Lio by Mark Tatulli for September 10, 2011

Busted by a loose head…

Lio, you can’t fool Dad that easily. He’s no dummy.

Homework is such a pain in the neck.

Nice manikin meee, Lio. But you forgot to build in a voice activated random-response tape-recording.[Bonus points to whomever recognizes the literary reference.]

Lio - chips off the old block.

Hey, Radish. Is that the little comic guy from “The Grapevine” in your picture? If so, we FOBs are indeed everywhere! If not, sorry to bother you. Br’er Jonathan

Lio, this is not the way to start off the new school year.

Nice try, Lio.

Lio’s goofing off again!

I was once teaching a course on a Compressed Video feed, and a student on the other side asked a question at the end of class. While I sat there thinking about the answer, the signal timed out, but my image of sitting there thinking was frozen. The students on the far side just sat there for a minute waiting on my answer, until finally they realized I wasn’t moving or saying anything.

“Escape from Homework”

Since it appears no one recognized it: manikin meee can be found in Cordwainer Smith’s SF short story, “Under Old Earth” (available online, free).

Perhaps the ‘ribbon on the wall’ is for the painting beside it of the twin towers in New York…probably done by Lio in school to commemorate 9/11.