This panel likely references lyrics from the doowop song [“Who Wrote The Book Of Love”] by the Monotones from 1957 (https://youtu.be/bn3yQtenLbM)

It was a trope for cowboys in Hollywood movies sing around campfires at night to amuse each other along the forlorn cattle trails, but this would be an unexpected song for an oldtimer to sing.

Did you ever wonder where the stereotype, and negative connotation, of a student giving the teacher an apple came from?

https://www.motal.org/apple-for-the-teacher.html

https://www.childrensmuseum.org/stories/why-teachers-like-apples

AI knows how they interacted with humans…

Reference to the rumor that Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 by knocking over a lantern.

That depends on how often they came back to collect samples…

Nobody said that it was cow leather…

It’s always the logs that get me…

Who reads the TOUs anyway?

I didn’t know about the Dinah thing, and the extant verse, TIL and thanks!

I thought I’d heard the name Dinah before, but I couldn’t place it.

This references “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah” an American folk song, here sung by The Barry Sisters with the Nat King Cole Trio

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=jL1Tb8lO_b8

Lyrics: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858980331/

Hopefully they actually detonated the warhead inside that thing instead of throwing it in some random direction.

Also, nice to see those mines, likely left over from a demining operation, be useful for something.

The process of swallowing large prey can take several hours.

A zookeeper feeds a reticulated python a whole thawed pig.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=OaeHnwnlDqw

“Da plane!” is from the opening to Fantasy Island, a 70s American TV show

Here’s the opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKtl_Q-kcWM

The Moral Majority was a Reagan-era Christian-right wing organization headed by Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. who perfected the Christian right-wing politics of fear still in use today.

Mikhail Baryshnikov was a world famous ballet dancer who defected from the Soviet Union.

Square dancing is a traditional form of groups of couples dancing following the instructions of the caller who shouts directions

This strip is obviously referencing the lyrics to the classic Fats Domino song “Blueberry Hill”

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=YxZ5iVhQ6iI

But the lyrics go:

I found my thrill
On Blueberry Hill
…

Back when theater admission was the price of a single coin…

But don’t let that distort things, because money was a lot more valuable back then.

According to this https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=1

A USD$1 in 1935 was worth about $23.15 in purchasing power today.

This site says that a quarter, $0.25, was the price of a movie ticket in 1935 https://www.davemanuel.com/whatitcost.php

Let’s say Sluggo is paying a quarter/$0.25 for admission in 1935, that would be around $5.79 today, or $4.36 depending on what metric you believe.

Let’s say Sluggo is a child, and paying child admission to a matinee. That’s currently $13.78 on AMC’s website today.

This strip is obviously done for laughs, but it is based on some serious questions.

Never mind language, timescale, or even being able to be in the same room without poisoning each other:

How would we communicate with intelligent alien life if their emotions and expressions are completely different than ours?

Some people were telling me about this event at some larger scifi conventions to simulate encounters:

One group would go off by themselves and invent an alien race, and the other group would be the human team to figure out how to communicate with the invented aliens.

The audiences showed up for the almost-guaranteed deaths.

This references the phenomenon that some stations that were part of PBS, the US public television network, started airing ads for their corporate sponsors, called “enhanced underwriting” This was in response to large increases in corporate revenues to those stations.

NY Times article from 1985 free gift article link

This was likely in response to Reagan-initiated -20% funding cuts to PBS’ parent body, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), starting in 1983. https://cpb.org/appropriation/history

FUCK REAGAN in his grave.