how could this happen? we started out like romeo and juliet but it ended up in tragedy! (12. 463)

Via ibīdem, here is a slightly baffling online oracle that presents itself as a Magic 8 Ball but purports to answer more than yes or no questions by harnessing the power of the long-running animated television series and triangulating one’s prognostication with a clip and quote from The Simpsons that relates to one’s query. There is of course a huge archive to draw from and the show’s longevity, reaching spanning several generations of living memory and even touching on topics time out of mind, like milkmen, the middle-class—or smoking, making up this bizarre sibyl and corresponding scenes that match to the disembodied arms ashing into a skull. You’ll just have to test it out yourself. Incidentally, the toy—from Circus of Values, makes at least one appearance in the franchise, in an episode called “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” Milhouse showing his friend the ball on the school bus, which he quizzes: “Will I pass my English test?” Outlook not so good “Will Milhouse get beaten up today?” All signs point to yes “Will Milhouse and I be friends til we’re old toothless men with hair in our ears?” Don’t count on it “Will Milhouse and I be friends when we’re high school dropouts living off Uncle Sucker?” It looks doubtful “Will Milhouse and I be friends at the end of the day?”—answering a definite No. The same day, they learn a new student has joined their class, Samantha Stanky from Phoenix—she and Milhouse becoming instantly infatuated with one other to Bart’s exclusion. To get his friend back, Bart reveals their relationship to Samanthas’s father, who, to protect his daughter, transfers her to a local convent school, Saint Sebastian’s for Wicked Girls—run by French-Canadian nuns, who turn out to be other than strict and dour, Sœur Sourire singing Domi-nique - nique -inque s’en allait tout simplement, though voiced by Maggie Roswell (Helen Lovejoy, Maude Flanders, Miss Hoover and Luann Van Houten), made up her own lyrics. Feeling guilty for disclosing their secret romance out of jealousy, Bart confesses to Milhouse that he outed them, resulting in a physical altercation that Bart breaks up by throwing the Magic 8 Ball, originally marketed as a paper weight, another skeuomorph from the series, to consult for answers at one’s desk with ten affirmative answers, five neutral and five negative, much like ChatGPT, at Milhouse, smashing it and negating its predictions, leading to reconciliation.