Issue: April 13, 2026

Here’s a cool li’l story: Startin some time in the ’30s or ’40s – it’s hard to say exactly when – a mysterious anonymous fella known only as the “Toaster” would sneak into Baltimore’s Westminster Burying Ground every year in the wee hours of January 19 & pour a glass of Martell cognac & raise a toast over the cenotaph of what author? Then he’d leave the bottle behind, plus also a trio of roses & sometimes a li’l note, & then skedaddle outta there.

The original fella who did this, he died in 1998, but I guess his son kept on the tradition for a li’l while. But then the Son of Toaster no-showed in 2010, which I guess basically brought the tradition to an end.

Apparently the Maryland Historical Society’s tried to revive the tradition in a more tourism-friendly sorta way, but ... I dunno, that feels a li’l cringey to me. Like, why not just let it be a thing that happened, & now it’s over, y’know? We don’t need to make everything a Thing for all eternity!

The two “cog-” answers are makin me think of cogs & gears & elaborate machinery of a vaguely old-timey vintage. Clockwork, steampunk, that sorta thing.

Can ya tell me what cartoonist’s name is used to describe any kinda whimsical mechanism that’s got lotsa interconnected parts that trigger each other in an elaborate sequence, usually to do some sorta fundamentally mundane (or even pointless) task?