Next to each other on my friends list this morning

[andrewducker]

and

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

That XKCD is awesome!

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

The alt text on today's XKCD is priceless.

[andrewducker]

It's on the one there - as a Title attribute. Does that not appear for you?

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I never encountered the Candy Man thing, at least not to my memory. The Bloody Mary thing was a huge part of my growing up, though, and it scared the shit out of me and continues to do so to this day. So while the concept of the first comic is indeed very funny and I like it from an objective standpoint, I'm now going to be avoiding looking mirrors for the rest of the day and leaving the bathroom light on all night.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Or I could watch Dick Van Dyke on Nick-at-Nite. That sounds great, but then it would sound great even if I hadn't been reminded of Bloody Mary.

Also I don't know who Dick Hofstadter is or why that's funny.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

It's Douglas Hofstadter, and if you don't know who he is it probably just means that you belong to a generation after his.

He wrote 'A Person Paper on the Purity of Language' and several fascinating books about mathematics, language, music, creativity, consciousness, fonts, and (more germane to the comic) self-reference and strange loops.

Check his books out sometime. His is a fascinating mind and view of the world. He won a Pulitzer for non-fiction, so my general rave reviews do have backup. :-)

[andrewducker]

If you like Horror Movies at all then it's worth tracking down the Candy Man movie, which is a classic of the genre.

And yes - I spent about ten years frightened of mirrors.