Panel 3: “Remind you of anyone?” is a direct reference to a recurring line on my beloved but long-departed The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which ran from 2005 to 2014 on CBS. Ah, the fond memories I have of wrapping up work on the late (third) shift and checking out the first three breaks of that show before crashing out for the night. Ah, but then the thrilling “digital TV revolution” came along in 2009 and ensured that my backwoods home could no longer receive broadcast TV signals, thus ending my time of watching over-the-air TV. No great loss, tbh, but I am sorry I missed out on the final years of Ferguson’s show.

Panel 5: Here, the “plumbing repair” line is a reference to my own years of using duct tape to strap insulation around freezing-prone water lines and drain pipes in a poorly insulated cellar. Considering that I often encountered surprising difficulty securing wholly inanimate lengths of fiberglass insulation around likewise inanimate pipes, I’m reasonably sure that trying to duct tape a struggling human being would be exponentially more vexing and frustrating—but, hey, kids, this story is a work of shortcut-intensive and cheerily unrealistic fiction, after all.

-Adam Warren