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Beetle Bailey, 12/9/04

For everyone who doubts that the French are a menace to all we hold dear in the good old US of A, I offer this installment of Beetle Bailey. Since they know that they can’t beat our military in a stand-up fight, we can here see that they are undermining our army’s preparedness. Sure, there are no actual French people in the comic, but Camp Swampy’s morale is being ravaged by ennui — an emotion so identified with the French that there isn’t even an English word for it. Quelle horreur!

(And a shout out to Nico “Speedo” Goerg in Gay Paree — we’re keeping an eye on you over there!)

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Well, no doubt like many of you, I got swept up in holiday madness last week, and am still playing catch-up in the non-gorging-on-turkey aspects of my life. What with the two Thanksgiving dinners, the Christmas gift exchange with the cousins, the rousing chorus of folk songs from the labor movement, the avant-garde play performed by elementary school children, and the specter of 24 straight hours of uncontrollable vomiting hanging over it all (what, your week wasn’t like that?) I haven’t had time to read the comics so you don’t have to. In both the spirit of the holiday and a desperate attempt to play catch-up, I offer you a week’s worth of comics and corresponding sentence-long things that I’m thankful for.

B.C., 11/23/04

I’m thankful that B.C., having already pissed off both Muslims and Jews, is now going after the Irish, ensuring its departure from the comics pages any day now.

Dilbert, 11/24/04

I’m thankful that public discourse has coarsened to the extent that the phrase “cow’s butt” can now be printed in the comics pages, because I think cow butts are funny.

Beetle Bailey, 11/25/04

I’m thankful that Beetle Bailey has discovered postmodernism, at long last.

Mary Worth, 11/26/04

I’m thankful for Boston, because they rock, man.

Family Circus, 11/27/04

I’m thankful that at least one member of this family is beginning to question the oppressive patriarchal suburban hell in which she lives.

Doodles by Mac and Sack, 11/28/04

I’m thankful that Mac and/or Sack were polite enough to add “please” to their request that I add horns and a bell to the grazing bovine in the bottom middle panel, though I admit that I could have done without the freakish hula-hooping cow above it.

Kudzu, 11/29/04

I’m thankful to Bill O’Reilly, who’s provided days and days of jokes to desperate comic strips everywhere.

B.C., 11/30/04

And now the handicapped. Yep, any day now…

Oh yeah, and one last thing I’m thankful for is this Jonathan Franzen essay about Peanuts from the New Yorker. It’s, like, good and stuff.

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Beetle Bailey, 11/11/04

Many comic strips today offered Veterans’ Day wishes to the veterans, and I of course assumed that the most militaristic of the comic strips would tip its hat towards the men and women of the military. I just didn’t think that it would do so in such a bizarre fashion. I guess the U.S. military really isn’t stretched as thin as all that, since the denizens are Camp Swampy don’t seem in any danger of being shipped out to Iraq. But still, while those who go and actually fight in wars get all the glory, we must remember to honor the forgotten veterans: those that stay in the U.S. and get the living bejeezus beaten out of them by their commanding officers for no good reason. Because remember, if their commanders weren’t taking it out on them, they’d be taking it out on you. At least, that’s the message I’m getting from Beetle Bailey.

Note to anyone seeking to infiltrate a military base for nefarious purposes: Pretend to be a flower delivery van driver! Army guys love flowers.