Babbage and busking
Oh dear. Charles Babbage, of difference engine fame, apparently had a hatred for buskers: “[N]o man having a brain ever listened to street musicians.” The context of that quote is even better, and can be found at Futility Closet.
Comments
Oh dear. I didn't know 'em. Oh dear oh deary dear.
Luckily the PhD has hit almost insurmountable problems, meaning that either it doesn't matter if I dive into someone's comic archives for a month or two, or that I need to devote all my waking and sleeping hours to working on it and won't even have time to check out that page you pointed me at.
The question, of course, is which?
Don't worry, those archives won't take you more than half a day, unless of course you choose to follow up the historical background. If you did want to kill a month, I would point you at http://www.rice-boy.com/see/, http://www.rice-boy.com/order/, and http://www.kukuburi.com/...
Commiserations on the PhD, in any case. I am in a similar situation (but of course)... I am going for waking hours only at the moment but trusting that my subconscious is on the job by night. I did have a dream about sampling an outcrop the other week so maybe it's working.
Oops, almost forgot http://somefield.com/merricks_online/index.html which I think would be very much to your taste, so much so that I suspect you've found it already.
Rice Boy I did read through (only took me a day). Kukuburi is new to me (dammit). Oh dammit, now I got hooked on Sixteen Miles to Merricks. Damn you, other me, damn you. (Is it coincidence that two of those three offerings involve perky girls in revealing clothing? Probably.) Gunnerkrigg Court?
Coincidence? Hard to say. Barnaby Ward is clearly the king of perky and revealing, and I got there from Scary Go Round via this fan art -- John A. is not impartial to the same kind of thing. But while insanely cute girls in insanely short garments are undeniably part of the appeal, there is clearly far more to it than that. Now that I think about it, the other clear similarity to Kukuburi is the marvellous surreality of the storylines and scenery.
Gunnerkrigg: the Ditz put me on to that a while back, and I have been loving it ever since I overcame my suspicion of the (entirely superficial) Harry Potter-esqueness.
Considering that you have previously alerted me to The Arrival, which I had to physically go to a library for as well as read, we're now probably about even in tit-for-tat PhD demolition.
Ah yes, Scary Go Round... perky.
I must say I was a bit unimpressed with the writing of Merricks; beautiful art, surreal situation, but awkward unbelievable tone-shifty dialogue... And a flash site with no rss feed, I don't think I'll bother following it.
Gunnerkrigg is great, but I'm a bit worried that Siddell is winging it; every chapter opens a heap of potential plot threads, and might (if we're lucky) close one or two.
Hah, Futility Closet has another blow for the folkies: "Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense." (Well, who the hell is Joseph Addison?)
I trust and hope that you are acquainted with the works of Kate Beaton, and in particular her treatment of the peculiarities of Charles Babbage: see http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=5.
Of course, if you're not acquainted with said works, you'll be wanting to set the next few hours aside for reading the archives. Good luck with finishing that PhD!