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The Middletons, 5/18/06

I’ve often excoriated The Middletons for its extreme middle-of-the-road bland lameness, for a mediocrity so shameless that it makes Herb and Jamaal look somewhat above average. But there’s one thing that I have to give it credit for: it deals unflinchingly with the sex lives of old people.

What?

No, I’m not joking.

OK, laugh it up, whippersnapper, but you’re going to be old some day, and you’re still going to want to get it on, and the last thing you’ll want is some young punk acting like his or her generation invented sex. Like you never got freak nasty back in the day!

Well, maybe you didn’t, in which case, you’d want to get busy with a suspender-clad, bow-tie wearing senior hunk all the more. My point, though, is that The Middletons proudly features a sexually aggressive old lady character, and all of us who are now or who will someday be old ought to salute that.

But no matter what your age, don’t talk about it in front of your kids though, because: ew.

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Family Circus, 5/17/06

“Yeah, know what else, kid? If your mother had remembered to take her pills every day, I wouldn’t have to listen to your jibber-jabber. Are you strong enough to pick up that bottle of bourbon and carry it over here? Oh, you are? Then do it and get the hell out of my sight.”

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Shoe, 5/16/06

Do you think that if you just drew all the characters in your comic as birds, day after day after day, you’d eventually forget that they were birds? Do you think that eventually you’d get so bird-blind that you’d think it was perfectly all right to go with a joke that conjures up the horrific image of birds gleefully pecking at the fried carcasses of other birds in a world where cannibalism isn’t just accepted, but celebrated by symbolics acts of the state legislature?

Because it’s not all right. Do you hear me? It’s just not.

Curtis, 5/16/06

Exactly how old are Curtis and his school buddies supposed to be? I always had them pegged as middle schoolers. I figure Curtis is 12, and Derek and “Onion” are maybe 13 or 14. Thus, my immediate reaction to this strip wasn’t “Derek and ‘Onion’ stole a car” but “Derek and ‘Onion’ can drive?” Maybe it’s just me.

I’m convinced that the quote marks around “Onion” are actually part of the gentleman’s legal name, so he doesn’t have to fear the wrath of Finger Quotin’ Margo. Others aren’t so lucky.

Wizard of Id, 5/16/06

Oh, Mrs. of Id, I wish you hadn’t gone and done that. Now she’ll … I mean, I try to stop her but she … oh dear …

She just feels very strongly about it, you see.