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It’s the 2020 Comics Curmudgeon Summer Fundraiser! The only good thing about this year!

Six Chix, 9/8/20

I’ve come to see Six Chix as a puzzle feature and not a comic strip. Every day, it presents a collection of images and words, and implicitly asks the reader, “How is this a joke?” I’ve gotten pretty good at it — I can find one or two a week now! But today they upped the ante and added “How is this a chart?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/8/20

I like fill-in-the-blank puzzles, too! Just imagine how other strips would handle this joke:

Rex Morgan, M.D. Snuffy Colonoscopy, Prostate exam
Marvin Tater Vancomycin® IV, Pressure-wash
Funky Winkerbean Ol’ Bullet Rabies test, Euthanasia
Dick Tracy Jughaid Bail Hearing, Execution

Rhymes with Orange, 9/8/20

We are all in very serious trouble.

Sally Forth, 9/8/20

Good luck, sweetie!

The shutdown has been a fascinating time for logistics geeks, as established supply chains broke down and became reëntangled in novel ways. For example, there was always plenty of toilet paper — but in bicycle-wheel-sized rolls of single-ply locked up in the storerooms of shuttered office buildings. And food — in March, I scored a ten-pound bag of chicken quarters for three bucks. They were chilled (freezer space was overwhelmed almost instantly), restaurant-sized (retail chickens are usually much bigger), butchered in-store in a hurry (bandsaw marks, bone fragments), and priced to move. It was probably diverted from the commercial channel by foodservice distributor and logistics prima ballerina Sysco, which turned on a dime to supermarkets once the bars, restaurants, and corporate cafeterias closed.

So a strategic sourcing specialist like Ted ought to be right in his element, puzzling all this out and planning how his company will avoid it next time. Certainly nobody’s going to fire a guy with skills like that at a time like this. But Sally is clearly conflicted about going back to her team of scatterbrains, and who can blame her? Maybe the strip will make a 180° turn and become the story of a happy, well-adjusted stay-at-home mom, her hardworking, sensible husband/breadwinner, their lovely family, and neighbors who still fence in their front yards in case the Forths revert.

— Uncle Lumpy