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| Plums |
 Title text: My icebox plum trap easily captured William Carlos Williams. It took much less work than the infinite looping network of diverging paths I had to build in that yellow wood to ensnare Robert Frost. |
Explanation
This is a reference to the William Carlos Williams poem This Is Just to Say, in which the narrator is apologizing for eating the plums in the icebox. In this comic, the joke is that Cueball, learning that the person out of view has left themselves some plums in the refrigerator for tomorrow, cannot resist eating them as a reference to the poem.
The title text is another joke about trapping poets with references to their own poems, referencing another well-known poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, which has been recently referenced in another comic, 3076: The Roads Both Taken. Of course, constructing a network of infinitely branching paths would be physically impossible for Cueball.[citation needed]
Transcript
- [Cueball is sitting at a desk with a laptop on it. He is looking backward towards someone offscreen.]
- Out of view: I got you the ingredients for dinner tonight.
- Out of view: Oh, and the plums in the fridge drawer are for my yogurt tomorrow; you should just leave them.
- Out of view: Be back later!
- Cueball, thinking: Oh no.
- Caption: Help. It actually happened. I shouldn't, but how can I not!?
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