Yow! I am having FUN!!

November 24, 2008 10:30 AM

The Zippy the Pinhead Archive: Are We Having Searchable Fun Yet? lets you search through many years of Zippy daily comic strips by keyword or date, from January 1, 1994 to the near-present. Sundays included. The Roadside Tour lets you search to see if Zippy's been in your part of the world! [Click the "Where's Zippy?" javascript button for detailed location indeces]

Also onsite: Understanding Zippy.

Bill Griffith has been drawing Zippy since early 1971.

The Zippy Quotes Database (used by the old FORTUNE program and the m-x yow command in GNU Emacs). Also available in a different format here.

Zippy's inspiration is mentioned previously on MetaFilter.

Laundry is the fifth dimension!!

posted by not_on_display (29 comments total)

This is great! Apparently he was in my neck of the woods a few years ago; here is the original for comparison (it is right by my work and in fact I had a temp job many years ago cleaning the "wax room" there).

It is nice to see this done by the strip's creator rather than by a fan who would be rewarded for their work with a takedown notice.
posted by TedW at 11:04 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Only from '94 to present -- there's a lot more Ziphistory out there. Anyone? I used to dig reading this in the Boston Globe as kid.

On a semi-related tangent...last year, someone posted a comprehensive Calvin & Hobbes site. Later that day, it was removed. No record of it ever being posted. Anyone know why? I've always wanted to rediscover that link. Suppose it was a unsanctioned archive...
posted by VicNebulous at 11:06 AM on November 24, 2008

It's FPP-in-the-form-of-a-question-day again?
posted by Mister_A at 11:14 AM on November 24, 2008

For some reason I thought this was a Ziggy archive, and I was unhappy.

But it's not! Hooray!
posted by LSK at 11:17 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

VicNebulous: On a semi-related tangent...last year, someone posted a comprehensive Calvin & Hobbes site. Later that day, it was removed. No record of it ever being posted. Anyone know why? I've always wanted to rediscover that link. Suppose it was a unsanctioned archive...

See here, perhaps? (Admins: please remove comment if linking to a copyright-shredding deleted thread is frowned upon.)
posted by not_on_display at 11:20 AM on November 24, 2008

Unfortunately M-x yow in GNU Emacs 22+ no longer uses actual Zippy quotes, they had to be removed from Emacs for legal reasons. It now always returns the same Zippy-like quote:

Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!

posted by orebokech at 11:20 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, JOY.

I think Zippy has influenced my life and career far more than I'd really like to ponder.

I have this one at home, clipped and in a frame. It was so weird to see a familiar part of my childhood, something I saw weekly, suddenly be enshrined in a Zippy.
posted by Miko at 11:20 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yay! I have loved Zippy since I was a pre-teen. My family actually called me Zippy for a while, and my baby cousin called me "Eeepy" for years.

Zippy was also about 15 minutes down the road from me in this strip.
posted by Biblio at 11:22 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Unfortunately M-x yow in GNU Emacs 22+ no longer uses actual Zippy quotes, they had to be removed from Emacs for legal reasons.

But they left in M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead, which has taken on a new pathos:

Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!

Why do you say legally imposed culture reduction is cabbage brained?

Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!

Maybe your life have something to do with this.

Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!

What makes you believe legally imposed culture reduction is cabbage brained?

Bastards.
posted by enn at 11:25 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, now I'm craving ding dongs and taco sauce. Thanks a lot.
posted by queensissy at 11:40 AM on November 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

They took out the quote database from emacs? Wow.
posted by JHarris at 11:42 AM on November 24, 2008

What we really need is daily Zippies via RSS. Getting them via email is so 2004.
posted by aletheia at 11:45 AM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I've enjoyed reading Zippy for far too long. I remember long ago being in high school (late 70's early 80's), and the UC Davis station KDVS had a weekly call in trivia show called "Trivia Masters." It was kind of like an internet forum in a way because people calling in would use pseudonyms, and there were a lot of asides. There were quite a few regulars like "Johnny Tampon and the Toxic Shocks" etc. One regular was Zippy the Pinhead, and the guys that hosted the show swore it was the "real" Zippy, they'd ask what he was up to, and he'd invariably answer something like "I'm bobbing for qualudes in my hot tub filled with Perrier water." I think they'd call him just as part of the entertainment on the show. I loved the surreal even back then.
posted by Eekacat at 11:46 AM on November 24, 2008

not_on_display -- many thanks.

(And, BTW, that sucking sound you may hear is my work day being officially siphoned off by Calvin & Zippy archives...)
posted by VicNebulous at 11:54 AM on November 24, 2008

There are two strips with the word library, one from 1997 and one from two weeks ago. I think that yellow website cured my SAD.
posted by jessamyn at 12:18 PM on November 24, 2008

Oh holy shit. You've killed me, son. You've done me in.
posted by cortex at 12:29 PM on November 24, 2008

I saw art spiegelman talking about underground comix many years ago. Zippy had been in papers for a decade and a half at this point, and spiegelman was still utterly flabbergasted by that fact.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:05 PM on November 24, 2008

the show swore it was the "real" Zippy,

There was a radio show in the late 70's that had Zippy on it. I don't remember which station (maybe KPFA?) but I remember an ad for it that included the phrase "let's take drugs and go bowling". Can't seem to find any references to it, does anyone else remember this?
posted by doctor_negative at 1:07 PM on November 24, 2008

Unfortunately M-x yow in GNU Emacs 22+ no longer uses actual Zippy quotes, they had to be removed from Emacs for legal reasons.

You can put them back with an older version of yow.lines, which still exists in plenty of places on the net. Zippy quotes are also available for Vim.
posted by DecemberBoy at 1:31 PM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Just for the record, in an email exchange with Bill Griffith some time ago I learned that he doesn't necessarily visit all those weird places... readers sometimes send in photos of places and he works from those.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 2:03 PM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh yes. First page of hits when I searched using "bling" as the only term. It's from an April Fools Day when many of the regular comics switched artists/writers for the day. Zippy via Foxtrot.
posted by speedo at 2:04 PM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mumu. mumu. mumu.
posted by longsleeves at 2:57 PM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

My family gets a pen tip in this strip. Don't think it gets much better than that! My uncle has a few more, I believe, and it'll be a hoot to read through everything whilst looking. Thanks so much, n_o_d!
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:52 PM on November 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I hope they are working backwards through the older strips! I hate it when a search for blender gravel comes up empty.
posted by bink at 9:49 PM on November 24, 2008

There's also a straight text list of Real Places in Daily Strips that dates back to the beginning of 2000. Then you can plug those dates into the search to find the actual strips.
posted by Partial Law at 4:36 AM on November 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

Partial Law: There's also a straight text list of Real Places in Daily Strips that dates back to the beginning of 2000. Then you can plug those dates into the search to find the actual strips.

Thanks -- that beats the javascript popout in usefulness and completeness. (But what's with the pukey-orange color? Somewhere in downtown Billings a gastroenterologist is balancing Loni Anderson's checkbook!!)
posted by not_on_display at 12:38 PM on November 25, 2008

Hi. I came to MetaFilter for the first time yesterday by accident. It looked somewhat interesting and the first thing I clicked on was the Zippy Roadtrip. Wow! There was The Spot, a local favorite with a long and storied history (on the courthouse square in Sidney, OH and across from the Louis Sullivan bank ) and home of fabulous Old Fashioned Cream Pie. I decided to join MetaFilter on the spot. Thanks for posting this!
posted by artfann at 3:40 PM on November 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

THE POWER OF ZIPPY COMPELS YOU!

Welcome aboard, artfann.
posted by cortex at 3:46 PM on November 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yow!! I was MetaFilter until I became the assistant manager of all the Tastee Freezes in Azerbaijan!! There is no cabal!!

Welcome to MeFi, artfann!
posted by not_on_display at 4:33 PM on November 25, 2008 [1 favorite]