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For Better Or For Worse, 1/26/05

You mean she’s “screwing,” right?

Just to show you the impact this blog has had on my home life: my fiancée came running into my home office around 8:45 a.m. today as I was enjoying my morning Coca-Cola, practically besides herself with glee at today’s FBOFW. Now, as noted, she’s a sex ed pro, and in fact works with teens for her job, and has never heard any of these euphemisms used by actual adolescents. Maybe it’s because they’re Canadian-specific terms. Can one of our north-of-the-border readers confirm or deny? Anyone? Jim Morrison? Anyone? Whatever the case, I urge all of you to start using these terms in your daily conversation, if only because calling a 14-year-old girl a “gig” or “roadside” is more polite than calling her “a big slut” or “jailbait.”

Non-Canadian-sex-slang observation: In the FBOFW patois, children almost always say “an'” for “and.” This makes a certain sort of sense, though poor Elizabeth is still doing it at age 23 or so.

As a final note, as I was putting the finishing touches on this post, faithful reader Ken emailed me the following note: “Could you please comment on today’s For Better Or For Worse? I am in awe of it.” I think that about sums up my feelings.

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A few weeks after I started out this blog, readers pointed me in the direction of a similar project that I had never seen before: Funny Paper, a hilarious feature that had run on the Web site of my own fair city’s weekly City Paper. Funny Paper’s tagline was “We read the comics so you don’t have to.” This was remarkably similar to the title of my blog, but since Funny Paper seemed to have stopped publishing around six months before I began my own endeavor, I figured the coincidence didn’t matter much. Well, last week I got an email from the writers of Funny Paper, saying that they felt rather proprietary about the phrase, and that their column wasn’t defunct, only “on hiatus.” So, since they were first and all, I have now changed names. Behold, the Comics Curmudgeon! You will now be able to access this blog at comicscurmudgeon.com. Of course, the joshreads.com address will still work, since nobody (myself included) can spell “curmudgeon” consistently.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/25/05

Whoa, no wonder June was unable to identify a human bone last week: if her freakishly extended arm in the first panel here is any indication, her body doesn’t actually contain any bones. Nurse by day … Elastic Lass by night!

Or, in this case, also by day.

I know medical professionals are all down on the way Americans eat now and everything, but I think if I were a preschool-aged moppet like little Sarah, I would be a lot less perky and endearing if my parents forced me to eat “Flakey Wheats” for breakfast every morning. I’ve eaten Cap’n Crunch and Cocoa Pebbles regularly for the past thirty years, and my I still have all my teeth and most of my pancreas, thank you very much.