No.
No.
No.
Uh, gee wow. That sure is weird. It’s so unique for similar businesses to have similar names. Thanks for sharing that exciting tidbit.
Could you share your theory about the president not being born in America? I don’t think we’re heard that one before.
Editor’s note:
You can’t have all your characters smoking in every office, elevator, theater, plane, store, restaurant, etc. in 1975 and by 1990. It’s unrealistic.
So, what, every car made must have a cigarette lighter built in and then suddenly NO cars have them?
To be fair if you went back in time to 1988 and told people the president’s name would be Barack Hussein Obama they probably would have said WTF?!
Note that this is very much a minority view held by very few (if any) professional academics specializing in Ancient Egypt.
the Law, which is a set or rules and guidelines to protect people regardless of money, wealth and power; is so convoluted that it requires specialists who have devoted their lives to it to make sense of, so that only those with money, wealth and power can take full advantage of it.
the Police, whose job is to enforce the Law, is able to flaunt it and get away relatively scot-free.
Against all expectations, levitation is impossible except in a limited way involving magnets.
“Back To The Future” already did this bit, when Marty went to see Doc Brown in 1955:
“Who’s president in 1985?”
“Ronald Reagan!”
“Ronald Reagan!? The actor!?!?”
The story of Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Rather than using ethanol blends to combat engine “knock”, this guy figures out that adding lead to fuel will give the desired result. Even after dozens die from lead poisoning at refineries, and he gets poisoned enough to seek treatment, he continues to advocate for it. Atmospheric lead concentrations soar.
For Act II, he switches divisions at GM and invents Freon. The ozone layer (eventually) crumbles.
Act III, debilitated by polio, he invents a contraption of ropes and pulleys to get himself out of bed. He gets entangled by the system and suffocates to death.
Not exactly the same thing.
Say it’s 1992 and somebody tells you that in 20 years the two major party nominees would be a Mormon and a black guy.
“Yeah, right, that’s gonna happen.”
The USA joins The Great War, over the Zimmermann Telegram. Even without the Zimmermann telegram, the Mexicans could have inferred by themselves that:
A – If Mexico sided with Germany, and
B – If the USA entered the war on the side of the Allies, and
C – If Germany won the war, then
D – Territory captured by the USA from Mexico would have been ceded back to Mexico as a spoil
Furthermore, if Mexico has sided with the Allies and the USA with Germany, and if the Allies had won, guess what would have happened? The Southwestern USA would have been restored to the victorious Mexicans.
The Zimmermann telegram merely underlined the obvious, but happened to state it from the perspective of German optimism. For all we know, a British telegram reminded Mexico of the reverse scenario but Wilson just did not happen to have that intercepted message.
Er… I’m not following this. A German “victory” would have at most meant France and Britain agree to peace with Germany and abandon Russia. And if the USA joined the Allies, the most a German victory would have meant was that the USA couldn’t help France and Britain win. There is no conceivable way that an American “defeat” would have meant being forced to cede territory. Additionally, Mexico was in a civil war at the time, with the central government having no effective control over vast swaths of territory controlled by revolutionaries/bandits like Zapata.
Yeah, that’s up there with “Aliens built the pyramids.” The legitimate debate over the age of the Sphinx is pretty much limited to, “2500 BC versus 2600 BC.”
To be fair, quantum physics plot holes are really tiny.
Sorry, I must have gotten sucked into some bad articles on it back in the 90’s. They seemed convincing at the time but maybe I should have been more skeptical.
He was born in Hawaii which had only been a state for 3 years and therefore wasn’t of legal state age something something BENGHAZI!
Picture this…a cartoonist, a typical west coast liberal in most respects and unlucky in most of his early life, goes on to produce three major works:
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An astoundingly cynical, bitter, scathing black-and-white comic, occupying a large square area but otherwise following no consistent format, employing a lot of strong language and outright profanity. Featuring, among other things, a shameless, eternally dysfunctional homosexual couple, rambling diatribes against everything from workplace politics to dating, and blistering indictments of no fewer than three Presidents. Groundbreaking, hailed as a masterpiece, tons of rave reviews, huge, huge hit among the Bloom County crowd, and is THE benchmark for alternative comics for an entire generation.
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A cheap, crude, film school-quality cartoon used as throwaway filler in an obscure cable sketch show, featuring characters the cartoonist literally drew up in 15 minutes who have paper-thin personalities on the show and barely even look human, eventually developed into its own show and pushed as a cheap slam against established, successful sitcoms.
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A second cartoon series, this one carefully planned from the ground up and backed by a seasoned staff of writers, artists, voice actors, and producers, and with characters far more in line with successful mainstream American shows. The dumb but good-hearted kid, the jerk who gets away with everything, the high-strung straight woman, the weirdo scientist, the perky Asian. It’s tight, focused, and loaded from day one, all but guaranteed to be a monumental success. Develops a massive, fanatical cult following almost immediately.
So what happens?
#1, though loved by its alt-comic fans, never gains any mainstream recognition. The decline of print media all but kills it, and it fails to catch on with a new generation of readers (most of whom don’t even know it exists).
#2 becomes a national icon. The cartoon itself has gone well past 20 seasons with no end in sight, and the related merchandise…which include a theme park ride, replica convenience stores, video games on every console from the NES onward, two pinball machines, and dozens of books, is absolutely ubiquitous.
#3 struggles to find its footing, gets shuffled around, and has annoying schedule gaps, and despite its cult following never becomes all that big. Eventually peters out to little fanfare.
Berke Breathed only wishes his career arc was this outlandish. 
What comic are you talking about?
Took me a minute, but I’m pretty sure DKW meant Life in Hell. I don’t remember there being much in the way of strong language or profanity in it when I was reading it, though.
Ah, okay. I enjoyed Life in Hell—never saw it in a newspaper; my cousin had the collections—but I can see how it wouldn’t get mainstream popularity. So far as satire is concerned, Simpsons became much better at it.