Terror Island
"some photos of chess pieces don't want to buy groceries?"
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Strip #182 — Friday, August 10, 2007
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Notes, Thoughts, &c.

Ben's Notes

Some of you may be wondering how the possessed stool moves around, given that stools are normally inanimate objects. In fact, it can't move on its own. The demon in it is effectively motionless, though capable of speech.

Some of you may next be wondering, "But how do the other characters move around? Aren't they also stools?" The answer is no. They are living beings just like you and me.

This may raise a third question: "How do you and I move around?" Since that isn't about Terror Island, I don't have to answer it.

Lewis's Notes

Does anyone besides me remember the toy "Wizzard" or "Whizzard" or something like that? It was shaped like a light bulb, and had bit at the bottom that could rotate, and you would get that bottom bit spinning real fast, and then you'd have a spinning top. If that sounds unexciting, or equally exciting as a regular spinning top, I have sorely misdescribed this toy.

Normally I would google for it, or check e-bay or whatever, and see if I'm making it up or if it really existed, but I couldn't come up with any comments today, so I figured, why not let the Terror Island be my google?

One last thing. My last sentence in the above paragraph reminded me of a ridiculous PSA campaign that was on TV when I was growing up. A dad was getting into the car with his kid, but they didn't have a child seat, and so they dad says, "That's OK, I'll be your safety belt." and clasps his fingers around the kid's waist like a seat belt. Obviously, the ad tells us that this is a bad plan, and that you should always buckle up. The point is, when I was growing up, I had no idea that some of the commercials and stuff like that were specific to different towns, and sometimes, when I am interacting with people, I forget that not everyone saw those growing up, and then wind up having people think that I am weird for randomly saying "I'll be your safety belt."

The most extreme example of this sort of thing is a ridiculous portion of a standardized test I took all through grade school. It was a memory test, I think, and it would give you some gibberish words, paired with real words. You got some time to study those (like 10 minutes or whatever), then you had to take a whole different test (like a math test) and then they asked you questions about the gibberish words. Every single time we took this test, the example sentence was the same. "A baloo is a bear." I took this test a number of tiems, and so that one is engrained pretty well in my head, but, don't worry, it's not the only one I remember. Luckily, part of my brain is irrevocably dedicated to storing the following information:

  1. A baloo is a bear
  2. A tay is a hammer
  3. A pillot is a shoe
  4. A yonker is a young man
  5. A lep is a ball
  6. A flix is a comb
  7. A korf is a tiger
These memory tests were used where I grew up, and a few other places (Indiana, for one), but they weren't really all that widespread. And it is just the weirdest thing to realize that I constantly interact with people who don't associate "korf" and "tiger."

Absolutely final note: according to the internet, there are two standard entries on the test I am missing. "To wuzzle means to mix" and "A zillation is an alarm clock." I don't remember either of those at all, but I do remember a wonderful tv program called "The Wuzzles" featuring a cast of animal hybrids, like a bumblebee lion and a kangaroo elephant, and a bunny-hippo.

And that, for those of you who are still reading, is a sampling of what it is like inside my head.


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