Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for January 13, 2024

You’re also going to need a bigger fan.

No you don’t.

Just invent elastic ones.

Or start closer to the outlet

It’s a shame that you don’t have a Tesla that you can plug it into.

I’m guessing this before petrol leaf blowers. Or as Calvin would see it. A jet engine…….

One day Calvin will meat Danae and the world will be annihilated.

Or a gas-powered sled.

The Tesla sled!

Sudden flashback of a 60s TV series about the Florida Everglades in which the guys buzzed around in a boat with a huge fan on the back. What purpose it served and why it was better than an outboard motor (which existed at the time) I cannot tell you.

I commented about extension cords on the snowman suicide comic, and here’s Calvin trying to commit suicide himself.

Early Tesla prototype.

A LOT more.

Try a battery-operated fan!

When an idea meets reality…

Rocket sled about to be invented.

Or Uncle Fester.

Fertile imagination, that or he’s been watching Swamp People or reruns of Gentle Ben.

From small beginnings springs great hope

There’ll be no putting the peddle to the metal on this one.

The propulsion system clearly needs work.

This is doomed to failure.

EV power didn’t work then, and it is not much better today….

Calvin needs a rocket from the Acme Corporation.

Hobbes holding the extension cord while standing in the snow?

Schocking!

Yes, I could really see this as real

You may want to opt for solar power.

Y’all need a bigger fan too..

I think you just need a steeper slope. Never mind that fan and the sarcastic tiger.

I get a bang out of the fact that Hobbes needs a scarf but nothing else. Is his neck (only) particularly subject to the cold?

There’s a video where a guy strapped a very strong leaf blower to his kid’s wagon and jetted his son down the sidewalk while blowing off the leaves. I don’t think he had hearing protection, though.

At least he’s not doing the ridiculous thing that was shown in Barbarella, with a FORWARD facing fan blowing against a sail. That’s the equivalent of trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Or be closer to the house.

I worked on a Free-Electron Laser project. It needed an “extension cord” over 100 feet long to get power to the top of it. Our engineer ordered a big reel of wire. I pre-tested it in the lab and our equipment did not work. On a hunch, I put my hand on the wire in the huge reel. The wire was warm. I measured the voltage coming out. It was below 90 volts.

He had ordered wire that had too small a diameter for the job and the voltage was no longer high enough to turn on our digital equipment. The resistance of the narrow wire was too high and dissipating the power as heat.

This is why you cannot just string together extension cords indefinitely.