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Beetle Bailey, 6/22/24

My wife and I are aficionados of real, non-microwave popcorn, and there are two ways to make this at home: you can do it in a metal pot on your stove, or you can use an electric air popper. What you can’t do is just leave a big metal pot on the end table next to your couch, not even plugged into the wall, and then doze off and expect popcorn to manifest itself there. Maybe this makes me a “comics curmudgeon” of some sort, but I think things in comic strips should more or less look like the real physical objects they’re supposed to represent. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Family Circus, 6/22/24

OK, sorry, I love it when Jeffy is dumb, but when Billy is? It’s not cute or charming at all. He’s the eldest and he should know better. You can tell Big Daddy Keane is thinking it too. Sure, the metric system is part of the UN one world government conspiracy to undermine American sovereignty, but that doesn’t excuse Billy from learning the absolute most basic and introductory fact about it, c’mon man.

Mary Worth, 6/22/24

Are you, Wilbur? Are you better? Are you better, really? Have you dealt with all your emotional stuff about your exes and your romantic failure and whatever it was that caused you to think it was a good idea to let your friends and family think for a week that you were dead? Or are you just experiencing the endorphin rush of getting some attention, just like the attention you hoped to get by showing up back home after letting everyone think for a week that you were dead? It’s the second one, right? You just like attention? You haven’t grappled with your many emotional and personality problems, at all?

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Family Circus, 6/21/24

Lord, I am a simple man, and one of my favorite Family Circus bits is when Jeffy just says some of the dumbest shit imaginable. Today’s dumb shit is particularly fun for me because it’s actually two different kinds of dumb shit that are a little bit in tension with one another. Because on the one hand, do you think other animals have to buy clothes? Maybe you think they should, but they clearly don’t. And second, you know that the turtle isn’t in his shell, but, biologically speaking, he is his shell, right? It’s part of his body; there’s not some naked little shell-less turtle inside of it. Like, imagine a scenario where a turtle ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and his eyes were opened, and he realized that he’s naked. He’s going to have to make or buy clothes for himself! His shell doesn’t count! He’s going to have to pull his clothes over his shell, and how stupid is that going to look?

Hagar the Horrible, 6/21/24

Oh, my friend! That raise was never yours! In this economic arrangement Hagar, the owner of the boat, is capital, and you are labor. You receive the prevailing wage as your salary, and Hagar appropriates the surplus value generated by your efforts for his own uses. Don’t let misogyny blind you to the economic realities of your situation! Your choices are submission, entrepreneurship, or revolution!

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Blondie, 6/5/24

The number one thing that makes me feel like an old person is my stiff right knee and hip, but number two, coming pretty close behind, is the fact that so many things, ranging from thoughtful essays to instruction manuals, that 10 years ago would’ve been written out as text now only exist in the form of YouTube videos. I don’t want to watch a video! I read very quickly and find videos that mostly consist of someone just talking to be annoying! Often I am in public and do not want to annoy everyone around me! Sometimes they’re good for real how-to instructional stuff but more often than not a written essay with some pictures would be just as good if not better and also would be easier to search through quickly to find the relevant bits. Anyway, my point is that I read today’s Blondie and immediately thought, “Finally, Blondie accurately depicts what young people are like for once — they all think you should learn everything from YouTube and it fucking sucks,” but then I instantly recoiled in horror. Is this what I’ve become? Someone who cheers when Blondie sticks it to the kids these days? My feeling of deep shame almost, but not quite, wiped all thoughts of how much I hate most internet video from my mind.

Intelligent Life, 6/5/24

I guess I haven’t talked about what Intelligent Life’s whole deal is in the few times I’ve posted it here, so: it’s whole deal is that it’s about a number of unpleasant people who are obsessed with “nerd” franchises (i.e., most of modern film and TV entertainment) in the most boring way possible. Anyway, today’s strip pissed me off because, yes, Meta’s use of user content for its dumb AI offerings is bad, and Emperor Palpatine is bad, but Emperor Palpatine never did anything like the real stuff Meta is doing that they’re talking about here. I saw those movies. He mostly did evil space wizard stuff and evil space politics stuff. He barely ever even used computers! Can we please be serious here.

Family Circus, 6/5/24

Without telling his wife, Big Daddy Keane has been taking Billy to one of those barbershops that hasn’t “gone woke” and starting obeying Big Government’s oppressive laws against trepanation, in an attempt reduce the internal pressure responsible for his eldest son’s grotesquely shaped head. The treatments are unpleasant, but they’re starting to show results!