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Herb and Jamaal, 9/29/05

There are so many things wrong with today’s Herb and Jamaal, but let’s start with the quotation marks around “date.” I’m a big fan of inappropriate quotation marks. They can be found in many venues, from crudely hand-written store signs (“We are looking for ‘friendly’ people”) to the headlines in major newspapers (“Tom DeLay says he’s ‘innocent'”).

Still, I suppose “date” is a fairly appropriate use of inappropriate quotation marks here, seeing as Jamaal’s “dates” differ from actual dates in almost every important respect. I was never exactly a big Casanova back in my single days, and I’m also terrifically cheap, but I’m reasonably sure that the following train of thought would never have rumbled through my head: “Sure, I don’t get to see my date in person, or hear what she sounds like, or have any opportunity for a long-term relationship or even an amorous encounter, and I won’t get to leave the house or see a movie or have a nice meal, and there’s a small but nontrivial possibility that my ‘date’ is actually an undercover FBI agent looking for pedophiles, but it’s all worth it because I won’t have to spring for dinner!” You really dodged a bullet there, Jamaal.

As a bonus feature, why not try Herb and Jamaal Mad Libs?

“I love to ‘[verb]’ online. I get to [verb] dozens of women and [verb] them with [adjective] [noun] for hours … without [negative consequence]!”