The Wikipedia page on Achilles is interesting. He is featured in the Iliad, but the part about him being invulnerable except for his heel was added centuries later, and directly contradicts parts of the Iliad. Also, there’s an alternate version where his mother tried to make him immortal by covering him in ambrosia and burning him.

I guess the ancient Greeks were less strict about the particulars of their religion than anyone in the present day.

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This is Erika in the year 2011, and I’m writing this comic for all of you great people in the year 2012.

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Thank you, spider in my cabinet this morning, for inspiring this comic. Enjoy the grain bugs you caught, and congratulations on your bundle of joy.

Really, I’m not an insane nature freak, I’m just cheap. Pesticides cost money, and that spider and its kids are willing to do it for free.

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To come up with the punny names Abby makes up, I had to spend a lot of time on a webpage devoted to listing all the words that begin with a given letter or series of letters. Not surprisingly, that webpage is intended as a Scrabble resource. To use it, just type in http://www.scrabblefinder.com/starts-with/something/ and replace “something” with whatever letters you like.

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But they don’t pop out as reliably. Kleenex is the default brand name for a reason.

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That paragraph used to be on Wikipedia, but it has been removed. I don’t know, maybe there wasn’t a credible source listed for it? It’s still on some sites that have quoted from Wikipedia, though.

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I hate shoelaces. They come untied, and get frayed, and catch on things. Someday they’re going to kill me at work, by snagging on the bottom of a pallet jack and making me fall on my head. Velcro sucks because it wears out too fast, but zippers on shoes would be a useful idea.

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Abby knows DeForest Kelley’s birthday without even having to look it up.

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Maybe it’s squeezed purely, without any original sin in the process? Immaculate constriction?

(The original sin was eating forbidden fruit, so as long as the juice doesn’t contain any of that, it’s fine.)

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I’ve often thought about how much more complicated language would get if we had pronouns to indicate traits other than gender. Age? Race? Mental diagnosis? You’d have to know several details about people just to mention them in conversation. And the combinations and permutations of the various descriptors might result in hundreds of pronouns.

Plus, race and mental condition are spectrums; it’s hard to define just where someone falls, when the line between one side and the other is so fuzzy. But then, the same goes for gender, and we somehow think we can have pronouns for that.

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