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Archie, 9/28/13

“You’re the governor. And the governor belongs in the governor’s house. Or, as most people call it, the governor’s ‘mansion.’ I mean, it’s a pretty big place. Why undersell it? It’s also in Albany, which, I can’t emphasize enough, is hundreds of miles and several hours of driving away from New York City, which is where this strip ostensibly takes place. So probably you couldn’t get there tonight anyway. So why not stay here, sure, whatever, fine, I guess. Don’t you have a girlfriend? No, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Blondie, 9/28/13

“And by ‘all of the sudden’ I mean ‘for the entire time this strip’s been around, even though I’m really only noticing it now.’ Jesus, are those antenna? Are you even human?”

Archie, 9/28/13

Pop’s outdoor cafe strategy includes some serious fire safety code violations

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In order to put today’s Rex Morgan, M.D., into its full delightful context, we need to backtrack to yesterday’s strip. Heather, the Morgans’ long-ago former nanny who they decided to fire because they wanted to raise their daughter themselves but then she quit before they could fire her so she could start a day school where they’d send Sarah anyway, has now decided to sell that day school so she can monitor her lunatic husband full-time instead:

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/13/13

Aw, Happy Otter Schools! That sounds nice!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/14/13

…nice for other children, that is. Lesser children. Sarah is different and shouldn’t have her mind contaminated by some garbage Canadian McPrivateschool chain. Only the very best and most elite schools are good enough for Sarah. Sarah’s non-Morgan classmates, who have also been Heather’s beloved pupils, will not be hearing anything about this “really good” school. The name is probably in some language that poor people don’t even speak!

Hagar the Horrible, 9/14/13

Oh, look, it’s apparently complaining about double negatives week in the comics! I’ll say this for Hagar: it’s at least true that negative concord was not a feature of Old Norse. (In fact, that may be why it’s absent from Northern English dialects!) So, props for historically accurate linguistic peevery, I suppose.

In other news, Hagar the Horrible is doing the “Hagar tries and fails to cheat on his wife” thing it does every few years or so.

Mark Trail, 9/14/13

Now we know why Senator Mason is so eager to drill for oil in Lost Forest: his daughter’s boyfriend desperately needs petroleum byproducts to maintain his magnificent pompadour. Our nation’s current strategic reserves simply aren’t adequate for the task.

Blondie, 9/14/13

Welcome to today’s Blondie, where the punchline only offers that element of surprise necessary for humor to those readers who are so senile that they have no idea what month it is. Do these guys know their audience or what?

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Herb and Jamaal, 9/13/13

OK, everybody, here’s the thing: when multiple negatives are strung together in a sentence the way that our faceless gumbo aficionado has strung them together in panel one, with the intent to intensify the negative sentiment rather than to have the negatives cancel each other out, that’s called negative concord. While this isn’t an accepted feature of high-status standard English today, it was common in old and middle English (and was extensively used by Chaucer), and is a feature of the high-status literary varieties of a number of other languages, including Portugese, Russian, Persian, and ancient Greek.

Now, arbitrary distinctions between dialects are made in every language ever spoken, so I’m not going on some quixotic quest to get negative concord back into standard English or anything, but I do have a gripe with people who pretend that dialectical uses of it are difficult or impossible to parse. People love to smugly point out that “I don’t got no money” logically means “I do have some money” — according to formal mathematical logic, which is very different from the logic that defines the grammar of naturally occurring spoken languages. But I would be very, very surprised if any competent native English speaker ever heared someone say “I don’t got no money” and genuinely believed that the speaker was claiming to have some money.

But (and here is my point) if you are going to go down this pedantic, narrow-minded, wrong-headed road, at least get your pedantry right. A double negative resolves to a positive. A triple negative resolves to a negative. You’re making yourself look dumb, Herb.

Gil Thorp, 9/13/13

Considering that some years the Milford bonfire is restricted to single glorious panel, I’m pretty excited about this fall’s installment being spread over multiple days! Even better is that this extra strip time gives us an opportunity to hear some Milford High students wax rhapsodically about the delightful smell of burning human flesh.

Blondie, 9/13/13

I’d give Dagwood a free sandwich if he showed up in that mask, wouldn’t you? I’d give him whatever he wanted. That thing is fucking terrifying.