Submitted for the prescriptivist's enjoyment, and the descriptivist's sniping:

http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/nq/

Sniping? ~ no way, Dgeigh! No, this descriptivist really enjoyed the joke of a pedant completely killing communication :)

Much of the time I don't "get" Non Sequitur. But I love when it features Obvious Man. That I get. He's as good as Dave Barry and tsuwm rolled into one.

(nice to see you back in these here parts, Dgeigh!)

There's nothing *non-sequitur about it (this time). However, it might be irony. (he-he/running away-e)

Don't all prescriptivists have an obvious *relationship with thier ego(s)?

See, this is really what I love about this board - the ability to BE a prescriptivist without killing communication. (Because I'm far too, too nice and polite ever to correct anyone in public. I just scream at my radio.)

sniping

What I'd like to know is how he knew what the caller's state of mind was. For all he knew the caller was anxious about Obviousman's potential for going off on some rant about word usage. Personally I think O'man was just being nice.

For all he knew the caller was anxious about Obviousman's potential for going off on some rant about word usage.

My liver hurts.

Dgeigh, that was hilarious! Thanks! How do you people find these things?

We communicate widely ;)

Could someone please post Obviousman's suggested replacement word? -I think it was 'eager' but I'm not sure and this has been bugging me for quite a while now :/

I think 'eager' is the word that you're looking for, zeronix. It also m ight be worth pointing out that, per the OED, the meaning for 'anxious' that O'man was railing against has been in use since the mid 18th century.

...when I try to refresh my memory I get today's strip, not the aforementioned Jun 3 '05. And the archive, alas, retains only one month. :-(

The original strip had Obvious Man as a guest on a call-in show responding to a caller who said that he had been anxious to talk with Obvious Man. O'Man stepped outside his role and ignored the obvious facts that language changes and that definitions of words are not carved in stone.

Fong... I'd thought the (obvious part of the) humor was that the normaly calm, cool and collected obvious man ripped the caller a new *one... fulfilling *his anxious destiny...