#220: "Sisyphus"
Artie says ever since Marv passed away & Alice sold the company to SynrSys, he feels like he’s been pushing a rock up a hill. But he’s making twice as much money, the benefits are great, & he pays for almost everything with his corp Amex and no one seems to care. So he’ll keep pushing on the rock, & even with all the soul-crushing, corporate BS, he’s starting to get comfortable. He started to noodle on this idea & it occurred to him that most depictions of Sisyphus show him pushing a nice, round boulder up a hill. Artie says it always seemed kind of generous to give the guy a perfectly round boulder. So his first caption for #220 featured the boulder as a rhombus. Krenshaw pointed out that a rhombus is two-dimensional & has 4 equal sides & the boulder Artie drew was actually closer to a trapezoid. And also that a 3D trapezoid, technically, is called a trapezoidal prism. Artie said the word “rhombus” was funnier than the word “trapezoid”, & much funnier than “trapezoidal prism”, which set off a long debate. Ultimately the Committee agreed 5-4 that rhombus is funnier & asked Artie to redraw the boulder as an actual rhombus to be consistent with the caption. Artie refused, saying that unequal sides on the boulder are better “image-balance-wise”. The Committee agreed with this logic and found themselves stuck in a state of limbo & wanted to see what the focus groups said. The S-MCSS results came back in favor of the unevenness of the trapezoid image, with a record-breaking difference in the image balance component of the score. But the caption component of the score favored the word “rhombus” in the caption. After a 2nd long debate, the Committee voted and, despite the focus group scores, came out 5-4 in favor of consistency & since Artie wouldn’t redraw the boulder as an actual rhombus, they just changed the caption to say trapezoid. Krenshaw then pointed out that a 3D rhombus is called a “rhombohedron”, which by that point was moot. I’m posting both versions, you be the Judge. Artie’s not that upset bc he thinks it’s kind of poetic that the Committee just basically validated his whole point. -Ed.
