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Mark Trail, 6/10/07

Dear humankind,

“Most belligerent animals for their size in the world,” huh? All right, nobody’s gonna mistake us for a bunch of namby-pamby, let’s-all-get-along types, we’ll admit. But do you two-leggers ever think that maybe there’s a reason we’re so belligerent? Huh? Do you?

Let’s start with the food angle. You know if you’re on a road trip, you sometimes say, “Oh, I don’t want to wait to get to Nashville to have dinner, let’s eat at the Sbarro at the next rest stop”? Well, imagine if the consequences of not stopping weren’t just getting hungry and cranky, but frickin’ droppin’ dead. And then, imagine that, instead of getting a baked ziti in a plastic container that you can easily take out to your car, you have to kill and eat an undersea bug the size of your head! Probably one with stingers or something. A frickin’ bug! And once you’ve eaten it, you’ve just got to start running (or swimming) around looking for more bugs to eat.

And then there’s the way you get treated. “Oh, look, how cute, your babies have formed a shrew-chain as they desperately cling on to your tail for dear life … oops, I just crushed them all to death with my enormous freakin’ foot!” And don’t even get me started on the freakin’ cats. “Hi there snoogy snoogums! How’s my sweet fluffy girl? Did you have a nice day outside? Awww, did you bring me a prize? You did! You brought me the corpse of an innocent shrew, who never did anything in its life to hurt you! Oh, look, it doesn’t seem to have any visible wounds — you must have batted it around until its internal organs were mashed to putty! How cute! Now let me take the body away and throw it in the garbage!”

It’s this kind of demeaning attitude that leads to a prevalent anti-shrew attitude in law enforcement agencies around the world. So, yeah, belligerent? Maybe we’re a little freakin’ belligerent. But maybe we’ve got some good freakin’ motivation.

Sincerely,
The shrews

P.S. We poop in your cereal boxes, FYI.

Apartment 3-G, 6/10/07

I mainly ran this so we can all continue to enjoy Margo’s bitchtasticness. Today, we see that her reluctance to go see her dear friend one-third of the rent for her apartment in the hospital may be more than a knee-jerk Margoism; she’s obviously just gotten collagen injections in preparation for Eric’s return from wherever it is he’s jetted off to, and she probably doesn’t want to go out in public for a few more days.

I do have to say re: panel five that I am getting a little weary of everyone being so stunned to find Tommie at the hospital. “So we’re at the emergency room and OH MY GOD THERE’S TOMMIE, WHO IF WE HAD SPENT MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES TALKING TO HER THE FIRST TIME WE MET WE’D PROBABLY HAVE LEARNED THAT SHE WAS AN EMERGENCY ROOM NURSE AT THIS VERY HOSPITAL!” It’s possible that, in a desperate attempt to get people interested in her, Tommie actually tells everybody that she has a much more glamorous career, as a CIA spy or Queen of Norway or something. It’s also possible that she’s so boring that nobody ever even makes it to the typical “so what do you for a living and where do you do it” part of that first conversation.

Tommie’s shock at seeing Alan is perhaps a bit more understandable, since he long ago swore a drunken oath to leave the evil metropolis of New York and all it stood for behind. Plus, he appears to be wearing eyeliner.

Mary Worth, 6/10/07

This may be one of the most horrifying Mary Worths ever, and not just because Vera looks like one of those soul-searing Margaret Keane paintings in panel five. We’ve watched Mary slowly break Vera’s independence and will over the past few weeks. Yesterday we saw saw the catharsis that came when she completed her Worth-appointed mission. Today, the upper level of her conscious mind seems to indicate that she yearns for freedom again, but her glassy expression and final thought — return to the programmer for further instructions — tell us that she’s still in the puppet mistress’s thrall. Of course, we all know that, now that Mary has convinced Vera to do the exact opposite of what she’s wanted to do for so many years, the innocent girl holds no more appeal to the meddling biddy; once Vera returns to Charterstone, Mary will just crack open her skull and feast on her brain, then have Dawn Weston post a “sublettor wanted” ad for Vera’s apartment on Craigslist.

Panel from Cathy, 6/10/07

I try to keep everyone’s exposure to Cathy to a minimum, but I do feel this panel is worth noting, because the phrase “Someone needs to relax! Let’s assemble a backyard gazebo!” is actually kind of surreally funny out of context. I’m pretty sure if you shaved Irving’s head and put a polka-dotted mumu on him, he’d be Zippy the Pinhead.

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Mary Worth, 6/9/07

Ah, what a revealing sibling diptych in the wake of the meeting that was so long in coming! On the right, we have Vera, brought to spasms of uncontrollable weeping as years of suppressed emotion wrench their way out of her soul. On the left, we have Von, who’s head is vaguely itchy. Remember, kids: alcohol is your ticket out of undesirably intrusive emotional experiences!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/07

Man, for a guy who thinks his friend’s husband is long dead in the icy North Atlantic, Rex is sure looking cheery in panel two. “Yeah, why don’t you go over and console Heather, soothe her grief, do woman stuff, whatever … while I get the house all to myself! For me and anyone I want to invite over. Lucky for me I wore my grooviest shirt today!”

Hi and Lois, 6/9/07

Dude, child labor is so much cheaper!

Apartment 3-G, 6/9/07

Sleepy, disheveled, nighty-clad Margo? Bliss. Sleepy, disheveled, nighty-clad, ragingly self-absorbed Margo? Rapture.

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Mary Worth, 6/7/07

You know those people who say, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when I retire!” I am not one of those people. I am basically lazy. Thus, if I had been cast out of my enormous mansion in Pacific Cliffs, and forced to live in a filthy tenement and get an archaic job like “typist” at an ad agency to survive, and then moved into a sublet at a soulless condo complex next door to Mary Worth and that was a step up — well, even if the experience did make me stronger, I might consider myself to be strong enough to go back to the lap of luxury when the opportunity presented itself, is what I’m saying.

On the other hand, if this strip has any desire to tone down the Flowers in the Attic vibe, panel two is NOT HELPING. Could the lap of luxury come at too high a price? I’d have to find out exactly how much luxury we’re talking about here before I make that call.

Hi and Lois, 6/7/07

Today’s Hi and Lois takes on the tough issue of twin-on-twin violence. I have to say that I’m actually a little creeped out by the way Ditto is slowly and deliberately rolling up the sleeve on his punchin’ arm, while Dot stands a few feet away, cringing in terror, but not fleeing. Fortunately, mom is on the case, making sure that Ditto merely humiliates and degrades his sister verbally.

For Better Or For Worse, 6/7/07

So, um, did I totally misidentify Shawna-Marie way back in 2005, or have she and her entire family switched races, as in the hilarious ’80s comedy Soul Man?

Also, it does seem kind of strange to try to switch your processional at the rehearsal, but, hey, if your mother is a terrifying control freak (I believe they call her the “black Mira Sobinski”), I can see how the prospect of confronting her might be kind of anxiety-inducing. On the other hand, they may not be actually at the rehearsal; according to the first panel, they’re just “go[ing] over the rehearsal.” That’s right, this is the wedding rehearsal rehearsal, people. After all, you want the rehearsal to go off smoothly, don’t you? Of course you do. I’ll tell you this: at the real rehearsal, Shawna-Marie will smile and rehearse with grace and dignity, and not spend all her time mouthing off about that rock-and-roll hippity hop music.