Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for October 09, 2023

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

So no guidelines for the meet up for either participant? I wonder how Bern will interpret this data.

Is Luann about to do the crane kick from The Karate Kid?

Ok, Whatever. Just re-enforces the idea that this is a stupid idea the author is going with.

I’m reminded, too, of the Camping trip a while back where Bernice was taking notes as “The Analyst” or whatever. That was the first thing it was made clear that Bernice was 51 cards short of a full deck.

Holy crap! A fourth week of this intermission from the nonstop dorm drama! I can’t believe it! Thank our lucky stars!!

Well, I see two more “candidates” for “clown suits.”

They’re mocking Bernice and her project and that’s not nice. They agreed to participate. I don’t like them.

I think that blows the project, LuAnn. Or this may say a lot about LuAnn and the coffee mate.

Well this story started out as an exercise in Creative Writing. It’s been going on since mid-September! 8^ )

Luann open your wings and and crash at Nil feet.

This made me laugh! Their body language expresses who they are — Nil, odd and introverted; and Luann, attention-seeking with a slightly awkward energy. I like that they’re having fun with the project.

Just a-messing with Bernice.

If I were Bernice, I’d write down that I have two idiotic friends which I am embarrassed to be friends with and I am pondering on dropping them.

The rats are taking over the maze.

This is totally silly. all three are nonsensical

ROFLMAO!!!

Cartoons are supposed to be funny – not silly.

I saw something like this on a old Bloom County strip where the Milo and the gang were mocking a political round table discussion like you would see on Nightline or Crossfire. Their positions were standing on their heads and looking like the FTD flower guy. I suspect Nil will suggest taking some photos and then will proceed to remove some of the artwork from the cafe’ walls ala “Airplane”.

Finally! Something that made me spontaneously laugh. I miss that about comics. Ya know…. the being funny and clever part!

Kinda like Shaw’s “Pygmalion”, where Prof. Higgins spied on Eliza, writing down everything she said with her Cockney accent.

Nil is actually smiling. Maybe Jack might be next?

Luann has excellent balance. Potential martial art student?

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!

Will Leslie Knox ask Luann out?

Pretty Cute! Though, I find it hard to believe Bernice could get Nil to meet with Luann, without telling him a little bit about what her project was.

I guess each day this week she’ll meet with a different one of the guys. I really hope this arc has a satisfying conclusion and not some lame ending.

So who is tomorrow? I’ll guess Ox.

Just a picky-picky observation about “optics” and maturity. Nil has the image, and a cup of coffee to underscore it. Luann has her glass of soda pop. Can you imagine Elliot Ness having a sit-down with Al Capone, and the mob boss sitting there with a Pepsi and a straw? Greg’s characters thrived in high school, but haven’t handled the transition since then.

We have two playful people here. Maybe playful isn’t the right word, but at midnight it is the first word I can think of. Bernice didn’t expect any of that. LOL!

I would not be surprised if this is exactly what Bernice expected, since she would not tell Luann what her was about. It will be interesting to see the final results of this “study”. In the meantime, Luann isn’t getting her writing project done, unless the purpose of all this is to get Luann to use this as her writing project, which could explain why Piro/Walt was left out, since he also has his writing project.

Trolling the Bern!

Looks lik e Bernice’s experiment is goin well.

Lucky Luann Nils is keepin his eye out for her

Ha ha….now who’s gonna have egg on their face. Bern’s study is not exactly double blind.

Take THAT, Berniece!!!!! Haha

If anyone here watches Survivor, I think the real life Bernice is a contestant this season.

Amazing Luann and Nil! I like how they want to mock Bernice’s project. Their complicity is immediate and it’s nice to see Nil smile and how Luann isn’t afraid in the slightest of making absurd scenes in public if this serves to make a joke, she really could be a stand-up comedian! Bernice “the voyeur” seems quite tense seeing Luann with Nil, I wonder what she’s trying to understand and what kind of data she’s collecting, if the research is on Luann or on the boys. Can’t wait to see what scenes Luann will puts on with the other guys, especially with Jack.

Ahahahaha! Well Bernice, you can write down that these two hit it off well, and they are the joksters type of people! “Bonding over being silly”.

To-tal Cha-os …..

I’ve tried, I mean, I’ve really tried to like the writing. But this is so foolish, that I have to say goodbye. The characters are acting like preteens. the story lines now feel like an assault on my intelligence. If they cannot generate a compelling story, they might as well close this strip down, but that’s not going to happen, so au revoir to all.

Oh, this brings back sweet memories. My father was an actor, but also an armchair psychiatrist who lived in New York City during the height of the Freudian analysis craze. When I was in my teens, he was always trying to analyze me, and went to great lengths to prove that I was hopelessly neurotic.¹ One day he administered the Lüscher Color Test to me based on the populist paperback by Ian Scott that was out at the time.

(The Luscher Color Test, despite the ease and speed with which it can be administered, is a “deep” psychological test, developed for the use of psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians and those who are professionally involved with the conscious and unconscious characteristics and motivations of others. It is Not a parlor game and most emphatically it is not a weapon to be used in a general contest of “one-upmanship.”)

Happily, I had read the book beforehand, and selected in order Black (death), Gray (depression), and Brown (excrement) as my first choices. He was so disturbed that he made me do the test twice more, with the same results. I never told him that I was trolling him, and he went to his grave thinking that I was a deeply-disturbed psychotic. This may sound cruel, but it was just a dollop of revenge for some of the psychological abuse that he enjoyed heaping on my and everyone else around him.

¹ (In some ways he was right, but not in the way he thought; he could never have accepted the fact that he was largely responsible for much emotional trauma.)

Stupider and stupider

Ostrich meets Crane . . . or two flew over the cuckoos nest

Gotta say, Bernice deserves that. Maybe this will humiliate her into changing majors. We can hope.

Bernice has served them mushroom tea to move things along.

So you know how to tell someone they are going to get pranked, so they become more and more paranoid about the prank because everyone has built it up to something that will never happen? That has to be what she did here.

Going kablooie in the right place.

An observed behavior experiment doesn’t have to be a secretly observed experiment. How do the participants act when they know they are being studied as part of a psych paper?

For Nils, it is a chance for performance art.

If they know that they are being observed, it’ll taint the results

Let’s see Bernice write this down.

Judging from the different camera angles, in the two panels, why did Bernice switch chairs?

TJ and Oxford are waiting in the background.

Please stop, Luann. All you’re gonna do is hurt your family’s business!

Did Zane and Crystal ever ride off into the sunset together? https://www.gocomics.Com/luann/2003/08/16

Just askin’ for a friend.

Maybe she’s observing how subjects who know they’re being observed act.

Well Luann, by explaining what it is, you have “skewed the data” LOL. Bernice will have a hissy fit!

So much for that project Bernice.

This is going to be one interesting project! :D

well it’s become performance art. the only way this works is if she’s actually observing L who knows she’s being observed and how she will behave

What if she told each male to say something specific to see how easily influenced by man Luann is.

Yeah, there goes that research project. The subjects know too much. Uh, in a particular sense.

Luann, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Skew that data!

I like this playful side of Luann’s character. She is a creative type with acting skills, writing skills, pretty friendly, goofy and go with the flow…. Not sure where it leads her in the future but she seems to avoid taking herself too seriously most of the time. Perhaps cuts down on her drive to get serious and focus in on a career path? Her character doesn’t seem particularly dull to me. She is willing to play around but often shows she has some good boundaries as well.Perhaps we’ll see a week of “character portraits”?

Poor study design Bern. the title of your project may just turn out to be “what people do when they know they’re being watched”

That’ll show ya, Bern!!!! Ya got BERNed!!!!

In my opinion all Bernice is trying to do is set up Luann with one of the other guys she knows so Luann won’t be competition for Piro’s affection.

most excellent

Both subjects know they are part of a psych project, but have no idea what data Bernice is collecting. So it can’t be anything that they could change or skew by acting like this. I sure hope we eventually find out what Bernice is looking for.

Save us all from undergrad psych majors.

this is funny.

Well, I get the Karate Kid, but not the table.

What are Luann’s sound effects for those moves?

Bernice’s project is to watch 2 people trying to figure out “what Bernice’s project is”. Nil is guessing body language.

…that’s going to skew her results…

I don’t know what she’s studying, but she may find out that with a small sample size, it doesn’t take many outliers to really foul up the data set. My psych 101 group devised a study to test whether certain room colors were more conducive to learning. Unfortunately, one of the test participants we solicited had such an extraordinarily good memory his data was basically worthless - he scored perfectly no matter what. :) I suspect you could’ve painted the room in neon plaid and marched a brass band through it and he still would’ve scored perfectly. He just has amazing focus.

Of course, the other problem is this is fiction, and fiction often doesn’t know how to design good research in the first place. :-)

The weirdest thing to me is the fact that Nil is smiling.

I don’t understand why Bernice told Luann she was being observed unless she’s making a study of the Hawthorne effect. People tend to modify their behavior when they know they are being observed. It totally skews the results of any study.

Well, if the subjects KNOW they’re being studied, it will skew the results.

Holy crap!

This is great! Very funny. Go Nil and Luann.

Love this!

I laughed at this one. :-D

Look, I hate Bernice more than anyone, but if you tell a friend you’re going to help them, you shouldn’t then turn around and sabotage their assignment.

Tremendous.

Luann’s going to get back at Bern by screwing with her head this whole week.

This is starting to look more like Karen’s creative writing assignment.

Nil is being Nil.

Ox will be Ox. Jack will be Jack. Les will be Les. Gunther will be Gunther.

Hopefully only one day for each. However, historically characters have gone on and on for a whole week about what they could have said/done in one day.

Oh Hells yeah.

Standing on a chair like that is unsafe, Luann!

Bernice is not familiar with this mating ritual

Leave it to those two! Whee!

This is exactly what Bernice deserves.

Something seriously wrong with Bernice. What’s her next project, installing cameras in motel rooms?

I think it’s about Bernice getting some cheap laughs at her friend’s expense.

See you next week

Idiotic projects deserve idiotic results.

This is great! Instead of being good little lab rats, they go all out in subverting B’s “serious (and pretentious) study”.

I LOVE IT!

Yup. The observer affects what is observed.

Okay Luann a tip about a study is to not let the subjects know otherwise you are tainting the results.

I love it. Payback is sweet :) Bern can be a bit too much sometimes.

LOL!! Nil has a good sense of humor and apparently Luann is following his lead. :)

HA! Hahahaha!! Good for you guys! LOL!!

Good! Now act like monkeys throwing poop and screeching!

Down Luann.

Tomorrow’s strip:

Shannon walks in with Toni.

Shannon: When does Luann get a timeout?

Toni: Pick a year. Any year.

Bernice will love this.

During my first few college semesters, the #1 major on campus was psych. One was always getting personality serveys & other oddball nonsense pushed under their dorm doors or otherwise being asked to participate in various exercises/tests run by grad students or profs. You couldn’t cross campus without walking through someone’s experiment.

Bern kind of creeps me out.

Just wondering, did Bern get Luann and Nil to sign informed consent forms for human subjects research? Did she send her research proposal to her schools Institutional Review Board for approval?

There is no defense against a properly performed Praying Mantis Position in Martial Arts so beware…….

Tomorrow Tara and Piro walk in (i.e. to write together at a table).

You can always count on Luann to bring the “psycho” in “psychoanalysis.”

Performance art at its best.

So what are you learning, Bernice?

Obviously Bernice knows nothing about the scientific method.

I really like the two shadow figures in the back. It adds a little bit of interest without taking away from the main event! Nicely done Greg and Karen! ❤️

looks like lu is having a lot more fun with this

A perfect social example of the “observer effect”, that is, that the act of observing something changes the object being observed.

Way to blow the curve, kids.

Do I hear the Benny Hill theme song “Yakkity Sax” in the background?

ooo…will there be a new Muse?

Putting on a show for the smarmy “observer”! Well played, Nil and Luann….

Nils actually looks like he’s having a good time..