The title of this installment has nothing to do with anything. My love and I just got to talking about Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and I learned moments ago that they’re still being made. I mean, the title of the series changed from “Condensed Books” to “Select Editions” in 1997, but they’re still going on, as far as anyone can tell. This got us wondering things like how they actually do the abridging. And got me wondering whether any abridged book ended up being better than the original. So I have reasons for only getting partway through last week’s mathematically-themed comics. I don’t say they’re good reasons.
Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater for the 13th is the Roman Numerals joke for the week, the first one of those in like five days. Also didn’t know that there were still sidewalk theaters that still showed porn movies. I thought they had all been renovated into either respectable neighborhood-revitalization projects that still sometimes show Star Wars films or else become incubator space for startup investment groups.
Corey Pandolph’s The Elderberries for the 13th is a joke about learning fractions. They don’t see to be having much fun thinking about them. Fair enough, I suppose. Once you’ve got the hang of basic arithmetic here come fractions to follow rules for addition and subtraction that are suddenly way more complicated. Multiplication isn’t harder, at least, although it is longer. Same with division. Without a clear idea why this is anything you want to do, yeah, it seems to be unmotivated complicating of stuff.
Dave Whamond’s Reality Check for the 13th is trying to pick a fight with me. I’m not taking the bait. Although by saying ‘likelihood’ the question seems to be setting up a probability question. Those tend to use ‘p’ and ‘q’ as a generic variable name, rather than ‘x’. I bet you imagine that ‘p’ gets used to represent a possibly-unknown ‘probability’ because, oh yeah, first letter. Well … so far as I know that’s why. I’m away from my references right now so I can’t look them over and find no quite satisfactory answer. But that sure seems like it. ‘q’ gets called in if you need a second probability, and don’t want to deal with subscripts, then it’s a nice convenient letter close to ‘p’ in the alphabet. Again, so far as I know.
Thaves’s Frank and Ernest for the 13th is the anthropomorphic-numerals joke for the week.
You can see this and more essays about comic strips by following this link. Other essays describing The Argyle Sweater are at this link. Essays inspired by The Elderberries are at this link. Essays about Reality Check are at this link. And times when I’ve talked about Frank and Ernest you should find at this link.. I can’t be perfectly sure about The Argyle Sweater and The Elderberries because I keep forgetting whether I had decided to include the ‘the’ of their titles as part of their tags. I keep figuring I’ll check which one I’ve used more often and then edit tags to make things consistent. And make a little style guide so that I remember. This will never happen.
nebusresearch 
Boy, those first two are downers heading into the school year! Sad but true category.
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Yeah. I suppose the consolation is that pretty much every subject gets the same reputation after school. It seems rare to commiserate with a couple friends about how much gym class gave them a lifelong love for working out. And I will always snicker at Richard Thompson’s character who’s reading some books for her “Introduction to Hatefully Dull Old Literature” course. Probably it’s just my interests that make mathematics seem like it always gets mentioned first.
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Found an 80’s obscure comic you might find interesting — “Rudy” about a chimp that a Vaudvillian trained to talk that reminisces about his Old Hollywood escapades. All I know about it is what I read in the Stripper’s Guide. The character was compared to George Burns.
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I am indeed interested! I’ve got weak spots for vaudeville nostalgia bits and George Burns.
… Also boy, they could make anything a syndicated strip in those days, couldn’t they? How long did they imagine that premise could last?
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I’m not sure how long the strip lasted, but apparently it was long enough to support one reprint book titled “Rudy in Hollywood”
Also, I don’t know if you keep up with the Stripper’s Guide daily, but today(Monday) they feature another obscurity strip you might like from the 20s called both “Dumbunnies” and “In Rabbitboro”. As you might assume it features a cast of rabbits, and in one of the sample strips a character mentions a Flemish Giant lifeguard.
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I haven’t been following the Stripper’s Guide, but I likely should. Thanks for the headsup about the strip. Sounds like it could be a good deal of fun. Flemish Giant lifeguard practically writes the physical comedy by itself.
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