Sooo...It happened with earlier tech! September 8, 2019 10:48 PM   Subscribe

I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their copy machine, or why.

9-9-90, For Better or For Worse reprinted with commentary 9-8-19
posted by brujita to MetaFilter-Related at 10:48 PM (24 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite

Fairly sure I read that strip in 1990. I like Johnston's story about looking for people with suspiciously-scratched arms.
posted by asperity at 8:38 AM on September 9, 2019


Throwback Monday!

Metafilter: People are up in arms over a gay character in the comic strip "For Better Or For Worse." September 6, 2001
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:51 AM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


Woah, that 2001 thread! The example of a strip with a "character that just happens to be gay" is Space Moose. Of all things.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:50 AM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: People are up in arms over a gay character in the comic strip "For Better Or For Worse." September 6, 2001

The links in that FPP appear long dead. But, weird because Lynn Johnston introduced the gay character, Lawrence, way before that, in 1993. I was in high school in a massively homophobic smaller city (it was technically a city, barely) in Ontario and I specifically remember the shitstorm over it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:06 PM on September 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


I'm curious if rude photocopying was ever a real thing, or just a thing people talked about on television and in newspapers. I was exactly the right age to take home several discarded drum mimeograph machines that my elementary school was throwing away when they got new photocopiers. (I then discovered that you needed special ink and plastic sheets to make them work, which at the time were way too expensive. So I left them out in the rain and they were ruined without ever being used.) By the time I actually worked in a place with a photocopier, I think the novelty had worn off. I've never seen this sort of thing in the wild. Did photocopying one's buttocks actually happen outside of sitcoms?

My favorite prank that I've never tried is to put a paperclip on a blank piece of paper, photocopy 200 editions, and then place the stack in the paper tray. If you want to be more devious, make one copy and mix it in with 8 blank pages first. I have no idea where I first heard the idea.
posted by eotvos at 12:21 PM on September 9, 2019


Anytime someone shares anything from For Better Or For Worse, I think about Farley's story-arc and then I get all teary eyed. Damnit.
posted by Fizz at 12:30 PM on September 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


> Did photocopying one's buttocks actually happen outside of sitcoms?

omg yes
posted by ericost at 1:14 PM on September 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


the plotline of the 2001 strips was Deanna's mother throwing a fit over lawrence being Michael's best man; johnston caved and wrote an alternative storyline about it being over the flower arrangements .

I started reading fborfw when the lawrence coming out strips ran and don't remember any uproar when he brought his bf to the grad dance
posted by brujita at 2:07 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


The FPP in roger ackroyd's comment, but with archive.org's instances of the links:

> People are up in arms over a gay character in the comic strip "For Better Or For Worse." It's okay to have sex and violence splashed everywhere, but people are taking offense at having a gay character in a comic strip? What the hell? (Story originally referenced in Jim Romensko's Media News.)

(Okay, the Romensko link is a kludge. Archive.org wasn't archiving it daily until September 14, so any commentary Romensko had is lost.)
posted by ardgedee at 2:37 PM on September 9, 2019


Did photocopying one's buttocks actually happen outside of sitcoms?

OF COURSE.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 2:38 PM on September 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


Yes. Yes indeed. Tits were also photocopied.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:06 PM on September 9, 2019


You name the body part, and someone would photocopy it, yes.
posted by gudrun at 5:26 PM on September 9, 2019 [5 favorites]




From the 2001 thread:
OK, Jason: thanks. You've lost me.
And welcome to MeFi from us old-timers!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 15:33 on September 6, 2001 [+] [!]


Miguel, you have some explaining to do regarding your definition of old-timers. Perhaps it has evolved in the post-9/11 era. Perhaps not.
posted by jjray at 7:34 PM on September 9, 2019


Anytime someone shares anything from For Better Or For Worse, I think about Farley's story-arc and then I get all teary eyed.

One of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories about Farley's passing was: Charles Schulz and Lynn Johnston were friends, and when Schulz heard that Johnston was going to write about Farley's death, he was so dead-set against it that he threatened to do his own story arc where Snoopy got hit by a car so it would steal her thunder. ....He didn't do that, of course, but it amuses me that Schulz thought that way.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 AM on September 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


Perhaps I'm a sociopath, but I want to see the Peanuts characters die horribly. What a missed opportunity.
posted by eotvos at 7:31 AM on September 10, 2019


Eotvos, you may appreciate this play.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:03 AM on September 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


(Also Snoopy would have eventually recovered in Schulz's plan.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:03 AM on September 10, 2019


Schulz often hinted at his personal life through Snoopy. When his studio burned down, Snoopy's doghouse burned down. When he reluctantly gave up an affair, Snoopy grieved miserably for days over a girl beagle.
posted by Melismata at 8:11 AM on September 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Did photocopying one's buttocks actually happen outside of sitcoms?

Yes. Several years after I gave her a copy of mine (there was alcohol involved, she dared me, whatever) an ex- still had it framed and mounted on the wall of her dining room. Many guests and visitors have seen my photocopied buttocks over the years, including several politicians (she lives in Islington and now moves in those circles). They might still be there now, looking down on the blancmange as it is served to diners...
posted by Wordshore at 12:58 PM on September 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


Linus has the blanket
Schroeder has the magic clavier.
Snoopy has aircraft
Franklin is the brains
Pigpen has dust obfusica.
Lucy's got the nickel jar of Carl Jung.
Peppermint Patty has the confidence job.
Marcie is I.T.
Rerun is overlook
Shermie is a thaumaturgist.
Woodstock is really a microraptor.

Charlie Brown has transport powers with-in the inner monolog.
posted by clavdivs at 2:00 PM on September 10, 2019


Wordshore your life and times delights me always.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:10 PM on September 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


You know, years ago, we didn’t have photocopiers. We had to make an oil painting of each others’ buttocks...
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 5:50 PM on September 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


I'm curious if rude photocopying was ever a real thing, or just a thing people talked about on television and in newspapers.

There's almost nothing that happens on the internet, in terms of visuals, that didn't happen first on copy machines. And mimeographs before that. And in print shops and newspaper offices before that - wherever people had the means of visual reproduction and the time to fuck around. I used to be pretty interested in the whole phenomenon of Xeroxlore (faxlore, etc.), and there is (was, now) a long tradition of newspaper/magazine paste-up hijincks.
posted by Miko at 6:19 PM on September 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


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