Crime and punishment comix
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Slylock Fox, 1/27/25
Now, on the surface, this one is a puzzle. I’m not talking about the actual puzzle in the strip, but the bigger picture: why would this ursine rustic be nattering on to the press here in an abstruse but technically correct way about the relative altitude at which he found this treasure chest? What does he possibly have to gain from it? I think the answer has to do with Slylock’s presence, actually: there’s something shady about that treasure (tax fraud? let’s say tax fraud) and he needs to distract Sly into aiming his big brain at just about anything else. Dropping an unusually precise trivia fact like “282 feet below sea level” is like throwing rice in front of a vampire: it’s such an obvious target for ratiocination that he simply won’t be able to not waste his time on it.
Pardon My Planet, 1/27/25
Hmm, so what I’m getting from this comic is that … the prosecuting attorney has called the defense attorney to the witness stand? And also the two of them are married to each other? Ha ha, this is an unusual court case indeed!
179 replies to “Crime and punishment comix”
God damn it Slylock, don’t google the answer in front of everyone.
BB:. Cookie’s problem solved by Tina’s Groove.
MW:. Don’t be too shocked, Dawn. Though he’s obviously developing a beer belly posture, Dirk uses only mild cuss words (we know this because there’s only one *).
PmP:. All about who ate the last piece of pie. Peter Prosecutor pumps his husband by making it into a federal case.
FBoFW:. Liz and Andrew broke up. And they really are staying friends? (Many times tried, many times I failed.)
Pardon My Planet: YES! WILBUR IS FINALLY ON TRIAL FOR HIS MANY, MANY CRIMES!
Poor Buford looks like he’s seen some things, probably the skeletal remains of whoever lost their treasure chest in Death Valley.
MW: This is going to end with Wilbur being the hero, with Fist O’ Justice even, right?
yRxMD: “Ha ha! Glad I got my forever fuck buddy, loser!”
GA: GAH! Skeezix turned realistic!
Who knew the HOA would be scared by a business card? (And can’t the HOA go on private property on their HOA?)
DT: “Women and children, …. belay that, politicians and corporate donors first!”
Phantom: …and the ship sinks, thanks to time-travelling Rhodians.
yyPhantom: “Bookmark this story for later, peeps!”
JP: They’re wrapping up a story that has already been wrapped up. Is Peter Jackson writing this?
Pardon My Planet takes place in…North Carolina? Fuck. I went to college there and now I’m going to hear Southern accents the next time I read this strip (hopefully never).
Dustin-“Why aren’t you wearing any panties?”
Slylock Fox-Slylock then had Burford arrested on trumped up charges and confiscated the gold coins as evidence.
RMMD-Is that June’s brother?
Slylock Fox:
Oh, I’ve got this one; this is easy. The reason is that there is a multiverse — an infinite number of universes, in which everything that is logically possible has happened or will have happened — and Burford is simply in a different one of those infinite number of universes than Max is. Here’s betting all the kids who read the strip get this one instantaneously!
MW: How long have these two been dating, exactly? Dirk’s breaking out the cartoonishly abusive behavior a bit early. Most people would be able to walk out pretty easily and guiltlessly at this point, but I guess Dawn isn’t most people.
The Animalapocalypse destroyed the entire system of human domination over animals, but afterwards we still kept social conventions such as imperial measurements and gold as valuable! Truly nothing good comes out of revolutions!
PMP: The scene may seem odd; but with DEI firings and IA roundups, they’re the only guys left in the courtroom.
RMMD: Get the waiter’s number, Summer. Sense of humor, not bad-looking. Looks like your best bet so far.
MW: What?? Dirk gets WORSE with alcohol? I am stunned! Stunned, do you hear me?
Did not expect to wake up and find out Frank Norris’s 1899 novel McTeage: A Story of San Francisco was canon to Slylock Fox, but you should learn something new every day, I guess.
Wait, Pardon My Planet has been set in North Carolina this whole time? Did I miss the strip where our cast of depressed post-hippie Gen X hipsters go to a Panthers game or obsess about the Wright Brothers or [third North Carolina stereotype not found].
MW: “Beer Boar.” Subtle.
Slylock Fox: That chest of coins looks like it belongs in a portrait, aging in place of its real-world likeness.
Slylock Fox – Burford Bear is in violation of the National Park rules on taking artifacts from protected land, as the area 282 feet below seas level (Badwater Basin) is most certainly in the Death Valley National Park’s jurisdiction. Slylock should be putting Burford in custody, not encouraging the young impressionable readers this strip is intended for to become illegal treasure hunters!
Pardon My Planet – I understood that Louisiana has a unique legal code based heavily on civil law from its Spanish and French heritage, but I didn’t know that…
*Squints at seal behind judge*
…that North Carolina’s legal code was based on family law, even incorporating the marriage equality ruling Obergefell v. Hodges
Today’s “Pardon My Planet” seems slight, but you just know the exact same sequence could have been a six week “Judge Parker” arc. Bullet dodged.
Slylock: Like Roman citizens burying their gold and silver in front of advancing hordes, humans running in the face of marauding animals abandoned their heavy treasure while crossing Death Valley… never to return.
JP The guard has been standing in the exact same position the entire time that Randy has been talking to his sister in prison.
Copy and paste is a wonderful feature.
MW: Say something before he makes you wear the ball-gag out in public.
Slylock: Since Max is already using the location tracking on Burford’s phone to determine that Burford wasn’t in the Pacific Ocean, why doesn’t he just read off that he was in Death Valley? *puts hand to earpiece* I’m just receiving the news that Max is an idiot.
Max’s research is simply following Burford’s movements through Instagram
Marvin: Not sure why Jeff has to explain to Granddad that people don’t like turning shit-stained pages.
Yessss Pardon My Planet, sad white men, so many sad white men, inject them directly into my veinssss…
@Dan Carroll: Aaaand the Comment of the Week competition lasts 1 hour and 22 minutes.
Burford finding the gold is enough to establish his legal right to own the gold, no need to trace the owner who left it decades ago. All property rights before the Animalapocalypse were abolished by right of conquest
Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: FOOD. GAS. Ancient camcorder. Trunk full of a glowing treasure acquired in the desert. Max. We’re just a plate of sushi ordered and not paid for and an Iggy Pop soundtrack away from the weirdest Repo Man remake ever, and you know what? I’m kind of loving it.
MW: I do hope that Dawn sees the error of her ways soon enough, so she can go back to being what really makes her happy — eating like a complete slob in public
PMP. When I first saw today’s “Pardon My Planet,” with its courtroom setting, implausible scenario and browbeaten attorneys, my immediate thought was, “I’m not sure how I feel about this new art style in ‘Judge Parker’…”
Also Slylock Fox and Comics for Kids: The Animalpocalypse beginning with an overcrowded Southern California population moving far out into the human-animal interface in the desert, only to be robbed and eaten by an ursine forced down from the Sierra Nevadas by climate change, is definitely a scenario worth considering.
Slylock: Looks like Max has reached his final form — sentient phone stand.
PMP: I’m not terribly familiar with the history of Pardon My Planet, but I’ll assume the feature’s full title ends with the words of Sad, Droopy-Faced Men.
@Ettorre: My bet, is if they did find the owner, it’s going to be that obnoxious German guy from the end of the “Flying Hellfish” episode of The Simpsons.
@Schroduck: go to a Panthers game or obsess about the Wright Brothers or [third North Carolina stereotype not found].
Argue about Lexington-style v. Eastern-style barbecue? Obsess over college basketball? Gerrymander voting maps?
FC: Not surprised that PJ is the only Keene innocent enough to be raptured.
Pardon My Planet: “There’s something about that fellow’s pocket square and weak chin I find appealing,” each man said when they met. From there, a kind of staid, dispassionate love bloomed!
Mary Worth: Be the best boar you can be, with Beer Boar!
Mary Worth II: Well, to be fair to Dirk, Dawn can be sort of a $%&*! sometimes.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Cassandra Cat as a Repo wife makes sense now.
Slylock: Wait, wait, wait, hold on… what kind of research was Max doing? Why does he have access to everyone’s location data?? Was this the post-PRISM compromise? The CIA was allowed to keep tracking everyone, but to prevent abuse, the only person given access to the system was just a total idiot.
MW: Come on, Dirk. The exact word was right there: ‘shithead.’
PMP — Worst anti-woke remake of Adam’s Rib ever!
How does Slylock know that Burford isn’t lying? Because his name is Burford, not something along the lines of “Baddy Bear” or such.
MW – I find Dawn to be more of a #$@%^&*!#!
Slylock – clearly we finally have proof that Slylock enforces the law selectively and with prejudice. Were this Reeky Rat he’d definitely be finding a,way to pin this on him. But as a Plugger-adjacent bear, Burford is beyond suspicion. He and Max will soon be having a serious discussion about his even suspecting someone if Burford’s social position, let alone the surveillance of such “good people.”
SFx: “Dr. Weirdly and Cassandra Cat admitted they were not near the Pacific Ocean, were arrested, and forced to give the gold coins back.”
Wait, isn’t that the comic template?
yyDustin: “That’s what SHE said!”
The MST3K episode The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (the first one with Mike Nelson) is about a scientist whose fiancee is decapitated in a car accident. He keeps her severed head alive, and searches for a woman he can dispose of, to acquire a body he can reattach it to. As the movie is slowly going through the awful logistics of this, and everyone’s riffing as usual, a frustrated Mike blurts out of nowhere “this — this is sick!”
Anyway, that’s where I’m at with Mary Worth. Just “this is sick.”
MW: Beer Boar is so cheap, it can’t even afford commercials about “The Big Game,” much less afford something that mentions “Super Bowl.” It’s last celebrity spokesperson was Andrew Dice Clay.
PMP – They may look somber now, but I’m sure things will pick up at lunch when they sit together and discuss their Zenni purchases.
@Anonymous: That prison (ahem, ‘Correctional Facility’) is going to regret cheapening out with just a cardboard cutout of a guard, because Randy looks like he’s about to Hulk out right there in the vistor’s room. Haven’t seen him go ape like this since 2-3 CIApril storylines ago, back when April was a ‘bad’ character before she turned good again.
Wary Morth:
Either Weelbur guzzles Beer Boar on the sly or Dirk at least Brought (His) Own Booze.
Wary Morth 2:
Dusk: “How dare you talk to me that way! If my father were here he’d throw you out….make that, he’d sit on you.”
Wary Morth vs Wrecks Moregone:
I hate to say this, but Dusk makes Winter look intelligent.
Slylock Fox: I think the real question here is why, if Burford Bear found the chest of coins in Death Valley yesterday, he’s showing them off in a completely different area today. Death Valley is famously hot and dry, and, like much of California, experienced very little rainfall over the past year. Yet the pictured location is nothing but greenery as far as the eye can see! Combine that with the fact that a large trunk full of gold coins would weigh hundreds of pounds — heck, even the chest itself seems to be made of pure gold! Did Burford really transport it here overnight, then drag it out to the side of a secluded road, away from any onlookers or cars? Why does the supposedly professional news cameraman have no idea how to position his camera for a good shot? Honestly, I think this is all an elaborate scheme in which someone is about to get whacked. Does Max have heavy gambling debts? I bet Max has heavy gambling debts.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Ah, yes, and eventually the creep comes upon an old acquaintance who is absolutely flawless below the neck but whose face was cut up by a jealous lover. This experience has left her deeply distrustful of men, but the creep gains her trust by saying his dad’s a top surgeon, he can fix her face, and gets her believing that maybe some guys are trustworthy…at which point he roofies her and prepares to lop her head off.
What I’m saying is, expect these vibes to continue once Jared picks Dawn up on the rebound.
MW – My first thought was that “Beer Boar” was comics-generic for Blue Bull, but I just looked it up, and Blue Bull hasn’t been made since 1999. My knowledge of ‘hood-favorite malt likkas is so out-of-date, I might be a Plugger.
Slylock – They’re laughing at you, Burford Bear! That’s why they sent a camera crew from LOL TV.
Don Abundio, translated:
“We’re selling an amazing new lipstick that won’t rub off. May we speak to the lady of the house?”
“Hold on”
“Dear, is your lipstick holding up O.K.?”
SFx: Slylock secretly resents that the current “woke” trend in the Glorious Animal Kingdom demands calling the area by indigenous human name of “Death Valley.” As far as he’s concerned it will always be Larry the Lizard’s Hollow.
The concept of a sovereign citizen survived, in an albeit mutated form, into the world of Slylock Fox. “It’s my gold, detective, owned by me and not my straw man, because your jurisdiction doesn’t apply below sea level because of maritime law!”
Rex Morgan – Please please please make this waiter a recurring character. The only change I would suggest is to make him snootier.
Just don’t make him a roots country singer in his spare time.
Crankshaft – Oh, fantastic. Two of the characters on my most loathed list blathering at each other.
When a character continually has his ambitions thwarted, he often turns into an evil genius super villain. Since Batty lacks genius, his super power is annoying readers to within a quarter inch of their last nerve.
Mary Worth – Dawn apologizes and says she’ll try to do better. Wow.
I do have to give Moy credit. We’re all commenting on this heavy handed dreck. And Mary isn’t even involved yet, although I’m sure that she’s feeling a sudden desire to bake muffins.
9CL – Speaking of my most loathed characters list… Bring back the interchangeable couples! Bring back Gerald! However, I draw the line at bringing back Arthur Peel and Nan-Lin.
CS: [Skip hangs up phone] “Ah crap, that blowhard Batton Thomas wants to tell me all about his supposed successful life again. Emily, be a sweetheart and go interview him for me.”
“Not a chance, old man. I’d rather cover bake sales the rest of my life.”
GT: “Let’s sit outside in 20-degree weather and eat ice cream. We can spit white fire at each other.”
MW: That’s no way for a guy like you to change a woman’s behavior, Dirk. You gotta cuff her around a little. Have another beer or two and it’ll come to you.
SFx: Max Mouse: Plugger Stalker.
Frazz: Because you can’t store seasonal decorations, old furniture, and appliances online, you frickin’ moron.
So Slylock Fox takes place in the ruins of Santa Royale. Selection pressure finds the animals (and humanimals) filling the old evolutionary niches: Slylock -> Mary, Max -> Wilbur, Reeky Rat -> Tommy, Professor Weirdly -> Ian Cameron.
SFx – Slylock assured Max that gold bearing pigs could have flown out of Burford’s ass. It happens every day….
PMP – Ah – the ol’ 5th Amendment of Marriage….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
(All Burford needed to do was drop a dubious attribution from Brainyquote and he’d have defeated me for sure.)
MW: This is getting serious, folks. Dirk is not even trying to control himself now, and after one beer is already turning into a nasty drunk, getting physically aggressive and verbally abusive, cursing Dawn—AND COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE ADJUST THAT DAMNED LAMP SHADE??
C’shaft: Batom deeply resented his experience as a teacher and pursued his comics career solely so he wouldn’t have to do it anymore? Yeah, that tracks.
Dustin: It’s funny because Meg has learned her one role as a woman will be to mother men who refuse to grow up.
GT: How can you tell?
JP: “Look, when I’m arrested you can call out my bad behavior and hypocrisy, but now it’s my turn!”
Luann: Can we just rename this strip Pick-Me Girls and have done with it?
MW: The demeaning nicknames and controlling behavior were one thing, but Dawn absolutely will not stand for rude language!
RMMD: “I mean sure, I’ve had plenty of women who got emergency calls from parents or friends, and one time a gal suddenly remembered that she was taking holy orders the following morning, but none of them have ever just walked out on me!”
SFx: Um, the proximity of the “FOOD” and “GAS” signs makes me hesitate to stop there for a roadside snack…
@Little Guy, GA: Google and Bing later….
In general, the HOA can’t go onto your private property, but there’s exemptions and codicils and whatnot, depending on the covenant…
…but this is GA, and the scary HOA has no teeth in the WaltWalletverse, so, again, we’ll find a papyrus scroll granting Walt sole exclusion from any outside restraint in perpetuity….
@Banana Jr. 6000: #45
I would *love* to see the gang from MST3K riff on “Mary Worth.” After the first couple of stories they’d all be saying “…this is…just…SICK!!”
@ERM: McTeague?
You have consigned two anthropomorhpized Foxiverse characters, and a donkey (possibly anthropomorphized, who can tell), to death in Slylock’s amazingly verdant Death Valley.
I’m looking forward to it.
Yesterday, DtM muscled in on Marvin territory (by making a poop joke). Today Pardon My Planet is taking on The Lockhorns, in the most baffling way possible.
MW has Beer Boar? Boar? Why call it that? It’s the alcoholic choice of Boors everywhere.
Mother Goose: The cat wants a privacy curtain when it’s pooping in a box. Mike Peters has a Pulitzer Prize for humor.
Marvin: Who has a bookshelf that is over 9 feet wide? This is something that a retail store might have but nobody in their home.
Baby Blues: Hammie already appears to have no teeth in his mouth also can’t help but thinking how difficult a simple task like shaving must be when you have this kind of misshapen head and a nose that is almost as long as your torso.
Dustin: Meg should spite her brother by also walking around shirtless, that’ll show him.
Curtis: I’m pretty certain the elastic on underwear would almost instantly melt or catch fire if put in a microwave. Looking forward to hearing about a case of some dumbass trying this and blaming it on this comic for suggesting it.
Hi and Lois: If you don’t care what you are watching you could just put on any of the free digital channels or even just auto play endless random videos on YouTube. There’s more content than you will ever be able to watch in several lifetime
@I speak Jive: Re RMMD, it’s too bad Frank Nelson’s under contract to Gasoline Alley. The waiter’s part had to be written with him in mind.
@Hibbleton: “You shithead! I’m glad I tortured you!”
@Little Guy: JP: They’re wrapping up a story that has already been wrapped up. Is Peter Jackson writing this?
______________________________________________________
No, Jackson Pollock is.
@Hibbleton: “Shithead! I’m glad I t0rtured you!”
Beetle Bailey: Beetle is disgusted not from the thought of eating plain meatballs for a week with no other sauce or foods but just the grotesque appearance of the cook. He has features that are repugnant even by the standards of this strip. Look at his hands and his ears and the bizarre body hair.
Family Circus: PJ has been possessed by a demon and is now levitating. Time for a family exorcism! It’s a good thing he’s already wearing a diaper.
@A. Mulyak: Yes, definitely!
@UncleJeffers: Re FC – Holier than thou Grandma is just the person to call to perform an exorcism.
@astroboy: I wonder if Red Bull (despite not being an alcoholic drink) somehow managed to shut them down due to the names being too similar.
Disney would do that all the freaking time.
MW: As I’m sure Dirk will eventually say to Dawn, after he beats her to a bloody pulp for having a milk mustache, “Why did you make me do that? You were ASKING for it!!” And Dawn will smile with secret satisfaction, knowing her injuries are every bit as compelling as anything JESS ever had, and certain that Jared will come back to her out of sympathy. Sounds far fetched, but this is how minds work in the Worthiverse.
@Daisy: It used to be a thing years back, for people to riff on bad fanfictions using the MST3K characters. So that’s getting a little closer :3
@ValdVin: Mac isn’t literally dead by the end of the novel. I’ve always liked to think he put Marcus’s corpse under one arm, the dead mule under the other, the lottery money in his pants, the birdcage on his head, and simply walked out of Death Valley.
@Giant Pondering Otter: Case in point, there was a very obscure Canadian cartoon years back called
“Ollie’s Under the Bed Adventures” which was eventually changed to “Oliver’s Adventures.”
I once just happened to meet the creator’s wife, and we were talking about the show and she said that Disney forced them to change the name because it (supposedly) sounded too similar to “Rolie Polie Olie”
I cannot make this stuff up.
Why does everyone look so grim and beaten down in today’s Pardon My Planet? It’s like they’re all in some Stalinist show trial, where today the defense will be executed as a enemy of the state, tomorrow the prosecutor will be sent to Kolyma to mine uranium, and by Sunday the judge will be in a cell under the Lubyanka awaiting the ministrations of Beria. Can someone call the artist and check in on them, or at least remind them that their work is in the ‘funny pages,’ and not the ‘tragedy tracts?’
Slylock Fox: Why is the prospector bear dressed like Woody from Toy Story?
Pardon My Planet: I love when newspaper comics try to cling so hard to their hyper-conservative target audience’s worldview that they end up accidentally implying the opposite of said worldview. In this case, the writer was clearly angling for a hoary “wives are nags amirite?” joke, but executes it so ineptly that it led to Josh’s conclusion above that these are gay lovers battling it out in court.
@ectojazzmage: Personally, being an avid watcher of Judge Judy, I have seen many cases of gay lovers battling it out in court, and they were so much more colorful and energetic than this snoozefest.
Sfx: Rice and vampires? What’s the connection? Anne?
Pardon My Planet
Well, in North Carolina back in the court
Lived three sad puppies considering a tort
They chewed the law till the sun went down
And their faces all got frowns
Mighty mighty pleasing, ‘motional diseasing
(whew, white fighting)
@ectojazzmage: “There’s a snake in my boot!”
Snake: I told you, over and over, my name is Keith. And I’m only in your boot to please my foot fetish.
Esse quam videri is a classical saying stressing the superiority of substance over appearance. Well, I hope these three have some substance, because their appearance stinks!
@Just John: Ancient vampire lore says that if you dump a bag of rice in front of your house at nightfall, if a vampire comes, they’ll be distracted with counting the rice. And they’ll continue to count the rice not able to stop until morning comes and they die from the sunlight.
@Giant Pondering Otter: Which is why Fhanghai Bistro, my local Vampire Chinese restaurant, failed so badly.
The amount of garlic involved didn’t help either. Or the fact that chopsticks are tiny prepackaged stakes.
@nescio: Pardon My Planet takes place in…North Carolina? Fuck. I went to college there and now I’m going to hear Southern accents the next time I read this strip (hopefully never).
A friend from Jackson MS denied vehemently that North Carolina was even a part of the South.
@Giant Pondering Otter: Ancient vampire lore says that if you dump a bag of rice in front of your house at nightfall, if a vampire comes, they’ll be distracted with counting the rice.
Is that merely a Sesame Street joke? I thought The Count liked to count things because he’s, well, a count. Not specifically because he’s a vampire.
This lore predates the show, you are saying? Never heard it before. And my feeble attempt to research it earlier, with a simple Google “vampire + rice”, was thwarted by Anne the author drowning out all possible hits.
Ugh, now it dawns on me – “Anne Rice” is a nom de plume – did she pick it because she wanted to write about vampires and knew the lore about bags of rice, and I was unaware of the corny in-joke (mostly because I don’t give two hoots about eroticized vampires) until now?
Somewhere in future California at exactly 282 feet below sea level, lies the body of a human prospector mauled to death by a bear for the treasure he had accumulated over a lifetime of toil. Slylock continues to scroll through links with fun facts about Death Valley.
@MKay: RMMD: Get the waiter’s number, Summer. Sense of humor, not bad-looking. Looks like your best bet so far.
Not so fast. With table-side manners like the unsympathetic “that’s surprising” rather than a neutral “that’s a shame,” I bet he leads the restaurant staff in not-getting-tips. Summer will be paying for all their dates.
@Charterstoned: #81
I’m honestly not sure that “minds” as we know them exist in the Worthiverse…and if they did, that they would actually “work.” That could be worth pondering, but not today…
@UncleJeffers: #72
“Marvin: Who has a bookshelf that is over 9 feet wide? This is something that a retail store might have but nobody in their home.”
I have three 3-ft wide bookshelves next to each other in the spare bedroom…does that count? :-)
If anyone is interested, the entire 50 year archive of Funky Winkerbean has been made available on the Go Comics site. The first strip is on 3/27/1972. The last strip is on 12/31/2022. The strip starts over again on 3/27/2023.
RMMD Waiter: “She wore her hair like that on a first date? That’s surprising.”
Summer didn’t mind Beatnik Joe’s personality so much, but the restaurant he picked — faux oak wainscoting, framed “Wines of Italy” poster — had such a strong Montoni’s vibe she found herself spiraling into a Batuik-induced depression.
Luann: Sure, why not. We just got done with one of the “women” throwing themselves at someone who is unavailable; why not continue with another of the “women?”
CS: This autobiographical set of comic strips is sure to win a prize! Is there are a Razzies equivalent to the Pulitzer?
9CL: Yes, today’s strip is objectionable, just not in the way it usually is.
Max’s research: aka the Forrestville ankle cuff info that all citizens(or at least those with ankles) must wear at all times that gets piped into the Sly-app on his phone.
@Just John: Sfx: Rice and vampires?
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No…Stove Top Stuffing ™ goes with Broiled Vampire with an ironic garlic sauce, and a nice glass of wine. For that elegant final touch, use his cape as a place mat. —- Martha Stewart Living Dead.
@Just John: It’s rooted more in Chinese vampire lore rather than European vampire lore.
MW: Boar Beer: Tastes Hate, Less Feeling
FC: The invisible imp Ida Noe is dribbling PJ like a basketball.
@Just John: #94: I worked with a guy from Mississippi who also denied that Texas and the Appalachian states were part of the South. To him the Deep South was Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and maybe South Carolina.
RMMD: Oh please let one of Summer’s dates be the “I’m gonna sue!” guy from the airplane forced landing story. He can bore her with his account of how he survived the most boring airline disaster in history.
RMMD: Maybe Summer’s next date will be Mud Mountain/Fergus, who’ll turn her off trying to hard sell his Swingset on the Moon self-help scam.
@Guillermo el chiclero:
#108. I’ve had similar experience– the South is used by some to mean the first states of Confederacy. Texas, Florida, DC excluded no matter what their location.
@Just John: I think it wasn’t really a nom de plume; she had married a guy named Rice and had been calling herself “Anne” from her first day of school because she liked it better than her given name, Howard. (Really.) So you don’t have to worry about it being an awful pun!
@Activist: The South starts at the Potomac and the Appalachians and ends at the Cascades.
SFx: The Ol’ Prospector finally strikes it rich, and now TV is going to blab it all over town. He can start expecting multiple visits from Slick Smitty, Reeky Rat, Shady Shrew, and, of course, Count Weirdly.
RMMD: Unbeknownst to its users, the dating site assigns a grade to each client, and then it pairs up all those with the least attractive qualities. This way the clients keep coming back to the site again and again hoping for a better match. It never happens. It’s genius really.
MARA LLAVA:. I’m admiring the writer’s demonstration of time keeping. What is a month for readers is merely fifteen minues in her time. (She gets paid by our time)
@Lord Flatulence: If anyone is interested, the entire 50 year archive of Funky Winkerbean has been made available on the Go Comics site.
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Funky Winkerbean is funny again?.That’s A sign of the apocalypse, Isnt it?
@Cleveland Mocks: He can start expecting multiple visits from Slick Smitty, Reeky Rat, Shady Shrew, and, of course, Count Weirdly.
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Don’t forget Rachel Rabbit! She’ll find a way to get her paws on the gold, even if she needs to volunteer for Weirdly’s Operation Juicy Steak! (Vixen Park ref).
The Familliar Mucus: “YEA!!!! PJ’S STILL POSSESED BY VAAL! He’s sleeping above the covers…4 feet above the covers!”
Mara Larva, Creeper Of Time: You need a montage…even if you move as slowly as Mara.
@Voshkod: Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute theah! The South, ah say, The South starts at The Line of Mason and Dixon, suh!
JP: Arrrrrrgh, even as we are suffering through one bizarre story, we are reminded of a previous one. That’s the Judge Parker Experience.
@Senator Claghorn: I’ll give you southern Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but you will not convince me Baltimore or Bethesda are in the south.
Now, as for DC, as they say, ‘all the charm of the north and all the efficiency of the south.’
@Just John: I spent several months in southwest Virginia and I thought that was part of the South too. Huh.
@taig: Somehow I don’t think that would make a globally-profitable vampire film.
@Senator Claghorn: #119
Well said, Sir…well said! May I invite you over for mint juleps some fine afternoon?
– Daisy, the Southern Belle
@Guillermo el chiclero: #108
Not Louisiana??
@Cleveland Mocks: #106
“Boer Beer”: the favorite of guerilla fighters worldwide!
Crank: Hooray, it’s the only plotline that makes me think “I wonder what Harry Dinkle’s up to?”
DT: Oh, sure, now Chief Patton gets to disperse the crowd. Couldn’t have done that before Dick’s Nick of Time Heroics, of course, in case they missed seeing how awesome he is in stopping them all blowing up!
JP: Okay, Ann has pointed out what we’ve all been saying for weeks, Randy has blustered a non-response, now back to the endless exposition that somehow never actually exposits anything.
MW: Oh, okay, I guess Dirkhead was toning down his behaviour in front of Dawn’s friends. If only Jared were here to strongly think about maybe saying something, since Dawn’s ladyparts prevent her having any agency whatsoever.
Phantom: Having previously played fast and loose with the “adventure” part of “new adventure”, DePaul is now pushing the definition of the word “new”.
S4th: I was going to say that Jackie owns the freaking store and doesn’t need to have Valentines stuff up already if she doesn’t want to. Then I remembered she lives in Vaguely Sinister Hallmarkville with its weird bylaws about the correct way to celebrate Hallowe’en, so maybe she does!
SFx: Aw, isn’t that cute, Max thinks he’s doing detective work! Slylock’s looking at him the way his near-namesake does between saying “You know my methods, Watson, apply them,” and telling the good doctor he’s an idiot who’s wrong about everything.
LUANN: Really?? That was it for Piro?? Sixteen days and then ol’ Starhead is gone again, having changed and accomplished nothing? Reminds me of the alien spaceship scene in LIFE OF BRIAN.
@Poteet: Wait, what am I saying. LIFE OF BRIAN made my young cousin laugh so hard he literally ended up on the floor of the movie theater. Deep, deep apologies, LIFE OF BRIAN.
@GarrisonSkunk: Funky Winkerbean is funny again?.That’s A sign of the apocalypse, Isnt it?
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Let’s not go too far, now.
@Voshkod: The cartoonist is also an artist, and I have seen some of his works. The people in the paintings look just as sad and hangdog as the cartoon characters, if not more so.
@Schroduck: Or perhaps Burford Bear just flat-out bribed them.
@taig: It’s rooted more in Chinese vampire lore rather than European vampire lore.
They do use a lot of garlic in their cuisines. Are their vampires repelled also by monosodium glutamate?
@VoshkoDC: “Maryland Fried Chicken” = “Southern Fried Chicken,” I understand. Doesn’t Maryland get credit for the best chicken in that general area of the U.S.? (Although the best I ever had was at the Gullah Kitchen just north of Charleston, South Carolina.)
@Daisy: In The Earl of Louisiana, A.J. Liebling carefully explains the difference between the Gentlmanly City of N’Awlins, which is not in the South, and the remainder of the state of Louisiana, which is.
@Ukulele Ike: #133
Thank you for that. As a lifelong Midwesterner I am sadly deficient in my awareness of these subtle cultural differences, like the difference between Creole and Cajun. Or the difference between mud puppies and hush puppies.
@Lord Flatulence: Let’s not go too far, now.
Word.
Does anyone hate read certain poster(s) content and will you admit it?
@Daisy: #125: Far south but a completely different culture, French Catholic and not the usual Bible-thumping Protestant evangelicals.
Florida is geographically the furthest south of all and was a member of the Confederacy but it’s so full of retired Yankees and Republican Cubans that it’s lost most of its Southern culture.
As far as Appalachia many Deep South Southerners just dismiss them as hillbillies and point out they were mostly Unionist and were against secession. West Virginia even when as far as to secede from the Confederacy.
@Daisy:
#134. Daisy, as a fellow native of Midwest, that’s an easy one to learn. Creole and Cajun basics are alike but Creole adds French influences and Cajun adds indigenous ingredients and techniques.
@Nobody: Does anyone hate read certain poster(s) content and will you admit it?
I put the content you will hate in a certain persona, the content someone else will hate in a different persona, and the content everyone will love in my own persona.
@Activist:
#138 OOPS. MAJOR OMISSION. Cajun cooking also heavily uses African contributions, like gumbo.
@Activist: Creole: cooked in cities by Black or fractionally-Black people (Creoles) with lots of butter and cream. Cajun: cooked out in the swamps by white people with lots of hog fat. Creoles and Cajuns both make gumbo but one is elegant and one is belly-fodder; both are delicious. (My own gumbo leans Cajun — more chicken and sausage than fancy delicate seafood. Okra to thicken rather than file powder)
@Nobody: Some Mudges I consistently look forward to be clever or surreal or incisive or informative or outrageous or just plain funny. I smile when I see their names and read their contributions with real pleasure.
Some Mudges I skip.
@Just John: Not a Sesame Street joke.
Either the writers were unspoken geniuses, or they were just making a joke on the word “The Count” and was a complete coincidence.
@taig: Aren’t the Chinese vampires the ones that jump all over the place? Not certain what I’m thinking of.
@Nobody: @Ukulele Ike: I get joy from any comment that I find funny or insightful, regardless who says it. I only skip comments if I’ve been offline for too long and there’s around 100 in queue to catch up on.
Regardless, I love everyone here :3 Even that troll under various names who keeps insulting us and Josh (to an extent)
We’re family! -hugs everyone!-
@Ukulele Ike:
A friend of mine up here on the North Coast had a job once on some kind of small ship that slept and fed the workers who toiled on an oil rig down in Antarctica. The ship sailed out of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
He told me a little about when they were back at their home port and mingling among the locals there. He said that he had always thought that the Cajun accents he had seen on TV and in the movies were exaggerated, but now he swore they were not. They were real (and they were spec . . . no, I won’t).
Pluggers: At last, a cartoon with a gainfully employed Plugger, not an old, sick, beat-down retired-on-a-fixed-income Plugger! And what’s more, it’s Rhino-Mann, who’s had a run of luck since the days when he had to hock his 9″ CRT TV. I am certainly glad to see his life has turned around.
Slylock Fox: My question is: If he found a chest of gold, why the hell did he tell anybody? I certainly wouldn’t’ve.
@Giant Pondering Otter: We’re family! -hugs everyone!-
Fist bump, please. I am not fond of too much physical contact.
@Nobody: Yes. My own.
@Guillermo el chiclero: One of my favorite songs by The Band (RIP Garth) is “Acadian Driftwood”.
It’s about the movement of French-speaking Canadians to Louisiana.
Check it out.
@Giant Pondering Otter: There are Chinese hopping vampires, yes. They might also be the same vampires who are thwarted by counting rice.
@Sex-Negative Nellie: Well, the way you dress around here, you’re just asking for it. (Pats Nellie’s scandalously-attired rump)
(note: the above is a totally hilarious joke. Uke knows ladies should dress any damn way they want and god bless them for it and hasn’t touched a lady in an unwelcome manner well, ever, because he is a gentleman)
@Poteet: You don’t think Nosferatu would have benefited from a 5-minute-long scene of Orlok standing there counting rice? :-)
There are parallels in faerie myths, where one can stop a fey creature by playing up to some form of OCD.
@UncleJeff: Great late-era Band song, from Northern Lights – Southern Cross (1975). I believe they played it in The Last Waltz (1976), one of the great concert films of our time.
@Ukulele Ike: the above is a totally hilarious joke.
You can’t joke about doing what it would never cross your mind doing.
@taig: There are parallels in faerie myths, where one can stop a fey creature by playing up to some form of OCD.
Computer, this is a Class A compulsory directive: Compute to the last digit the value of pi.
@Spock: *blep*
@Little Guy: yyPhantom: “Bookmark this story for later, peeps!”
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So we can reference the date, six or seven years down the road?
@taig: *blorp*
@Giant Pondering Otter: #144
HUGS BACK AT YA!
@Guillermo el chiclero: #137
@Activist: #138
Thank you both! The book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard is somewhere in the pile of books I intend to read soon – it looks interesting!
However, no one has yet addressed the difference between mud puppies and hush puppies (*not* the shoes). :-)
@Sex-Negative Nellie: Why is your lucious rump scantily-attired, then?
@Daisy: A hush puppy is a tasty fried cornmeal fritter. A mud puppy is a gross bottom feeder freshwater salamander.
@Just John: It isn’t just rice. Vampires are compelled to count any scattered grain, or beads, or sand (off of a beach, I assume). They’re also compelled to count the holes in a net.
@Ukulele Ike: Why is your lucious rump scantily-attired, then?
I’m not going to give you an opening by even continuing this puerile line of discussion.
Slylock: The fox is doing a great job of maintaining his composure even while Max tries to distract him with Cassandra Cat’s latest OnlyFans video.
@Sex-Negative Nellie: 166
Oh, for the days here with Nemiah Scudder’s references to “bountifully bouncing buttocks.”
9CL: And now in response to popular demand by absolutely no one, an entire week of Thorax?
So what everybody is implying is that vampires suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Pardon My Punchline: Is Ruben Bolling still doing Marital Mirth?. This could be a real knee slapper if he steals it. What’s the next installment? One Guy Be Shoppin’?
@Ukulele Ike: #141: Do you burn your own flour to make the roux? When I make gumbo it’s sausage and either shrimp or crawfish tails, no chicken.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: Oh, for the days here with Nemiah Scudder’s references to “bountifully bouncing buttocks.”
I try to engage in well-rounded conversation but you people insist on making it hard.
@Guillermo el chiclero: So what everybody is implying is that vampires suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
We wash our hands of this discussion. About 35 times already today, in fact.
@Activist: #2, reFOOB — I think Liz ends up marrying this doofus.
@Sex-Negative Nellie: 173
“…making it hard.” Oh you’re such a tease!
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: “…making it hard.” Oh you’re such a tease!
Now you’re just putting words in my mouth. People here are always trying to put things in my mouth.
@taig: Bwahaha!
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: I know this is really pedantic, but I’m pretty sure it was “jauntily bouncing buttocks.”