Yaaay, Pencils!

On this great day, 151 years ago, Hymen Lipman invented the pencil with an eraser on top. Let's give him a big hand.














Okay, forget it. We'll pick this up later on.


PPMB

• Falling into College 67: How Did We Get All This Stuff? by Richard Lobinske (Part 2): Arriving home after their long drive, Daria and Jane were surprised to find a pile of boxes and luggage in the apartment. "What the hell?" Daria asked.
• Iron Chef: No Tom: Got some good ones in here!
  
• Lawndale's Finest: The Dark Knight, by NightGoblyn (continued): “Tiffany?” Stacy called out, tapping on her friend’s bedroom door. “Your mom said I should come on up, are you awake?” Stacy heard some unintelligible muttering from inside the room and pushed the door open.
• Love Is a Series of Burning Sensations, by Undefinedlust (continued): Dragging herself from bed, Jane laughed at how appropriate the song seemed that morning. Last night, like all the nights since the previous Sunday had been a tough one. Her emotions swirled violently around feelings of despair that she would never have the woman she wanted, and a counter stream of desire that she could not push away, no matter how hard she tried.
  
• Things Fall Apart, by Doggieboy (Part 5): Martin Peters streaked into the skies as fast as he could; he neither looked behind him nor tried to defend himself. When the lightning bolt struck him, however, it still came as a surprise.
• Turnabout Confusion Part II: All The King's Horses, by Dennis (continued): "You should thank me," Kelly said. "After Thursday's fiasco, you're lucky I don't go Brooke on you." "But you're still in the Fashion Club," said Quinn. "Because Sandi hasn't seen fit to dispose of me yet," Kelly said and took a defiant bite of her pizza.
• Unnamed story (Iron Chef: Drunk as a Skunk and Twice as Stunk), by NightGoblyn (COMPLETE!): A bit of one-upmanship between Daria and the nemesis of the free world.
  

Upchuck Unbound

Charles “Upchuck” Ruttheimer III is a strange fish, and his following among Daria fans is not large. On one hand, he doesn’t appear to change a single iota between the time he puts the moves on Daria and Jane in “The Invitation” to his final scene with Andrea in Is It College Yet? From start to finish, he’s still the same sleazy sex-obsessed teenager that makes the Fashion Club go “Eww!” in unison.

And yet . . . he’s something more. He doesn’t blackmail Brittany for sex favors in “The Lab Brat,” instead being content to have her be his personal gopher (go for this, go for that, etc.) while he works on the mouse maze. He has the capitalist spirit in spades, being the creator/manager of an Internet website selling exotic candies (“Prize Fighter”). There are little hints dropped along the way (his wide vocabulary, for instance) that he is brighter than most students, and he is certainly clever. His Ultrasuave Universe website in The Daria Diaries speaks of interests in collectible items, Three Stooges movies, Jerry Lewis, Playboy, The X-Files, history, movies, Star Wars, brassieres, comic books, music, and Monty Python trivia. (He also seems to find Daria “feisty.”) And he is a high-ranked contender for a college scholarship (“Prize Fighters”), so dumb, he isn’t.

And . . . he has Stage Presence, actual mass-media charisma, a whopping metric ton of it. How else would he be able to wind up with gigs as an announcer for a bridal show (“I Don’t”), DJ at a school dance (“Daria Dance Party”), announcer for Lawndale High football games (“A Tree Grows in Lawndale” and “Fizz Ed”), operator of his own “float” in the Lawndale High homecoming parade (“I Loathe a Parade”), and amateur magician (“Life in the Past Lane”)? He has drive, for sure.

“Aside from my far-flung reputation as a people person,” he says in “Prize Fighters,” “I’d say my strengths include a daring entrepreneurial bent, coupled with an unquenchable need to succeed.” He could have added that he’s a proven risk-taker, which should have been obvious from his come-on lines. He's the walking poster child for the Myers-Briggs personality type called the ESFP (the Performer), described at the following links. See if Upchuck doesn't spring to mind right away as you read them.

http://www.personalitypage.com/ESFP.html
http://typelogic.com/esfp.html
http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/esfp.htm

Of all the characters on Daria, could it be that Upchuck has the best potential for a successful future? Could he become rich, famous, and internationally beloved, while his classmates vanish into obscurity? He might not appear to grow as a character, but his repertoire of skills expands greatly, and when he successfully goes out with Andrea in IICY?, one wonders if he's finally on the road to bigger and better things. That would be rrrowrrr, feisty!