Back in the dim dark distant days of yore, Matt Groening actually did some promotional artwork for Apple — all at about the same time he started up with some little show called the Simpsons, and when he’d apparently doodle up a poster for them for the price of a Laserwriter.
Speaking of Groening and the Simpsons, Richard Dawkins will be making a cameo voice appearance this Sunday. Tune in!
I have a Life in Hell book that contains that pic!
I think I had that poster.
Like heck! Where’s the beer? (“In the fridge” is not a sufficient answer. Important items should have their own reference.)
“My name is little Bongo, I sing my little songo, whenever I get called upon the teacher says I’m wrongo.
My name is little Bongo, I love to play pingpongo, I have an ear upon my head, they say it’s very longo.”
I can out-hipster* that! I was reading ‘Life in Hell’ weekly in the L.A. Reader back in 1983! That’s before there was a Macintosh! Our socks were still wet from the fucking Flood!
*wait, does it still count as ‘hipster’ if it happened 30 years ago?
Bongo the one-eared bunny was a regular character in Groening’s “Life in Hell.” I also recall Akbar and Jeff, ambiguously described by the cartoonist as “possibly brothers or lovers or both.” I have the collection of education-related strips, “School is Hell,” in my office, where it occasionally reminds me that I have it good.
I note the pet octopus on the second floor. Did that contribute to your recollection?
The Groening comic strip that served as a goad through my grad school years was the “Meet the bitterest person in the world” panel of his “lesson 19: Grad School, some people never learn”(I’ve tried to put a decent link below, bottom right panel).
Some ‘clever’ individual clipped that panel and posted it on their office door. Every time I passed it, I’d almost swear it was mocking me. Even after graduating, that panel still evokes a visceral reaction from me.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/images/ComicGradSchoolHell72dpi550pxw.jpgBoy, that takes me back. I used to read the strip weekly in The City Paper in B’more back in college. Loved it when they came out with books I could buy that didn’t yellow like all the paper clippings did.
“when he’d apparently doodle up a poster for them for the price of a Laserwriter.”
Hey! When they first came out, LaserWriters went for some serious coin!
(around 7 kilobucks …..in 1985!)
–MAB
sylwyn reminds me that I was once one of those dreaded grad school dropouts, but I managed not to become “the bitterest person in the world.” The main reason was that I had racked up a huge number of academic units in four years of grad work and the school district I joined placed instructional staff on the salary scale based on your total units. Yay! I started my teaching career based on a master’s degree plus all of those sweet, sweet units from an unfinished doctoral program. (Later I added a doctorate and jumped up another notch on the salary schedule, but that big boost at the beginning was a major plus!)
No disrespect was intended to those that didn’t finish their dissertation. I’ve seen a few cases (even in my limited perspective) where taking a masters was a smart move (as it sounds like it was in your case, Zeno). On more than one occasion I’ve described myself as “too muttonheadedly stupid to quit” and that wasn’t false modesty or cloaked pride in my tenacity. I was just to shortsighted to see beyond that damn cartoon panel. In this case I’m glad I was, but a greater perspective might have suggested other routes and options.
At a ridiculous hour in the night it occurs to me that I may have identified the wrong panel. Sure enough, I check and I have. I meant the bottom left panel; the “bitterest person in the world one.” I’m not sure which is more troubling: the fact that I can’t keep my right and left straight, or that I’ve taken the time to correct this now…
Aah, yes. I ordered Groening’s “Life Is Hell” book to Sweden through Amazon, and donated it to the library when I was through.
Apparently, juvenile rabbits/hares only have one ear each, graduating to a full set once they grow up.
The pool can’t be more than a foot deep because there’s a room right below. The room with the Mac, no less!… (I should really not care about this.)
I’d have dug this poster when Mac was still badass in the 80s and 90s. Now? No thanks.
Actually, no: Bongo is the result of a drunken one-night stand with a non-rabbit. The lone ear is the stigma that contributes to his nervous demeanor.
(I attended The Evergreen State College in the late 1980s. When The Simpsons first came out it seemed like everyone I knew was an instant fan, and I personally thought it ridiculous that everyone was so obviously biased in his favor just because he went to Evergreen. It was a bit of a surprise when I left the campus behind and realized that my fellow students were actually just reflecting the general populace.)
Macs are no longer Hip or Edgy. Time to buy one.
It’s the pet octopus that sells it.
I always believed that Richard Dawkins had great potential, and I am glad to see he has finally made a mark for himself.