Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 22, 2023

Calvin is already counting down the months to the school year’s end.

It’s called a calendar, Calvin!

Phones tell you all that.

Wise observation, Hobbes.

My watch tells me month, date, day of week, hour minute and second. I almost NEVER have to look at my phone… and so I don’t.

I’m pretty smart, I know the month and year without looking…….DUH

My watch (a mere timex) actually does show the month as well as the day of the week (in both name and number) and the hour, minutes, and seconds. It’s very useful

Good one Hobbes.

Is “date” synonymous with “day of the week” here?

My Casio watch only shows day and month, in reverse order, trying to confuse the rest of the world… My Samsung watch displays day, date, month and year…

Watches that only have dates and not months, tend to count to 31 regardless, so you need to adjust them after every February, April, June, September and November.

In other words, retired people.

Had a pulsar digital in the 90’s showed the month and day with the time. Had another watch that had Sun -Sat printed across top with a little bar lit under which day it was.

Instead of an elaborate outing or vacation for our 50th we bought a pair of smart watches. Now we not only immediately know more than we might want but also have been conditioned to stand and walk when it tells us to “get up off your lazy a$$ and walk for a minute this hour”.

An entire minute. Ohhh, the humanity! Or as the Colonel in the Cave said, “the horror, the horror “.

I saw a complex mechanical watch advertised that would get the month and day correct up until the February 28th, 2100. Under the Gregorian calendar, the year 2100 is not a leap year. Neither are 2200 or 2300, but 2000 was, and 2400 will be.

Not something I’ll have to deal with, of course.

Forgot who said it, but it was about a watch that was watertight to 200m. “Chances are, if that watch is ever going to be at 200 meters, it will either not be on your wrist, or you are not going to care what time it is” .

What year is it Calvin?

You used to be able to call the telephone company and they told you the time. That disappeared at some point.

I remember when I lived on St. Croix that I wasn’t always sure about what month it was. Dry season, rainy season, Christmas winds, yes, but not the month. Of course, if the breeze ever stopped it was probably August.

Maybe Calvin should get a wrist calendar. One that also tells you the year.

Mine tells me the day of the week, the month and the day of the month. However, it does not tell me the year. How can I know whether 2020 is finally over, or whether we are stuck in its fourth iteration?

On vacation we asked the waitress what day it was. She gave us the date. We clarified, we wanted the day of the week, we had totally lost track! Before cell phones and all that.

Well I know it is Friday and that is all I need to know.

“No wonder you’re late – why this watch is exactly two days slow!”

Well if you aren’t smart enough to know the month then you’re not smart enough to need a watch.

Years past digital was a type I didn’t need or like. Now, at my age, it’s handy to have time, month, date, year on one screen that’s easy to read. Too many forms need those, especially at docs’ offices.

Can you tell time yet Calvin?

During the pandemic, I had trouble remembering what year it was!

Calvin should be hired by Steve Jobs…

And the year. OMG, what year is it? I need to know NOW … or maybe that was last year. I need to know the year, right now.

I know these two characters often lean heavily into observational humor, but there’s not the slightest pretense of a joke in this one.

For those of us who are Electricians, Electronics Techs, Electrical Engineers, Ham Radio operators, Telephone Techs, Computer Hardware Engineers, et. al., today is Michael Faraday’s birthday. And yes, I got a charge out of this.

The date is the month.

Although sometimes I have to recite the months to figure out which name that month is.

If you don’t know what month it is, you likely wouldn’t remember where you left your watch either. (Nor calendar… nor phone… nor…)

What’s a watch?

That complication would probably double the price of a mechanical analog watch. As it is, my digital watch has that and a few other things that I find very useful; stopwatch, countdown, 5 alarms, multiple time zones, etc . And not more than I really need. Not bad for a little Casio AE-1200. (I highly recommend that watch for its features and cost. I am not being paid by Casio)

My watch tells me the millennium…

Hobbes oblique sarcasm is kinda cute.

Sometimes I need to be told what year this is.

And no, I’m not the type to wear a watch.

I’m never late. Or early. I don’t need a watch.

No, I’m not a wizard.

Cute! As usual. What a pair.

My roommate in college got a Seiko when Seiko’s were considered very exclusive. He bragged about how accurate it was . . . then later asking him what time it was (it said it was 2:47) he said “its 3 o’clock”

It never fails. When January rolls around and I have to write a check, I always put the previous year on the date