Joseph Nebus's Sense Of Humor
Reference: The March of Democracy, John Truslow Adams.
Reference: The Wizards of Armageddon, Fred Kaplan.
| Letter | ‘E’ Content |
|---|---|
| A |  |
| B |  |
| C | |
| D | |
| E |  |
| F |  |
| G | |
| H | |
| I |  [1] |
| J | |
| K | |
| L | |
| M |  [1] |
| N |  [2] |
| O | |
| P | |
| π | |
| Q | |
| R | |
| S | |
| T | |
| U |  [3] |
| V | |
| W |  [3] |
| X | |
| Y | |
| Z | |
[1] Value is dependent on the typeface used.
[2] Value is dependent on the typeface used and only applies to the lowercase ‘n’.
[3] Value is extremely dependent on the typeface used.
Reference: Troy: A Collar City History, Don Rittner.
A note on methodology. Movies are compared based on the number of Goofs recorded at the Internet Movie Database. Goofs listed as “character error” or “incorrectly regarded as goofs” are deducted from the total. The reason for not counting the second kind of goof is that goofs which are not goofs should not be counted as goofs. Please sit down and hold your head in your hands until dizziness from that last sentence passes. The reason for not counting the first kind of goof is that fictional characters are permitted to be mistaken about things, unlike real people.
Reference: Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience, James E. Tomayko.
Oh yeah also Kidco (1984) and Dr Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985) contain no known goofs.
Reference: Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr.
Reference: The Rocket Men: Vostok and Voskhod, the First Soviet Manned Spaceflights, Rex Hall and David J Shayler
A note about research methods. Some may accuse this department of focusing entirely on its own experiences and not adequately sampling the full conceptual space of grandmotherly presences. To this we answer no, we called our grandmothers ‘grandma’ and ‘mom-mom’, none of this casual ‘grammy’ stuff for us and so therefore nyah.
Reference: Star Fleet Technical Manual, Franz Joseph.
This weekend’s the anniversary of when I started this blog! So I thought to look back over its popular stuff again.
Reference: A History of Modern France, Alfred Cobban.
| Proximate Form | Demonstrative Form | Interrogative Form |
|---|---|---|
| here | there | where |
| hither | thither | whither |
| hat | that | what |
| he | the | whe (*) |
| hence | thence | whence |
| horn | thorn | worn (**) |
| hen | then | when |
| his | this | whis (*) |
| hack | thack(*) | whack |
| hit | thit | whit |
| hump | thump | whump |
| heir | their | wheir (*) |
| herefore | therefore | wherefore |
| heretofore | theretofore | wheretofore |
(*) denotes a word which theory indicates should exist but which has not been confirmed by an independent word laboratory.
(**) the ‘h’ was lost during the Algeciras Conference when it rolled under a table at the end of the room and was too much trouble to salvage.
Reference: The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune, Richard Kluger.
Reference: The Lure Of The Integers, Joe Roberts.
Reference: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Lutz D Schmadel.
| Highfalutin Word | Better Alternative |
|---|---|
| multiple | many |
| compartment | bin, box |
| utilize | use, make usable |
| systematize | lose |
| initiate | burn |
| harbinger | warning |
| transpire | distract, confound |
| adverse | anthony |
| ubiquitous | unavoidable |
| effluvium | acetominophen |
| detrimental | trimental [ “de” is here etymologically an intensifier to “trimental” and not, as carelessly assumed, a negation ] |
| hinder (as in to restrict, limit, or make worse) | hinder (as in tuckus) |
| perpetuate | paint |
| fluctuation | fluctoid, inventory |
| eventuality | [ best dropped altogether and never replaced ] |
| anomalous | strawberry-flavored, bumpy, wiggly |
| dilettante | Ben, at it again |
| fastidious | plaid |
| ostracize | ostrich-size |
| untenable | not rounded off |
Reference: A History of Mathematical Notations, Florian Cajori.
Not included: Arthur Christmas, because we have it on DVD but our DVD player just broke. Also not included: Robert Rossellini’s 1971 Blaise Pascal because that’s really not a Christmasy movie, right?
Reference: Wind Tunnels of NASA, Donald D Baals, William R Corliss.
In comparison to that of 2014.
| Day | Status |
|---|---|
| December 16 | Refusing to read any more essays that want you to have an opinion on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. |
| December 18 | Trying to insist the problem is they just don’t write good Christmas songs anymore and it’s not that you imprinted on the songs of your childhood and aren’t taking in new ones. |
| December 19 | Minor-key acoustic cover of “Wonderful Christmastime” makes you exit for the kitchen, open the freezer door, stick your head in, and scream into a bag of frozen peas-and-corn. |
| December 20 | Wishing you still had the emotional baseline that allowed you to be genuinely upset about “Santa Baby”. |
| December 21 | Karaoke night has a group that starts out singing “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” but ends up making a fair fraction of the bar actually weepy. |
| December 22 | Entire afternoon spent reading the lyrics to Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Jingle-o The Brownie” and pondering dumb mysteries like why Jingle-o has such a broad and, honestly, unfocused portfolio |
| December 23 | Attempt to fuse an argument about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to the question of whether pigs-in-blankets count as sandwiches somehow backfires and gets you stuck among people trying so hard to insist that Back To The Future II is somehow a “Christmas Movie” that you can’t tell exactly where the put-on is. You scream into a bag of frozen peas-and-corn-and-carrots, the extra carrots doing much to absorb the sonic blast. |
| December 25 | Watch about 65 minutes of the movie Auntie Mame before working out that oh, the version with songs in it is just called Mame and it stars different people, it’s not just that they did some weird and very wrong edit that missed out on songs like “We Need A Little Christmas”. |
| December 27 | Entire day lost to trying to convince people you heard a song titled “Captain Santa Claus And His Reindeer Space Patrol”. You are imagining things. |
| January 3 | Hey, they snubbed “Father Christmas” again, didn’t they? Ray Davies is not going to be happy. |
Reference: A History Of Poland, Oscar Halecki.
| Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials | Questions Raised |
|---|---|
| Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer | 14 |
| Frosty the Snowman | 8 |
| Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town | 4 |
| The Year Without A Santa Claus | 18 |
| Rudolph’s Shiny New Year | 34 |
| The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow | 4 |
| The Life And Adventures Of Santa Claus | 3 |
| Jack Frost | N/A [ No one has settled the question of whether it is a Christmas special ] |
| Frosty’s Winter Wonderland | 64 |
| Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July | 7 |
| Pinocchio’s Christmas | 11 |
| The Little Drummer Boy, Book II | 3 |
| Nestor, The long-Eared Christmas Donkey | 5 |
| `Twas The Night Before Christmas | 20 |
| The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold | 8 |
| Cricket On The Hearth | 4 |
| The Little Drummer Boy, Book I | 5 |
| The Stingiest Man In Town | 15 |
| Santa, Baby! | 6 |
Reference: Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race, David Scott, Alexei Leonov, Christine Toomey.
Not listed: I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas because no matter how hard you try it’s not getting out of your head.
Reference: Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History, Giles Milton.
Reference: Skyscraper: The Search for an American Style, 1891-1941, Roger Shepherd.
OK, but the “Mid-No-Way” is worth a chuckle at least the first time you hear it.
Reference: Functional Analysis: A Short Course, Edward W Packel.
Reference: A Guide to Seabirds on the Ocean Routes, Gerald Tuck.
For those who aren’t spelling in French today.
Reference: Jerseyana: The Underside of New Jersey History. Marc Mappen.
Reference: Under The Black Flag: Exploits of the Most Notorious Pirates. Don C Seitz.
| Day | Comic Strip I’ve Wanted To Punch Harder Than I’ve Wanted To Punch Anything Else In My Life Today |
|---|---|
| Sunday | Funky Winkerbean |
| Monday | Luann |
| Tuesday | Funky Winkerbean |
| Wednesday | Luann |
| Thursday | Mary Worth |
| Friday | Mary Worth |
| Saturday | Mary Worth [1] |
[1] With the footnote that if you did not know the context then Saturday’s Mary Worth would be hilarious. Any comic strip where someone barks out “Bah!” is 90% of the way to hilarious. But trust me. In context? You’re going to want to punch this comic strip harder than you’ve wanted to punch anything in your life. Promise.
Reference: The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space (Studies in Military and Strategic History), Rip Bulkeley.
Reference: Art of the Carousel, Charlotte Dinger.
This is a special Statistics post, commemorating the event of Another Blog, Meanwhile finally reaching its 100,000th page view, sometime during the 6th of October, 2018!
I had hoped people would enjoy getting to look back at how the number of page views has grown, over time, until it’s finally reached a number literally higher than it has ever reached before.
My thanks as ever to all the readers who looked at one or more of my pages, concluded that this was a strange lot of talk about mid-19th-century cabinet secretaries, and then went on to some other, popular blog.
Reference: Lilo and Stitch: Collected Stories from the Film’s Creators, Editor H Clark Wakabayashi.
Time again for my monthly review of how many people come around this blog, and what they seem to be coming for. I’m not sure what I expected. A decline, I suppose. I always feel like I’m fighting a battle against popularity. But now that Jim Scancarelli is back and producing new Gasoline Alley comics, there’s no reason for people to come around trying to understand what’s going on with the comic. People are curious about Alley Oop, but not as intently. People might come to miss Hazel and Henry, but … like … really? And Henry hasn’t quite stopped running yet. Anyway, here’s the big picture and it’s about as I expected:
So I didn’t earn another two hundred or so page views last month. 2,644 views in September, down from 2,848 in August and 2,984 in July. Lost nearly two hundred unique visitors, too. 1,436 visitors in September, down from 1,619 in August and 1,569 in July. I had expected that going from cartoons — in the Betty Boop and Popeye two-reelers — to half-hour-long radio — the Stan Freberg Show — would hurt readership. A half-hour densely-written radio show seems harder to skim than a cartoon short. But there’s evidence I’m wrong about that, too.
For all that I’ve got fewer readers, they’re staying involved, at least per capita. 174 things were liked around here in September. That’s basically the same number as were liked every month going back to April. It’s March since there was last a like-total outside the 165-to-180 range. There were 50 comments total in September, up from August’s 39 and July’s 36. It’s nice to have any month where there’s more than one and a half comments per day, anyway.
OK. So which of the comic strip explanation posts were most popular in September?
I’m really happy people are finding that Phantom Weekdays update, since for once they’re finding the most current update. And stuff is happening pretty fast and big right now.
My schedule — subject to change to respect breaking news — for comics updates in October is:
My most popular non-comic-strip thing was the recap of The Stan Freberg Show‘s second episode. The first episode was rather popular too. I’m wondering if I’m filling one of those gaps in Internet Knowledge by providing an episode guide for these. My most popular long-form piece was Yes, I Am Aware Of The Historical Irony. This makes sense. What’s more universally communicable than me geeking out over some tiny bit of local history?
In August there were 60 countries sending me any readers at all. 16 of them were single-reader countries. How does this compare to September?
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 2,039 |
| Canada | 80 |
| India | 74 |
| Australia | 71 |
| United Kingdom | 58 |
| Italy | 34 |
| Germany | 22 |
| European Union | 19 |
| Romania | 18 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 14 |
| Philippines | 14 |
| Singapore | 14 |
| Norway | 13 |
| Brazil | 12 |
| Austria | 11 |
| Malaysia | 10 |
| Spain | 10 |
| France | 9 |
| Japan | 9 |
| Sweden | 9 |
| Netherlands | 8 |
| Mexico | 7 |
| South Africa | 7 |
| Russia | 6 |
| South Korea | 6 |
| Czech Republic | 5 |
| Egypt | 5 |
| Croatia | 4 |
| Denmark | 4 |
| Indonesia | 4 |
| Uruguay | 4 |
| Switzerland | 3 |
| Taiwan | 3 |
| Belgium | 2 |
| Finland | 2 |
| Greece | 2 |
| Jamaica | 2 |
| Peru | 2 |
| Qatar | 2 |
| Saudi Arabia | 2 |
| Sri Lanka | 2 |
| Thailand | 2 |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 2 |
| United Arab Emirates | 2 |
| Bangladesh | 1 |
| Belize | 1 |
| Bulgaria | 1 |
| Chile | 1 |
| Colombia | 1 (*) |
| Fiji | 1 |
| Honduras | 1 |
| Iceland | 1 |
| Iraq | 1 |
| Israel | 1 |
| Kenya | 1 |
| Kuwait | 1 |
| Macedonia | 1 |
| New Zealand | 1 (*) |
| Poland | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 (*) |
Once again 60 countries sent me readers. Yes, I double-checked that I didn’t look at the wrong month’s data. 16 of them were single-reader countries. Yes, I checked again that I was looking at the correct month. Colombia, New Zealand, and Turkey were the only single-reader countries two months in a row. See? I have to be looking at the correct month. And yeah, 2,039 readers from the United States. Yes, I checked that I didn’t hit the Chuckletrousers number. Still weird. Looking at month-to-month totals it seems like half my readership decline was just people in India and Canada not coming around. Maybe I need to comment more about Australian politics to get them back?
October started with my blog having reached 99,519 viewers, from 54,713 unique visitors. Yes, I’m excited by the idea of reaching 100,000 viewers too. When I do reach that I can start the countdown to the Fibonacci number of viewers, 112358. Won’t that be exciting? It will too.
As of the start of October I’ve posted 273 things on this blog for 2018. There’ve been 177,181 words published total. That’s 18,197 total words published over the month, down from August’s 20,725. I’m averaging 641 words per post this year, down from 654 at the start of the month. There’ve been 641 comments total, for an average 2.3 comments per post this year. That’s the same average as at the start of September. There’ve been 1,671 total likes this year so far. That’s an average of 6.1 likes per posting, down from the start of September’s 6.2.
You can follow Another Blog, Meanwhile by RSS, using whatever reading tool you like. If you’d rather put it in your WordPress Reader, use the button that says something about adding the blog to your reader. It should be at the upper right corner of the page. You can find me as @nebusj on Twitter. All my postings should be announced there as they happen. Thanks for reading.
Huh.
(Looks again.)
Huh.
(Goes outside, breathes the fresh air some. Comes back in and looks again to see what it looks like.)
Huh
(Rubs his head, walks over to see if there’s some engagingly crazypants movie on Turner Classic Movies. And then comes right back to see this all again.)
Really would have expected these lines to have crossed again years ago, you know? Anyway. Huh, I say, and I stand by that.
Reference: Safer C: Developing Software for High-Integrity and Safety-Critical Systems. Les Hatton.
Really looking forward to next week, gotta tell you.
(This past week, Mopey Pete and Boy Lisa were told by their boss at the comics company that they needed a new flagship character. Mopey Pete’s girlfriend who inexplicably hasn’t shoved him over a cliff yet suggested “Atomic Ape” and the boss loved it. Then since the boss figured Atomic Ape needed a sidekick, she suggested “Charger Chimp” and the boss loved it too. Then Mopey Pete spent half the week yelling at his alleged girlfriend about how they were trying to do SERIOUS stuff here and he always hated kid sidekick characters and I guess somehow a chimpanzee has to be an annoying kid sidekick? Anyway, his alleged girlfriend was gone from the strip Saturday and if she has any sense, she’s put in for a transfer to some three-generations-and-a-dog strip like Ben or One Big Happy where they avoid focusing on the hateful characters quite so much.)
Reference: The Frozen-Water Trade, Gavin Weightman.
| Month | Pies Cooling On Windowsills In Henry This Month |
|---|---|
| September 2017 | 0 |
| October 2017 | 0 |
| November 2017 | 0 |
| December 2017 | 0 |
| January 2018 | 0 |
| February 2018 | 0 |
| March 2018 | 0 |
| April 2018 | 0 |
| May 2018 | 0 |
| June 2018 | 0 |
| July 2018 | 0 |
| August 2018 | 0 |
| September (through the 15th) 2018 | 0 |
Not counted: two instances of pies shown on display in the window fronts of bakeries. My reasons for this are that pies are appropriate items to have on display in the window fronts of bakeries, even in real life; that said windows are not shown open and so the pies cannot be considered even loosely to be on a sill; and that there is no way to know the temperature of said pies on display and therefore whether to ascertain whether they are cooling relative to the general decline of the universe.
I know, I’m shocked too. And you know what else is shocking?
Doing this has lead me to discover that the Henry that got me all worked up this Monday, the 10th, they also ran the 19th of September, 2017, just about one year ago. And the strip has been running the strips from just about one year ago a while now and I only just noticed. They’ve done a little recoloring, like changing the flowers on the teacher’s desk, but that’s all.
Reference: Henry II: The Vanquished King, John Tate Appleby.
Reference: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W Tuchman.
Not a thing. Nothing at all. Yeah, sorry folks, this one caught me by surprise. Shall pass on word if I get any, but I guess we’ll see what gets printed Monday and whether Olivia Jaimes takes over the strip or something. When I have more I’ll post it at this link.
It’s bizarre that they would have introduced M T Mentis as this major new character if they were only going to use him for two stories. Also that if they expected a farewell that they’d go out on a story quite as mundane as Wizer and Alley Oop getting confounded by Alexa and having pizza. (I’ll get around to that shortly.) But I hadn’t even heard rumors of the strip ending, or of the Benders considering retirement, before this.
