I think I followed a link from another board to the article about “rule of thumb”.
Later, I clicked some link to a SMBD thread where a father (mother?) told of the misfortune of his fifteen-year old son, whose girlfriend had wound up pregnant. I just could not believe the sheer bible-blind hatred the man and his family was met with, right alongside statements of support, and encouragement (memorably from a doper who had herself borne a child at fifteen).
One quote sticks to my memory, something like. “So your saying getting married will ruin these kid’s lives, BUT HAVING SEX WON’T !!?”. As if getting married could somehow make everything better. Idiot.
For some reason I kept coming back. A few months ago I stopped lurking. Case closed.
I picked up The Straight Dope: A Compendium of Human Knowledge in Coliseum Books, when it was on west 57th street in NYC. Stood and laughed SO hard in the aisles.
I was a heavy duty AOL’er back when the Dope had an AOL presence. I saw a banner or ad somewhere on AOL’s sign-in page for The Straight Dope and went a-lookin. Which is how I got to be a 99’er.
DMark, seriously- have you ever written to The Reader, to ask Slug if you can get the original , or at least a good fine quality signed print, of the cartoon that accompanied your query to Cecil ? That’s pretty cool, that you had your questions printed and cooler yet that it earned a cartoon.
Hmm, no - never thought of that, but I doubt they would still have the artwork around - it was probably in 1996 or 1997 or thereabouts that the question was printed with the nice little cartoon artwork. And my question even resonated to a follow up thread a few months later.
From Cecil’s comments about Slug over the years, I think you’re giving Slug a lot more credit for being neat and tidy than you ought to. It’s entirely possible that the drawing is jammed into a drawer along with some old Chicago Bulls Championship Game programs.
Some fellow SF fans moved into the area and we decided to get together. Before the date, I noticed that one of them had written a letter to the local newspaper giving the lyrics to “Louie Louie.” When we met, I joked about how impressive that was. She told me she got them from the book “The Straight Dope.” I bought it and wrecked it reading it over and over.
