972: November

|< < Prev Comic #972 (November 2, 2011) Next > >|

November

Title text: November marks the birthday of Charles Schulz, pioneer of tongue awareness.

Explanation

This comic is a homage to Charles Schulz, the creator of the comic Peanuts, who was born on November 26, 1922. Both comics carry the idea that when you start thinking about your tongue, you can hardly stop thinking about it. (Similarly: if you start thinking about your breathing, you stop breathing unless you consciously think to breathe, same goes for blinking.) This is similar to the ironic process theory, where trying to not think about something will invariably make you think about it. The intention of Black Hat in this comic is for Cueball to consciously feel his tongue for the entire month of November. Since it was Black Hat's idea, Black Hat probably suffers the same consequences.

Here is the comic in question by Charles Schulz from Peanuts.

This is similar, in concept, to the expression and phrase used for trolling in online communities, "You Are Now Breathing Manually".

The line "you are now aware of your tongue" was mentioned much later in the title text of 2563: Throat and Nasal Passages. Here it was throat and nasal passages awareness which was the subject, due to the, at that time, two year long 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Transcript

[Black Hat and Cueball sit in a room.]

Black Hat: Did you know November is Tongue Awareness Month?

[Cueball is suddenly aware of his tongue.]

[Cueball continues to be aware of his tongue.]

[Cueball is painfully aware of his tongue.]

Cueball: I hate you.

Black Hat: Enjoy the next four weeks.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

What link is that second paragraph talking about? --Jimmy C (talk) 14:54, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I re-added the link from the explanation originally posted at the blog. --Waldir (talk) 19:09, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

All subcutaneous nerves can feel their environment the same way our bodies can be heard, seen and smelt. Our sensory settings normally turn it into white noise for us so we automagically tune it out. Some people are born without any nerves and some never quite manage to ignore it all.

Mental process ditto. <hint>I suppose one day there could be a chart of the relatively little known illnesses (and the well known ones for that matter (e.g. tinnitus.))</hint> I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 18:02, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Please justify the reason the entire peanuts comic is included in this explanation and not just a link to it. Otherwise I will be deleting it and providing a simple link and quick overview.Lackadaisical (talk) 12:46, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

It is more convenient. It's not like it is taking up any space. Beanie (talk) 10:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I personally appreciated it, having come here mostly I understand the alt-text. Also, links are constantly breaking. 172.70.126.179 20:56, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

That peanuts comic sounds like a beginning of a Junji Ito manga 162.158.166.179 03:21, 12 January 2017 (UTC)