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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/29/23

Believe me, if there’s one bit of empathy doing this blog for multiple decades has granted me, it’s the understanding that it’s actually really a grind to come up with a new joke every day indefinitely, so I don’t blame comics writers for latching onto whatever they can as a a prompt. Blondie in particular loves to use fake holidays made up for marketing purposes to hang their jokes on, and that’s what I assumed was going on here, but a little Googling shows that “Contrarian Day” simply is not a thing — it mostly seems to occur in the phrase “contrarian day trader,” which is a sort of person who, if some very sad Reddit threads are any indication, frequently loses a lot of money. Anyway, you’d think he could’ve just said “Opposite Day?” That isn’t any kind of official holiday either, but at least it’s been sanctified by numerous cruel teens, right after they tell you that your clothes look nice.

Dennis the Menace, 9/29/23

What’s the menace here? That Dennis is revealing to his mother that his father has a comely assistant? That Dennis is accusing his father of being bad at his job and needing help? Neither: it’s that his father has violated their community’s WASP code and hired [shudder] an Italian.