this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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The Far Side

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Hello fellow Far Side fans!

About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.

The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side

Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!

Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:

Bloom County [email protected] https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty

Calvin and Hobbes [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes

Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness

Garfield [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/garfield

The Far Side [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.

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[–] AMillionMonkeys 32 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This comic says 1993, the song only goes back to '97. Was this comic inspiration, or were they both inspired by some worm-drum correlation I'm unfamiliar with? Or is it pure coincidence, because that's an oddly specific coincidence.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I also need to know the answers to these questions

[–] sjkhgsi 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Seems like it's just a coincidence? Bird hunt worms by sound so Gary probably just thought "drums are loud"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

No. Gary knows something.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Couldn't tell you how true it is, but this is what a They Might Be Giants Wiki had to say on the origins of the song:

In an interview with Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child, Linnell said that this song's origins can be traced back to the KISS song "Calling Dr. Love", when the two Johns would make up alternate lyrics to it. John Flansburgh also discussed this in a later interview:

Well, for a long, long time we have been riffing on the song "Dr. Love" by the band KISS. And I think just the weirdness of the conceit of that song was kind of rolling around in John Linnell's head. I know a million, billion times we've talked about the song "Dr. Love." It's such an absurd song. So I think "Dr. Love" was kind of the springboard for the idea behind "Dr. Worm."

Couldn't use the quote thing for this or the links would break.

[–] KillerTofu 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

He’s not a real doctor, but he is a real worm, an actual worm.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

One day somebody else besides him will call him by his stage name.

[–] General_Shenanigans 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

People used to believe that when birds were turning their heads while hunting worms that they were listening for them. Just in case you went through life without anybody pointing this out: They’re literally just getting a good look at the ground because most of them have their eyes somewhat on the side of their head.

[–] 200ok 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact: Predators have forward-facing eyes. Prey have side-facing eyes. Worms don't have eyes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Furbys are predators.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The comment is a week old, but I feel this because I only recently figured it out. When I was a little pre-K kid I loved watching robins hunt worms in the yard, and my mom told me that they were listening for worms. It made sense when you're four.

40+ years later I realized that robins have eyes on the sides of their heads and maybe... maybe... there's another explanation that makes more sense. And I only really thought it through because all these years later I was watching robins hunting something that wasn't worms in my own backyard. "huh, I wonder what they're eating back there that's as loud as worms? Oh shit."

[–] RizzRustbolt 3 points 8 months ago

He misunderstood them when they told him he was "playing with fire".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

He died in a horrible gardening accident

[–] ooklamok 0 points 8 months ago

He choked on vomit.