c'mon... [penny-arcade.com]

Ahem. It says 'crap'.

In Response to deerboy (#33020):

What I find interesting is that Phillip is apparently both unripe and crap. This makes me wonder what he would ripen into.

Ah hell. I knew it was too good to be true. I even did google searches!

In Response to jon (#33022):

Anyway, apologies all around for that, I will strive to do better tomorrow.

In Response to jon (#33022):

"When life gives you crap, make crap-onade." -- Mike Grubb, as played by Randy Quaid, The Grubbs, 2002, Fox.

Luckily, the series was cancelled before it aired.

In Response to jon (#33022):

Not really your fault even... the penny arcade search function is broken (or was when i tried to find the link). I had to go through the archives strip by strip to find it.

So they may have beat you to the joke, but at least your website works...

Uh, since when does something need to be original to be awesome? I'm pretty sure that, with 6.5 billion souls alive at the moment (and several thousands of years of civilization), the odds are that no clever turn of phrase is entirely new.

Sure, some have been recorded before others, but really, the sarcastic and/or clever and/or demented-punning mind usually runs in the same circles. Especially with similar social contex.

For instance, I was at a beauty pageant (don't ask) the other day, and the whole thing lent itself (as one would assume) towards being mocked. As a result, the guys to my left and right would be glibbly whispering to me. Twice that evening they both fed me the same joke independant of each other (which I found amusing).

At any rate, I've found that people that dwell on originality over all else tend usually to never get anything started (oh, but that's been done before...) so I doubt it's really that big of an issue here. I just get annoyed if people actually care enough.

I think it's plainly obvious that Jon's not a theif, and frankly, the google-test is what I use to "prove" something I just came up with is "unique enough" to claim as my own for use.

In Response to mcgrue (#33045):

ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn

In Response to mcgrue (#33045):

the odds are that no clever turn of phrase is entirely new.

Of course. For instance, try googling (with quotes) "epileptic auctioneer" or "revelatory elbow". On the other hand, "fortified stapler" is entirely original, and I hereby give Jon permission to use it without attribution.

In Response to mcgrue (#33045):

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.

-- James Stephens

In Response to mkinyon (#33051):

Malo enim bis idem agere, quam semel nihil -- Leibniz

I've been trying to understand your signature tag-line, but i don't know much Latin. I recognize "malo", "enim", and "nihil", but the rest eludes me. There were several ways in which i attempted to retrieve an answer from Doctor Internet, but he really didn't help much (although i did find some other interesting quotes by Leibniz).

So now curiosity compels me to ask, would you please translate that into English for me? Thanks very much.

In Response to Teledildonix (#33073):

T0 ch0053 1n f4c+ +w1c3 +h3 54m3 f4Rm , h0w 4 51n6l3 +1m3 n0+h1n6

In Response to Teledildonix (#33073):

Here is a direct quote from my source [sciencedirect.com]:

Leibniz's scientific credo is to be found on the 16th sheet of his inquiry into sums of series and quadratures [...]:

Malo enim bis idem agere, quam semel nihil.

For I prefer to do the same twice instead of doing nothing once.

It is the bequest of a restless scholar. [1]

InterTran's "to choose in fact twice the same farm", which deerboy so kindly provided [goats.com] for us in 3133t-speak, is perhaps more appropriate to the current Topeka Prime storyline.

[1] E. Knobloch, Beyond Cartesian limits: Leibniz's passage from algebraic to "transcendental" mathematics, Historia Mathematica, 33 (2006), pp. 113-131

In Response to deerboy (#33074):

Thanks. Between the two of you (and your answers) i might actually be even more confused. And the tiny bit of transcendental mathematics touched upon by my Calculus and Linear Algebra professors nearly two decades ago seems to have faded from my memory. So any subtle meaning is probably going completely over my head.

This is what happens if you grow older but don't practise utilizing stuff you've learned. The brain cells apparently atrophy even more quickly than the other bits.

In Response to Teledildonix (#33077):

i might actually be even more confused

Mission accomplished.

In Response to mkinyon (#33076):

I prefer to use a web translator twice instead of not translating it once.

In Response to deerboy (#33082):

Praestat aliud agere quam nihil. -- attributed to Seneca by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1632 edition)

I'm sure there's an earlier precedent, than this, but I have one that predates webcomics.

Anyone ever seen the sitcom Nurses [imdb.com] [1991-1994] on NBC?

Well, there was this one universally unlikeable blond guy named, I can't believe I remember this, Jack. I believe he was a con man or something of the sort -- white collar criminal -- who had inexplicably been assigned full-time community service at a hospital rather than going to jail.

One episode, he waxes philosophical on making the best of his current situation:

Jack: You know, my mother always told me, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Paco*: Jack, I need you to take this** up to [can't remember].
Jack: What are they?
Paco: Well, it's not lemonade.

* I did have to look that name up.
** They were urine samples.

Also, see the greatly under-appreciated Drowning Mona [imdb.com] [2000]:

Chief Wyatt Rash: My mother always used to say, "When life hands you potatoes, make potato salad."
Mona Dearly: Yeah? Well life handed me a pile of shit. What am I supposed to do with that?!
Phil Dearly: Make shit salad?

So, lemons->lemmonade, shit->shit-ad/salad has a long pedigree. I'm guessing it goes back a lot further than 1991 as well.

In Response to jon (#33023):

don't feel bad,
what is that old greek saying?
something about only being 5 origional ideas in the world?