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B.C. and Herb and Jamaal, 9/20/13

Well, congratulations, B.C., you have done the impossible! You have created a strip that made a technology joke in Herb and Jamaal look hip and with-it by comparison. Sure, Jamaal, still adds a weird, awkward “and tons of other means” to his list of social media services in panel one; but at least that list consists entirely of real, actual websites that exist and are popular right now, on the day the strip was published. And the punchline to the joke actually reflects a reasonable observation about how social media affects our day-to-day relationships with other humans! Another way that social media affects us is of course that sometimes we find it so overwhelming that we fly into a panic and then write a cartoon in which a bunch of ants spout gibberish at one another.

Crankshaft, 9/20/13

The entire plot of Crankshaft for the past two weeks has been that there is a new bus driver who is a lady, and who is nice, and who actually cares about being good at her job and nice to her co-workers and to the children who ride her bus. Naturally, she’s viewed with suspicion and loathing by the monstrous assholes who are the ostensible protagonists of this strip. Today their long national nightmare is about to come to end, though, because Crankshaft is clearly relishing the thought of murdering her by running her over with his bus.

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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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Sally Forth, 8/8/13

Aw — seems like just yesterday she was a cute little fifth-grader, and here she is ruining her first summer romance with a pointless, self-destructive neurotic meltdown. Little Hilary, all grown up!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/8/13

Wait! Tell us more about this “Charlie” player, cutting a wide swath through the maidens of Hootin’ Holler with his smooth talk, fancy ring, and bait-and-switch mating strategy. Is he unaware of the role played by firearms in his community’s courtship rituals?

Or perhaps Hootin’ Holler’s ancestral wimminfolk cobbled together their own ritual from scraps of Sadie Hawkins Day and Musical Chairs, in which eligible wimmin pass the ring down from one to another as one by one they wed, until at last the final maiden is doomed to wear it as she weds the Final Feller — the Feller No One Wants.

Yes, that must be it, judging from the look of shock, horror, and despair on Ginny’s face — it’s exactly how Loweezy looked wearing the ring at her own weddin’ a generation ago.

Mary Worth, 8/8/13

Swimming! Hiking! Stretching! A life of petty intrusiveness requires constant discipline. Not for the weak!

Herb and Jamaal, 8/8/13

Jamaal lives every day as though it were his last, and reeks so bad everyone around him wishes it were theirs.

— Uncle Lumpy