Dark Tuesday
Post Content
Dustin, 11/5/24
The thing about Dustin is that it’s a perfect machine of hateability, in the sense that there isn’t a single recurring character that I have any real warm feelings for. Dustin’s sister Meg in some ways escapes my ire the most, because she has very little in terms of revealed personality and exists only to make rude comments about her brother and parents and occasionally be reprimanded for dressing too slutty. Today, however, we learn that her misanthropic attitude extends beyond her family to the human race at large, and frankly I would love to learn more about Doomer Goth Meg in future installments of this strip.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/24
A sobering discovery of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, in many places that embraced electoral democracy, it functions less as a way for wise or efficacious policies and ideas to be debated and endorsed by the citizen body, and more as a head-counting exercise: different interest groups within a society, many of them ethnic- or clan-based, use the vote as a means to assert their numbers and power rather than to win in the marketplace of ideas. While this might not be what the Enlightenment philosophers and America’s founding fathers had in mind, you have to admit that the Smifs and the Barlows taunting each other by means of “I Voted” buttons is preferable to their usual means of settling disputes (murdering one another with antique rifles and whatever other makeshift weapons they can lay their hands on).
43 replies to “Dark Tuesday”
SS. I call BS. Felons can’t vote.
@Where’s Rocky?: But they can run for President.
CS: Okay, let’s get some obvious questions out of the way now:
1. Uh, if you’re short on bus drivers, why are you pulling them off their bus routes to act as crossing guards?
2. How many cars will Crankshaft wave through the intersection while the crosswalk is full of kids?
3. Has Batiuk just given up all hope of ever being relevant and is now just cranking out nonsense in a pit of drunken despair?
BEST ELECTION STRIPS:. so hate me
– MF: patience 1
– LUANN:. tomorrow, the vote is on who wants Steph out, and she learns why a republic that protects rights of minorities is better than a dictatorship of majority
– FRAZZ:. Patience 2
– CANDORVILLE:. Time travel is still only one way
PHANTOM:. Ah guys, no matter what Ian Mollusk told you, there still are no sovereign nations on this planet or on the moon. As of today.
Phantom: This is where reality disconnects if the reply is anything but “We’re here to help you guys. Hail, Mollusk!”
Dustin: I wonder if Jeremy knows that Sara takes on gigs on other strips.
MW: Is that a player piano? There doesn’t seem to be a place for sheet music.
Mary Worth: The pets have the humans right where they want ’em. Libby’s distracting them while Odin’s peeing on Wilbur’s couch cushion. Clever!
GA:
Reading Gasoline Alley is kind of like looking at a car wreck that you’re passing. You don’t really want to interact with it, but you are somehow impelled to do so — you know, like a moth drawn to a flame.
MW: Under cover of the merriment, Wilbur puts a move on Sheila See. She jabs him with a hypodermic and he hits the floor.
H&L: It’s that daily run to the liquor store. The pricier the gas, the more it costs to get gassed.
BG&SS:
The Barlows quickly perceive that the only way that the Smiths could be sporting “I VOTED BETTER” buttons is that they somehow became aware of how the Barlows voted, thus betraying a breach of the confidentiality rules associated with casting a ballot. The Barlows take successful legal action to disqualify the Smiths’ ballots and emerge triumphant.
I wonder if there’s any deeper symbolic significance to an Election Day strip where Dustin is holding onto a video game controller but not actually using it to accomplish anything. More likely it’s just that the Dustin creative team don’t know how video games work.
CS: Tom Batiuk understandably wanted to cover the school bus driver crisis as his latest award-pandering Very Important Story. The problem is, the crisis is about there not being enough bus drivers, and Batiuk simply could not bring himself to retire any of the beloved and brilliantly-developed characters Crankshaft works with, like Silent Old Woman, Guy with Hat, Other Guy with Hat, and of course Lena the Workplace Abuse-Sink. Instead Batiuk doubled the team with a handful of other people we’ve never seen before, and then declared they had a shortage of drivers anyway. Now because there aren’t enough bus drivers, more kids have to walk to school, so… they’re using bus drivers as crossing guards. Another problem in this country masterfully solved by its wisest and wittiest social commentator.
JP: Yes, obviously the dozens of senior citizens trapped in shipping containers filled with dangerous machinery that plummeted into subterranean caverns were all fine with zero fatalities. Never mind that that is physically impossible; Neddy said so, so that’s how it is. Anyway, this is turning into a bizarrely drawn-out explanation of the origins of Hank
TollingBowen when “He’s just an ex” was a perfectly adequate answer to Reena’s redundant question and it’s not even important because Neddy explicitly did not go to visit him. But something has to fill the void after Neddy spent less than two minutes confronting and breaking up with her fiancé, so I guess we’re doing a clip show about some minor character from eight years ago. Maybe we’ll even get an explanation for how a very young local structural design engineer loaded down with at least six years of student debt was able to afford a second home in the Alaskan wilderness after a surely career-ending mistake and was willing to spend several jobless months consoling a self-pitying narcissist, but don’t hold your breath on that one.Well sounds like this is a great time and place for me to mention that if you want democracy to achieve the best outcome for all of society and not just a tug-of-war between two great forces to impose their will on everyone else, you want rangevoting.org, it produces far superior outcomes to voting systems that [gets dragged out of the room]
MW:
“Now here’s an anthemic one for our friend Wilbur, courtesy of the pertinacious Miley Cyrus. It’s called ‘Wrecking Ball’ !”
Chix (sic): Good one.
MW-Too cheap to hire a DJ?
JP-“They all survived by which I mean me. Who cares about a bunch of senior citizens.”
Dustin: It’s funny, because you would think that a young
Zoomer/googles quickly/ ‘generation alpha’ teen would be more worried about global warming than a new ice age? Maybe she’s actually quite optimistic about our society’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or maybe ice ages are the subject of the hot newY.A. novels/googles again/ ‘Tiktok dances’? No wait…that can’t be right…BGSS: The Barlows are right to look distressed: if the Smiffs voter ‘better’, it means that they voted ‘wrong’, and they’ve found themselves on the proscription list. Technically it was a hidden ballot, but those tattered rags the town uses for curtains don’t provide much privacy.
Snuffy Smith: I refuse to believe anyone in Hootin Holler votes any differently from anyone else. They all open the ballot paper, and then remember that they’re illiterate.
MW- Moy has obviously never owned a cat. Not sure if I’ve ever heard any group of humans chant ha-ha-ha.
SS- In Maryland mine said “yo voté.” Jo momma.
Dustin: I mean, if I lived with the Dustfamily I’d turn nihilist pretty quick myself.
Dustin: Almost [gulp] forty years ago, a philosophy instructor told the class about riding the elevator with one of his professors on a wet, windy, stormy day. “A good day to read Schopenhauer, don’t you think?” the professor asked, about the other famed German crank/philosopher, known for his commitment to humanity’s racial suicide. Any day in Dustin is a good day to read Schopenhauer, is what I’m saying, Meg can drag out On The Freedom of the Will, or they can all die in a fire, it’s all good.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: One of the primary characteristics of 2024, for the United States and indeed the global community, has been the suffocating dread, anxiety and omnipresence of the American presidential election. You can’t get away from it! Campaign ads blanket television, it’s jammed into every possible news story, it’s all people talk about anymore.
Shorter Schultz: Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought this would happen to me, but I long for the days when Snuffy Smith concentrated on being a lazy, drunk chicken-stealer…
C’shaft: Because kids far enough away to take the bus to school absolutely would have no other option but to walk, likely several miles and across multiple high-traffic intersections.
JP: Man, you’d think Reena would be desensitized to Parker-Spencer-Driver drama by now.
Luann: “Look, I’m just the granola girl earth mother stereotype; I don’t have anything to contribute beyond vague new-age catch phrases.”
MT: “Yes. Next question!”
MW: I have owned several cats, and I have heard several noises out of them: meows of every pitch and length, hisses, purrs, that thing where they yawn and meow at the same time, the chittering noise they make when they see a bird, the confused “prrp?” when you poke them awake from a nap. I have never, NEVER heard a cat go “woooo” like they’re they lost Isley brother. Karen Moy should have stuck with “Meow!”
Pluggers love Election Day because it allows them to feel smug and patriotic at the same time.
MW: GLURRRRRGGGEEE!
Phantom: “Well, why didn’t you say so?” [Troopers join in beating while Mr. Man in Black jerks off at the sight]
But seriously folks, DePaul’s just getting this out of his system now because depending on what happens in the next few days/weeks, he’s probably going to find himself out of a job by New Years…
SF: How precious that Sally (and by extension Ces) think that we’re going to know anything certain and widely accepted about this election ‘soon enough’…
JP: Ces pines for the days when everyone loved his ridiculous (but effective) way of demonstrating just how stupid the previous writer’s story concept had been, before everyone realized he was merely saying ‘Hold my beer…’
I fled the Gocomics comment section because nobody could talk about anything but The Big Race. Took every watt of my mental energy not to type in ALL CAPS at all the stupid people on the other side. Not getting drawn into any of that, sticking to comics and porn today, and maybe tomorrow if the election isn’t decided.
Dustin – Only the he dead have seen the end of war.
George Santayana
BG&SS – I’m an asshole, and all I’ve got to show for it is this lousy sticker….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Dennis the Menace: Does everyone sleep in the same room? That seems uncomfortable and awkward, and yet explains a great many things.
I can only conclude Snuffy and Loweezy voted for one of his poker buddies. If they wanted to snobbily proclaim they voted in a superior way, surely the stickers would say “I Voted Gooder” or no one in Hootin’ Holler would understand.
Shut up, Meg. The next ice age? We’ll have heated ourselves to near extinction before that happens. The only good news is that as sea levels rise, you’ll start to be able to buy seaside property really cheap.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Shut up, Meg. The next ice age? We’ll have heated ourselves to near extinction before that happens. The only good news is that as sea levels rise, you’ll start to be able to buy seaside property really cheap.
Meg may be onto something. Back in the 70s, the climate change boogieman was a coming ice age within a matter of years. It never came so they switched to global warming. Maybe the powers that be are switching back again.
@Buck Ripsnort: You’re going to want to stick to porn, and for a lot longer than today or tomorrow…
G. *(*&%#$(&# Thorp: Gil looks like he’s rubbing one out in that voting booth.
Dustbin – “What do you call Dustin Kudlick buried under a glacier?” “A good start.”
Don Abundio, translated:
“Today I will let my readers fill in the words”
“Hey, it works for The New Yorker“
BG&SS — On the plus side, at least we know Sheriff Tate’s first name now–it’s Better. He had it legally changed a few years back, and the Smif’s prefer a semi-competent functionary to an efficient fascist. I know how they feel.
Things that Pluggers do that are not specific to Pluggers #2397.
@John Plugger Mellencamp:
That impression was created by certain media outlets, but the majority of scientific papers on climate in the 1970s predicted warming.
@Activist:
#5. PHANTOM:. Oops, I typed while thinking of GA and Dark Side of the Moon. There are just no sovereign nations in the US. Though I think there are some enclaves (or exclaves) on Ian Mollusk’s home country.
Dustin – Doomer Goth Meg? Sounds more like Boomer Meg. Next will she make a “joke” about being more afraid of natural stupidity than artificial intelligence?
BG&SS – Part of the advance of civilization is the rule of law and a central state with authority, which sublimates our animal instincts to lash out at dangers and slights to honor, family, or personal pride. This plays out in several arenas: The adversarial role of lawyers in court, debates in the legislative bodies, the relationship between the people and police and, in the democratic societies, the people putting aside the bullet for the ballot.
There are other ways that feuding factions might jockey for status and dominance outside of direct violence: Sports, business, science and technology, architecture, public spaces and infrastructure, artistic and cultural pursuits, and endowing great centers of learning. None of these other options are likely to take hold in Hootin’ Holler for several generations, if ever. But if the Newnited States can manage to keep the denizens out of direct conflict and following the law, if not the spirit, of the quadrennial electoral process, it’s a positive sign the rest of society can avoid backsliding into primal savagery.
9CL – So, the big reboot with (some) new characters does not resolve the time travel issue. Characters still may suddenly be any age and find themselves at any point in their timeline. These new characters from a few months ago are already having their storylines retconned. Alistair was almost 20 but now has reverted back to pre-adolescence for at least a few installments.
As for Alistair’s persistent insistence on bringing a grand piano with him everywhere he goes, maybe we can retcon him to play the Triangle or some other instrument that travels better?
BG&SS – Not that I think I’m a better writer than John Rose, but changing the the buttons to “I Voted Early” and “I Voted Often” would have been funnier, and more on brand.
That said, I don’t see Hootin’ Holler as a place with a lot of variety in political ideology. I mean, how long has the mayor been mayor? Also, aside from fence post gossipin’ with Elvinney, where do they get their news? Does Loweezy have a monthly subscription to The Atlantic? Does Doc watch Fox News 24/7?
Not that I have a lot of room to talk. I grew up in a formerly sleepy little suburb of Atlanta that, for the first three decades of my life had the same mayor – a man by the name of W.L. “Pug” Mabry. He pronounced the word “chimney” as “chimbly”.
Anyway, go vote, or vote better today if you have not already done so!