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Prepare to Be Thagomized!
A friend of mine passed along this Mental Floss article on Gary Larson’s Far Side. Many of us here are probably Far Side fans. I know I am. It was normal, growing up, to see Far Side clips taped up in practice rooms, on lab doors, and in teachers’ offices. I didn’t know, though, that Larson’s nickname for the spikes on a stegasaurus’s tail, “thagomizer”, is now an acceptable 
paleontology term. I had heard of “shmooing” before, a process named after cartoonist Al Capp‘s shmoos excuse me, shmoon:
[T]he cellular bulge that is produced by a haploid yeast cell as a response to a pheromone from the opposite mating type (either a or α) is referred to as a “shmoo,” because cells that are undergoing mating and present this particular structure resemble the cartoon character.[12] The whole process is known to biologists as “shmooing.” Shmoo[n] are essential; without them, we would have neither bread nor beer.
Too many of my friends diddled about with microbiology for me not to have heard of shmooing. The migration of the thagomizer from The Far Side to reality is new to me, though.
Larson decided to retire in 1995, before The Far Side grew stale. He seems to enjoy an inconspicuous life supporting conservation organizations and playing jazz guitar. He had studied entomology before switching to a communications major in college, and before becoming a cartoonist, he worked for a while at the Humane Society as an animal cruelty investigator in order to pay the bills. Many of us might still be able to relate to the childhood adventures that inspired Larson’s lifelong love for animals, not just love of the “charismatic megafauna,” but also of the little ones, the “ugly” ones, the creepy-crawly ones. Larson’s grandparents…
“lived by a great swamp. Today it would be called a wetland. But it was a textbook swamp. Crystal clear water, sandy bottom. Salamanders everywhere.” It was fed by a small creek and right behind the high tide drift line. The “frosting on the cake” was that the area was a major habitat for western fence lizards.
Fence lizards are fun – and easy – to catch. Easier than frogs, what we usually caught around where I grew up. Until a transcript snafu, I had looked forward to attending a college where my work-study job would be catching fence lizards. Life had other plans, though. A woods near the school I did end up at contained plenty of beautiful red efts, though.
I doubt I’d be much happier than Larson was to discover any of my old, wild (well, wildish) stomping grounds had been developed. I think it’s natural to feel a sense of loss, of uncanniness or “creepiness”, as Larson put it, upon discovering that sort of change:
“Filled in and a house or two now stands there, and the creek is just a landscape feature through someone’s yard. But the other creepy thing is that, while the drift line is obviously still there, the lizards are all gone. I’ve gone looking for them, walking among the driftwood on a warm, lizardy kind of day. Not a one.”
That said, people gotta live somewhere, too. Opposing development on conservation grounds is not entirely innocent, either: often, it’s used as an excuse for the elites to keep regular folks out of their elite enclaves. And fence lizards remain common, despite human development. I doubt any of us here would agree with Larson that modern humans are “the flora and fauna Nazis.” Still, Larson’s tender attachment to animals, however unrealistic, contributed to what his fans, of all political stripes, love so much about The Far Side.
A few critters are now named after Larson, in that their Latin name carries some variant of Larson’s name. Several other scientific terms (quarks, boojums, etc) derive from literature, serious or humorous. But “thagomizer” and “shmoo” are the only scientific terms I can think of which come from cartoons. Can you think of others?
Published in Science & Technology
There are two cartoons I love that for some reason I’ve never been able to find online.
One has two obviously well fed crocodiles next to a shipwreck with one saying to the other, “Some cheesecake would be good right now.”
The other has a jumper falling off a building ledge, but barely noticeable in the corner is a pigeon with his foot sticking out, apparently having kicked the jumper off.
The pigeon one hahaha! I also like the two dinosaurs watching Noah’s ark sail off, and one of them says, “Dang! That was today?” or something like that.
Speaking of rabbit ears:
The concept that a Jewish mother (even a cave-woman) would name her son…
Gak,
and not even dignified with a “ck” has had me giggling for 31 years. Just say “Gak Eisenberg” to yourself.
And those lips…a horrible moment caught in history, the one open eye, hand raised plaintively; and no sign of the mammoth apart from the evidencing footprints which suggests it didn’t even notice the tragedy. Here’s to 31 more years of mirth for my psychic funny bone.
Which Superman one?
The important thing about this cartoon is knowing that that is NOT a bow in the girl’s hair.Now look at her brother’s arm.
How do You know that’s a girl? They’re both drawn the same, or am I missing something?
They both resemble more Dad than Mom, so I would call Them Brothers.
I am a huge Far Side fan. I always felt like this was made personally for me. What else are you gonna do but laugh?
There’s a Non Sequitur I loved (but can’t find in the bowels of the internet).
A shark labeled reality is swimming, and in front of him are three little fish in a line, and at the head of the line is a slightly larger fish saying “No Timmy, we can’t swim faster. The curriculum is geared for slower swimmers, so the 10 of you will have to wait for the rest of the school to catch up.”
I think “girl” comes to mind because it looks like a hair-bow.
But yeah.
That’s awesome.
My favorite strip that I can’t find anywhere is an old Zits strip. It labelled something to the effect of “The All-Nighter: Then and Now”, and shows the teenager saying “Woohoo! I stayed up all night!” and the dad saying “Woohoo! I didn’t get up once!”.
At least from the photos online, the blue is more extensive on the Western Fence Lizard. I knew them as bluebelly lizards in my yute.
Apparently, opossums may also be Lyme terminators. Despite their appearance, they are fastidious groomers, though not exactly fastidious eaters: as it grooms itself an opossum can lick off and swallow up to 5000 ticks per year.
Another controversial one: Some ants are carrying a baby back to the anthill. A supervisor-type ant on the hill says, “You fools! We’ll never get that thing inside.”
And another: Two spiders (?– they don’t work together, do they?) have just finished building a web at the bottom of a playground slide. One says to the other, “If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings!”
I highly recommend the compilation (with vignettes and essays) book “The Prehistory of the Far Side.”
The whole spiny lizard family, including fence lizards, tends toward colorful bellies. Some bellies are pure, intense blue. Others, rainbow:
Though US spiny lizards often have fairly drab backs for camouflage, even those can get rather ornate during breeding season:
The 80s was a golden age of comics. The Far Side, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes. Hell, back then even Garfield was funny sometimes.
Gary Larson’s “The Prehistory of the Far Side” recounts two separate occasions when the captions on The Far Side and Dennis the Menace got switched. Each time making both of them even better.
In 1981
Again in 1983
Been looking at that cartoon for years and it never dawned on me once that it’s two brothers. Of course it is.
Garfield’s Halloween on TV was a tradition at the Miller house for years.
Candy, candy, candy… steady boy!
Thanks, all! I really enjoyed being reminded of these all-time-great funnies.
Here’s one I can relate to…
Plus their tails fall off when seized by a predator. Such as juvenile male hominids attempting to keep the lizard from escaping into a pile of railroad ties. Don’t ask me how I know this.
And as I didn’t know at the time, it’s at a significant cost to the lizard, too.
I was about eight years old when I attempted to catch a skink by the tail. The elderly relative who found me with with still-wriggling tail explained the cost to me, and I was suffused with that intense sense of sin children get which can be difficult to equal in adulthood, even when you’ve done something objectively worse.
Since then, in my dealings with lizardkind, I’ve accidentally knocked one more tail off. Herpetologists will tell you, the best way to get to know these critters is to handle them, as long as you follow good practice. But even with good practice, there’s risk you might sometimes hurt them. (And if they’re big enough, that they could hurt you – it’s incredibly cute when the little ones try to bite you, convinced they’re accomplishing something, but with the bigger ones, it’s only cute if you’re wearing heavy gloves!)