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Crankshaft, 11/12/14
Everyone knows that Crankshaft rests on twin pillars that I like to call the “two Ms”: malapropisms and misanthropy. The strip’s really been leaning on the former for the past week or so, with “punchlines” that have involved the words and phrases “painted themselves out on a limb,” “battle-ax states,” and “electrical college.” But this I decree to be not up to snuff. “Nasal” derives via French from the Latin “nasus,” and “nose” from the Old English “nosu,” and both of those come from the same ultimate Indo-European root. They’re basically the same word, in other words, with just the vowel shifted a bit, which means this is unacceptably lazy wordplay. The whole point is to mash unrelated terms together! And you’re pointing to your nose! As if we’re incapable of figuring out what “nosal passages” might refer to! Come on, get it together, Crankshaft.
Herb and Jamaal, 11/12/14
“One of those new cashing devices on your phone,” on the other hand, is perfect. It is an amazing example of someone trying to refer to a technological advance who’s heard about mobile payment systems but doesn’t understand anything about how they work and has zero intention of doing any research about them. Never change, Herb and Jamaal. You keep doing you.
Judge Parker, 11/12/14
Oh, boy, that chainsaw-weilding maniac I ordered has arrived, and in just three weeks, which in Judge Parker is a unit of time so fleeting it can only be recorded with the most delicate scientific instruments! I had neglected to order Sam Driver’s washboard abs, but I approve of the gender-inversion of the usual horror movie trope where sexy ladies take off their clothes and then are gruesomely hacked to bits. (This trope will be further inverted when, instead of being gruesomely hacked to bits, Sam will be handed a substantial sum of cash for no real reason.)
