Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for April 10, 2024

Yes,Sluggo IS dangerous, but it’s him or the silence that haunts your inner mind.

Feel free to chat amongst yourselves in the comments.

So does that mean that Sluggo thinks that people who habitually speak in long, drawn out sermons are dangerous people to meet?

How ’bout that weather? It sure does exist.

In the fourth panel, Sluggo is heading over to the Peanuts comic strip, in order to display his witticisms there.

One of the things Ford [Prefect] had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day”, “You’re very tall”, or ‘You seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?’ At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation, he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

I’ve read suggestions that small talk is a social-bonding ritual, like chimps grooming each other.

In John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” it’s noted that Doc has the peculiar belief that when people ask a question it’s because they’re interested in learning the answer (so he always answers it, if he can). Hazel, however, simply becomes uncomfortable whenever there’s a pause in the conversation, so he’ll ask a question just to start the talking again even though he’s not at all interested in the answer. (There’s a classic scene between the two of them in Chapter 6.)

Nancy may or may not be Hazel here, but Sluggo is definitely Doc.

I’m an introvert, I don’t do small talk at all well. I find it best to avoid.