Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for September 08, 2023

In response to the question, “Got enough snow this year, Earl?”

Florida came in second.

Absolutely true:

There is a school in Canandaigua NY called Finger Lakes Community College. Until about 1990 its name was Community College Of The Finger Lakes.

The problem was incoming mail. It is a standard that each line in an address is limited to 32 characters (including spaces); anything after that is truncated.

The college officials got so fed up with always seeing their mail addressed to “COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF THE FINGER” that they changed the name of the school.

Or maybe an amoeboid organism made an obscene gesture with a pseudopod at another protozoan.

We made the Comics

I guess that makes Cayuga Lake #1. Oh, whine, wine, wine.

A short story first published in 1956, “The Splendid Source” by Richard Matheson, claims that there’s a benevolent conspiracy creating and spreading risque jokes. Pretty much all of them. And the organization goes way back. As one of its leaders explains about when it began:

“That is history’s secret,… veiled behind time’s opacity. Our venture does have its honored past, however. Great men have graced its cause — Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Dickens…. Shakespeare, of course…. Horace and Seneca…. Yea, in the palaces of Tutankhamen was our work done…. Scraped on rock, in many a primordial cave, are certain drawings. And there are those among us who believe that these were left by the earliest members of the Brotherhood. But this is only legend…”

I’m told this story was adapted into a 2010 episode of Family Guy.

I would think… that would just be one lake…

I heard using the middle finger as an obscene gesture goes back thousands of years.

not nice to point

Good one

Makes some sense in a screwball sort of way…

I learned a while back that the French refer to the middle-finger gesture as “le doigt d’honneur”—“the finger of honor.”

New York City, circa 1885. A slow-moving horse-drawn carriage cut another one off while doing 5 in a 3 zone. The victimized coachman pointed to the Lord and shouted, “I hope God saw that!” …But he had stubbed his index finger earlier that day, so he resorted to using the next finger over to point upwards, and thus a trend began and stuck.

Incidentally, the other driver’s horse had been drinking. A cop on foot pulled over the horse and the coachman and put them in a jail cell and a stable (yes, in that order.)

If Shoe is right, I guess you can blame it on ice age glaciers.

But not Upper or Lower Finger Lake; the other one!

How do birds do it, on this “bird” comic…(For those of you who… Birds w/fingers?)

This is Saturday’s strip. 9/09. Friday’s strip is on Comics Kingdom. This one is actually better.

Since there’s 11 of ’em, I wonder which one it would be??

This is the September 9th issue on September 8th, a day early. A time warp?