12 thoughts on “Narbonic Third Anniversary Contest

  1. 256’s name is obviously supposed to be 0x100, also known as 2-to-the-8th, also known as one larger than the maximum value of a byte. And the ANTONIO SMITH quote is most obviously a reference to the webcomic Homestuck.

    Personally, I think it’s tremendously unfair of you to use not one, but two American city street performers as so-called pop-culture references.

  2. Well, the scarlet emerald rings a bell… it is a reference to that multifarious jewel, The Eye of Argon!!

    (…which also happens to be the worst fantasy short story ever written ever.)

  3. I’m going to be horribly pedantic here, and say that question 1 should start with “Whom is ANTONIO SMITH…”

    Curiously, question 3 is fine as it is. “To be” is an odd verb, indeed.

    • Mmmm.. I don’t think that’s right. “Who/Whom” is subject/object — it follows the same rules as he/him, she/her, and so on. But here, I think the quoted person is actually the subject of the (interrogative) sentence.

      • Nah. Look at the verb – which person is doing the quoting? ANTONIO SMITH, of course, so he’s the subject. And “to quote” doesn’t take a nominative object, so it’d be “whom”. Not the most common order of words for an English sentence, but this specific case is common enough.

  4. I remember when I first saw this contest, and the only one I knew was #2.    (an avocado, of course)

  5. (TUNE: “Lydia, The Tatooed Lady”, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg)

    Oh, trivia!  Oh, trivia!
    The answers I’ll give ya!
    Oh, trivia from strips Narbonic…
    Who’s Professor Smith misquoting?
    Who’s the ZRS promoting?

    Trivia, oh trivia!
    Where do those guys live, hah?
    This trivia is making me sick!
    From whence comes the language that Jungle Mell speaks?
    In what town was poor Dana learning from freaks?
    And why in the world does Doc Narbon date geeks?
    You can strain your brain with trivia!

  6. Don’t forget. It wasn’t just a scarlet emerald, it was a scintillating, many-fauceted scarlet emerald, glaring down from a single obling socket in the stoney, cycloptic face of a bloated deity.

    They’re the best kind.

    For extra points, who has the lung capacity of a whale? 

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