According to Barry Popik, an American etymologist from New York who has been studying language for decades, the Sault is the first place to reference ‘tricks or treats’ in print anywhere in the world.
The citation comes from an edition of The Sault Daily Star on November 1, 1917, which detailed a brief story about local youngsters who were out celebrating Halloween the previous evening.
“Tricks or treats you could hear the gangs call out,” the article read.
Sounds like there was more regional variation early on and things were still in flux when this comic was made. The references I could find to "money or eats" were from the Midwest, so probably a variant that died out in favor of just "trick or treat"
Edward is such a normal name for the Moomin universe. Makes it feel like their equivalent of "weird fantasy name".
Also, we've seen that Moominpapa has some sort of blunderbuss type gun in a previous comic but apparently they need better gun control if Mymble is going around threatening people like that.
It's a mix of Oglaf and one-offs like this. Posting it here since it's a way to support the Oglaf creators and doesn't really have anywhere else to live
I'll probably put some candy out for any kids that come by, but I've never really gotten much foot traffic near me so won't be actively handing out candy. It's also threatening to rain, which will probably discourage making the rounds too.
I took some heat from a few parents about this cartoon, but this is one that remains one of my personal favorites. It's just such a ludicrous situation trying to pull itself off as a serious one.
I wanted to write back to a couple of these people (I never did) and say, now, c'mon: look at this cartoon: First of all, this cartoon "couple" have not hired a witch-like babysitter to watch their kids—they've hired a witch! Secondly, they're not horrified at what's occurred, as we might suspect, but mostly indignant. And lastly, they're especially upset that the witch ate both their kids—as if to suggest one would have been pretty bad, but both is really unacceptable.
It's even more interesting to me that fairy tales themselves, frequently full of violence and scary things, are directed at children—which is mostly condoned. This cartoon, on the other hand, is merely satirizing a common fairy tale them (e.g., "Hansel and Gretel") and directing the humor at adults. Now that's confusing.
Maybe it's just from living in the Midwest, but that seems strange to me. I've certainly met plenty of people that don't speak English natively, but I wouldn't assume that by looks. Where did you have people making that assumption? It might be more of a rural thing?
A friend of mine related a story of how she once brought a boyfriend of hers to her parents' house for dinner. Her father and her boyfriend (Edgar) apparently didn't hit it off real well, and before the evening was over, her father ended up saying to Edgar, "You know what your problem is, don't you? Your problem is you don't have a purpose! Everyone has to have a purpose in life, and you simply haven't found one!"
I have no idea if the real Edgar ever found his purpose or not, but if he did, this is how I imagined it.
Shoutout to https://subvert.fm/, which is still in the works but is promising to be a collectively-owned Bandcamp successor. I get my music from Bandcamp currently because they'll give me bits that I do what I want with in return for money, but since they've been bought out, the clock is ticking on enshittification.
The historical cartoons are picked randomly each day, and this is what was picked. I don't really get what they're doing here either, looks like it's an advertisement for this video of theirs, but it's not really clear from context that there's a video to watch:
Sounds like a hacker koan which have a very similar format:
The venerable master Qc Na was walking with his student, Anton. Hoping to prompt the master into a discussion, Anton said "Master, I have heard that objects are a very good thing - is this true?" Qc Na looked pityingly at his student and replied, "Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's closures."
Chastised, Anton took his leave from his master and returned to his cell, intent on studying closures. He carefully read the entire "Lambda: The Ultimate..." series of papers and its cousins, and implemented a small Scheme interpreter with a closure-based object system. He learned much, and looked forward to informing his master of his progress.
On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master by saying "Master, I have diligently studied the matter, and now understand that objects are truly a poor man's closures." Qc Na responded by hitting Anton with his stick, saying "When will you learn? Closures are a poor man's object."
Thanks for catching that, I'll probably start adding a note to the post that the transcript comes from the site and not something I write/generate myself. Not sure what happened, the transcript is from May 23, 1951:
It's Professor Gilbert- He's come back from the grave to destroy us all!
Actually, it was only prof. Simmons, the lab practical joker who had discovered a technique of rejuvenating dead tissue
Transcript (commentary):
I have absolutely no idea what the little doodle above means or where it came from, but it led to this Far Side. (And now I know where the latter came from, but I still don't know what it means.)
Yeah, I think that's the joke he was going for. Other readings like deflated meaning "emotionally let down" don't really work as well.