From one of my new favorite webcomics, Piled Higher and Deeper, which pokes fun at grad school and grad students. I’m probably all “old meme” on this one since the comic’s been published since 1997 (originally in a Stanford student paper), but I only found it recently and I’m loving it.

• When did we forget our dreams?
• You’re curious, smart, and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. (This one’s my desktop right now, and also on my fridge.)
• Because we’re grownups now, and we get to decide what that means.
• Hey, I found squirrels!
• Maybe just having this conversation means we’re lost.
• The difference.
• Interesting life.

Their punchline strips are always great too, but it’s the deep ones that are speaking to me right now. How did I ever convince myself that I wasn’t a geek at heart?

I’ve seen that airport bus around town and every time I do I think “I should take a picture of that and send it to Bill Griffith”. And I guess someone (who is not me) finally did!

It’s not a great day-to-day strip as comic strips go, but I’ve been reading it as long as I’ve been reading comics, and since the characters age in real-time and there’s 25 years of complete continuity there (and in part because I’m the around the same age as Michael in the strip, so when I was off to university the strip was him being off at university, and so on) it makes for a good read. I was sad when Farley died and I can’t stand Deanna. I can’t say I’d recommend that anyone that hasn’t read it for 25 years tune in now, but there you go.

But as always the Internet has to come along and be weird.

Witness Binky_betsy, aka “The FOOBiverse”. It’s a community which contains an in-depth analysis (posted by the same person, daily) of the plot and artwork of each day’s strip and the “letters from the characters” on the strip’s website with dozens of comments every day. Now I’m not that surprised that people obsess over fiction, but then I saw the FBOW FAQ in the community maintainer’s userinfo, and now I’m wondering if “When do you think April will start getting her period?” is really asked that frequently.

But that’s just run-of-the-mill comic book guy obsession. Weird, but not outright wrong. But then at the bottom of that userinfo I found a link to someone who has a blog in which she roleplays April. And you know that when you reach that point it’s going to get worse, and it does:

For Better Or For Worse slashfic..

I thought “April Fool’s joke” at first, but I didn’t see any other comics with the same gag. Anyone else see any?

Edit: Here’s another, Pearls Before Swine:

Definitely an April Fool’s joke, I think. Any other comics?