Most. Disturbing. For Better Or For Worse. Ever.
For Better Or For Worse, 3/20/05
So very, very disturbing. So very, very, very low on my list of potential FBOFW erotic fantasy sequences, coming in just below the Deanna’s mom-on-Lovey lesbian scene. I hope that, when I get so old that my sex life happens entirely in my head, my meanderings aren’t so clichéd.
Now, many of you have already remarked on this unpleasant bit of business in the comments section, so what do I have contribute? Well, in panel two there, if those where real Greek letters, Grandpa would be getting something called rsrreums poured on his head. There, no need to thank me, that’s what we in the biz call a value-add. Those six semesters of Greek sure were a good investment for the future. Yesiree.
March 21st, 2005 at 9:48 pm
Thanks for the translation Josh…. ewww, here in my part of the world, we reserve rsrreums for foot massages – we wouldn’t think of pouring it on some old geezer’s head.
March 21st, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Maybe the first few panels are Jim’s REAL life, and the whole thing with that weird family is a dream!
Wow… didja ever look at your HAND… I mean, REALLY look?
Are there any Doritos left?
March 21st, 2005 at 10:11 pm
I’m looking at Grandpa Jim’s hand, which is pretty goddamn close to his wrinkly nether regions (shudder).
March 21st, 2005 at 10:14 pm
I hope that, when I get so old that my sex life happens entirely in my head, my meanderings aren’t so fully clothed.
March 21st, 2005 at 10:25 pm
I’m more concerned that he’s possibly sexualizing his daughter and granddaughter. It wouldn’t have occurred to me except that I saw the one nubile concubine holding a lyre, and in Grandpa’s real world, there’s that blasted guitar. So is the guitar strumming concubine April? The blonde massaging his feet is Iris. The blonde feeding him is Elly (who passes the cake onto April once he’s done), and John’s (by the process of elimination) that brunette in orange with the weird afro-puffs helping Elly get the doddering old guy dressed.
How’s that for a disturbing erotic fantasy sequence?
March 21st, 2005 at 10:35 pm
Dammmm, I used to be so innocent (other than being knocked up by some low-life) til I started reading your commentaries.
Learning fast in the big city – I even know what bashing the bishop means
March 21st, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Well, Mim, that, and much MORE information is available at the world-renowned…
Oh, never mind.
March 21st, 2005 at 11:05 pm
At least the Sultan saw fit to have the unfortunate concubines’ eyelids sewn shut as a gesture of mercy.
March 21st, 2005 at 11:42 pm
Re_reiume, actually. The _ is for the R shaped third letter, ’cause there IS no Greek letter resembling it.
March 21st, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Here’s another disturbing element in grandpa’s erotic dream. Notice the first two panels. It appears that one of his fantasies involves a satisfying fart in the tub that ends up smelling like perfume. Damn you grandpa! That’s my fantasy!
March 22nd, 2005 at 12:17 am
so charles, where do the dogs fit in?
March 22nd, 2005 at 12:48 am
Greek, awesome.
This classical archaeologist thoroughly approves.
Now, back to licking the ol’ pus encrusted wound…
March 22nd, 2005 at 12:55 am
Here’s a strange For Better or For Worse from 1981:
http://www.fborfw.com/timetravel/strips/080981.gif
Would the classic “it broke off” joke have followed, had more panels been allotted? Only the vaults of Lynn’s memory hold the answer to this question.
March 22nd, 2005 at 1:05 am
That may indeed be Grandpa’s idea of Heaven, but where were the women in his fantasy consigned? To watch a codger fart in the bathtub and then feed him grapes and rub his feet for all eternity? It seems more like Hell to me!
For poor Grandpa too, getting all that tease and no action. :(
Wake him up, Elly!
March 22nd, 2005 at 2:30 am
“so charles, where do the dogs fit in? ”
They must be the bath.
If I were a codger with one foot in the grave, I’d think in a dream like that I’d be at my buff 25 year-old stage rather than a shriveled saggy old coot.
Four nubile nymphs couldn’t be all that impressed with his dangling, wrinkled mantits, among other things.
March 22nd, 2005 at 3:01 am
The whole thing isn’t a dream of Heaven..it’s literal. The old lemon-puss has finally kicked the bucket, right in front of everyone. I remember when there was such a thing as tact.
March 22nd, 2005 at 5:00 am
Nonsense. If the guy had bitten it, we would have seen Elly warbling about “the miracle of death” and the “majesty of nature” as Gramps loosed his bowels on the couch as he breathed his last.
Then they would have thrown him into the freezer to wait until May when the ground would be soft enough to bury him.
March 22nd, 2005 at 7:36 am
In both the dream world and reality Grandpa wears green trousers and green socks. However, his fantasy shirt is much more elaborate than his (again) green sweater. Not only is the color different, but he has a vest and even a gold pendant necklace. Is grampa’s fantasy really about just having the freedom to wear the clothes that he wants and not what society tells him?
March 22nd, 2005 at 8:33 am
Jeez, has Grampa gone roadside on us? Is he now a gig?
March 22nd, 2005 at 8:40 am
I can only say that my erotic dreams almost never involve that much fruit.. I cant figure out why the Rsrreums(tm) brand perfume is steaming, whats in that stuff?
March 22nd, 2005 at 8:46 am
Good Lord! I just hit the link Zanzibar left us and it is much more disturbing then then current comic. Maybe this undercurrent of disturbing sexuality in FBOFW is not as recent as we thought. Those Canadians seem to know how to have fun in the bathtub.
March 22nd, 2005 at 9:28 am
Maybe Grandpa should get a copy of Said’s “Orientalism” for his birthday.
March 22nd, 2005 at 9:35 am
I feel sorry for Gwampaw. He is lost in his reverie: wonderful farty baths, handmaidens perfuming him and feeding him grapes, nubile young nymphs massaging his feet.
He is going to wake up to real life and see wifey number 2 (does she have a name or even need one?), Elle, and April. Odds are good that he will be running to the garage to grab the shotgun so he can escape his horrible reality and slip away back to heaven.
March 22nd, 2005 at 9:49 am
Yeah, the creepy guitar/lute::April/concubine thing struck me, too, charles.
On a completely different topic, I was mildly interested in Sunday/Monday’s Spiderman where Spidey’s about to open up a big can of whup-ass on the poor little actor guy in the Rhino costume once he had him safely webbed up.
I thought Spiderman’s MO was to wrap up bad guys and leave them safely for the police to collect and process through the U.S.’s crackerjack justice system.
Any rabid spiderman fans out there able to remember any time that the friendly neighborhood spiderman webbed a bad guy up, then proceeded to pound the crap out of him?
Just curious …
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:13 am
Not enough of you are disturbed about Zanzibar’s link! Freaky!!!!
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:26 am
You can safely place me in the “disturbed” column for the Zanzibar link. Is is odd that both strips (Sunday’s and Zanzibar’s) both start with the balloon statement “Ahhhhh”?
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:30 am
Hey Josh,
My four semesters of Greek suggest a translation of rerreume and not your rsrreums. Shall we settle this with a duel or thumb wrestling?
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:42 am
Panel six is especially disturbing. I never knew that Grandpa Jim had cloven hooves. Is the bigger of his two toes wiggling around? I think he’s trying to…ummm…tweak that little missy with his foot.
March 22nd, 2005 at 11:01 am
Smitty Smedlap? How’s the chophouse business? Hope you don’t need to eat feesh anymore.
The nymphs are turned on by Grandpa’s scrotum chin. He’s a geezer but he has an extra set of testicles under his mouth…
March 22nd, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Thr real Rhino could break webbing with a bit of effort. The pounding Spidey was about to give was supposed to discourage such effort.
March 22nd, 2005 at 1:51 pm
It’s obviously labelled in imaginary dream-Latin, not imaginary dream-Greek!
March 22nd, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Me & my no semesters of Greek, but having to memorize the Greek alphabet once when I joined a fraternity, agree with Hi Rev that those are Epsilons, not Sigmas.
March 22nd, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Ok, so we are privy to the insights of Gwampaw Jim’s mind. In the final panels we see him getting a foot massage from the lovely Iris, but in his mind he is in some harem somewhere with a beauty stroking his feet.
This establishes that he is taking real world events and putting them into the context of his fantasy. April plays a tune for him on the guitar, she turns into another harem nymph.
Iris and Elle help him from the tub, they are transformed into, you got it, harem nymphs.
The dogs licks his face, and he thinks he is being fed grapes.
Gwampaw needs to be in a home and not out on the streets. Who know what kind of delusions he has when he is out on his own. I certainly hope he isn’t driving anymore, cause he probably thinks that SUVs are German Panzers and he has to ram them with his jeep to save the patrol.
Send him to the home or pull the plug.
March 22nd, 2005 at 3:38 pm
I think grampa & Iris live in some sort of assisted living facility, & grampa doesn’t drive any more.
March 22nd, 2005 at 4:00 pm
No feesh, no more endless yappin’ with Mary and her limp-noodle boyfriend during endless dinners at “The Bum Boat,” and unfortunately, no more “stuff” ever since that Beadle kid disappeared.
Son-in-law drove the chophouse into the ground — thanks for asking. Harrumph.
March 22nd, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Gwampaw needs to be sent to the kind of facility that will strap him to the bed. That is the kind of assisted living that he really needs.
March 22nd, 2005 at 5:04 pm
I had a spidey-themed dream last night in which I webbed up two young hooligans and kicked them a couple of times like sacks of feed before handing them over to authorities. So in my experience — albeit limited — spidey will take cheap shots after a victory, but only if no one appears to be watching.
Also, I’m afraid that the FBoFW strip may mean something that we’ve all overlooked. The color green symbolizes rebirth and the emergence of spring, when life takes hold in the soil and young men’s fancies turn to thoughts of love. Sunday was the first official day as well. Coincidence? Unlikely. It’s my interpretation, then, that this dream doesn’t symbolize Grandpa’s death at all; rather, it shows that this nice little siesta he’s taking will revitalize him back into the spry, virile young buck he once was and he’ll be back to his old ways of high-risk group sex with women a quarter his age.
“Hey toots,” Grandpa said to the guitar-stumming, black-haired beauty, “would you care for a taste?” (The placement of the glass of wine is NOT accidental.)
March 22nd, 2005 at 6:09 pm
This is truly the most disturbing FBOFW ever. I can’t even say more than that.
March 22nd, 2005 at 6:46 pm
You people continue to disturb me. I want my Illusion of Comic Strip Innocence back!
March 22nd, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Josh, how come no mention of todays use of fake slang in FBOFW?
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:17 pm
As a girl seriously into costume design, I don’t think it’s supposed to represent a Greek or Roman lifestyle. The women are wearing harem garb. It’s just a magical eastern world of Grandpa’s design.
March 22nd, 2005 at 10:31 pm
The Gwampaw foot rub thing just gives me the willies. One thing’s for sure;
he’s not satisfied getting a foot job from his hag-wife. Gawd, imagine his
horror when he wakes up and sees that
wizened, time-blasted crone kneading his bunions. Ick.
March 22nd, 2005 at 11:10 pm
Want to get REALLY creeped out?
Considering the diversity of perversity that permeates the human animal, you can be assured that someone, somewhere, was actually AROUSED by that Sunday strip.
And I send you to bed with that thought.
March 23rd, 2005 at 10:23 am
Actually the mise en scene in Grandpa’s dirty old man dream looks a lot like that classically bad Elvis movie, Harum Scarum. If Elvis were still alive, and some say he is, he’d probably look like Grandpa Jim by now. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
March 23rd, 2005 at 10:35 am
My initial thought after the first few panels was: “Uh oh, Grandpa is dead.”
March 23rd, 2005 at 11:50 am
“Considering the diversity of perversity that permeates the human animal, you can be assured that someone, somewhere, was actually AROUSED by that Sunday strip.”
Darn you. I thought my secret was safe.
Now I have to go back to my Tony Daytona/ Luannn lesbian hook up fantasy.
March 23rd, 2005 at 10:20 pm
The way the feet are drawn here reminds me nearly of a foot-fetish… but if this were a real fetishist it would be much more prominent throughout the strip. This is just generally disturbing.
March 27th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Actually, I don’t find that Elizabeth-and-Michael-in-tub-together comic all that disturbing at all. I think it’s only disturbing if you’re an overly-prudish American. :) In most other parts of the world, it’s fine for siblings to bathe and sleep together when they’re young, or even to sleep/bathe with their parents.
September 22nd, 2005 at 8:39 pm
yeah but its not fine for them to grab each other’s “junk”