Tag Archives: time travel

by | July 10, 2019 · 10:30 pm

Hammett Up, Cliff

Today’s strip gets a “time travel” tag and a “retcon” tag, because both of those things appear to be happening!

This is lifted wholesale from the Fatty Arbuckle case, by the way. Dashiell Hammett actually was a Pinkerton man in the late 1910s and early 1920s and he did claim to be a part of the Pinkerton team hired by Arbuckle’s defense attorneys, though some historians doubt his involvement was significant if it even happened at all.

How this squares with the timeline of silent film star 1940s icon Butter Brickle Brinkel’s trial is unclear… but all timelines in the Batiukverse are about as clear as an oil spill.

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by | August 5, 2015 · 10:30 pm

Pa-Loop-aville

Today’s strip brings up many Funkyverse Altering Questions (FAQ), which I will attempt to answer below.

So Young Crazy apparently lost/water-damaged the smartphone, is this TB’s cheap way of maintaining Act III’s status quo?
Yes. More convenient than a Neal Rubin Gil Thorp plot conclusion, isn’t it?

Shouldn’t I be asking the questions, not you?
Uh…

Does that badly taped sign in panel 1 say “Smew Reunion”?
Probably.

Is Les doing his trademark waddling off underneath the Smew Reunion sign?
Definitely.

Is that Donna, Holly, or Mary Sue looking over Crazy’s shoulder?
Good question.

Which words coming through the time phone in panel 2 are onomatopoeias and which are things Young Crazy is actually saying?
Judging by the lettering, “splash” is an onomatopoeia while Young Crazy is speaking “ooops” and “pa-loop”, both popular vernacular in 1978.

What hath Jobs (and Woz) wrought?
An immeasurable number of fictional computers made by parody companies named after produce (and at least one real-life example). “Pineapple” falls somewhere between Kumquat and Banana on the scale of bad to thoroughly terrible Apple parodies.

Shouldn’t Crazy have specifically told his younger self to buy Pineapple stock in 1996 or 1997?
Yes he should have, but because of his lack of specificity we were spared references to McHale Swindler and Bil Spamelio, which is a plus.

Into what liquid did Young Crazy accidentally drop the smartphone?
Search me… Maybe the Time Pool, though none of the gang looked wet after passing through it.

What did Crazy tell his younger self to do with the smartphone before buying Pineapple stock?
He, uh… Oh.
No.
Nononononono.
Sorry, FAQ over. I need to take a shower, followed by another shower.

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by | August 4, 2015 · 10:30 pm

Roaming Charge of the White Decayed

Today’s strip indicates that some time about a year ago TB finally got around to seeing the closing scene of Disney’s 2007 hit Enchanted.

One could argue that Milton Berle stole jokes too, so who are we to judge. One could more successfully argue that Berle could deliver a stolen joke well. I could argue that Crazy’s square end tie looks stupid, and so I will.

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by | August 3, 2015 · 10:30 pm

Violating the Time Directive

Ah, so today’s strip clarifies that Young Crazy didn’t steal the smartphone, Old Crazy (soon to be called “Crazy Prime”) gave it to him in hopes that he will use it to alter the future reality. This, of course, will lead to an homage to the legendary Family Matters episode “Father Time”, in which Carl and Steve go back in time and give a past Carl stock tips that lead to present Carl becoming fabulously wealthy but childless. Present Carl finds that he was much happier in his original reality and returns to the past with Steve to… Ha, sorry, the thought of there being an alternate reality in which a Westview resident is less happy than the present one is not even theoretically possible.

I was going to remark further on the fact that Old Crazy is willing to alter the present reality in order to enrich himself, but not willing to do so in order to possibly prolong Lisa’s life, but I know we have commenters here who are better suited for that job.

Meanwhile, Cindy and Bull exit stage orchestra pit, and Bull is just done with this time pool business. I think this strip’s readers are with him.

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by | August 2, 2015 · 10:30 pm

Light at the end of the Time Pool?

billytheskink here, occupying the SOSF time share for a couple weeks. I’ve just come back from a weekend of moving everything out of my parent’s house of 30 years in 100 degree heat, driving it 4 hours away, and moving it all again in 97 degree heat. I mention this because it was considerably more enjoyable than the last half of last week’s strips, now that I’ve got around to reading them.

So today’s strip confirms that the time pool works both ways, and that everyone’s internal organs and white Keds (and Holly’s elephant Q-Tip) apparently survived the trip intact.

Who do you need to convince, Cindy? This is literally everyone you interact with, plus some people that you don’t. Is convincing Barry Balderman and Principal Fairgood that you talked to your future self about the definition of “happy” really all that critical?

I do look forward to Act II Apple Annie Crazy’s attempts to convince the stagflation-weary populace that time travel is possible by showing them a stolen battery-operated device that he should have idea how to use and no way to charge.

If it is just so important, you know how the gang could really convince people that there is a “time pool” in Crazy’s locker? They could show it to other people… kinda like how Crazy convinced the rest of them in the first place. Nah…

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by | August 1, 2015 · 10:00 pm

The War of the Time Pools

No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that Westview was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Les’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as pizza mongers busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Yet across the gulf of the internet, minds that are to Les’s mind as his is to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded today’s strip with beady eyes, and slowly and surely picked at nits.

Here ends my snark stint,
So off will I slink.
Coming up next:
Billy the Skink!

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by | July 28, 2015 · 10:00 pm

In which it turns out to be about Les

Oh, the plot turned out to be about how it affects Les? Huh.

The artwork today isn’t bad, and the facial expressions have been mercifully smirkless of late. We see Young Les as he discovers Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe on the in memoriam table. He thumbs through the volume, a look of wonder and bemusement on his teenage features. And then—

Hey, wait a minute! Les never wrote this book; he read it. It is no heartbreaking work of staggering genius. No! It’s a temporal loop, a quantum fluctuation that has existed since the Big Bang itself, a flaw in the matrix, an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. Or something.

Still, it doesn’t explain how this innocent boy became an insufferable pedant. It’ll take more than quantum time paradoxes to explain that.

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