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Heathcliff, 10/14/13, 10/15/13

What goes on by night in Heathcliff’s neighborhood just got a lot more disturbing. Heathcliff has quintupled his garbage consumption in just a few short months, and now requires armored strikes by Garbage Ape just to keep him in slop. I fear he is building his strength for an apocalyptic conflict with Marmaduke for absolute domination of the comics page, and I’m not sure which one to back. In this business, you don’t want to be wrong about something like that.

One Big Happy, 10/14/13, 10/15/13

Meanwhile, Ruthie’s got a raven to sleep in her princess doll bed, hide in her closet, and share her breakfast. The raven tells her secrets. Terrible, terrible secrets that all ravens know but little girls must not.

Stupid raven, leave her alone — she’s just a little girl! I don’t care how much you like Trix!

Gil Thorp, 10/14/13

First I wrote, “Gil Thorp is getting a little annoying”, but the sentence just laughed at me so I put these other words around it. John Pascoe is a skilled football player who can talk but doesn’t. Nobody else can seem to shut up about this. Including, now, me. Crap.

— Uncle Lumpy

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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.

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Mark Trail, 9/12/13

I am completely in love with conversation between Mark and Senator Mason because it’s like a conversation between an environmental activist and a pro-oil senator two or three parallel universes over, where the issues are pretty much the same but the ossified political vocabulary consists of an entirely different set of signifiers. “Beautiful areas!” “Outdoor people!” I sincerely hope that every senator from now on starts referring to those supporting environmental protection as an “outdoor people” and those supporting increased exploitation of fossil fuels as “indoor people,” kind of like the difference between indoor and outdoor cats. Of course, this whole surveying business may just be part of the senator’s plan to enclose most of America’s population under vast domes; the few remaining “outdoor people” will be left to fend for themselves, presumably eventually accepting the absolute rule of Mark as their Outdoorsman-in-Chief.

Gil Thorp, 9/12/13

So this year’s Gil Thorp football plots appear set: the A plot involves a hulking behemoth who refuses to speak to anyone and therefore can’t shore up Milford’s sorry offensive line, and the B plot involves Tip the gymnast, who is deigning to grace the cheerleading squad with his nimble presence. Tip’s first order of business: hurling a cheerleader into the flaming maw of the fall Milford bonfire, a sacrifice to the Gods of Football. The Mudlarks have a bonfire every single year, not that it helps much. Have they considered that maybe they’re worshipping a false pantheon, and that Gil is a fraudulent messiah?

Family Circus, 9/12/13

Oh dear, it looks like Mommy’s mind has been annihilated! Hopefully we’ll find out if this was caused by powerful prescription tranquilizers, a nefarious CIA hypnosis scheme, or just her daughter’s irritating and relentless voice.

Momma, 9/12/13

Let’s ignore the joke in today’s Momma (not hard!) and contemplate Thomas’s pants for a minute. Is he supposed to be wearing camo pants? Camo pants and a polo shirt and, like, a kepi? This is a guy who shows up for dinner at his mother’s in a suit and straw boater, but now he appears to be going horribly, horribly casual without any guidance or sense of decency.

Apartment 3-G, 9/12/13

I try to avoid contact with teens as much as I can, but I think I know a little bit about how they think, and I’m pretty sure a bad girl with asymmetrical hair would ever describe a melty-faced middle-aged man with a flattop as “super-hot.” Also, Marty, Lu Ann may be super dumb but she still has sex thoughts! You’ve got a lot to learn about how horny stupid people can get!