Oh, the Geometry!

We've all played with Möbius strips, right? We understand that one of the most mystifying and fantastic things to do with them is cut them down the middle, and then cut the results down their middles as well? The link back there is pretty good, if you've never done this. Also, once you have done it, you seriously need to go back and read Failing to Believe again, because there are four awesome jokes you missed out on last time through.

Speaking of which; I recognize that I basically recycled the "twist" joke. Except this time it's also in reference to the fact that when you cut a Möbius strip down the middle, you get a boring old strip with two twists in it--it's not a Möbius strip, it's just twisted. See? That's kind of a different joke, right?

Anyway, this one's been percolating for a while. You know I can't leave the Möbius strip alone; that thing is a veritable gold mine of math puns. Plus I'm sort of interested in how human-like emotions apply to a world of shapes and figures. What grosses them out, what kinds of things are horrible to see on television? I would imagine that the graphic, on-screen dismemberment of one of their kind qualifies. Insert meaningful commentary about context and perspective as determinants of emotional response here.

Speaking of commentary: you'll notice that panel 1 borrows the Excitement! background from Starts with P. The couch you should recognize from No Other Than, and Otto's chair by now is in enough strips that I don't really need to bother linking them. The last panel is copied directly from the first strip ever; I just took out the bottom thought-bubble and changed the text. That kind of thing happens a lot in Polytopes. It is no accident that all the rooms and doors are the same proportions all the time.

Plot-things: did you notice Ike jumping into Brock's...uhh...face, when the snipping happened? Look closely; Brock jumped over a little, too! Also, Otto seems to have recovered from his little foray into paronomasia, and the Buddha is oddly reticent to speak in this strip. What's up with that?