#974 – Laced

A find the sound of a springtime chorus of crickets to be relaxing. It’s pleasant to fall asleep to. However, an ambitious soloist trapped in my bedroom is jarring and frustrating. It’s one of those sounds that jumps into your head and pulls you out of sleep right as you are about to fall into a dream. Dream ruiner.

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24 thoughts on “#974 – Laced”

  1. TJovian says:

    I don’t get it. Was his shoe named “cricket” or something? Or is the cricket manifesting itself in the form of a shoe because that is the last thing it saw before it died?

  2. Karen says:

    I’m also not really understanding the shoe …

    With regards to crickets, though: one of the main reasons I stopped feeding crickets to my lizards and switched to other (non-chirpy) bugs instead was the fact that one cricket would always inevitably end up being really good at hiding, and would escape being eaten for DAYS by tucking itself somewhere totally inaccessible within the lizard’s tank. Said cricket would then proceed to spend the entire night chirping happily away, until I was about ready to pull apart the entire tank setup just to find it and pull its wings off.

  3. i.half4 says:

    Jimminy! Do I hear a Fiddler on The Roof? Or is it The King at sea?

    “Blue moon….
    I saw you standing alone…”

  4. SilentDragon says:

    I think the shoe is quite obvious, Biff stepped on the cricket, killing it. Now its ghost haunts him hovering over Biff shaped as that dreadful, dreaful murder weapon!

    You would do the same thing with a knife in case of a stab victim, to that cricket, the shoe is a very threatening form!

  5. TwiztedMessiah says:

    Agree with SilentDragon. Analogous anecdote: When I was younger, at the onset of winter when the flies would slow down on the windows, I would poke at them with chopsticks, killing many of them. My mom would try to deter me by saying I would have nightmares of giant flies chasing me with chopsticks. It never worked, but I think that’s the idea here.

  6. loans says:

    is this an invader zim reference?

  7. Phos says:

    It reminds me of an episode of Invader Zim.

  8. Sven says:

    Crickets are *nothing* compare to the horror that is Cicadas. We have a lot of them in Japan and during the summer months they are a constant 24 hour per day cacaphony of sound that’s far, far louder than crickets. Apparently they can reach 120dB at close range. Seriously, trying to work with one of those fellows sitting on your window is just *impossible*.

  9. baughbe says:

    Ah, the Cicadas. I lived where the 7 year variety was very prolific. And they had a rather unique sound. The years that they would come out it sounded as if you were right under a 1950’s flying saucer about to land on you. Actually I think they got the sound for flying saucers from the cicadas.

  10. Chris says:

    I’ve never seen Invader Zim, did they have cricket ghosts?

  11. i.half4 says:

    I remember when the cicadas made the news in Chicago. I got there a few times, hoping for a cacophany, but I never heard more than a distant light buzz that didn’t come close to drowning out the traffic. And I can hear way cooler overtones than that any day in the big slot room at Pottowatomi right here in MKE.

  12. Zim says:

    Invader Zim had aliens that looked like glowing ghostly shoes. And it was awesome.

  13. steve-o says:

    Why did I feel that I had failed something when I didn’t get this for a full two minutes?

  14. Billy says:

    I think the shoe part should be fairly understandable. 1. the shoe was the murder weapon and 2. chris would never start showing a cricket in the comic if he hasn’t put any other kind of creature in it. After all, why have a cricket have the honor of being the first creature other than Biff show up?

  15. onex says:

    It would be a chicken in my case. I know what you mean about crickets, Chris. The cement pad outside my west window is shaped perfectly for the buggers to keep me awake all night from -outside- my house. Fortunately, I’ve found many of their favorite hiding places. Our chickens are happy for moving food in the morning.

  16. Ziriath says:

    Nice to see Biff sleeping in more clothes. At previous strips I always felt cold just from seeing him sleeping with no shirt.

  17. Chris says:

    @steve-o – Was it funnier when you got it?

    @Ziriath – It depends what time of year it is. He usually doesn’t wear a shirt in the summer.

  18. Matt Lee says:

    @Chris – This is the best I can find on youtube. This is that clip of Invader Zim everyone’s been talking about. Someone made a Blink-182 music video with clips of the show. It’s at 0:13.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNqgCkm7a4

  19. sco3tt says:

    The laces on that shoe look familiar, kinda like Biff’s eyebrows. At first glance I thought that he was having a nachtmare that he was a ghostly shoe. I thought for just a second there that it wasn’t just me that had that nachtmare, that I’d found a kindred spirit in Biff. Then I realized it was a cricket joke, and since I don’t play, I don’t get it.

    (nachtmare – nightmare with German subtitles)

  20. Twilightfairy says:

    Cicadas are everywhere over here in Jersey in the summer months. Little buggers are annoying!

  21. Chris says:

    @Matt Lee – Wow, that’s crazy! It’s almost identical!

  22. i.half4 says:

    I can take a guess why that shoe is glowing. The large dot on the ankle means it must be a Converse All Star. Poor Biff! Imagine being hauted by every star in the sky. That’s even more scary than being haunted by every bug you ever stepped on without giving it a second thought.

    Don’t panic, Biff. Don McLean and Vincent will tame that Dragon Sky:

    Starry, starry night
    Paint your palette blue and grey
    Look out on a summer day
    With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

  23. Rex says:

    @i.half4

    it sounds to me like you just wanted to put those lyrics there, nothing you said seemed to make sense whatsoever.

    Colors changing hue!

  24. i.half4 says:

    I guess that’s a fair thing to suppose, and I would be honest with you if you had got it right, but I distinctly recall that in my mind, the lyrics followed on the notion of a person being scarred by stars, so the comment definitely inspired the lyrics, and not the other way round.

    In fact, I only rememebered that song because it was used by The Simpsons in an episode that began with Lisa’s stargazing being obstructed by light pollution from the town. I had to Google the lyrics, and when I read them, I hesitated to include the complete first verse because it was much darker than the way I remembered it. (I thought the title was Starry, Starry Night, not Vincent) But then I considered that in the context of this day in the life of Biff, and in the context of the music of the song, Vincent is a lullabye. I mean, the words don’t carry any more meaning than “down will come baby, cradle and all” do they? I stand by the original context of the quote.

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