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Hello friends! Your COTW in a moment, but first, in seeing-Josh-tell-jokes news, I will be telling jokes in a standup show in Baltimore this coming Wednesday! It’s called The Hustle, it’s put on by What Weekly, and it’s at Maryland Art Place at 218 West Saratoga Street in downtown Baltimore. Starts at 8 p.m. Here is the Facebook event! Don’t miss it!

And now, your comment of the week:

“It’s difficult to say what is most attractive about Boog from Little Blond Girl’s perspective. Is it his unblinking glassy black eyes? His black sweatshirt that glows an eerie red for some reason? The way he deftly uses that non-descript metal object to punctuate his every thought and feeling? His ability to emit tiny black hearts at will like some impish wizard? What IS it?” –Flippin Arkansas

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Meanwhile, Snuffy realizes that he’s in Count Weirdly’s virtual-reality chamber when he sees celery and a bunch of yeller bannaners in Loweezy’s shopping bag. Might as well have a gorilla and a goddamn tree sloth.” –Oregonian

Apartment 3-G: “Meanwhile, back in New York, Margo has quit her job as a publicist and is now *rolls dice* a hot dog vendor.” –Liam

“Incurable disease? Boring! I’m more interested in the story behind that tripoded chimera child wandering the halls.” –sporknpork

“But it was only later, when they insisted that she put on wire-frame glasses and a beard, that Sarah realized that she was the central part of the special Toulouse Lautrec exhibition.” –odinthor

“‘DINNER WAS WONDERFUL AND NOW I’M GOING OUTSIDE!’ Cabbage and baked beans again, huh?” –pugfuggly

“Now that Carol’s demanded a big fat kiss, I’m about 60% sure she’s not Jack’s mom.” –bourbon babe, unbuckled

“In the third panel of today’s Mark Trail, we see the horrifying fate of rebellious waffles in Lost Forest. Nailed to a wall and left to the mold. Don’t cross Mark and Cherry, breakfast food. Just don’t.” –Voshkod

“‘How many kids are going to be in this group, Ms Lanning?’ ‘I’m not sure … it’s a busload! I could count the seats or something, but that just smacks of math. I have people for that.'” –Enlong

Apartment 3-G: “Tommie better watch out — Carol could kill her in front of a dozen witnesses and the cops would never be able to get an accurate description of her. ‘Yes officer, I saw the whole thing — the perp was 5’ 10” and about 40 years old.’ ‘No, no, no — she was only four feet tall and couldn’t have been more than sixteen!’ “Well, one thing we all agree on — she couldn’t stand in one place for long, and her neck swiveled like an owl’s.'” –Tom, the Sailor Man

Mary Worth: “Glad to see Tommy upped his game from panel 1 to panel 2 by switching his tight T-shirt for a looser one with a scooped neck, all the better to give Tina a tantalizing glimpse of the uppermost tuft of his chest hair, a.k.a. The Sternum Bush. Tommy knows that all ladies love themselves a little bit of sternum bush, and hopefully it will distract Tina from noticing how freakishly dilated his eyes are when he stares at her lovely, Keane-Kid sized head.” –gelded wilderbeeste

“I love Weezy’s look of seething rage in that last panel. ‘It’s one thing to poison folks,’ she thinks. ‘It’s quite another to look so damn smug about it. They may tolerate that in Funky Winkerbean, but that’s in that godless Ohio. This is Hootin’ Holler! When you be makin’ a punchline up here, you best be sticking out yore tongue!'” –Guts Dozier

Mary Worth: “Huh, so ‘gentleman’ is the code for creepy guy who offers to get me alone within 10 seconds of meeting now? It’s so hard to keep up with slang these days.” CanuckDownSouth

“Roombas are programed to target concentrated areas of dirt and filth. I’m just saying.” –TheDiva

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Hello all, hope you are about to embark on a fine Memorial Day Weekend, if you live in America. Let me very briefly point out to you that if you are going to be in Baltimore next Wednesday you could do worse than see me perform my beloved character “Gary the Emotionally Fragile Substitute Yoga Instructor”, at Chucklestorm! Please come and enjoy!

And now, your comment of the week!

“I’m just taking a moment to enjoy the confused look on the faces of the vikings holding the now-superfluous battering ram. ‘Uh, so do we, uh … I mean, what do we do here? Do we still run headlong into the door, or…?'” –Joe Blevins

And your very funny runners up!

“Actually, it really is surprisingly depressing to see Pluggers quote ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE RADIOHEAD, YOU BASTARDS. GO BACK TO HANK JR. YOU CHOSE THIS PATH, NOW WALK IT.” –C. Sandy Cyst

“Cherry should have known better than to leave ‘the talk’ to Mark.” –Naked Bunny with a Whip

“It’s black and white. But it’s always called Le Chat Bleu, because if there’s one thing that doesn’t make you look like a pretentious douche, it’s naming the personification of your mental state in French.” –Horace Broon

“Wait, I thought the talking cat represented death, or maybe just cancer-death? I dunno, this is Funky Winkerbean, I guess it can be two things, as long as one of the things is cancer.” –Dan

“I was going to say here that Tommy could use the prison experience to his benefit by explaining that his assigned duties were janitorial and that he is very familiar with the instruments of dirt removal and has kept abreast of the latest developments in cleaning technology in the trade periodicals. But look at what a shit-ass job he’s doing in his own flashback. It’s like he’s never seen a goddamned mop before. Don’t have that flashback in front of Jerry, or the gig is gone.” –hogenmogen

“A ‘guilt trip’, dear? I wouldn’t call it that but I can see how you would. Would you like a salmon square? Oh, that’s right. It reminds you of things you are suppressing. Grey, garish things.” –tallyHO

“Last year’s county fair a had a pretty lackluster freak show tent, so Jack is really hoping that the twin calves are conjoined. To be honest, we’re all hoping.” –Chareth Cutestory

“I really hope you’re kidding, Carol. Jack has made it clear that I am not to fall in love with him until I’ve mucked out the stables 35 times. Only 15 more to go, and then I can—Oops! Look at the time! Jack allows me one potty break at 10:00, and it’s 9:58. Gotta run!” –bourbon babe, unbuckled

“Oooh, I wonder how they’re going to stage a catfight without anybody touching or making eye contact.” –TheDiva

“‘Dr. Octopus sure is a pussycat lately.’ ‘Yeah, as it turns out, the most dangerous thing about him were those powerful metal tentacles attached to his torso that he could control with his mind.'” –pugfuggly

“I hope this strip continues to gradually de-power its characters one-by-one until it’s finally through being a silly affair about an insecure, petulant, ineffectual superhero self-contradictingly titled The Amazing Spider-Man and becomes a poignant and brooding character study simply called Man.'” –Perfesser Wut

“I’m intrigued by the implication that ‘lately’, while still in prison, Dr. Octopus had been allowed to keep his metal tentacles. ‘Remember two weeks ago before they took them away? I’m still hosing the blood out of the guard’s breakroom in cellblock D. I guess that’s one way to bust a union.'” –David Schraub

“I am 99% sure that there is nothing in the Declaration of Independence that could be construed as a commentary on workplace safety issues, at least not by conventional standards of jurisprudence. In fact, I had thought that it was one of the few things that anti-regulation Tea Partiers and abortion-crazed liberal Obamaites revered in common. Although I suppose that none of that will matter in ten seconds, after school bus 110 has tragically crashed in the forest while going 95 miles per hour, while some bunnies watch in shock and horror as the grisly carnage unfolds before their adorable eyes.” — Chad Sexington

“If the new boss actually has to say ‘we don’t abuse each other,’ you know something really bad went down with your predecessor, probably involving cops and lots and lots of lawyers.” –BigTed

“Hangovers are a great way to celebrate a dry, hot climate — you can synchronize your pounding headaches with the relentless noontime sun.” –made of wince

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Your comment of the week moment but first: faithful reader/Maryland-area standup/cool guy/personal friend Isaac Hirsch pointed me in the direction of this AMAZING animated Mark Trail GIF. It’s animated, and it takes a minute to get going, but for God’s sake wait for it, because it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Are you the anonymous mad genius who made this beautiful thing? If so, please email me at bio at jfruh dot com and let me know so you can get the credit you deserve!

Update: Some light shed on the subject by faithful reader Mathew Walls, aka Something Awful forums user Tiggum and Twitter user @blindomics (please note that if you’re not a registered Something Awful forums user these links will go to a registration page that plays audio):

As far as I’m aware, all that is known about the creator of that gif (other than by the individual themself, obviously) is that they go by R Ubbish on the Something Awful forums, which I believe is where that gif was originally posted. They post only in two threads (the Comic Strip Megathread and the Political Cartoons thread) and never say anything, just post an edited comic and that’s it. They’ve never responded to anything anyone else posts, or given any hint of their identity, but obviously follow the threads regularly as they’re aware of the in-jokes and memes. Any more than this would be wild speculation.

Anyway! This week’s top comment is also super-hilarious, by the way!

“To his credit, Slick Smitty looks so damn happy about everything. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s actually an apple-stealing criminal mastermind, or if his mind has snapped from being the only human in a world of anthro animals. ‘Hey, fox friend!’ he gleefully says to the one animal he sees on a regular basis. ‘Hey! I have apples. My hands are in so much pain!! What are you barking about? Oh, is it time for my mauling? Okay!!! Ha ha painful animal hugs are the only love I know!!'” –Tophat

And the runners up are also hilarious!

“‘It’s a joke!’ ‘No, it’s not. Why would you expect to find a joke in this comic?'” –hogenmogen

“It’s always really interesting to see what they decide to show in this strip. Tommie goes to visit the sights of Italy? Not one panel. Tommie goes to a farm in Pennsylvania? Three months of agonizing, manure-shoveling detail. I don’t know what Margo and Lu Ann are up to in NY at the moment, but it must be something extremely hard to draw.” –pugfuggly

“Mrs. the Menace thinks that if she keeps baking delicious flapjacks, maybe her son will give her nose back. He will not.” –C. Sandy Cyst

“I was sad that I had to wear the same pink turtleneck for mucking out the stables every day for 3 months, until I met a retiring high school English teacher who had to wear the same plaid jacket every day for 30 years.” –seismic-2

“I honestly can’t tell if that‘s supposed to be a lady groundhog or if it’s supposed to be some kind of hip, devil may care groundhog who doesn’t conform to traditional groundhog grooming standards.” –beardiemcwarren

“Oops, got Tommie confused with Tommy. The MW Tommy has a ‘Y’ as in ‘Why are you sitting around all day?’ A3G has an ‘IE’ as in ‘IEEEE! would you please change your clothes and take a bath?’ Now I can keep them straight.” –Kevin on Earth

“My God, isn’t that exactly what all of us imagined a personal trainer in the Funkyverse would look like? The body one needs to smugly look down on the less fit as they fail to live up to their dreams, a facial expression worn down by constant tragedy and depression, and workout attire that’s entirely black so that the work/funeral/work schedule runs more smoothly.” –Alex Blaze

“Down in midtown? Over in downtown? East of the playdowns? No wonder Mary didn’t want to stay in New York, what with its reasonably understandable spatial orientation and everything.” –WeatherServo9

“‘What? I thought you told me to toss the salad.’ That’s the punchline. I mean, I’m not happy about it, I’m not suggesting it makes the comic good, it’s certainly not funny, but, well, we’re all on the same page here, right? With that set up, and with the joke being a pun on ‘toss’ meaning both ‘to mix the ingredients of a salad so as to equally distribute them’ and ‘to deposit in a garbage receptacle,’ that’s the joke. I understand it has its own problems — why would Alice Mitchell ever ask her careless, filth-covered offspring to toss a salad? But, again, I’m not suggesting the joke is perfect, or even good. I’m just acknowledging what we all know to be the truth. That was the joke. ‘What? I thought you told me to toss the salad.’ As it stands, it’s not even a joke. Yes, it’s good fodder for Josh here, it’s even better for our purposes that it has no joke, that it’s just Dennis staring his mother down and he tosses food in the garbage, presumably without permission or in open defiance of authority. But it’s better for us because of how clearly misguided it is. The robot authors of Dennis the Menace (unlike the irony grand-warlocks behind Heathcliff) are not playing along with us here. They just fucked up is all, just flat-out fucked up. And we’re well past the point of just rolling our eyes and moving on. It’s wrong what they’re doing here, it’s immoral. And I don’t know whether the answer is a letter-writing campaign, or a firebombing stint, or whether we just seethe with hatred until the end of our days. I don’t come to you with solutions. But I’m saying, we can’t pretend this didn’t happen. We can’t just sit here and do nothing.” –Vincent Watkins

“What I find to be truly menacing about Dennis is that he doesn’t seem to have a salad bowl that he dumping the salad from. Rather, he seems to have found a hand-held portal connected to a world of infinite salad. ‘The game is up, mother. May this be mechanical or demonic, your trans-dimensional salad preparation days are over. Now you prepare salads like the rest of the mothers in this neighborhood. Then I shall throw those away too, but this time by a physics that is meant to be understood!!'” –Sean Franco

“The logical conclusion of this story line is a succession of ever larger bears being used to scare off the last bear Mark ran into. Eventually, there will have to be some sort of Platonic Uber Bear, an Ursa Major, if you will, which no other bear can surpass. After years of running, Mark will gratefully surrender himself to the sweet release of death. Finally, he can stop running.” –Tori

“The Jungle Patrol must be the strangest paramilitary organization in the world. I would love to hear how they are integrated with the rest of Bangalla’s military institutions and what mechanisms of civilian control and parliamentary oversight they operate under. Maybe the reporter from the last storyline would have done better by writing a story about the chain of command in the Jungle Patrol. Readers of International Geography would have loved it.” –Master Softheart

“She named the mare Mary? Lily should be glad she didn’t get named Fawny, apparently.” –Laura

“‘Then what is she ready for?’ asked Tommie, naively. ‘This,’ said Jack as he leaned in to kiss her on her dry, thin, peach-colored lips. She then backed away awkwardly, pretending to clear her throat, and they went about their work in stony silence. Later, they would have an uncomfortable lunch of tuna sandwiches, skim milk, and soda crackers. THE END.” –Joe Blevins

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.