SECANTS RATE highly in my book

Longtime readers already know that I'm a regular visitor to dieselsweeties.com to get the daily comic by R. Stevens (or rstevens, as he prefers) featuring the inimitable Clango Cyclotron. He really should visit LBL at some point and see some of the ARCANE TESTS they carry out with the 88". You know, Clango could get in touch with his roots; after all, that first 'L' stands for Lawrence, the inventor of the cyclotron.

I'm enough of a fan of DS that I got my lovely wife a t-shirt featuring a punchline from the comic for Christmas last year. Being a mammalogist, this is far and away the most appropriate of the DS shirts for her to wear, although our CAT RESENTS A message so positive about another species.


I get the impression that R. Stevens is a cat person (and Mac user) like me; given the opportunity, I would CARESS TEN, AT least.

A wish of mine has been granted, and some recent Diesel Sweeties strips have featured mathematically-themed humor. It's good to see that R. Stevens RECASTS A NET from time to time to trawl for these sorts of jokes. The second, in addition to referencing one of the great integer sequences, is concerned with puns, which mathematicians inexplicably enjoy more than most other people. Some mathematicians also enjoy anagrams, although that's more easily explained by the fact that they are a special case of permutations.

To celebrate cope with the commerce season, Stevens is running an anagrammatically named contest. He's a rather good sport about it, even suggesting that writers might describe his pants as a one-ACRE ASS TENT. If I were to open myself up to such public conversation, I'd feel like an ANT AT RECESS, leaving myself completely at the whim of schoolkids. I like his output too much to be so cruel; I especially enjoy Maura's antics (A TART'S SCENE if ever there was one) and the strips in which A SCAT ENTERS. I usually detest "bio-humor", but somehow Stevens treats it so absurdly that it has a certain appeal.

Here's wishing R. Stevens, Clango, and the whole Diesel Sweeties crew a Merry Present Season and a Happy New Year!