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Archive: Mark Trail

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Ha ha, guys, you heard about how coffee is expensive now. You heard about this

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/3/19

Actually, Mopey Pete, I gotta disagree with you. My guess is that “The Beanstalk” is a play of of the “beans” that people grind to make coffee, which appears to be the main thing they sell there. And if you just read the phrase “spend a lot of Jack” and thought, “Hmm, I as a native English speaker have never heard ‘jack’ used as a slang term for money — is this a usage I should be familiar with?”: results seem mixed! It appears to maybe be an archaic Britishism, and Urban Dictionary insists that “making jack” means making a profit, though I would definitely interpret it as meaning “making jack shit,” i.e., making nothing. Meanwhile, the phrase “a whole lot of jack” mainly points to a Facebook page featuring cute signs about drunkenness. My point is that I think this is yet another Funky usage that has no relationship to actual English, along the lines of “solo car date” and “vendos” and “Lewis and Clarking” and “Nordic, with the added twist of this fake phony-baloney wordplay being the sum total of the “punchline.”

Mark Trail, 8/3/19

Leola may be uncomfortable when people grapple with their feelings in an enclosed space, but Doc isn’t afraid to “dig deep” and help JJ really understand the emotional rollercoaster he’s been on. “I don’t hold it against you that you threatened us at gunpoint!” Doc says. “It could’ve happened to anyone! If things had been just a little different, I definitely would’ve killed each and every one of you, with my bare hands, just so I could possess the precious, precious gold I thought we would find here.”

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Yet more soaps for Friday

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Rex Morgan, M.D., and Mark Trail, 8/2/19

Have the soaps gone soft on us? Here we are with a couple of certified villains, and now we’re being asked to, like, sympathize with their motivations, which aren’t abstract evil but rather arise from the socio-economic superstructure in which they — like us — find themselves embedded. Oh, boo hoo, credentialing institutions dangle the prospect of fulfilling and renumerative careers that they can’t deliver, leaving thousands of idealistic young people burdened with debt! Waaaah, small businesses in this country are finding it harder and harder to compete in the marketplace and end up in a downward spiral of indebtedness that they can’t ever escape from! At least Mark, Doc, and Leola are watching JJ’s meltdown with rightful suspicion. Don’t come literally crying to us because you blew all your money on vehicles with an unusual number of wheels, JJ!

Mary Worth, 8/2/19

Somehow, the sight of JJ blubbering about his small business loan isn’t the funniest thing in the soap opera comics today. No, that honor goes to Dawn and Hugo’s date at the Bum Boat, where the strained, manic quality of their “flirting” reads as if each of them is wearing a wire and has been told to keep the other talking long enough that they eventually say something incriminating. Anyway, do you think Hugo knows about Billy Big Mouth Bass? Pretty sure this is Dawn’s big opportunity to finally impress this irritating euro-splainer with something America has that France doesn’t. We can’t deliver universal health care, but if you want easy access to an animatronic mounted fish that sings, the United States is the country for you!

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Soapy Thursday

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Mark Trail, 8/1/19

A while back, I asked whether Mark Trail, the comic strip, knew how mines work. Today we can see that the “blame game” has already started and the other characters are making Doc in particular feel bad about not knowing how mines work, despite the fact that obviously nobody involved knows how mines work. “It was probably confusing!” says Mark. “An hour ago, when I said ‘Good job, Doc — you led us right to it!‘ by ‘it’ I meant ‘a small cave, definitely not a mine, those are definitely two different things and I can easily distinguish between them!’ God, what a dope you are, Doc.”

Mary Worth, 8/1/19

Is this whole relationship going to revolve around quickly entering bodies of water together? I was going to make fun, but, you know, people can and have done a lot worse.