olive Oyl. Of course Wimpy will have some task he’s easily bribed away from. Brutus wil turn out to double-cross whoever’s working with him, and kidnap Olive Oyl. And Popeye will get his spinach and stop Brutus.

And I know I say this about half these cartoons but, wow, this is a sloppy one. Like, to start, Popeye and Brutus read in the paper how a rare stone was discovered in Egypt. OK, fair that they both have the idea of going to recover it for the intersted museum. The subhead says “Princess Olive Oil Believed Owner Of Valuable Gem”. It’s apparently the gem in her crown. What is the word “believed” doing there? And why can’t they get Olive Oyl’s name right?

Popeye has trouble with his camel, Camille, OK. Brutus, riding Frampton, meets up. “Hope you ain’t going to Egypt after that rare stone ’cause you’ll never make it on that ca-mule!” is pretty good trash-talking, echoing how Popeye had said Camille walks like a mule. They’re already in Egypt. This sort of combination deft and sloppy line runs through the cartoon. We see Olive at the top of the pyramid staircase Brutus and Popeye run up. Wimpy with an axe blocks them. Brutus offers a bribe of two hamburgers for Wimpy to show him where the princess is. Not sure who Brutus thought he was running towards right in front of him.

Wimpy as guard may seem odd but who would be a better choice besides literally any other Popeye character, including Roger the Dog, Swee’Pea, or one of the cheese men of the Moon?

There’s a nice bit of animation when Brutus punches out Wimpy. And Wimpy has a good line, “O, the perfidy of mankind!” And that’s the last time we see animation of anything important happening. Olive Oyl cries what sure sounds like stock cries for help and Popeye finds his way through the tunnels that are somehow there, only for Brutus to somehow tie him up. That’s all right. Wimpy, after declaring he’s too weak from hunger to save Popeye, passes up his chance to untie the very flimsy handkerchief holding Olive’s hands together, to go save Popeye, whose name she knows for some reason. Wimpy feeds Popeye spinach for some reason. Popeye blows out the flames he’s been tied over, which somehow frees his hands to untie himself, and then I guess Brutus’s camel throws him? Maybe Popeye has something to do with it? Anyway, Brutus is beaten and does it matter if it was Popeye or just the perfidy of camel? Anyway we all close up with Popeye and Olive riding Camille and Frampton, everybody in love with their species-matching partner.

Mulling this over I realize what the story structure is. It’s the narrative equivalent of the simplified, abstracted backgrounds of UPA-influenced cartoons. That is, the important features get highlighted, and everything else gets a perfunctory appearance if at all. When it’s done well, you get a production that’s just the stuff worth your attention. When it misfires, you notice how the chairs can’t stand on that floor.

Statistics Saturday: Some Partly Foggy, Semi-Clear, or Sort-of-Imprecise Words

• Approximativish
• Becloudedish
• Brumousesish
• Gauzyish
• Inexactly
• Loosish
• Mistyish
• Murkyish
• Mushyesque
• Opaquish
• Undeterminedlike
• Vaguish

Reference: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

Tempus Fugitive

Sorry to be late, but I’m still trying to process how it is the satellite radio playing “Monster Mash” at me the other day. This is the time of year the satellite radio should be playing “Alice’s Restaurant”. What is “Monster Mash” doing out of its season?

MiSTed: Reboot: Breaking the Barriers (Part 16 of 16)

And now, finally, the end of Carrie L—‘s Reboot fanfic “Breaking The Barriers”. And my Mystery Science Theater 3000 fanfic treatment of it. You can find the whole of my MiSTing here, at last.

The story so far: young author Carrie L— had a portal open between her home and the world of pioneering computer-animated series Reboot. She’s met Bob, the guardian of Mainframe, and the various other important characters, hero and villain. The evil Megabyte’s come to Canada’s mall, turned into a vampire, and bitten Carrie. Then they all went back and got her fixed up again. And now she hopes to get safely home again.

The “indirect-addressing jump opcode bug” is a thing from assembly-language code on the 6502 chip, used in all the cheap home computers of the 80s. It’s about making references to something stored at the end of a page of memory. This annoyed programmers in like 1984 and I don’t think you need to worry about it now. Crow’s Price is Right dream is one that I actually had and thought noteworthy enough to save for some later use. The “times change, and newspapers evolve” is another thing from the undergraduate left-wing student newspaper I was on. I think it started as a sincere statement about how groups must continuously work on their self-improvement. But we also recognized it, and treated it, as the sort of earnest yet pompous reason everyone treated us like that. They ignored us.

---

>
> * * * * * * * *
> * *

TOM: Even the dumb mice can solve this maze.

>
> Part Twenty-Seven

CROW: Three to the third.

>
> Carrie sat up straight. *Where am I?* she thought.

JOEL: Halfway between H and J.

> Then her
> eyes adjusted to the light. *I’m back home!!* She looked around.
> She was in her room, on her bed.

TOM: It’s a good thing she didn’t get slurped up into a laptop and back.

> *How long have I been asleep?* she
> wondered. Then it clicked.

TOM: I’ve *never* been awake!

> "No!" she whispered, "It couldn’t have
> been a dream! It was so life-like!"

JOEL: Maybe it was just another holodeck episode?

> She flopped back down, upset and
> depressed at the thought that all her wonderful adventures were merely
> a figment of her overactive imagination.

TOM: What’re the odds?

> Suddenly, someone knocked on
> her door.

CROW: Pirates!

>
> "Come in." she moaned.

JOEL: It’s somebody looking for Captain Picard.

> Her mother opened the door. "Carrie,
> Robert’s at the door looking for you."

CROW: Please. Call him Ted.

> Sighing, Carrie got up and
> went upstairs to see her best friend.

TOM: This is going to make Robert feel good.

> "Hi!" he said. "Hi." Carrie
> sighed, staring at the floor. "What’s wrong with you?" he asked. "Oh,
> nothing." Carrie moaned.

JOEL: [ As Bob ] Hey, you’re never gonna believe this, but last night I was fiddling on the computer and I got pulled into the world of Automan!

> Then she looked up. Surprise registered on
> her face. Behind her best friend stood someone who bore a striking
> resemblance to Guardian Bob in his human form. Robert smiled.

CROW: Do you think Robert Guardien is a person in Carrie’s real life?

> "Carrie, I’d like you to meet Bob. He just moved into the apartment
> across from mine last night."

JOEL: And if the landlord ever finds out will *he* be in trouble.

> Carrie stood there, speechless. Bob
> smiled. "Uh…We’ve met already." He whispered. Finally, Carrie
> snapped out of it. She ran forward and hugged Bob warmly.

TOM: Robert begins to suspect they went to school together or something.

> "See," he
> breathed, "I told you I’d see you again." Carrie looked up into his
> eyes. "But why…." Bob silenced her with a quick kiss.

JOEL: I decided it’d be the cruelest thing I could do to Dot.

> "I’m just
> taking some time off." he said. "I got a friend to look after
> Mainframe for a bit."

TOM: Now, if a nanosecond is to them like one second is to us, then every minute Bob spends in our world is, like, nineteen hundred years in theirs.

> Carrie looked at him confused. "A friend?" she
> asked. Bob smiled.

CROW: I didn’t know you had friends!

> "Yeah. His name is Symble,

TOM: Actually, over half his names are Symble…

> and he’s a great
> guy!"
>
> THE END?

JOEL: Uh … yes?

TOM: No! No, it’s not.

CROW: I’m going to write in "Beethoven."

>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JOEL: I could watch the ocean all day.

>
> Ok! So it isn’t a really great ending,

TOM: It’s an ending, dear, and that’s all we ever want from experiments.

CROW: And we only get one about half the time.

> but it’s the only way I
> could come up with to get poor Carrie out of the mess I had her in and
> still let her be happy. If anybody has a better ending, I’d love to
> hear it.

CROW: How about simply accepting not every pleasant fling is meant to be a lifetime relationship?

JOEL: But they shared so much with Mainframe and Canada and all.

> I know that in the end the characters ended up probably
> being out of character, but, Hey!

TOM: It was the only way they could beat the Kobayashi Maru.

> I was really tapped on how to solve
> Carrie’s problem!!

JOEL: Just peek in the back of the book and work it out from there.

> [Without just having her sit up in bed and have it
> all be a dream, ’cause that ending really rots!! : ) ]

CROW: What if it turned out there was no monster?

> If anyone has
> a real major problem with it, just tell Max and she’ll tell me.

TOM: I have never known anybody named Max.

> Don’t
> worry, I don’t get mad about things like that. Critisim does more
> good than harm most of the time anyway.

JOEL: That’s what they all say …

ALL: At first.

> Hope you did like it, even
> though it is kinda weird.
>
> This story was taken from a recurring dream I always seem to
> have after going through my collection of fan fics.

CROW: Please. Don’t commit acts of fan fiction. And if you must commit fan fiction, don’t sleep.

> I never dream the
> ending though. Which makes me mad, but, can’t do anything about it.

TOM: Didn’t A.E. Van Vogt have the same technique?

JOEL: And he’s Canadian too! We’re on to something here.

> I had to make up my own ending ’cause my dreams end even before Carrie
> goes to see Hex!!

CROW: She should set her alarm for about ten minutes later.

> The last part of that dream is when Carrie passes
> out after she attempts to stop the delete command heading for
> Megabyte.

JOEL: Except this one time where they stumbled into Square One Television.

> Everything after that is all my daytime thoughts on how to
> get her out of that mess!!

TOM: That didn’t play like most of the daytime television I’ve seen.

JOEL: Not enough chair-throwing.

> [And besides! Who out there didn’t want
> to see her get together with Bob anyway!?! I know I wanted her to get
> the guy!!

CROW: Or Bob. Whoever.

> ; ) ]

JOEL: Hey, check it out, a double-chinned smiley.

TOM: A happy Marlon Brando winks.

>
> Hope you liked it!!!
>
> Later, sugah!!

CROW: Uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh … now, honey honey!

>
> ‘Mouse’ ; )
> (A.K.A. Carrie)

JOEL: Mouse, the sprite named Carrie.

TOM: Versus Carrie, the mouse named Sprite.

CROW: And Sprite, the carry named Mouse.

JOEL: [ Picking up TOM ] Thank you, Carrie, for making us laugh about the indirect-addressing jump opcode bug …. again.

[ They leave. ]

[ 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. ]

[ SATELLITE OF LOVE DESK. JOEL is counting up cash totals. GYPSY, CROW, and TOM are anxiously waiting for the winner. ]

CROW: Before today, I really hadn’t thought about ReBoot much. I’d never thought people would dream themselves into it.

TOM: It’s understandable. Many’s the time I woke up to realize I had just imagined myself the dashing leader of the Autobots.

CROW: Yeah, right. I betcha he really dreams of being Leader One.

TOM: [ As JOEL giggles ] Hey!

JOEL: And Gypsy I bet —

GYPSY, JOEL: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

CROW: What about you, Joel?

JOEL: [ Looking up ] Now and then I picture myself as host of "Saturday Night Live" … I’m standing there on stage, giving the monologue … one of the cast members just stood up as an audience member and asked a question and I’m staring out into the cameras and wading through the dead silence and I start walking out and feeling despair over what’s become of the show.

TOM: We all feel that. Now I remember one particularly vivid night I dreamed I was standing on a beach with Shaggy and Scooby-Doo as the tide was rolling in … I wanted to climb up the rocks and get away from the water, but none of us could move as the water rose ever-higher … and I kinda liked it that way.

GYPSY: Sometimes I dream I’m Popeye. But Crow is Olive Oyl.

TOM: Hah hah!

[ JOEL grins. ]

CROW: Hey!

MAGIC VOICE: My favorite dreams are when I’m narrating Bullwinkle.

JOEL: Fess up, Crow, what’s yours?

CROW: I’m alone in this open curved cement walkway. Suddenly I turn around and there’s a studio audience and a refrigerator. Bob Barker is standing there and he opens the fridge. It’s almost all full of men’s shirts inside plastic boxes, but there are a couple misshapen oranges and limes that look like bananas there. He explains he’s giving me a target price and I have to pick out something in there that’s under that price. The target price is 14 dollars, 95 cents … and I look hard at the shirts and the oranges and the limes and I see there’s a label pasted on the fruits, 35 cents each.

So I ask, I just pick out any single thing that’s less than 14.95, and he says yes, and I look again and the price tags are still on and it makes no sense. I start to ask again but the audience is booing me and I pick the lemon. Bob asks me to repeat it and I do and the audience boos louder. He asks if I really want it and I nod and the audience boos and he tells them they should let me make my pick whatever it is, and he asks one last time if I want to change my mind.But I don’t, and he reveals the price card, and the lime is 35 cents and the music starts up like I’ve won and the audience is mad and Bob waves for it all to stop and says now we play the super round if I want, and I start to say yes but the audience boos so loud I say no, and that just makes them boo *louder*. Bob gives me another chance but I just want to get out as soon as I possibly can.

JOEL: Wow.

GYPSY: Creepy.

TOM: I like Carrie L—‘s TV show dreams better.

JOEL: Me too.

CROW: Yeah. But in the Showcase Showdown my bid’s only four dollars low and I win both showcases, so mine’s cool too.

GYPSY: So who wins the game?

JOEL: [ Tapping the pad ] By forty dollars and the Atlantic City edition of Monopoly —

ALL: [ Quickly, facing the camera for just the word ] Huh?

JOEL: … Cambot!

TOM: [ As CAMBOT nods ] Fix!

[ MADS SIGN flashes. ]

JOEL: Can’t please everybody. What do you think, sirs?

[ JOEL taps MADS SIGN. ]

[ DEEP 13. DR. FORRESTER and TV’s FRANK are still stuck back-to-back. ]

FRANK: What if we just took off our shirts?

DR. F: One of my life’s goals is to never see you shirtless.

FRANK: What if you took yours off?

DR. F: Another is that you never see me shirtless.

FRANK: This is just like a dream I had about The Odd Couple.

DR. F: I’ve never dreamed myself into anything besides 60 Minutes.

FRANK: If we get a little cereal residue in a water pistol, I bet we could make a tractor beam out of Cheerios!

DR. F: It’s time, Frank.

[ DR. FORRESTER and TV’s FRANK shuffle around backwards. Then DR. FORRESTER starts jumping backwards, not making TV’s FRANK move in the least. ]

DR. F: [ As he jumps back ] Come … on! Push … the … button!

FRANK: Oh!

[ TV’s FRANK leans forward, as DR. FORRESTER jumps back and rolls off, towards the camera and into another table and … ]

                      \   |   /                               
                       \  |  /                                
                        \ | /                                    
                         \|/                                  
                      ----o----                                  
                         /|\                                   
                        / | \                                  
                       /  |  \                                
                      /   |   \         

Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its characters and situations are the creation of Best Brains, Inc. "Breaking the Barriers" is by Carrie L— and used with permission. Reboot and its characters and situations are the property of Mainframe Entertainment, if I don’t miss my guess. The MiSTing as a whole is the creation of Joseph Nebus. Despite Gypsy’s claim they would follow the standard rules, the Monopoly game represented herein followed the time-limited rule variation. The management apologizes for any confusion. Times change, and newspapers evolve.

Finally, some good news

So, you know that canister of bread crumbs? The one you got from the local food co-op chain the last time you visited it, a couple years before it went out of business in 2015? You’ve still got like two-thirds of it left, so, you don’t have to worry about that.

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Why did Abbey burn down her hotel? August – November 2021

I mean, for the insurance payout to salvage something from a failed business? At least that’s the obvious motive for the obvious suspect. What we don’t know is whether how much to trust what we’ve seen. Later on I go over some possible explanations and what does or doesn’t make sense in them.

There are many ways that Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker could go. This should catch you up to where it is as of mid-November 2021. If you’re reading this after February 2022, or news about the comic strip breaks, you may find a more useful plot recap here.

In my other project, describing mathematics terms, I got up to “Triangle” last week. There are so many things people can say about triangles. I tried to not say them all.

Judge Parker.

29 August – 20 November 2021.

An early-morning fire destroyed Abbey Spencer’s failing bed-and-breakfast in time for my last Judge Parker recap. So that’s been the big important event and focus of how things changed in the summer-to-autumn time gap. I’ll get there.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 26th of September, 2021. Yeah, so … that covers this essay, really. Thanks for joining me. See you next week if all goes well!

But first the sideline. The trailer for Converge, the series inspired by Neddy Spencer and Ronnie Huerta’s writing, dropped. Thrill for them and for Huerta’s fiancee, Kat, whose last name I can not find. Less thrilled: April Parker, who kind of held Neddy and Huerta at gunpoint to make them Tell Her Story Right. They complied, yes, but there’s no controlling how TV shows mutate on the way to production. Also we learned that Charlotte is with April Parker. We presume the missing Randy is too, but haven’t yet seen that.

Neddy returns to Cavelton to support Abbey in her troubles (see below). Huerta wants to use the chance of “housesitting” Neddy’s place to get some breathing space from Kat before their wedding. She explains to a Kat who did not have any idea Huerta wanted to be away from the person she was marrying. They have a discussion that escalates quickly. Neddy reassures Huerta that Huerta and Kat will get back together. That’s been a painful side plot. Not that the reactions of everybody hasn’t been plausible. We’ve seen Kat being insecure and high-maintenance. Also perceptive and quick to cut through the ways people kid themselves. We haven’t seen enough of what makes Kat desirable, although that perceptiveness and sincerity is a solid start.

---

On to the Spencers. Abbey’s devastated by the fire. Also by the verdict that it was arson. Mayor Sanderson vows, at every public event including ordering lunch, to investigate every reason Abbey Spencer did it.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 20th of October, 2021. So I know order-through-our-apps and self-checkouts are scams to offload the work of customer service on people who are already paying to be customers. But also, mm, I see the value in setting up life so as not to interact with humans.

And it takes hold. In a weird scene at the coffee shop the cashier, and other customers, harass Abbey for being at fault for everything wrong in town. This seems at first like a weird reaction. Like, the previous mayor of Lansing got in a lot of fights with people, but I can’t remember anyone who cared enough to join in. He fought mostly city council members, or other political figures. The owners of a just-built bed-and-breakfast destroyed in a fire that luckily didn’t kill or hurt anyone, or any animals? Why get in on this fight?

But I can make the town caring sound more plausible. The Spencers also owned the aerospace-factory-turned-clothing-factory that collapsed in a sinkhole. That was the first story of Francesco Marciuliano’s tenure as author. Yes, that was Neddy Spencer’s project, and was in no possible way her fault. Fault would go to the site surveyor, the architect, and whoever supervised construction. But I understand the general public not caring about fine distinctions like that. It’s fair all they know is every time there’s a disaster that puts Cavelton into the regional news the Spencers are there.

So the family gathers around Abbey for support. Neddy comes in from Los Angeles. Sophie takes the semester off. Sam Driver keeps pointing out an indictment isn’t everything and besides they made bail. And then Deputy Mayor Stewart, taking a break from his job of making faces of pouty concern about Mayor Sanderson, steps into Driver’s office.

Driver protests, correctly but not for long, that he and Stewart can’t talk about anything while Driver has his suit against the mayor going. That lawsuit alleges Sanderson evicted people illegally for a gentrification project. Stewart talks oddly, too, for example saying he wants to get through this conversation before “I get so bored I ruin everything for the both of us”. Bored is not the feeling Stewart should be having in this moment.

Stewart holds out the prospect of getting the charges against Abbey dropped. And getting Driver to win the gentrification lawsuit. Driver listens, which seems like a believable failing of professional ethics.

Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 18th of November, 2021. So I guess Deputy Mayor Stewart is just one of those people who talks like he’s the self-aware fourth-wall-breaking character in a lightly comedic movie. I can’t say that’s the easiest sort of person to deal with. But I also admit more than once I’ve refocused a conversation with my love by asking, “So what do we do on this here podcast?” so we’re all difficult in our own ways.

What Stewart has is drone footage of Abbey Spencer carrying accelerants out to the bed-and-breakfast ahead of the fire. Not established yet is how any of this could help Abbey Spencer, Or how it could get the lawsuit about wrongful evictions settled.

Who Burned Down Abbey’s B-and-B?

So the obvious question is did Abbey Spencer burn down her own bed-and-breakfast? If not, who did? So here’s my quick thoughts about suspects.

• Abbey Spencer (in her right mind). The obvious suspect, with a clear motive, as the B-and-B was a money pit. But, without expert handling, this could damage Abbey’s character beyond repair.
• Abbey Spencer (not in her right mind). She burned the place down, but was sleepwalking or in some kind of altered mental state. This answers the objection that the B-and-B had survived the worst year it could have and would be less of a money pit for the future. But could mental illness, to the point of endangering lives, be handled in the story comics in a tasteful, appropriate manner?
• Senna Lewiston. Abbey’s secret half-sister, seeking revenge on Abbey for “stealing” the comfortable life. She’s presumed dead, but we never saw the body.
• April Parker. Presumably able to disguise herself as anyone useful for the plot. Motive is inscrutable. But she’s off in the world of super-hyper-ultra-secret agents where motive can be inscrutable anyway. Revenge on the main cast for somehow not doing something more? “Liberating” the Parkers or Spencers from Cavelton and get them to join her and Sophie and (we assume) Randy Parker? Revenge for how the show based on her story’s come out is untenable. The fire happened well before the trailer came out.
• Plus+. Or someone connected with the show made about April Parker and Godiva Danube. They have actors who look uncannily like the Spencers for some reason. The motive would be publicity. But we’ve been signalled the people making the show are low-rent. That’s nothing like “willing to risk killing someone in the hopes it somehow gets a thousand new subscribers”.
• CIA Agents. The motive here would be flushing out April Parker. Or getting the Spencers and Parkers to suddenly remember something they’ve been concealing. Or some other inscrutable reason.
• As-Yet-Unknown Agents. It could have been someone we’ve never seen or suspected before! Some might complain about throwing in new villains, but, it would expand the setting and open up new sources for chaos.

My bet? I’d put about half my stake on Senna Lewiston, a third on CIA Agents, and a sixth on Abbey Spencer not-in-her-right-mind. But I don’t write any narratives more complex than MiSTing host sketches, and don’t get any tips either. If someone’s heard something on a Judge Parker podcast, please let me know.

Next Week!

Mole men! A suitor for Aunt May! The last Roman Emperor of the West, still alive in the 21st Century! It all comes together in
Roy Thomas and Larry Leiber’s The Amazing Spider-Man!

Reposted: Walking Through Novel-Writing: The Next Step

And let me continue with the reposting of my National Novel-Writing Month special. On rereading this, I don’t remember anything from the writing experience. I like the convention that writing’s something that could be scored, though. That’s a notion someone could do more with. I don’t read enough fiction anymore to use the notion well enough, though.

---

Hi, everyone, thanks for being back for the next part of this novel-writing walkthrough. You remember last time my leads had gone off down the wrong street. It’s so hard to keep a book on track when the characters drift off like that. Plus, there’s the risk of them doing something that a reader knows is wrong, and the reader then tweets something snotty about you. So what, you say? Well, how do you know that the tweet isn’t going to go viral? And you aren’t going to wake up one day underneath an Internet Dogpile of people mocking your naivete? The public pressure grows until the publisher recalls and pulps every copy of your book, and then goes after you for the money. You’re left with no choice but to escape your home, leaving behind all your loved ones and all the belongings that don’t fit in your cargo pants. And you have to flee to some obscure Canadian province where you eke out a bare living by working as an off-season basketball hoop. Then things get dire the second day.

But. Here’s how I’m going to double down and turn this accident into bonus points. See that? Second lead mentions how, you know, this is the part of town where Jonathan Lethem set most of Chronic City. Main lead didn’t know that but admits he never read it. Second lead reflects how he never read it either, he just heard this was the area. They shrug and get going back to where they should’ve been. Little detour is good for, like, 125 points total.

Why? First the obvious stuff. I get to mention a more popular author’s book, but not in any way that makes me look envious or sour. Readers who’ve heard of him now know I heard of him too, and they like me more because they figure we’ve got stuff in common. Even if they hate Lethem, that’s OK, because I point out the characters didn’t read him. More subtly, now, the story looks like I’ve used its specific setting. Major bonus in making the events feel grounded in reality. I get that even though if you look you realize I haven’t actually referred to any real details.

And if I have the reference wrong, I have a built-in excuse right there in text for getting it wrong. Even the most hostile reader has to agree, characters can get wrong details about books they haven’t read. Doesn’t say anything about what I screw up. Finally, having them talk about a book they haven’t read makes an echo of their talking about quantum mechanics they don’t understand. Almost nobody reading it going to pick up on that. But it adds this nice extra underpinning of security to the story.

You know, I bet this is all good for up to 150 points. Well, that depends on your scoring system. I use the one I’ve always used, some algorithm that was built into emacs back in Like 1994, because it’s too hard to learn another. Some madman exported it to a separate PHP script in 2002 and I’ve been using that ever since. And yeah, there’s this patch that’s supposed to let you use the 2009 revisions to standard story scoring but I’ve never gotten it to work reliably. You can score by whatever your word processor uses, or a web site if you’re doing this competitively. I mean my points and that’s enough for me.

So we’re getting near the end of this installment. Before I go, the Comment of the Week is a special one. In subthread BlooPencil had the happy discovery that Cat Rambo is a well-regarded editor and writer of science fiction and not a novelty tumblr full of kittens photoshopped into 80s Action Movie scenes. I want to thank everyone for whimsical comments on that. And for the novelty tumblr you put together full of kittens photoshopped into 80s Action Movie scenes. That’s the sort of loving and creative community everyone wants the Internet to be for. Keep it up, gang.

---

About The Author: Though he has never had any work produced in the movie or television industries, Joseph Nebus has seen aquarium animals with names that are compatible with their being Arrested Development references.

60s Popeye: Canine Caprice, starring Roger and incidentally also Popeye

It’s been a while since I was studying the King Features Syndicate-made run of Popeye cartoons. I’m going through the roster as King Features gathered them on their YouTube channel, so these follow no logic I’m aware of. For today, it’s a Gene Deitch-produced cartoon from 1962, Canine Caprice. Let’s enjoy.

Gene Deitch, famously, didn’t care about Tom and Jerry when he got the contract to make Tom and Jerry shorts. Didn’t feel the characters were interesting. What I’ve never known is what he thought about the Popeye shorts. The only important animator whom I know to have said a bad word about the 30s Popeyes, for example, is Chuck Jones. And that’s only if we count as negative his observing that they’re scrawny-little-hero versus big-round-bully, like any generic generic black-and-white cartoon.

What gets me wondering is this short. It’s got Popeye in it, but it’s all driven by Roger the Dog. Who’s a talking dog that Popeye buys, in falling for a talking-dog scam. And who takes over the short, messing up Popeye’s life for not much obvious reason. The dynamic’s a lot like that of Shorty, from three of the most loathed Famous Studios cartoons. But Shorty you always knew what his deal was. Why does Roger not talk in front of Olive Oyl until the end of the short? No idea.

Roger and Shorty are not a bad concept. As he got domesticated, Popeye stopped looking for fights, and he got boring. A character pulling Popeye into trouble fixes that. And if you think I’m making a case for Scrappy-Doo, well, yeah. Scrappy being a relative answers why Scooby puts up with him. We don’t get so much information for Roger. I’m still stuck on why Roger didn’t talk to Olive Oyl when they first met, and why Popeye talked to him after that. Roger firing up Popeye’s jealousy over the piano teacher makes sense, although Olive Oyl could have said something sooner. At least there Roger had good intentions.

Truth coming out of her Boxing Trophy to apologize to Mankind for making all this unnecessary fuss.

The story starts hobbled. But granting that, the rest of the short holds up. Deitch’s animation looks cheap, yes, but the characters all move, with a good range of motion. You don’t get characters standing and blinking. The dialogue’s okay enough. It includes Popeye’s weird statement that “fights bores me”, which can only make sense if he means televised fights that he’s not in. Or Popeye’s domestication and boringness got really out of control.

I, too, am curious why Popeye’s packing a valise full of spinach cans. In the Deitch cartoons he never seems to have a can on him, so, what is this for?

Anyway, I wish Roger a happy time moving in with Wilbur Weston, a man whose life he can’t possibly screw up any worse than Wilbur can.

Statistics Saturday: Some Unfoggy, Clear, or Precise Words

• Inapproximative
• Unbeclouded
• Inbrumous
• Ungauzy
• Uninexact
• Unloose
• Immisty
• Immurky
• Ummushy
• Inopaque
• Antiundetermined
• Unvague

Reference: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

In which we didn’t see the Moon not be visible

I didn’t see the lunar eclipse. I have good reason. I live in Michigan’s lower peninsula. The lower peninsula gets a persistent cloud layer that rolls in around early October and that lasts through May every year. It’s heavy enough that even our sunlamps have a vitamin D deficiency. I can’t tell you what the upper peninsula gets, because the snow is too heavy for people to exist in the upper peninsula from early October through May.

It’s just as well I didn’t see it. If I’d seen it I imagine someone might have expected me to do something about it. And I don’t have the energy to do something about the Moon. Or a long enough stepladder. I’m glad someone else took care of it.

MiSTed: Reboot: Breaking the Barriers (Part 15 of 16)

Welcome to the next-to-final installment in my Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of Carrie L—‘s Reboot fanfic, “Breaking the Barriers”. You can read, and even enjoy, the whole at this link. I haven’t decided what to post next.

The story so far: A portal connects author Carrie L—‘s small Canadian home to pioneering Canadian computer-animated series Reboot. Everyone’s taken some time in the other reality. While Megabyte as a real-world vampire bit Carrie, she isn’t too bothered by it, and she’s back in the virtual world and recovered well. But to get home they have to brave a meeting with Hexadecimal.

Vulture Squadron was the outfit Dick Dastardly and company were flying from when they tried to catch Yankee Doodle Pigeon. Solarians are from Isaac Asimov’s science fiction mystery The Naked Sun. They’re humans who live on a severely and deliberately under-populated planet so people almost never see anyone in the actual flesh. And you see how long ago I wrote this that I thought “web log” was clearer than “blog”.

The Mer-Lion is a giant statue of a part-lion, part-fish that’s an icon of Singapore, where I was living at the time. It’s great to see, especially by night. The Mighty Thornberries is surely meant to be The Wild Thornberries, a cartoon I don’t know why I mentioned at all. It’s not even something I disliked; I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode, unless it was on in-flight entertainment when I wasn’t paying attention.

I have replaced two jokes. One because it was a little more sexist, and hack, than I feel comfortable with now. The other was a quoting from M*A*S*H that I used because it was some nice quick wordplay nonsense. But the underlying joke in M*A*S*H relied on something edging up on gay panic for its delivery. I can do without that, so, I will.

---

>
>
> * * * * * * * *
> * * *

CROW: Kansas (detailed map).

>
> Carrie stood silently at the base of Hex’s tower, staring
> upwards in awe.

JOEL: And David Warner’s in there *somewhere*.

> Lost Angles was definately a place that one had to
> get used to.

TOM: It’s a good place to (ahem) make a point.

> She looked at Bob. "Don’t be nervous." he told her,
> "I’ll be right here with you."

CROW: Besides, you won the heroes over, you won the villains over, all that’s left is for you to win the landscaping over.

> Carrie smiled. "Thanks." she
> whispered, "I really appreciate it."

JOEL: It’s always the little things that count.

> She took a deep breath and
> reached out to press what looked to be some sort of doorbell. Before
> she had a chance to touch it, the door flew open.

CROW: Convenience store doorways of the future!

> Carrie gasped and
> jumped back. She smiled sheepishly at Bob. He returned her smile and
> chivalrously offered her his hand.

TOM: I hope they don’t put those on the wrong places.

> Carrie just looked at him,
> dumbfounded, for a nano, then shyly took his hand.

JOEL: Energy shake, hand shake, it’s literary counterpointing.

> She wasn’t sure
> why he was acting this way toward her, but she wasn’t going to say
> anything. Swallowing hard, she entered into the shadows.

CROW: And she bonks into Megabyte.

>
> As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, her surroundings
> became familiar.

JOEL: It’s the hangars of the infamous Vulture Squadron!

> This was yet another place that would be forever
> etched into her memory.

TOM: That’s the danger of becoming a sprite, you could get something from cartridge ROM mapped onto you.

> The room was enormous, yet the actual space
> that was accessable by normal sprites was rather small.

CROW: It’s like being at gramma’s, you have to stay on the plastic strips.

> *I guess it
> doesn’t matter whether you have a floor or not when you’re a Class
> Two!* Carrie thought.

JOEL: There’s a thought I wouldn’t have had today if the story didn’t help me along.

> Before them was a large and rather
> uncomfortable looking throne.

TOM: You are what you sit on.

JOEL: No.

> It seemed almost twisted and the back
> was several twisted spires with no bar ajoining them on top.

CROW: That’s not a throne, it’s a bad church organ.

> Bob
> started foreward, heading into the ever present spotlight that floated
> through the room. Carrie quickly pulled her hand from his grasp.

TOM: Shhhhhhweeee… *pop*!

> Bob
> stopped and looked at her. "What’s wrong?" he asked, worried. Carrie
> smiled. "Nothing."

JOEL: Bob Guardian, *this* is *your* life!

> she lied, *It’s just that I would prefer to stay
> on Hex’s good side!* she thought.

CROW: Offer to link to her from your web log.

>
> "Welcome to my Lair." The voice seemed to come from every
> corner of the Throne Room.

JOEL: But … the room is round.

> Carrie’s eyes darted around, trying to
> find the source. Then she saw it. Just a mask floated above the
> Throne before them.

TOM: WHAT would you have of the mighty Oz?

> There was a slight flash and Hex’s form
> materialized,

CROW: Hey, can I learn that trick?

> sitting gracefully on her throne. "I so rarely have
> visitors."

JOEL: She’s Solarian.

> She smiled almost evily and Carrie’s heart jumped. *Hex
> may be my favorite,

TOM: I’ll have to check and get back to you later.

> but she still scares the heck out of me!* Carrie
> thought. Then Hex’s mask changed to one of surprise. "Why, I wasn’t
> expecting you, Guardian!"

JOEL: If I’d known you were coming I’d have calculated a pi.

> Bob said nothing, but smiled slightly.
> Carrie stifled a smile. *I guess I’m not the only one who isn’t
> exactly comfortable around Hex. He’s got a good reason, though!*

CROW: They used to be roommates.

>
> Hex turned to Carrie again. "So," she murmered, "one of my
> many fans finally stands up to be counted."

JOEL: One!

TOM: One, too!

CROW: One, three!

JOEL: There’s one of us!

> "This is my first time in
> Mainframe."

CROW: Oh, make sure you get to see the Mer-Lion by night.

> Carrie whispered, "I really shouldn’t be here."

JOEL: It’s supposed to be my day off!

> Hexadecimal looked at Carrie suspitiously. "Why is that?" she asked.
> Carrie swallowed hard. "I’m….uh…..I’m a…." her throat caught
> and she couldn’t say anything else.

TOM: Her next word was going to be "Ima."

> Hex laughed quietly. "I know,"
> she said, "You’re a User."

CROW: You have it written all over your .plan file.

> Carrie’s head snapped up and she stared at
> Hex in shock. Hex laughed again. "You must know that I know just
> about everything that happens in Mainframe."

TOM: She’s been port-sniffing.

JOEL: No, she’s the *real* Carrie L—! *She’s* been writing this whole fan fiction!

> She waved her hand
> casually and a familiar purring sounded.

CROW: She digitized a tribble!

> Scuzzy zoomed into the light
> and stopped just in front of Carrie. He tilted forward slightly and a
> picture appeared in the top of his head.

TOM: "The Mighty Thornberries"? What’s wrong with you?

> It was Carrie, Dot, Enzo and
> Bob sitting in the diner. Carrie looked up at Hex.

CROW: She has the power to look at flashbacks!

> "I guess I should
> have known that." she said.
>
> "Now!" Hex said, "I know how to get you home." Carrie’s eyes
> sparkled.

TOM: Bring me a couple mice, a pumpkin, and my magic wand.

> "Oh! Thank You!!" she spluttered. Hex waved a hand and
> Carrie quickly subsided into silence. "I ask only one thing." she
> said.

JOEL: You must start a Robert Benchley web site for me.

> Carrie said nothing at first. "If I can, I will do what you
> ask." she whispered. Hex laughed, amused. "It isn’t as difficult as
> you think." she said,

CROW: Scrub the bathrooms. They’re filthy.

> "I want you to tell Megabyte that he still owes
> me ten crystals of neurowine." Carrie stared at Hex momentarily.

TOM: And you have to do it without giggling.

> "Uh…I’ll tell him, but I can’t ensure he’ll listen to me. He has
> already repaid my favor." Hex smiled mischeviously. "Don’t worry."
> she whispered, schemingly, "He’ll listen."

JOEL: It’s not so much conflict and resolution as much as it is a Reboot Convention.

> A vid-window pinged before
> Carrie and she once again found herself playing the messenger. As
> Megabyte’s face appeared on the screen, Carrie suddenly felt her
> confidence returning.

TOM: You’d think being able to direct traffic through the multiverse would give her more to do with her time.

> He actually wasn’t scowling at her for
> intruding. "What can I do for you?" he rumbled. Carrie smiled.

JOEL: She’s going to start with Girl Scout cookies and move up to neurowine crystals.

> "Hexadecimal has asked me to tell you that you still owe her ten
> crystals of neurowine." Megabyte growled audibly. "She won’t let
> that drop, will she?" Carrie just shrugged.

CROW: If she lets it drop won’t they spill?

TOM: Try to keep up with us, Crow.

> Megabyte pondered her
> request for a nano, then scowled. "Very well.

JOEL: [ As Megabyte ] You’ve bested me again. Well done.

> It will be sent to her
> by the end of the cycle." Carrie smiled. "Thanks!" she chirped. The
> window closed and Hex smiled down at Carrie.

CROW: He’ll be paying them Tuesday for that hamburger today.

>
> "Very well done!" she said, "You certainly have won his
> favor!" Carrie said nothing. "Now, your way home."

TOM: Would you like to take this way home, or would you like to trade it for what’s inside this box?

> Out of nowhere,
> Hexadecimal’s Looking Glass suddenly appeared.

JOEL: She’s checking if Snow White is still alive.

> The reflective surface
> shivered slightly, and then a room Carrie knew and loved could be seen
> on the other side.

JOEL: If only they looked.

> She gasped in delight. "…..Home!…." she
> murmered.

TOM: Raths…

> She stepped toward the glass, mesmerized.

CROW: Outgabe…

> Then, she
> suddenly remembered something. Turning, she faced her new friend.

TOM: You mean Bob, Hexadecimal, Megabyte, Enzo, Dot, Phong, Scuzzy, or the binomes?

>
> Bob smiled as their eyes locked. "I’m gonna miss you." Carrie
> whispered.

CROW: I don’t know, it seems like getting from the real world to Mainframe and back is about as hard as catching the 173 bus to the MRT station.

> Bob said nothing at first, then produced a small box.
> Carrie gasped in surprise. "I fixed this for you, and added something
> so you would never forget me."

TOM: Gary Seven uses that to talk with his computer.

> Carrie looked up into his soft brown
> eyes. "I could never forget you." she breathed. "Open it." Bob told
> her.

CROW: Dare you to lick it.

> Her eyes glistening, Carrie lifted the lid on the box. Inside
> sat her necklace with the ‘Mouse’ charm on it, but now, there was
> another charm beside it.

JOEL: Yellow hearts, blue clovers, green moons —

CROW: Huh?

> A small gold and black inverted icon impaled
> by a rose. "It’s beautiful!" Carrie gasped.

TOM: It’s… a glam rock tattoo.

> Bob took the necklace
> from the box and gently placed it around her neck. Carrie admired it
> briefly before returning Bob’s gaze. "I’ll wear it always." she
> whispered.
>
> Bob flashed her his killer smile.

[ ALL gasp, choking, and slump in their seats. ]

> "I’ll always wear mine,
> too." he whispered, and gently pulled the gold chain out from
> underneath the coller on his uniform. It almost the same charm as
> Carrie’s did,

JOEL: Hey, he copied her file!

> except that the icon was the usual black and white.

CROW: And then shift-clicked it.

> Carrie couldn’t hold it any longer. She burst into tears and threw
> her arms around him. Bob returned her embrace, listening to her
> gentle sobs. "I’ll never forget you!" Carrie cried.

TOM: Shane! Come back, Shane!

> Bob said nothing
> for a nano, afraid that his voice would reveal his sorrow. "You…you
> better go now."

JOEL: Ah, Louie Louie, aaah… we gotta go.

> he finally stammered. Carrie looked up into his eyes,
> tears glistening on her cheeks. "Thank you," she breathed, "for
> everything."

CROW: She’s in Mainframe, she’s out of Mainframe, she’s in Mainframe, she’s leaving Mainframe, she needs to make up her mind.

>
> She stepped back, smiling. "If I can find a better way," she
> said, "I’ll be back." Bob laughed quietly.

TOM: This way seems to be working out fine.

> "Maybe you should feed
> your computer more often, then it won’t decide to have you for a
> snack!"

JOEL: I guess we’re lucky Carrie’s computer didn’t just swallow Benny, her hamster.

> Carrie laughed, and turned to the Looking Glass. "See you
> later!" Bob said. She stepped up to it and started to reach out to it.
> "Wait!" Carrie turned to Bob again.

TOM: Oh, just *go* you big silly.

> He stood in front of her,
> looking directly into her eyes. "Just one more thing to remember me
> by." he whispered.

CROW: Besides the experience, the vampirism, the charms, and the interdimensional computer portal.

> Carrie froze as he wrapped his arms around her.
> She held her breath as his warm lips pressed gently against hers.

TOM: See, this is how you spread computer viruses.

> She
> couldn’t believe this was happening. She wrapped her arms around him
> and gently returned the kiss. Then, suddenly, all her surroundings
> seemed to melt away.

JOEL: Global Warming sinks Mainframe.

[ To continue … ]

How 1989’s got me running late now

So a friend referred me to a short-lived but fun game show, Now You See It, from 1989. Not directly from 1989; it made some stopovers in getting to me. But in the middle of the show came this commercial for a cereal supposedly called “S.W.Graham” and, well, here. From about 12:56 in:

This … this is somebody’s prank, right? Somebody wanted to spoof some of John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade shorts from the 40s. And their friend with the camera wanted to spoof 80s music videos and the singing-three-quarters-view-in-front-of-stuff composition? And their friend who could write just heard about Sylvester Graham and could not shut up about his food wackiness, right? And they put that together and slipped it into the only known copy of this episode. That has to be what happened, right? Because I have been trying for ao long to think of another set of events that makes this plausible, and I can’t, and now I’m running late on everything.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? What is Chance Macy’s Problem? August – November 2021

You might remember “Blowtop Mad” Chance Macy from the 2019 football story in Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp. Macy’s a senior now. He’s not much for hanging out, not much anyway. He’s also not one for talking with the local sports reporters. Colleges are trying to recruit him. He’s not answering the phone, e-mail, or physical mail, which, mood. A recruiter from Milford State University comes to ask what his deal is. What he’s thinking is he doesn’t know he wants all this.

Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 3rd of November, 2021. It’s a nice bit of composition to have Macy’s third-panel word balloon underneath his face in the second panel. It depicts how he’s forming thoughts he can only articulate later.

I didn’t know the athletes at my high school, so I can’t say how authentic this is. But there is a recurring Gil Thorp motif of pretty good athletes figuring they don’t want to keep doing this. It feels mature, but that might be because I suspect I wouldn’t want to have to go on playing any sports. It intrigues me the strip has its characters feel such ambiguity about the sports they work that hard at.

This should get you caught up to mid-November 2021 in Gil Thorp. If you’re reading this after about February 2022, or any news about the strip breaks, there’s likely a more useful essay at this link.

And my A-to-Z project, on my mathematics blog, continues. Last week I tried to explain Analysis, which is one of the big things of mathematics. I left some stuff out. You might enjoy it.

Gil Thorp.

24 August – 13 November 2021.

Last time, young Heather Burns’s detective work, teasing out golf cheat Carson Hendry, had impressed Milford Star reporter Marjie Ducey. But there were no job openings at the Star … and then Ducey decided there would be if she took the buyout package and retired. So Burns has a new job. Also, per Coach Thorp’s tip, a volunteer position coaching the city youth program for Wick Harmon. So that’s nice for her.

---

From the 30th of August the autumn, and current, storyline started. One key figure is Kianna Bello, a bit overcommitted to girls volleyball and the gymnastics team. Another is Boyd Spiller, on the boys football team, who’s discovered this thing called consciousness and wants to see it raised. He has a glorious scene trying to turn the annual Bonfire into a visualization of the cosmic All that happens to include beating Oakwood. They beat Oakwood anyway.

Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 16th of September, 2021. I love Spiller’s wholehearted embrace of this stuff. I am only sad that he’s on a trajectory to be an Internet Atheist within ten years.

They also beat Kettering, although it’s a closer thing than Oakwood. Tevin Claxton fumbles and Spiller asks if he wants to do something about his choking problem. After Claxton misses a pass in the Goshen game he hears what Spiller has to offer. It’s hypnosis. Which Spiller totally knows how to do because he learned it on YouTube. I adore this, and I wish also to thank whatever junior high teacher assigned him a book report on Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 22nd of October, 2021. And yes, this is all a bit silly. But a lot of sports psychology is silly. For example: if you have a little superstitious ritual going in to some competition? You actually do play better, even if you’re not superstitious and you’re just doing it because you heard it helps you play better. People, you know?

Thing is, it seems to work, with Claxton putting in clutch performances the next couple games. More people start coming to Spiller for hypnotherapy. Including, finally, Kianna Bello. The strip’s cut back to her and her overloaded schedule several times. Her frustration at taking only third in a tournament; she’d been second the year before. Her barely getting enough rest, and keeping going on caffeine and competitiveness. She thinks Spiller’s hypnosis might be a way to push through her fatigue.

Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 12th of November, 2021. The Tsukhara vault, I am told by Wikipedia, is any of a family of vaults, featuring a quarter or half turn on the vault table into a backwards somersault. It’s named for Mitsuo Tsukahara.

But she doesn’t feel better-rested. And she takes a bad landing at the district meet, spraining her foot and putting her out of competition for two weeks. She can not believe what an idiot she’s been. And (we learn this week) Claxton has had enough, and has secrets to reveal.

---

Milford Sports Watch!

Who’s Milford been playing? These schools, back around these dates:

• Oakwood. (16 – 23 September)
• Kettering. (28 September – 4 October.)
• Goshen. (11 – 16 October)
• Jefferson. (23 October)
• Central, New Thayer. (26 – 28 October)

Next Week!

We see court-related action in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker! No actual courthouses, so far, but at there is some promise of professional misconduct so that’s something to look forward to.

Reposted: Walking Through Novel-Writing Some More

When I was writing original pieces every week, the hard thing was always thinking of something to write about. Having a topic, however flimsy, let the rest fall into place. So that’s why this trifle spilled into a monthlong project, and why I have four pieces to share again. Here’s the second.

---

Welcome back everyone. Hope you had a good week writing and are ready to resume walking through this novel-writing experience. Before I start, though, ClashOSymbols had his good post for the month, “Facts: Never Your Friends”. Read it wisely.

Now we left off last time here, our heroes wondering about the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics. But they don’t know it enough to say anything meaningful, so they can’t be wrong. See ClashOSymbols above. You can’t break a suspension of disbelief if there’s nothing to disbelieve. That’s the first reason they have to talk about stuff they don’t really understand.

Something else you get from this. Now, this part doesn’t matter if all you want is a book, but a career walkthrough’ll tell you this. Characters talk about quantum mechanics, you have a science fiction book. You want to start out writing genre, because if genre readers to start reading you they’ll never stop. Doesn’t matter what genre. Science fiction, mystery, western, romance, military, anything at all. But then you have to pivot to literary fiction. Your genre readers will keep reading, and they’ve talked about you enough to their normal friends that you get those readers too. All your books get reissued with boring but uniform covers and your back catalogue sells all over again. Your genre readers will complain about you selling out, but they’ll keep buying and new people will follow them. Always in your career: start genre, then pivot to lit.

But here’s the thing. The harder you start in genre, the tougher the pivot to lit. Start your career with books about Earth pacified by giant memory-wiping kangaroo robot detectives, your pivot is going to have to be like five novels where a sulky old guy reviews badly-named bands for a minor-league city’s failing alt weekly while nothing happens. So doable but soooooooo boring. If you start instead with something so softly genre it could get filed by accident with the grown-up books, you can pivot without doing anything more than picking duller titles.

So. They talk quantum mechanics many-worlds stuff, they don’t know enough to say anything right or wrong or anything. Science fiction fans’ll eat it up, real people will think you’re doing that Bridging The Two Cultures stuff. The novel’s got a good start and I’m already setting up for the pivot.

Now — oh, phoo, what did they go down there for? OK, they just got off the subway and went down the wrong street. I could just go back and restart from the subway and go the right way but you’re going to have to deal with accidents like this and you should see how to recover. Why is a wrong street dangerous? Because if you’re set in a real place, you might say something about the place that a reader can check and find is wrong. That can wipe out all the score you get from the whole chapter. Even if you’re doing the little-chapter strategy, which I say is gaming the rules and won’t do because I have integrity, this dings you. Remember, facts are just stuff you can get wrong. So, have the characters observe something non-committal and non-falsifiable and then they can say they’re on the wrong street. Hey, they’re rattled from that knifeketeer/magician thing, anyone would understand.

Or you can martingale it. Double down, pick something about the setting and just go wild describing it. Extra hard, yes. It’s almost irresistible to put bunches of facts about the place in. And facts aren’t your friends. But pull it off and you can get so many bonus points. We’ll talk about that a little next time.

For now, though, let me point out the Comment of the Week. That’s from FanatsyOfFlight back on Monday with her great Fan Theory: All Fan Theories Are The Same Fan Theory. If you missed it, you’re probably thinking fan theories are a weak target for satire. Maybe they are, but they’re so well-eviscerated.

---

About The Author: For two years as a reporter on the student newspaper Joseph Nebus attended all the student government meetings for four of the Rutgers University undergraduate colleges. The most challenging was the University College Governing Association, because as adult commuting students they could afford to cater their meetings with way too much pizza to eat and had the pull to reserve the warm conference room with the plush chairs.

Reposted: The 42nd and Final Talkartoon: The Betty Boop Limited

I forgot that when I first posted this I threatened I’d get bored and do a rewatch of them a year later. Took longer than that and I didn’t rewatch with the intention of rewriting these. I am figuring to resume my 60s Popeye-watching now that this is exhausted and I’m slightly less exhausted, though. I have thought about going on to a more important series, such as the full run of Betty Boop cartoons. Or maybe the 60s-70s Pink Panther cartoons, although that would involve a lot of saying “wow, but the timing on this is excellent” and “they gave this bit character a lot of personality”. Which would not be the worst energy to put out in the world, admittedly.

---

And now, the last of my Talkartoon shorts until sometime next year when I get bored and decide to do a rewatch. This was originally released the 1st of July, 1932. Its credited animators are Willard Bowsky and Thomas Bonfiglio. They’ve been teamed before, on the 21st cartoon, Twenty Legs Under The Sea and in the 31st, Any Rags?. How they missed the 41st is anybody’s guess.

The Talkartoon series, I suppose, started out as a way to feature a song, but have the framing cartoon be a bit more than setting up to follow the bouncing ball. Over the series’ run, Bimbo and then Betty Boop stumbled into beings as characters and the songs grew less important. And now here, for the last of the Talkartoons, it’s a lot of singing. The framing device is ripped from — I’m not sure the proper little genre name. I’ll call it the Gold Diggers of Broadway genre. Specifically it’s ripped from about the second and third reels of these movies, where — having introduced the long-struggling and the young-up-and-coming performers and their prospective marriage-grade partners, the story comes to a stop so a bunch of vaudeville performers can do their acts for posterity and for the last time. (Since, well, if someone’s seen your trick-sneezing act on film they don’t have to go to the last vaudeville theater in town to see you do it live, right?) So it’s basically a bunch of musical bits that could be strung together in any order, and done as long as it takes to fill out the short.

Betty Boop’s song is a version of Max Rich and Mack Gordon’s Ain’tcha? and I’m glad to have that established. I was having trouble figuring out just what it was supposed to be. The act most interesting to me was Koko the Clown’s soft-shoe. It’s a nice, smooth, fluid movement. It got me wondering if it might be rotoscoped. I don’t feel expert enough to call it that, not without supporting evidence. But there’s something in the way his shoulders move, and in this slight shift in the plane that his feet are in. It suggests to me movement studied from film.

There’s an inexplicably tiny cat who wanders in several times to start singing Silver Threads Among The Gold, or as it’s actually known, “Darling, I am growing older”. It’s a good running gag. I think I’ve seen it in other shorts, possibly from other studios, and I’m wondering if this is a first or earliest instance of it. (Hey, some cartoon had to be the first to use Franz Liszt, too.) But why such a tiny cat? I understand if it’s meant to be a kid running out and getting chased off stage, but the cat seems small even for that.

The short offers two solid choices for old-fashioned animated body horror. There’s Betty Boop and the whole gang getting sheared in half by the train tunnel about 5:15 in. There’s the cow getting hit by the train at about 5:40 and recovering well, at least that first time. (The train also looks to me like a detailed, grey-washed cutout, maybe even a picture, moving across frame, rather than cel animation. If it is, it evokes the way silent Koko the Clown cartoons would use stop-motion on regular pictures to, say, animate his being drawn into existence.)

I’m not sure there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it joke. Maybe the steps into the train car being a giraffe’s neck. Maybe the train blowing its nose after being fueled up. Also nice to see that Old King Cole recovered from his death and all that and went into the railroad business. And amongst the long-haired musicians (a variation of the one from Fire Bugs? Maybe? I’m not convinced) is a clearly moonlighting Mickey Mouse, right about 4:35 in.

It’s easy to say cartoons fall apart at the end. It’s hard to come up with a good solid punch line that resolves the storyline. This one has several weird ending problems. First is the kangaroo trying to get to what I had assumed was the bathroom: apparently it’s a phone booth instead? All right, I’ll allow it, although did phones even work on trains that weren’t in stations back then? And it’s more of a peanut vending machine than a phone? I follow each whimsical-step here. It just seems like a lot of steps in a row.

But the bigger one. The train hurdles toward the camera and smashes into it, for one last round of the tiny cat singing “Darling, I am growing older”, at about 5:35. But the short keeps going after that? It’s for some good jokes, including the first cow-smashing bit. And the railroad switch-operator business. (And check out that perspective shot at about 5:55 as he lurches over in his bathtub.) And the train worming its way through that tangle of rail lines is great. But why wasn’t the smash into camera and “Darling, I am growing older” the final bit in the short? It would be such a stronger conclusion to the cartoon, and to the series.

Statistics Saturday: Some Foggy, Imprecise, or Unclear Words

• Approximative
• Beclouded
• Brumous
• Gauzy
• Inexact
• Loose
• Misty
• Murky
• Mushy
• Opaque
• Undetermined
• Vague

Reference: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

In Which My Understanding of _Krazy Kat_ Is Broken

I’m sorry, I’m having trouble working out how today’s vintage-1922 Krazy Kat, from ComicsKingdom, has a pop culture reference. I read Krazy Kat for cryptic, hard-to-parse wordplay. I don’t read it for jokes that, like, a normal person of the year 2021 has a chance of getting.

This paragraph isn’t anything important, I’m just adding a little more padding so that the comic appears below the tags and categories stuff in the left column so can run a little bigger. So to that end here are some more words: applesauce value center liquid accessory design Garaimal zinc. There. I’ve done all I can.

George Herriman’s Krazy Kat for the 25th of October, 1922, and reprinted the 12th of November, 2021. I too am distracted by all the scare quotes around, like, “Mouse” and “Glasses” and “Harold Lloyd”. But I also like how in the fifth panel Krazy’s eye line is to Ignatz’s position in the sixth panel, the only place we see him. That might be coincidence. It’s only sensible Krazy be looking to the right, and most sensible compositions would place Ignatz somewhere in fifth-panel Krazy’s line of sight. But even if it’s accidental, it’s a great accident.

MiSTed: Reboot: Breaking the Barriers (Part 14 of 16)

With another week we draw even closer to the conclusion of Carrie L—‘s Reboot fanfiction “Breaking the Barriers”. You can read the whole of my Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of it here. No, I don’t know what I’ll turn to after this.

When a strange portal connects author and protagonist Carrie’s small Canadian hometown to the world of Reboot, characters come visit other realities. At the Three Doors Mall, Megabyte turns out to be a villain and kinda bites Carrie before she saves him from something or other. They rush the injured Carrie back to Mainframe for treatment. So things look good for her apart from how Megabyte’s taken her off to the Tor by himself.

The Michelangelo Virus was a famous computer virus of the early 90s that caused people to write newspaper articles about computer viruses. Kevin Kubusheskie was part of the cast of 80s Nickelodeon series You Can’t Do That On Television and shows what I thought would pass for a forgotten celebrity in 2003. “Angle Pozo, the mathematical herring” is a reference to a joke that Ken Goldstein and Keith Fernbach, the two funniest guys at my undergraduate student newspaper, published one time back in the 90s. They would go on to review the rest areas on the New Jersey Turnpike, describing the clientele at one stop as “men on pay phones apologizing to their wives”, which may be the most perfect bit of scene-setting I could ever hope to read. But there was never a chance the “Angle Pozo” riff would make sense. It’s in there for me alone.

Oof, but that riff about a collection of cats is bad. I’m sorry. On the bright side, the riff about Auntie Anne Pretzel Stands is one of my all-time favorites and I’m reminded of it every time I see an Auntie Anne. I’ve never been to one, but I’ve seen them in many malls.

---

>
> * * * * * * * *
> * * *

JOEL: It’s both a punch card and a player piano scroll.

CROW: Another one without a new Part. I bet it’s some tax law.

>
> Bob raced through the Tor. *Why haven’t they tried to stop
> me, yet?* he wondered.

TOM: They must’ve put a homing device on the Millennium Falcon.

> "Glitch!" he said, "Show me Carrie’s
> location." Glitch chirped and displayed a map with a small white dot.
> *She’s only one level above.* he thought.

JOEL: That’s not Carrie, that’s the User from that Indiana Jones and Daisy Duke game a couple chapters back.

> Then another thought hit
> him. "Glitch, show Megabyte’s location." Just as Bob had thought. A
> larger blue dot appeared, directly to the left of the small white one.

TOM: Aw, Road Runner and Coyote are chasing each other through the mining tunnels.

> That meant that Carrie could be in danger. With no thought for
> anything else, Bob sped up and raced toward the room Glitch had shown
> him.

[ JOEL hums the Speed Racer theme ]

>
> Surprising herself, Carrie found herself laughing.

CROW: Caught off guard, she slammed the door shut on herself, making her wait outside until she was ready.

> She
> listened with pleasure as her voice melted together with Megabyte’s
> own deep chuckle,

TOM: Liquid voices.

> finding it melodious and wonderful. *He’s so much
> different than I had thought.*

JOEL: She’s going to end up dumping Bob, I know it.

> In fact, she found him rather amusing,
> in his own way.

CROW: It’s called "evil".

> She looked at him and smiled. He returned her smile,
> and Carrie found herself liking him more and more with each passing
> nano.

TOM: Megabyte’s plan is to seduce Carrie so Bob’s torn between Dot and him?

> Feeling brave, she spoke up.

JOEL: [ As Carrie ] Megabyte, will I go to the dance with me? Uh…

> "You’re very interesting." she
> told him. "There is more to you than meets the eye."

CROW: Robots in disguise!

> Megabyte
> chuckled and returned the compliment. "I never thought I would be
> talking to a User."

TOM: He should take the chance to ask her to uninstall Virex.

> he rumbled, then paused thoughtfully. "But then,
> I never thought I could end up in the User world either."

JOEL: [ As Megabyte ] I never realized the User world was mostly Auntie Anne pretzel stands.

> Carrie
> smiled. "I wasn’t expecting to end up in Mainframe myself."

TOM: So who brought her to Mainframe, anyway?

> she told
> him. *He really is an okay guy once you talk to him.* she thought.

CROW: Now he turns away, smiles, she steps up to him, he reveals vampire fangs and HYAAAAAH!

>
> Bob stopped in front of the door and got off his zip-board.

CROW: Or we cut away to the other story thread.

> He placed his ear to the door. He couldn’t hear anything, and that
> worried him

TOM: It’d be more worrisome if they were in the real world where sounds transmit through objects.

> even more than if he could hear sounds of struggle or
> something.

JOEL: There are some sounds you definitely don’t want to hear.

> Finally, he got frustrated and, raising his foot, kicked
> the door wide open.

TOM: Uh, there’s a doorknob.

CROW: There’s a couple doorknobs.

> Carrie whirled as the door to the Infirmary burst
> open. She watched, shocked, as Bob raced through the door with Glitch
> armed.

JOEL: [ As Carrie, startled ] Bob! What a surprise … uh … you know Megabyte, from the church group … he was … getting a kiss out of my eye … I mean …

> "Alright Megabyte!!" he shouted, "Let her go!!" Carrie stood
> up quickly and walked over to stand beside Megabyte.

CROW: Prelude to a dumping.

> Megabyte simply
> looked down at his hands, casually inspecting his nails.

TOM: He’s this close to pulling a Fonzie.

> "She is not
> being held here." he rumbled, "She is free to leave whenever she
> chooses." Carrie nodded.

JOEL: Are they saying that with their voices merged still?

> "Megabyte saved my life."

CROW: And by "saved" I mean "endangered."

> She said,
> turning to look up at him. She smiled as Megabyte looked over at Bob.
> "Just as she would have done for me."

JOEL: And this emotional turmoil is going on inside all our computers?

TOM: Yes.

CROW: Always.

> Bob lowered his arm, looking
> utterly confused. Carrie smiled and walked up to him.

JOEL: [ As Carrie ] I am your drill thrall.

> "You should
> know that virus’ do have a sense of honour. Remember when you rescued
> him in the crashed game?"

TOM: Oh, SimCity 3000.

> Bob and Megabyte stared at her first, then
> looked at each other.

CROW: It’s a living.

> "He allowed you to leave as a return favor for
> saving him. He could have just deleted you there and won.

JOEL: It’s kind of a Quark and Odo thing.

> But he
> didn’t." She reached out and took Bob’s hand. "I know that he
> wouldn’t hurt me now."

TOM: Megabyte actually left. He’s visiting the Digimon crew.

>
> Then, Carrie turned to Megabyte. "I would like a favor in
> return for my help, though." She said.

JOEL: Help with what?

> Megabyte smiled suspitiously.

TOM: Aah! Don’t *do* that!

> "What would that be?" he asked. Carrie smiled. "I need a way home."

JOEL: Like Glitch and Phong opened up earlier?

> Bob looked at Megabyte. Megabyte was about to answer when Carrie
> held up her hand. "But, you must promise you will not follow me, for
> any reason."

CROW: What if she leaves her wallet behind?

> Megabyte scowled and Bob smiled. *She definatly knows
> about virus’* he thought. "Very well." Megabyte rumbled. Then he
> turned. A vid-window pinged into existance and a small viral binome
> appeared on the screen. "Get me Hexadecimal."

TOM: I can give you two Octals and change.

> Megabyte ordered and
> the binome saluted. The picture changed to that of the dark throne
> room of the Lair in Lost Angles.

CROW: Angle Pozo, the mathematical herring.

> Hexi smiled. "Well, what a pleasant
> surprise!" she murmered, "How nice to see you."

TOM: It’s so *wonderful* that you could be here!

> Megabyte frowned. "I
> have something to ask of you." he rumbled. Hexi gave him a suspitious
> look. "And what would that be, love?"

CROW: This is for 125,000 dollars … What’s the region of Greece where centaurs come from, is it (a) Thrace, (b) Thessaly, (c) Epidaurus, or (d) Epidurmus?

> she asked. Megabyte turned to
> Carrie. "Perhaps you would care to explain it to her?" he asked.

JOEL: So how is this confusing Bob’s priorities?

> Carrie’s heart jumped. *Me?* she thought, *Talk to Hexadecimal?*

TOM: Somebody’s got to.

CROW: You’re carrying that scientific calculator that translates between decimal, hexadecimal, binary, octal, and Swahili, after all.

> She
> began to rub her hands together nervously. *She’s my favorite
> character on the show!*

JOEL: This is a twist Bob didn’t see coming.

> Swallowing hard, Carrie stepped into Hex’s
> view.

TOM: Hey, down in front!

>
> * * * * * * * *
> * * *

JOEL: It’s the kind of constellation a Vulcan draws.

>
> Part Twenty-Six
>
> Carrie stood silently, staring into the suspitious mask of her
> favorite virus.

TOM: I remember when I felt that way for the Michaelangelo virus.

> She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
> Hexadecimal frowned. "Well?" she asked.

CROW: Closer to fair than well, thanks.

> Carrie swallowed hard. "I
> need your help." she blurted.

TOM: I have to get Megabyte something for his birthday and I don’t know what.

> Hex smiled. "So, she can talk. What
> sort of help would you be needing?" she asked.

CROW: Enough narrative discipline to get to the story’s end.

> Carrie clasped her
> hands together. "I know you have great power, and that you can form
> portals to certain places."

TOM: This is like James Bond talking with his travel agent.

> Hex smiled. "Why thank you." she said,
> "But why should I help you?"

TOM: You don’t want to be the last one in town to help, do you?

> Carrie looked down at the floor. "I
> have nothing to give you in return." she whispered.

JOEL: She’s going to play for her on her drum.

> "I just hoped
> that since I am one of your admirers, that you might spare me some
> time out of your second to help."

CROW: This same ploy’s used by aspiring actors all the time.

> Carrie knew that Bob and Megabyte
> were staring at her like she had suddenly grown a third arm,

JOEL: [ As Megabyte ] She *did*!

> or
> something, but this had to work.

TOM: ‘Cause girls will do anything if you flatter them.

>
> Hexadecimal laughed. "You see, brother?" she said, "I, too,
> have a following."

CROW: Come *on*. On the Internet, Kevin Kubusheskie has a following.

TOM: On the Internet, Vegemite has a following.

> Megabyte growled. Carrie motioned to him. "You
> promised." she whispered.

JOEL: No followings.

> Megabyte glared down at her, but said
> nothing. Hex looked from Carrie to her brother curiously. "And why
> are you helping this small one?" she taunted.

TOM: She’s under the limit, he had to throw her back.

> Megabyte said nothing
> at first and Carrie held her breath. Then he chuckled. "She is a
> friend who has come to see that I repay a favor she paid me once."

JOEL: He’s repaying her for saving her life?

> Hexadecimal said nothing at first, then her mask changed to one of
> pleasant surprise.

CROW: Wonder who’s underneath all those masks? Carol Channing.

> "Why, I see you have even brought the Guardian to
> help you ask me of this favor!" she murmered, and Carrie glanced at
> Bob out of the corner of her eye. "How nice!"

JOEL: So what’ve we learned this story?

CROW: Carrie’s nice.

>
> Carrie turned to the vid-window again and looked directly into
> Hex’s smiling face.

CROW: [ As Carrie ] I forsee … a large collection of cats in your future.

> "Please," Carrie whispered, "I really want to go
> home."

TOM: I’m tired and I want to go to bed.

> Hex looked down at her, surprised. "Home?" she asked,
> "Brother! If an admirer of mine needs a way to her home system, all
> you had to do was ask nicely!"

CROW: Click her shoes three times, and…

> She laughed at some inside joke and
> the vid-window closed suddenly. Carrie started at the sudden cut off.
> *Boy! she is impulsive!* she thought.

TOM: That’s not impulsive, that’s just rude.

> She looked at Bob. "Why don’t
> we go to Lost Angles so I can get home?"

JOEL: Why can’t she go back the portal she used last time?

> she offered. Bob smiled and
> offered Carrie his hand. She stepped up onto his zip-board and
> wrapped her arms around his waist. She turned to Megabyte once more.

TOM: He’s doing a good job using Bob’s inner turmoil to his advantage.

> "Thank you, very much." she said. Megabyte chuckled again. "I’ll see
> to it that no one bothers you on the way out."

CROW: That just means he validated their parking.

> He glared at Bob only
> briefly before he turned and disappeared into the shadows.

JOEL: Uh, Megabyte, that’s the broom —

TOM: SMASH!

JOEL: Closet.

> Carrie
> smiled. *I love his dramatic exits!* she thought.

CROW: [ As Megabyte ] I think I broke my leg … can somebody please … hello? Anybody?

> Then she turned to
> Bob. "Let’s go." she said.

TOM: Let’s blow this popsicle stand.

> Bob flashed her his killer smile.

JOEL: Gah! Your smile … it’s still … poi … son …

> "Hang
> on." he said.

[ To continue … ]

And now with the flowers

I realize we have bigger climate issues, what with having destroyed the climate and all. But around here we just realized it’s a month later than we should have planted the daffodils and tulips. It’s just been so warm, you know? Anyway, they’re in the ground now, but it’s so embarrassing to realize our flowers are going to bloom a month later than everybody else’s now.

What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? What was Jordan’s deal in the Army? August – November 2021

Jordan Harris was in the Army, before his curent life as a chef and restauranteur. He’d lost a leg in the service. He’d created, or allowed to be created, a story of how he lost it in combat. He told childhood friend and incompetent mugger Delmer Robertson what we took to be the truth. He was in food services. He lost his leg going to an improvised explosive device as he was off to buy food.

Now? That may be in question. Because “Griff” Griffin tried recruiting Jordan for “a job”. Jordan refused. It seems odd that a top-secret mission would need a chef, particularly. But Griffin talks of Jordon’s classified work in the past. And Jordan talks of how the “cover story” he’s given his fiancee is “mostly true”.

We have not learned what this is a cover for. Or what “classified” work Jordan could have been doing. Nor whether this has anything to do with how he lost his leg. I’m inclined to doubt it does, but I don’t see an obvious problem in supposing Jordan told Robertson lies or a cover story.

So this all should catch you up to early November 2021 in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.. If you’re reading this after about February 2022, or any news about the strip develops, I may have a more useful post here.

And on the other blog, I wrote about ‘Monte Carlo’ as last week’s mathematics term. What’s this week’s term? You can find out tomorrow by looking at the most recent A-to-Z essays. I hope you’ll consider them.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

15 August – 7 November 2021.

Rex Morgan, M.D. was at the start of a new story last I checked in. Most of that has been about the wedding of Jordan and Michelle. Let me dispense with the part that’s not.

Sarah Morgan and her hundred-page fan-letter/fan-fiction broke children’s author Kyle Vidpa out of his writer’s block. Vidpa sends his young coauthor the Advance Reader Copies of the book based on her work. Here my suspension of disbelief breaks. I can’t believe there was enough time for the book to be that far along in publication. Let that pass. Sarah’s uninterested in it anyway, since she wrote the story, she knows it.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 8th of September, 2021. I admit I haven’t liked this plot thread. I don’t like super-secret hypercompetent agencies who work Outside The Rules by Making The Tough Decisions so they can Get Things Done. The premise is everything fascist about superheroes without the tempering grace of superheroes’ overwhelming need to protect the public. And how that need exists even — especially! — when the public doesn’t appreciate them. But you’ve seen me write about Norton and April Parker, over in Judge Parker, so that’s no surprise.

The big story has been Jordan Harris and Michelle Carter, nurse at the Morgan clinic. They’d already planned an online wedding. But now think they could have a few people for an in-person ceremony. He’ll cook, of course, because he can’t not. Rex and June Morgan make the list. Rex quips about how he wouldn’t turn down a free meal enough times it feels weird. Several of Michelle’s family plan to attend too. Jordan offers only excuses for his family. He doesn’t want anything with his old Army buddies.

They want something with him, though. “Griff” Griffon stops by, saying his old team is getting together for a mission and they could use his talents. Griffin accepts Jordan’s hard “no”. Griffin’s boss does not, on the grounds that now Jordan knows someone connected to Griff is planning some job. So the only thing to do is kill Jordan. Griff acknowledges this, connects some dynamite to a control module, and scopes out Jordan and Michelle’s wedding.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 9th of October, 2021. So another reason I dislike super-secret hypercompetent agencies. If you think of how much time Batman or the Phantom have to spend just on their daily chores you face the unreality of their superheroing. Packs of Gruff Men With Guns Looking For Reasons to Kill People, though? You can get that together without noticing why it keeps failing. And you get a situation like this, which does show it. Why did Shadowy Boss Figure send Griff to ask Jordan to join them? If the only acceptable answers were “yes” and “die”? Shadowy Boss Figure has decided to kill Jordan Harris, who he knows knows nothing, for fear he might tell someone something? And yes, Beatty shows this organization’s fundamental sickness killing it and its participants. Doesn’t make me like what it’s built on, though.

Beatty did have me fooled. Most of his run has made the strip about pleasant characters to whom nothing very bad happens. It’s been comfortable reading. That’s been welcome as we endure the berserker rage against civilization of capitalism’s most recent crisis. But I thought it plausible that Griff would kill Jordan, putting real shock and surprise into the strip. No, though. Griff watches the ceremony, and once the two wed, he calls his boss. Assured that his boss is near the car, Griff presses the button, blowing up the device, the car, and his shadowy mysterious employer. He figures to go hide out maybe in the Caribbean.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 6th of November, 2021. Also, I am not convinced Terry Beatty had a particular mission in mind, or a clear idea what Griff’s group was about. This drains energy from the choices Jordan and Griff make. Jordan isn’t tempted away from his happy life by being part of some heist or whatever. And Griff’s decision to kill his boss — why doesn’t this new unit he’s part of matter as much as his old-unit pal of Jordan? Maybe Beatty has an answer for that, but I don’t see it in text. So all I have is Griff wanted to be nice to the main-cast character.

Next Week!

Who expected any of the story comics to get into Hypnovember? And if any one did, would you have guessed it’d be the high school sports strip? I look at Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp next week, if things go to plan.

Reposted: Walking Through Novel-Writing

I would like to offer support to friends taking the National Novel-Writing Month challenge. I haven’t got the strength to do any challenges lately, but admire those who do. So let me share a series I wrote, back when I had the strength to write weekly essays, in which I imagine writing a novel or having a fan community.

---

Hi, okay, welcome to this walkthrough of writing a novel. I know we’ve got a lot of new viewers this month because they want to do their NaNoWriMo stuff right. Don’t worry, you should be able to hop right on into this. You all see my novel like it is right now, so let me explain where I’m going.

First, though. Viewpoint. I’m doing third-person omniscient. I mention for the new viewers. I explained why third-person omni like, was it three? episodes ago. Go to that if you want the whole spiel but, in brief: I like it. It’s cozy. I’ve got all my writing macros set up for it. It lets me drop in cynical observations without any characters having to be snarky, which is off-putting when you do it as much as I do. You want to limit readers’ reasons to dislike your characters to the ones that you want, so much as possible. Third person limited is okay. It’s a harder level for getting dramatic irony but sometimes you want the challenge. First person is the easy mode for suspense, the extra-hard mode for dramatic irony. Figure how hard you want to write your stuff. Also you think you get away with any continuity errors by playing the ‘unreliable narrator’ card. Everybody knows that trick so they don’t fall for it. Neutral there.

ClashOSymbols, I see you already rushing to the comments section and you’re wrong. Second person is not happening, and you’re not gonna make it happen. Everything you do in second-person reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. By the third time anyone reads a Choose Your Own Adventure, all they’re doing is reverse-engineering the Happy Ending. Do it in a straight novel and you hit the Choose-Your-Own problem, where ‘you’ get told you’re doing or thinking something you would never do. Yes, shut up, a reader who pretends enough will go along with you. But every line you get wrong is fighting the suspension-of-disbelief and a whole novel of that doesn’t work. You’ve got better fights to pick with your readers than what they think they’d do in your scenario.

Also no it’s not second-person if the setup is the person who did the thing telling it to ‘you’. You are so wrong. New viewers, meet ClashOSymbols. That first impression you’ve got of him? You have him pegged. Short-short version, I’m right, he’s wrong, we’re just delaying his inevitable admission. And yeah, interests of fairness, read his walkthrough yourself for the wrong side of things.

Back to the writing. Up here, that’s the Meet Cute. This isn’t a romance, but my leads didn’t know each other before the book starts. They have to have some reason to stick together. They aren’t in a spot they can be ordered to stick together, and it’s so hard having an emotion about a new person. They gotta be shoved together and that’s why it’s a Meet Cute.

So. New York subway scene. Protagonist rescues the guy from the manic guy stabbing the air with a knife, other guy says it was a magician and shows his cell phone photo to prove it. That works. Readers can imagine knifeketeers on the New York subway. They maybe heard from someone how there was a magician performing on a car or in a station on a big city subway. Readers’ll buy it. And the characters have some reason to keep talking because one has the photo of the knifeketeer, the other the magician. All that doesn’t make sense.

So here you see they try guessing about some quantum mechanics multi-world thing. Neither of them knows enough quantum mechanics to figure how that makes sense. That’s fine, it doesn’t make sense. But they can make wild guesses that maybe explain it, and I don’t have to commit to anything. This is important. Everything you write as a fact in your book is something you can get wrong. Every statement is a chance to break the reader’s suspension-of-disbelief. If you want to do science fiction don’t ever explain how something works in enough detail that any reader can check the numbers. They’ll never ever work. Stay vague and you can insist you’re really writing “hard” science-respecting science fiction. Plus you can boast you spared the readers the boring calculations that would prove it.

This does something else important too. But I’m about out of time for this installment. Hope you learned something useful for your novel-writing. Catch you next week with some more walking through. And, yeah, ClashOSymbols, as always, commenter of the week for that killer pumpkin snark. Congratulations. Folks should check what he has to say out. He can write so brilliant an argument you almost forget he’s wrong. Catch you later.

---

About the Author: Joseph Nebus has an unpublished Star Trek: The Next Generation novel from back when he was a teenager that dear Lord you will never ever EVER SEE YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW WELCOME YOU ARE. He is currently working on an ambitious project of grousing about others’ success.

Reposted: The 41st Talkartoon: Admission Free, a cartoon that jumps the tracks

When this review first ran I observed I had failed to notice if this was the first Talkartoon showing Betty smiling and winking at us in the introduction. I have failed to notice again. I think we do see Old King Cole, though, as an old guy walking past Betty Boop’s change booth at about 1:04, just before Aloysius pops in. Glad he’s not doomed. I still wonder if animators ever considered using penny-arcade-movies as a way to do blackout gags, showing the one minute worth of material they had for a premise and moving on to the next. Outside this I only remember seeing it (in Fleischer/Famous cartoons, at least) used for clip shows.

---

I am almost out of Talkartoons to have opinions about. Don’t think I’m not just as worried by this as you are. Today’s was originally released the 10th of June, 1932. Its credited animators are Rudolph Eggeman — familiar already from The Cow’s Husband and A Hunting We Will Go — and Thomas Johnson, a new name. The Internet Movie Database doesn’t list any earlier cartoons from Johnson, but he’d go on to a number of great cartoons like Betty in Blunderland or It’s The Natural Thing To Do. Also some of those faintly sad cartoons where it’s the 50s and Popeye lives in the suburbs and is outsmarted by a gopher or something.

There’s a short cartoon-Indians joke early on in the short. There’s also a bit that reads like it’s maybe some kind of joke on Italians. I may be being oversensitive on that point, but the soundtrack during it is “Where Do You Work-A, John”, which rouses my worries.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been disappointed in an arcade cartoon. Even the ones that are just a frame for showing clips of earlier cartoons capture my fancy, somehow. Maybe part is the sense that you can just dip into anything and move on to something else engages me. It seems to engage animators too, possibly because this is a framing device that lets them just use the good parts of a joke.

I forget if this is the first Talkartoon that’s had not just the “Sweet Betty” song but the introductory title where Betty smiles and winks at us. Talkartoons were about to end and get replaced, production-wise, by the Betty Boop series anyway. Despite the title and her appearance to start things off, she doesn’t have much to do this short. Koko appears, yes, but Bimbo really guides most of the action. And pretty well, too. Stuff like how he slides his pennies down his shirt and then transfers them to his pocket may not have a specific joke. But it’s the sort of action that makes a character more interesting and endearing.

During the part where the monkey watched the fight movie I got to wondering: did animators ever think of this framing device as a way to burn off ideas they only had one or two scenes for? Rather than waste a premise or try to pad two minute’s worth of cartoon into a whole reel? Or to test out characters for their own cartoons? As far as I can tell, no. They just weren’t cautious in that way back then, it seems. And they had little fear of jamming together two or more unrelated cartoons with barely any transition.

Which is just what happens here, somehow. There’s a transition point, yes, Bimbo chasing a rabbit target out of the shooting gallery and into the woods. But somehow the short runs out of arcade jokes and turns into a hunting cartoon. Also jumps from nighttime in the city to daytime in the forest. It’s not a bad hunting short, mind, and the bullet at about 5:20 sneering at the rabbit with the declaration, “go chase yourself” is one of the few funny bits of dialogue from this series. Really all the action with the rabbit is good. As far as I know they didn’t try more with this character, which is a pity. The squirrels are a nice pairing too. But why this change in theme?

The arcade left plenty of room for little jokes you go back and notice. And it starts with a joke that almost gets lost in the digitization. So my blink-and-you-miss-it joke for the week is right up front. The chaser lights around the Penny Arcade sign drip off and run around the whole frame. It’s what’s going on when that weird tinkly sound comes in over the music. Some of the movie or attraction signs are fun, too. I mean, “Oh You Queenie”? “They Forgot To Pull The Shade”? If I hadn’t seen machines with names about like that I’d think they were being too silly. And it’s not a joke at all but I’m startled by the “Play Soccer!” mechanical attraction every time I notice it.

Not sure if that’s a mouse taunting Bimbo at about 4:36. The ears seem too large and floppy, and the tail seems big, but what else could it be?

Bimbo’s brother makes a cameo at about 1:07, in case anyone worried what’s become of him.

Statistics Saturday: Some Ways To Spend November

• No-Shave November. Celebrate the month by going thirty days using full ice cubes, or none at all. None of this shaved or chipped ice stuff.
• NaNovember. Like November, but in one-billionth slices.
• Hanovember. Celebrate the imperial court where Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz did his most significant avoidance of work for the Court of Hanover.
• Napvember. A much-needed time to lie in bed while the afternoon sun’s warming your toesies.
• Nullvember. 30 days in which we examine the byte patterns denoting the end of a string variable in C-based programming languages.
• DiNovember. A whole month in which the most serious argument you have is about whether brontosaurus is the right name for them or not. (Note: we mean whether they’re the right name for brontosauruses. We all agree ‘brontosaurus’ is not the right name for kangaroos, Zach.)
• No-No-November. Each day your life becomes an even-more-faithful adaptation of the smash Broadway hit No, No, Nanette.
• Perry Comovember. Not limited to Perry Como but rather to learning about the originals of all the performers and movies you learned about from watching SCTV. Next week we compare The Towering Inferno to when they opened that super-skyscraper over Melonville!
• Morevember. November, but it’s a 31-day month. Think of the possibilities.
• Hypnovember. Thirty days, thirty right triangles, thirty hypotenuses!
• San Marinovember. We all visit the tiny nation at once and see if we can’t make it tip over!
• Renovember. Finally we do those little home-repair projects we’ve been putting off for eighteen years. … Maybe next month.

Reference: The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, John McPhee.

You can get Amid Amidi’s _Cartoon Modern_ for free now

I have already lost what person brought this to my attention. I apologize. The important thing is the Animation Obsessive web site has a delightful bit of news. For Halloween, it declared, We’ve Made a Rare Animation Artbook Free to All.

The book is animation historian Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation. It’s a book I remember wanting but not being able to get, back in the young days of 2006. But Amidi expressed his desire, some years ago, to have the book scanned and released as “a high-quality PDF”, and so it has come to pass. You can download the book from Animation Obsessive’s site directly. Amidi has also placed a copy with the good people at archive.org.

I haven’t had time to read it yet. It’s bubbling near the top of my reading pile, for whenever I finish Paul C Tumey’s Screwball: The Cartoonists Who Made The Funnies Funny. (It’s about the early-20th-century zany-screwball cartoonists. You know, the people who invented characters leaping backwards out of the panel when they heard the punch line.) Still, I know Amidi’s book is a massive study of the UPA Style that took over so much of animation in the middle of the 20th century. We’re still living in its wake. It’s worth a few hundred megabytes to read about, or at least look at grand pictures.

MiSTed: Reboot: Breaking the Barriers (Part 13 of 16)

And now, after a Halloween hiatus, let’s resume Carrie L—‘s Reboot fanfiction “Breaking the Barriers”. All of my Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of her story should be at this link.

The story so far: a strange portal opens between our author/protagonist Carrie’s home computer and the land of pioneering computer-animated series Reboot. Carrie visits the digital world, where she gets along great with series hero Bob and assistant hero Enzo. and stirs up jealousy from Bob’s not-yet-girlfriend Dot. Even series villain Megabyte likes her, although as someone he can kidnap. The digital world visits her hometown mall, where Megabyte becomes a vampire and neck-bites Carrie. But a return to the digital world and an energy drink get her back into shape. Enzo, angry about all this, has gone off to the Data Dump to find something he can use against Megabyte. And that’s where this segment begins.

One riff mentions Clarabelle Cow as a gossip. I don’t know enough about Clarabelle Cow to say whether she is or not. I know at the time, Disney Channel where I lived was running a lot of segments explaining the minor characters and they said Clarabelle was a gossip.

I trust there was a specific episode of the 80s G.I.Joe cartoon I was thinking of, when Tom asks didn’t this happen in one episode. I no longer remember what. If you know, yeah, I’m curious. Don’t go to any great lengths figuring it out though.

I think Tom’s line about not letting the Tor hit you on the way out is one that gets the Brains’ voice right.

I remember thinking it was a funny concept to delete half a picture window. I now think it’s something where you would concede the logic says this should be funny.

In this segment I’ve replaced one joke. The original riff had alluded to a childhood prank/game that I’m ashamed I ever used. The replacement is funnier. I promise.

---

[ THEATER. TOM, JOEL, and CROW file in. ]

JOEL: *So* immature.

> As he came around
> the corner, he tripped over something. Pulling himself back up onto
> his feet, Enzo picked up the protruding object.

CROW: He’s found a porn spam!

> It looked like one of
> those old delete commands he’d read about in school.

JOEL: I’m pretty sure there still are delete commands.

> He picked it up
> and brushed it off. It glowed dimly in his hand.

TOM: Couldn’t that kind of delete thing take his fingers off?

> If he remembered
> what Miss Brodie had taught him,

CROW: Our Miss Brodie…

> these old commands couldn’t
> completely delete someone anymore,

JOEL: They’re just called delete commands for the fun of it.

> but they could do some damage.

TOM: So you can see why they leave that kind of thing lying around where anybody can grab it.

> From the look of this one, there was enough energy to at least hurt
> Megabreath.

CROW: The Big Bad Cyberwolf.

> Feeling confident, he leapt onto his zip-board, and
> zoomed away.

JOEL: The implication is, when your computer garbles your e-mail files, it’s the acts of venegence from your graphics display elements.

>
> Back at the Diner, Dot was watching Bob as he comforted
> Carrie. She was not impressed. Suddenly, the door burst open and
> Enzo walked in.

CROW: So Enzo went to the Data Dump, found the Delete command, and got back in about seven seconds.

> Dot, Bob Carrie and Megabyte all turned to look at
> him.

ALL: NORM!

TOM: Norman.

> Enzo strod in, his hands hidden behind his back.

JOEL: He just does that so they don’t have to draw his hands.

> He stopped a
> few feet from Megabyte and smiled slyly.

CROW: OK… got a riddle for you. If an egg and a half can raise a day and a half in a chicken and a half … wait.

> Megabyte simply looked down
> at him. "Enzo!!" Dot said, "Where did you go?" she asked.

JOEL: Was it cold? Did you wear your warm clothes?

> Enzo only
> stood there, smiling at Megabyte. "Enzo, what are you doing?"

CROW: He didn’t even go to the Data Dump, it all happened in his mind.

> Bob
> asked as Enzo stood ready, the delete command held tightly in his
> hand.

JOEL: As his fingernails dissolve.

> "Giving this guy what he deserves!" Enzo shouted, and threw the
> command at Megabyte with all his strength.

TOM: Unfortunately his aim’s bad and he deletes the salad bar, the soda fountain, and half a picture window.

>
> * * * * * * * *
> * * *

CROW: A long cold front ending in a small vortex.

>
> Part Twenty-Five

TOM: There is no joke to make about that fact.

>
> "Noooo!"
>
> Megabyte stood, surprised, as Enzo whipped the command at him.

TOM: Here’s a role reversal from the usual dodgeball.

> Then, before he could move, a figure jumped in front of him.
> "Stop!!" she screamed.

JOEL: In the name of love!

> Carrie had placed herself between Megabyte and
> the rapidly approaching command.

CROW: You know it’s serious because we’re moving in slow motion.

> Bob watched in horror as Carrie
> stood with her arms stretched out, protecting the virus.

JOEL: But Megabyte ducked.

> "Glitch,"
> Bob ordered, "Catch!!"

TOM: Unfortunately Glitch was owned by Bill Buckner, and…

[ CROW wimpers ]

> Glitch chirped and caught the command in an
> energy beam. Carrie looked over at him and smiled. Then she moaned
> quietly and collapsed.

JOEL: She’s had a hard day what with becoming a transparent Canadian vampire and all. Let her rest.

>
> Megabyte looked down at Carrie’s fallen form in wonder, then
> picked her up gently.

CROW: [ Singing ] What have I done? … I’ve killed da WAB-bit…

> Bob and the others watched in surprise as
> Megabyte placed her on the counter once again.

TOM: Lucky thing Bob, Enzo, and Megabyte *are* the lunch rush.

> Then, he opened a
> vid-window. A viral binome saluted as he realized it was Megabyte.

JOEL: Hey, aren’t binomes the creepy guys that stole the Enterprise in the good episode from Next Generation’s first year?

> "Yes, sir?" he asked. "I want my limo at Dot’s Diner now. And get
> the infirmary ready for an incoming patient." Megabyte ordered.

CROW: So he’s taking her to the infirmary after she was hurt after taking her to the diner after she was hurt. What a sweetheart!

> The
> binome saluted and Megabyte closed the window before he could answer.

TOM: Ooh, communications breakdown. Their relationship’s in trouble.

> Bob stared as Megabyte picked Carrie up once again, and started toward
> the door.

JOEL: Hope he remembers to turn sideways before going through the door.

>
> "Wait!" Bob said, and Megabyte turned.

CROW: [ As Megabyte ] Uh, I’m *busy*.

> "Where are you taking
> her?" he asked. Megabyte frowned. "To the Tor." he rumbled.

TOM: [ As Bob ] Well, don’t let the Tor hit you on the way out.

JOEL: [ As Megabyte ] Ow!

> Bob
> looked confused. "Why?" he asked. Megabyte simply looked at him.

CROW: Because if we stay here any longer we have to order something.

> "She just risked her life to save mine. That is something that does
> not go unnoticed."

TOM: Didn’t this same thing happen with G.I.Joe once?

> He turned and left, entering his waiting limo.
> Bob raced outside and watched as Megabyte’s vehicle zoomed away. He
> pulled out his zip-board and took off in pursuit.

CROW: They’d get there faster if they just dropped themselves into another folder icon.

> Inside the Diner,
> Dot was talking to a very depressed and upset Enzo. "Why did you do
> that and where did you find that command?"

JOEL: Revenge; and Big Denny’s Discount House Of Loaded Firearms, Defective Firecrackers, and Hair-Trigger Mines.

> she asked. Enzo didn’t
> answer. Dot reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. "What’s
> wrong?" she asked, worriedly.

TOM: Uh, Dot, you were in the scene just passed, right?

> Enzo looked up at her, tears filling
> his eyes.

CROW: Now why would a sprite need to cry?

JOEL: Because he was assigned to Smurf Adventure as the bottom half?

> "I didn’t want to hurt Carrie,." he sobbed, "just
> Megabreath!!"

CROW: It’s only *technically* attempted murder. He *needed* killin’.

> With that, he began to weep and Dot held him, not
> totally sure what to say.

JOEL: A cautionary tale about venegence, or just three more chapters?

>
> * * * * * * * *
> * * *
>
> Carrie wasn’t sure what had happened,

TOM: Hey, why doesn’t that break rate a separate Part?

> but what she did know
> was that when she awoke, she found herself in a room she had never
> seen before. "Ah, you’re awake."

CROW: [ As Megabyte ] We downloaded you into a chicken. That OK?

> The voice came from the darkness
> that surrounded her. She knew who it was as soon as she heard it.

JOEL: Unicron!

> "Megabyte." she whispered. He walked out from the shadows, smiling.

TOM: They always walk out of the shadows, smiling. Don’t any supervillains pay the electric bill?

> Carrie took no comfort in his smile. "Why did you bring me here?" she
> asked.

JOEL: He’s hoping to collect the five cent deposit.

> "Now, now." he said, "I mean you no harm." He walked up to
> the side of the bed she was on and looked down into her eyes.

CROW: Don’t worry… We won’t hurt you…

> Carrie
> stared back, mesmerised.

TOM: Sleeeeeeep!

> Megabyte’s eyes were cold and hard, yet,
> somewhere deep below the surface, there burned the fire of feirce
> emotion.

JOEL: Fierce yet generic emotion.

TOM: It’s dull surprise.

> She couldn’t move. It were as though she had been
> hypnotized.

CROW: Brrrrrrr….rruk … cluck cluck cluck cluk cluk…

> Her mind told her that Megabyte was bad news, yet
> something about him intrigued her incredibly. He offered her a hand,

[ JOEL claps ]

> and she took it cautiously. He pulled her up into a sitting position,
> and she swung her legs over the side.

TOM: This is the tender, loving side of Megabyte.

>
> Suddenly, an alarm went off and they both looked up quickly.

JOEL: Klingons!

> A vid-window pinged into existance before them. "Sir!" the viral
> binome saluted, "There’s an intruder on the third level!"

CROW: Sonic the Hedgehog is breaking in!

> Megabyte
> frowned. "Show me."

TOM: Here’s a bunny, and here’s a butterfly, and here’s a puppy dog.

> The viral saluted again and quickly pushed a
> button. The screen switched to a shot from above the intruder,

JOEL: It’s like watching soccer coverage.

> zooming along on a zip-board. "Bob!?!" Carrie said. Megabyte
> frowned, then signaled the viral binome again.

CROW: Why can’t they just learn to not hang up?

> "Should we stop him,
> sir?" The viral asked, excitedly.

TOM: Have they ever been able to stop him?

> "No." Megabyte rumbled. "Allow
> him through."

JOEL: First make him say "Pretty Please with Sugar and Spice on Top."

>
> "Allow him……?" The binome started. "Ahem. Yes sir!" The
> viral saluted again, and the window closed.

TOM: I bet you ten bucks when we get out of here that guy shows up on the hex field view screen.

CROW: You’re on.

> Megabyte turned to Carrie
> and smiled. "It seems the Guardian is concerned about you." he
> chuckled.

CROW: The Mirror doesn’t give a dang, and the Daily Mail barely acknowledges you exist.

> Carrie just looked at him, uncomprhendingly. "What do you
> mean?" she asked.

TOM: What part of that sentence didn’t she get?

> "Well, it’s none of my business, but it seems that
> there already was a significant other in Bob’s life before you came
> along."

JOEL: I didn’t figure Megabyte was a gossip.

CROW: The Clarabele Cow of Mainframe.

> Carrie stared at him in shock, then gasped, covering her
> mouth. *Of course!* she thought, *I forgot about Dot!*

TOM: And here she is, a huge fan of the show, and she forgets its basic emotional dynamic.

> She looked
> down at the floor. *I must really be causing trouble.*

CROW: Aw, the story wouldn’t be the same without you.

> Megabyte
> smiled as he watched Carrie. Perhaps if he could occupy the Guardian
> with his female problem,

JOEL: Oh, yeah, like computer guys have anything to do with girls.

> he would be too busy to bother with stopping
> any attempt at the Supercomputer.

TOM: Maybe Megabyte should try taking over something easy, like a Street Fighter arcade game, and then work his way up to supercomputers.

---

[ To continue … ]

Statistics October: How October 2021 Trick-Or-Treated My Humor Blog

Oh, I like that subject line. I should have thought of something Halloween-themed for last month. Ah well. There’ll be another October, someday, although there’s no knowing when. (We say this to make October feel more sneaky. Don’t let it know we almost always find it right past September and short of the Moon.)

October saw a slight rise in readership around here. There were 4,355 page views recorded from 2,410 unique visitors. However, that’s still got the blog below the twelve-month running averages. From October 2020 through September 2021 the blog had a mean 5,565.1 views from 3,341.4 unique visitors. I mean arithmetic mean. Few of them were hostile. The running median was 4,996 views from 3,036.5 unique visitors. I can’t explain this dropping off except that it could be people aren’t thrilled to see plot recaps of forgotten Talkartoons that they already saw three years ago.

Or they are. There were 161 likes given in the past month. That’s a fair bit above the running mean of 138.1 per month, or the running median of 135 per month. It was chatty, too, with 62 comments given, above the mean of 52.6 and median of 45.5. That’s the fourth-chattiest month in a couple years now.

WordPress suggests I “grow my audience with a podcast” and I can’t think of one to do except maybe a pop-culture hangout podcast about the podcasts I already listen to. There are probably a bunch of those already and if I started one of my own, I would get hurt.

The most popular posts from October were the set one might expect, mostly comic strip recaps and complaints:

• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why is there time travel now? July – October 2021
• How Angry Should You Be About the _Crankshaft_ and _Funky Winkerbean_ Stories Not Being Done YET?
• Reposted: The 33rd Talkartoon: The Robot, surely Not A Time-Traveller’s Prankish Insertion To History
• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Are new people taking over the comic? October 2021
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? What happened between Diana Daggers and Bee Sharp? July – October 2021

While Crankshaft has moved on to a different story, I don’t get how that’s still going on either.

The most popular piece of all was the September 2021 plot recap for The Phantom, weekday continuity. In it, it did look as though The Phantom might die. My most popular piece intended to be funny and posted in October were these selections from my library.

But my story comic recaps will stay the most popular things around this blog. My schedule for the next couple weeks is:

• Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. (9 November)
• Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp (16 November)
• Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker (23 November)
• Roy Thomas and Larry Leiber’s The Amazing Spider-Man (30 November)
• Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop (7 December)

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I understand how parochial my blog is. But as far as I can tell I’ve never gotten a single reader from Chad, Niger, or the Central African Republic and you’d think that would have happened at least by chance, wouldn’t you? Someone clicking something by mistake? But I suppose the people in Africa know what they’re doing.

There were 71 countries, or things as good as countries, sending me page views in October. 14 of them were single-view countries. Here’s the aways popular roster of them:

Country	Readers
United States	2,952
Canada	157
India	147
Australia	125
Philippines	114
United Kingdom	96
Sweden	86
Germany	67
Brazil	66
France	40
Spain	40
Finland	30
El Salvador	27
Ireland	27
Serbia	24
Ecuador	23
Mexico	22
Italy	21
South Africa	17
Japan	16
Argentina	15
Austria	15
Indonesia	15
Peru	14
Netherlands	10
Romania	10
South Korea	10
European Union	9
New Zealand	9
Thailand	9
Czech Republic	8
Lebanon	8
Israel	7
Kenya	7
Malaysia	7
Poland	7
Portugal	7
Singapore	6
Turkey	6
Barbados	5
Chile	5
Colombia	5
Jamaica	5
Malta	5
Nigeria	5
Guadeloupe	4
Hungary	4
Norway	4
Switzerland	4
Belgium	3
Croatia	3
Hong Kong SAR China	3
China	2
Egypt	2
Estonia	2
Taiwan	2
Trinidad & Tobago	2
Bulgaria	1
Costa Rica	1
Denmark	1
Greece	1
Guatemala	1 (*)
Jordan	1
Kuwait	1
Madagascar	1
Pakistan	1
Puerto Rico	1 (*)
Qatar	1
Russia	1
Ukraine	1
United Arab Emirates	1

Guatemala and Puerto Rico were single-view countries in September also. Nothing has been a single-view country three months in a row.

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WordPress is of the opinion I published 21,001 words in October. That’s an average of 677.5 words per posting in the month. This is also well down from September and most of the rest of the year. This shows the power of switching from nothing but long recaps of cartoons to photographs with two sentences setting them up. Also to using much shorter MiSTing segments than I had been. I am up to 227,572 words posted this year, so far, an average of 749 words per posting.

Between the original theatrical release of Young Frankenstein and the start of November I’ve posted 3,195 things to this blog. They’ve drawn a total 259,464 views from 148,630 unique visitors. WordPress also claims I have 1,370 followers, although I suspect not all of them are following that closely.

If you’d like to follow more closely, you can try increasing your browser’s zoom on this page. It’s almost as good as shrinking. If you’d like to add this to your WordPress reading page, click the “Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile” sticker on the upper right corner of this page. If you’d like to get them by e-mail, you can use the panel underneath that. I won’t do anything with your e-mail address except send posts as they’re published, but I can’t say what WordPress plans to do with them.

For more private reading (not even showing up in my statistics), you can add the RSS feed for posts to your reader. If you need an RSS reader can get one at This Old Reader or at NewsBlur. Or you can sign up for a free account at Dreamwidth or Livejournal and use their friends pages. Use https://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/ or https://www.livejournal.com/syn to add RSS feeds, not just mine, there.

And thank you for whatever kind of interaction we’re having here.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What exactly is The Visitor? August – October 2021

We don’t know! The past three months in the Sunday continuity saw The Phantom share what’s known about The Visitor. It seems to be material; it leaves footprints and can punch out and skull-mark minions. It doesn’t seem to be material; it disappears from exitless rooms and caves. It seems to know language; it told the 16th Ghost Who Walks of the Origin Story. It doesn’t answer inquiries. The current Phantom, and his listeners, speculate that it’s some force that’s been present since the beginning. Always watching. Sometimes intervening. And that’s all they can know.

There is a Doylist explanation, one that appeals but is unconfirmable from text. And I forget which commenter I saw put this forth, but: could The Visitor be a representation of the audience? The audience sees everything The Phantom does. The audience — the fans, at least — know everything The Phantom could know. And the audience does affect The Phantom’s life, although in indirect ways, incomprehensible to the character.

But that’s not something the characters in-story can understand. And The Visitor has left, chased off by Devil, the Phantom’s wolf. So what it is may be impossible to ever determine from within the text.

This all should catch you up on Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, Sunday continuity. If you’d like to know about the weekday continuity? If you’re reading this after about February 2022 and want to know the Sundays? You may find a more useful essay here.

If you’re interested in reading other things, may I offer Little 2021 Mathematics A-to-Z, in which I explore mathematics terms. Embedding was my most recent essay. And I am looking for suggestions for topics starting with the letters I, C, and S.

The Phantom (Sundays).

8 August – 31 October 2021.

The Phantom was telling Bandar youth of past encounters with The Visitor. The Visitor is a strange, not-quite-ghostly doppelganger to The Ghost Who Walks, encountered in the times of four past Phantoms. The 16th Phantom told how The Visitor recounted the Origin Story of the Walker line.

The story excites the Bandar people who hear it. A being from before The Phantom’s own time? That witnesses it all? That supports, even spreads, the legend? (You see how this goes with the “it’s the audience” hypothesis.) But there’s no conclusions one can draw. As the Bandar youths leave The Phantom asks them to unchain Devil. And why was Devil chained, Diana Walker asks? So as not to disturb their guest. In a wonderful, creepy moment, The Phantom reveals that The Visitor has been there, listening, all night.

Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 12th of September, 2021. I gasped!

Diana tries to get it to speak, to respond. It doesn’t. She speculates that it doesn’t understand. It can mimic what it sees and hears in the Skull Cave, but that’s all. Also unprovable, as Devil races in, and leaps for The Visitor … who vanishes, reduced to mist. And we’re left not knowing most anything about The Visitor, including whether it’s gone. My supposition is The Visitor has donned a bunch of pizza boxes to go and mildly annoy Funky Winkerbean.

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What is gone is the story “The Visitor”, ended the 10th of October. With the 17th begins the new story, “The Ingenues”. It’s the 192nd Sunday-continuity story. It’s about another of The Phantom’s many responsibilities, this one taking a crew of Mori youth to sea to test their boating abilities. It references a story from 2007 where this expedition ran into trouble. And all we know so far is that some young women among the Mori want to be among the crew. By February we should have a better idea what the story is.

Next Week!

Somebody’s getting married in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.! Also possibly shot, which would be a change of tone for Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.! I hope to have a plot summary for you here next week. Thanks for reading.

The level I’m operating at today

Spent a long, long time chuckling at how this “Smoky Carolina BBQ” vegan jerky advertised itself with a picture of Kentucky, a state that is neither North or South Carolina, before finally noticing the company name is “Louisville” and that’s the largest single thing on the entire package.

Part of the trouble may be that I don’t eat jerky, so it shouldn’t much matter to me where it comes from.

So this week as you see me not understanding things, consider, this is my understanding-things baseline.

Reposted: The 40th Talkartoon: Hide and Seek, A Cartoon I Need An Answer For

So we’re coming near the end of this repeat of my Talkartoons reviews. I’ll need to start actually working again soon. I have no regrets about putting this much of my blog in repeat mode. I haven’t had much time or energy for fun stuff since mid-August and I can at least keep my inexplicably long publication streak going with repeats like this. Plus I don’t know how to bring a guest author on anyway.

Hide and Seek is a cartoon I discuss mostly for its strange anachronistic nature. It looks and feels like a much more primitive cartoon than its recorded release date seems to justify. I haven’t got any new insights about its production. But then I also forgot the cartoon entirely after the original publication, so, it would take a stroke of luck to get anything.

In my recap I warn about the Chinese stereotype character that shows up in the cartoon. This feels to me today like a too-weak warning. If you don’t need Bimbo and a proto-Betty-Boop talking fake Chinese by saying stuff like “Chop suey” at a guy marrying them, skip this short. There’s some fun weird loosely-plotted cartooning in here but not a thing you have to experience.

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This Talkartoon comes to me as a mystery. I realized while writing this that I couldn’t find it on the archive.org list of Betty Boop cartoons. This is because it has no Betty Boop in it. It’s also not listed under Talkartoons, but the archive.org roster of “subject: talkartoons” doesn’t have any of the 1932 shorts. I could only find one copy of it online, on YouTube; I just hope that it doesn’t go missing before you read these words. Wikipedia says this short was released the 26th of May, 1932. Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice And Magic agrees. I will provisionally accept that as true. But I’d like someone who has primary documentation to confirm because this is a weird one.

Also a mild content warning. The cartoon ends up in China. Not for long. Just long enough for a Chinese man to perform a quick wedding.

So. Yeah. This was allegedly released just about a month after A Hunting We Will Go. The 26th of May, 1932. Is anyone else not buying that? Because this cartoon would make so much more sense if it were released in 1930 instead. Let’s consider:

• What the heck is with Bimbo? He looks like he did in 1930 and early 1931, before his character had really stabilized and he’d settled on the basic-black look.
• Where’s Betty Boop? The romantic lead here looks strikingly like a prototype Betty Boop. But at this point why have a Proto-Betty Boop? These aren’t the days of Barnacle Bill or The Bum Bandit. Why not have Betty Boop appear and tie the cartoon to the studio’s clearest star?
• It’s directed like a silent cartoon. Some of this is the backgrounds. They’ve got this limited use of grey that looks much more like what the studio did just after the transition from paper to full cel animation than what it was doing, say, in last week’s cartoon. Some of this is in framing shots. There’s a lot of use of setting the action inside a circle, against a black backdrop. We saw this all the time in 1930. These days? Not so much.
• The sound is just awful. Granted some of this is the quality of the print that whoever uploaded this to YouTube uses. But I think it’s something in the source material. There’s no good dialogue even by the standards of a Fleischer cartoon. There’s not many good sound cues. There’s a title card song that seems to have nothing to do with the short. There’s just nothing.
• There’s just one credited animator, Roland Crandall. This is the first and only Talkartoon that Crandall’s got a credit for. But he did a lot of work for the Betty Boop version of Snow White, and he’d be the animation director for the Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels.

So what if this cartoon has been mis-dated, and it was actually released in late May 1930? That would reduce an otherwise strikingly long gap between Fire Bugs (the 5th of May) and Wise Flies (the 14th of July, 1930). The character designs would make more sense. So would the direction. Also the big part the motorcycle has in coming to life. That has the feel to me of a spot joke that kept growing as it turned out the motorcycle was interesting. The style of the backgrounds makes more sense too, as does the use of a not-Betty-Boop for a Bimbo cartoon.

And yet.

There is the copyright date on the title card. The Proto-Betty-Boop is a weird figure, but any weirder than in The Robot — also a 1932 release? And also one with the white-model Bimbo? And the circles of action on a black background?

Apart from one Koko the Clown short, all the Internet Movie Database’s work for Crandall is dated from 1932 through his retirement (from animation) in 1941. And if a 5-May-to-14-July gap in 1930 is implausibly long, then how do I answer the 29-April-to-10-June gap that relocating Hide and Seek to that year would create?

All right, perhaps. It’s still weird. I wonder if Hide and Seek weren’t finished much earlier but not released until some scheduling issue demanded it. Also whether The Robot might have had a similar fate.

So I turn this over to people who know how to access primary documentation: the heck’s the deal here? Huh? You know?

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There’s little information about this cartoon online. So I’m going to run out my column here with what happens. This is for the benefit of people trying to figure out what the heck happened after this mysterious cartoon vanishes from YouTube and the whole Internet.

The plot: A kidnapper grabs Proto-Betty Boop. Bimbo and his motorcycle give chase, pursuing him into a mountain and down into Hell. They’re captured by a demon. The motorcycle rescues Bimbo and Proto-Betty, and they make it to a happy ending.

And here’s a more detailed list of incidents, as opposed to just the plot. The title card opens with a tune about you being a detective called in to solve a hold-up and ultimately hypothesizing you’d have to say your prayers. The short opens in a bank where Proto-Betty Boop withdraws a bag of money. A lurking crook whom I thought was Bimbo at first cackles and follows. Bimbo, a cop working one of those traffic island signals you see in 1920s and 1930s shorts, notices the crook. The traffic signal picks up the crook’s card (“I. Grabber, Kidnaper [sic], office 66 Snake St”).

Proto-Betty strolls out of the bank, past I Grabber’s storefront (it even lists him as proprietor). She walks past his open trap door. Grabber pulls a rope out of the trap door and walks behind Betty. This ultimately pulls a goat up behind them. He grabs Proto-Betty and ties her atop the goat.

Bimbo spots this, and takes out three giant links of sausage, which he fashions into a motorcycle. He pursues Grabber up an impossibly steep mountain. Bimbo’s motorcycle can’t manage the incline until it sneaks back into town for a drink from the “Tea Shoppe” speakeasy. Thus fortified it’s able to drive uphill and, at that, through a boulder.

The two chase through an Old Man Of The Mountain rock face and to the smouldering volcanic crater up top. There they race around the cone in the center of the volcano, until the ground level drops down as an elevator. They arrive in Hell’s Kitchen. Grabber and the goat are taken by a giant demonic hand and put into an iron stove. Bimbo and Proto-Betty are grabbed by a demonic hand and taunted by a devil who looks more like a hippopotamus than anything else. The hippo-devil puts them in an icebox.

Meanwhile Bimbo’s motorcycle, undetected, searches for everybody. He finds the stove, and Grabber and the goat baked into pies, where he leaves them. (Their intact heads poke out of these pies; leaving them like that is shocking.) The motorcycle breaks through the icebox and carries Bimbo and Proto-Betty onto a miniature golf course, a reminder that 1930 was when miniature golf was first, er, big. This hole — number 19 — has a dragon or alligator putting a tethered ball through a wooden half-pipe ramp and looks pretty fun, truth be told.

Bimbo, Proto-Betty, and the motorcycle fall through the 19th Hole, down the tunnel to China, 4000 miles below. They land in a Buddha(?) statue’s hands. From it emerges a minister, who marries Bimbo and Proto-Betty Man.