3303: Slab Graveyard

Slab Graveyard

|< < Prev #3303 (September 25, 2026)

Title text: It's ok if you want to close close your eyes for the slab graveyard, so you can still have fun riding the mantle plume back up afterward!

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Explanation

This is one of 54 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a GHOST OF TECTONICS PAST. Don't remove this notice too soon. You can help by editing the explanation!

A popular Halloween activity is visiting cemeteries and telling ghost stories.

However, "graveyard" is also often used figuratively to refer to a place where obsolete or unused objects are kept; for instance, a junkyard might be called an "automobile graveyard" because junked cars end up there. In the comic, Beret Guy refers to one of the terms used for the area where portions of the Earth's crust end up after subduction. Him being Beret Guy, he confuses it for a real graveyard, conflating these two kinds of cemeteries, and says that he and his friends are going to go there on Halloween. But tectonic processes are really slow, so this will take millions of years if they just ride the slab down. However, Beret Guy is fine with this, reasoning it would mean more time to tell ghost stories.

The title text has more of Beret Guy trying to persuade Cueball to see the graveyard. Believing Cueball is just scared, he encourages him by saying they will ride a mantle plume back to the surface. This falls in with a typical trait of his, to naively go about not realising that the centre of the earth is far too hot for human survival, similarly with the mantle plumes.

Transcript

This is one of 37 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. You can help by editing the transcript!

[Cueball is on the left, facing Beret Guy on the right.]

Cueball: Any plans for Halloween?

Beret Guy: Me and my friends are gonna check out a slab graveyard!

[Diagram of a portion of the Earth at the bottom, showing a subduction zone with portions of the crust falling down into the mantle. There are clouds above the surface. Cueball and Beret Guy are not shown; their voices come from outside the panel.]

Cueball: What's that?

Beret Guy: When dense crust subducts, geologists think it might pile up at the bottom of the mantle.

[Cueball and Beret Guy are shown again. Beret Guy has his arms spread.]

Beret Guy: We're going to hide in the crust and ride it down to see.

Beret Guy: Wanna come?

Beret Guy: It's gonna be spooky!

[Cueball and Beret Guy are shown again.]

Cueball: Won't that take millions of years?

Beret Guy: Lots of time for ghost stories!

Cueball: I think I'm good.

Beret Guy: Too spooky? I understand.

Trivia

There is a typo in the title text: the word "close" is repeated twice.

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Discussion

Trivia time: "close close" dittography in the title text. --2001:A62:518:1001:61EF:DCF5:C3C0:A037 16:30, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

I was trying to work out if it was a reference to a song-lyric where a key word is repeated. (Like "It's a man's man's man's world!") But what that might actually be escapes me for the moment.

Or if it was a valid statement using two different meanings of "close" (a 'clowse' pronunciation, i.e. "near to", and 'clowze', i.e. "to shut", for example. Like "I'll close the carriage's connecting door only when we're close to the station". Or even a nearby dead-end road being a "close close" (both being 'clowse'). But I haven't yet worked out an actual intentional and viable-but-confusing meeting.

Perhaps one or other will occur to someone. 81.179.197.66 19:15, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

I added a transcript, but I don't think I did the diagram justice. Someone please update that. Barmar (talk) 17:13, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Anyone else so inunduated to Beret Guy's weird powers that their first reaction was that he's got friends going along with this? 207.195.86.17 19:02, 25 September 2026 (UTC)
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