UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

6 thoughts on “541 – Graverobbers

  1. “Oh, *that* kind of grave robbing? Lead on, Chuck!” 😈

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    What? I say “What”?

  3. Heh, this is going to be fun. Tradition says you need to drink at least one bottle of MD 20/20 before going to the graveyard.

  4. At first I was thinking of something like a potato battery … nope!

  5. If you take a dead “D” cell battery, take out the carbon rod from the center, cut a strip of galvanized sheet metal about an inch (2.7 centimeters), take a small jar for canning, suspend the rod in the center and the strip on the side, pour in drain cleaner, you’ll get 1.2 to 1.4 volts DC. 10 of those connected to an inverter will give you 120 VAC at 0.5 amps. Do NOT keep them in the same area you live in however, the fumes will burn your lungs. Just something I learned in chem class in high school. You’d have to top-up the jars every few days, however. Any type of acid will work, even salt water. I think the teacher was a survivalist…

  6. Scheffler, Hovland and Conners Share the Lead at P.G.A. Championship
    Jordan Spieth, who needs a victory at Oak Hill to complete the career Grand Slam, and Justin Thomas, who won last year’s tournament, just made the cut at five over.

    Give this article

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541 – Graverobbers

WonderCon 2025 is coming soon, so the next comic is planned for April 9th.

In the meantime, relevant previousness for this week's page:

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/223-surrounded-by-film-end-of-episode-9/

 

https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/483-solar-systems/

Chekhov’s incidentals…

I’ve written about the storytelling technique of Chekhov’s Gun in several past blogs, but here, a quick refresher:
“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)
I remain of mixed feelings about this. For instance in my favorite movie of all time, Jaws, which is also widely acknowledged as a very good film, there is a shot where a frustrated Quint slams his unused machete down into the wood on the side of the Orca and the camera lingers upon it sticking there. In cinematic language it is absolutely a Chekhov’s Gun moment and this machete will figure Extremely Prominently in events to come…
…but it does not. If you look close during Quint’s death scene he has indeed grabbed the machete and is futilely attempting to carve a bit out of the giant shark in the process of eating him, but it might as well not even be there for all the significance it has.
But chances are you wouldn’t even notice it, at least not on your first viewings. It doesn’t ruin the movie or even make any true dent in the rhythm. The oxygen tanks and many other important items are foretold in fine Chekhovian manner and come back later for good or ill and the tale is told.
The machete just ends up a weird afterthought. But does it matter? It seems like it doesn’t, except perhaps to nerds like me who have watched the movie over and over so much and ironically love it so much we end up picking apart little flaws no one else would care about. And then we write blogs where we make excuses.
I suppose this is just incidental, too…