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Archive: Heathcliff

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I definitely like to thought-balloon about my deepest secrets, that’s a normal thing

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Mary Worth, 3/17/15

NEW STORYLINE IN MARY WORTH, EVERYBODY! Haha, look at how Mary is prying into this new Charterstone tenant’s life before he’s even gotten his meager possessions off his handcart. “Most people need a moving van or at least a U-Haul!” she says. “Why don’t you? Are you poor? On the run from the law? Have your references been adequately vetted? Will your rent checks clear? Should I call the sheriff and have your boxes dumped out onto the curb now, to save time?” Anyway, I look forward to Adam cracking under the pressure and spilling his guts about his emotional baggage over the next six to eight weeks. What can he never let go of? Dead wife? Estranged son? Or maybe it’s a real physical object, like a cursed goblet or something. That’d be pretty sweet.

Heathcliff, 3/17/15

Wow, nice job, Heathcliff: on St. Patrick’s day, you’re wearing a blue bowler cap, the dominant color on the flag of Ireland’s British oppressors, and deliberately mocking the beloved cabbage component of corned beef and cabbage by replacing it with literal, actual garbage. I never thought I’d see such blatant anti-Hibernianism in the daily newspaper.

Apartment 3-G, 3/17/15

Oh my, Lu Ann has removed her pink blazer so that she’s now clad only in her turtleneck! Is she trying to seduce Martin? She’s only got six more layers left to go!

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Is he going to, like, stab the bait with a sword, or what

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Mary Worth, 3/11/15

The Hanna-Sean-Amy-Gordon storyline (haha, just kidding, Gordon was not actually involved in any meaningful way) is finally over, though we can’t say for sure until someone digs it up and puts a stake through its sinister heart. But until then, let’s enjoy the tale of the first time Mary and Jeff met! This might be an enjoyable story to see in flashback, so naturally we’re watching the two of them exposition it to each other over fish- and vegetable-disks at the Bum Boat. I’m a big fan of Mary’s use of the phrase “former bigwig” here. “Obviously I could tell you were a nobody, Jeff, but how was I supposed to know that you used to be somebody? I didn’t see a tag, and you weren’t dressed the part, and you certainly don’t exude confidence or competence of any sort!”

Heathcliff, 3/11/15

The less said about this cartoon, which seems like one of the saddest attempts at combining the syndicated comics character Heathcliff with vaguely whimsical pop-cultural tropes to date, the better, but it does lead me to one of my current favorite obsessions, namely looking up dumb URLs to see if they’re available to purchase. Up until fairly recently, URLs either ended with a two-letter country code, like .ca or .uk, or a fairly limited set of generic codes, like .com, .org, or .gov. Then a few years back some new, much dumber top-level endings were introduced, like .biz and .info, and lately there’s just been a flood of truly moronic ones, one of which is .ninja. This is meant to appeal to serious scholars of the semi-legendary shinobi of Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period the sort of dips who think changing their job title from “web marketing assistant” to “social media ninja” makes them sound cool, but it’s worth noting that the domain name bait.ninja is available for only $14.99 a year, and while I’m not going to buy it, if somebody else wanted to and have it just redirect to this post, I certainly wouldn’t object. Also, and I’m just putting this out there, when you look to see if a domain name is available you get auto-generated suggestions of similar domains you might be interested in, and this is what I got when I checked on bait.ninja:

Spider-Man, 3/11/15

Apparently most of the incidents in this plot had been set up by Peter and Mary Jane to trick Mysterio? Who they didn’t even really know was involved for a lot of it, I don’t think? Nice try at tricking us into thinking these people are smart or capable of forethought, Newspaper Spider-Man.

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Oh man, a cat wearing a hat, that’s just too much

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Heathcliff, 3/2/15

Today’s Heathcliff brings into focus for me one the most irritating aspects of this feature: that the title cat’s personality veers wildly from terrifying murder machine to weirdly forced whimsy with little rhyme or reason. Ha ha, that cat is wearing a Carmen Miranda hat in the dugout! That certainly is a … potential source of amusement? Heathcliff used to play basesball irritatingly, not just cheer it on, so this is really a step down for him to be honest.

Momma, 3/2/15

Whoa, Tina has been blonde for at least the last decade and probably longer, so now we have to ask ourselves: why is she suddenly now raven-haired? My guess is that, based on the overwhelming soul-crushing awfulness of having Momma as her mother-in-law, she’s decided to go full-on goth. The filthy house is not so much a lifestyle choice as a side effect of the overwhelming depression.

Mary Worth, 3/2/14

Oh, wait, what’s that? This wasn’t valedictory wrapping up after all? We’ve got at least another week of Hanna and Amy pretending to be on good terms while passive-aggressively sniping about each other’s choice of spouse and lifestyle? [nods, steeples fingers] PROCEED