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I bet you all thought that I wouldn’t read the 1000+ comments on the ULTRA POST, but read them I did. One is already the comment of the week, as you can see, but as is befitting a post that was truly ULTRA in its postosity, there were a number of contenders, so I thought I’d share them here for everyone who’s too daunted to slog through them all:

“Plus we got a couple of strong sweeps from Rex’s megawatt gaydar. That’s a blip to watch out for in the future.” –Sharkbait

“Bil Keane would be rolling over in his grave, if he was dead.” –sickboy

“‘Adventuresome’? Gee, Elly, does that shill come with a tube of K-Y jelly?” –Dennis Jimenez

(Incidentally, I had been looking at Dennis’ handle for months before the then-Future Mrs. C. pointed out to me that it’s a comics pun. If you’re dumb like me, say it out loud as if you were habla-ing the español.)

“That’s it. I want to murder FBOFW and piss on its grave.” –Sourbelly

“Argh. I looked at Marmaduke. Now I’ve lost about 40 IQ points.” –meep

“I’m getting frustrated at Lynn in Mark Trail. Plus, I’m frustrated at the fact that I am frustrated at anything that goes on in Mark Trail. It’s a vicious circle.” –Mike Donovan

“Personally, I’m so awash in anticipation that I can hardly keep my pants dry.” –Adam-12

“With the constant influx of wildlife in Mark Trail, I am disappointed at the quality of the so-called ‘beauties.’ I am profoundly disturbed by these trout for several reasons. 1) They are stiff. Fish, even dead fish, tend to be at least semi-floppy, right? Right. The way that these fish are dangling rigidly makes me think that they are not indeed real fish, but poorly-made plastic imitation trout that this hirsute gentleman picked up at the local Wal-Mart to inspire jealousy in Mark’s heart 2) They are grey, but not in a fishy, slimy way. They are grey in an ‘I have run out of colors’ way, further supporting the Plastic Wal-Mart Trout theory stated previously. Either that, or (given that they are the same shade of grey as the background) they are strange, ethereal trout from another dimension that can only partly manifest in our reality. Also, the gentleman and his lady friend in panel 2 are very creepily proportioned. They look not quite like midgets, not quite like RealDolls™. Perhaps they are poorly made plastic imitation people Mark Trail picked up at the local Wal-Mart to make it seem like he had friends.” –leathermessiah

On who would play major comics characters in the movies:

“Mary Worth — Martha Stewart. No contest. That perfect melange of asexuality and insincerity.” –Islamorada Girl

“There is no professional actress who could play Cathy, as none are annoying enough.” –Chet McCord, Wildlife Defender

I’m not really sure what this means, but it made me laugh:

“I have to thank you all for turning me on to the very excellent Gil Thorp. Priceless douche chills!” –hacky

And in one point Dingo referred in passing to our favorite young-women-in-the-big-city soap opera strip as The Goyim in Apartment 3-G and I nearly peed myself.

Speaking of those wacky gentile girls, a lot of people seem to want guidance on just what’s going on in today’s installment. I’m afraid that I’d be a lot more help if anyone had entered the Summarize the Soaps contest. Which no one did! C’mon people, you can do it. I want summaries. E-mail me summaries! Check out last year’s winners for guidance.

And finally, a moment that I had long been awaiting arrived this evening. A member of the Curmudgeon household was recognized by a reader in public — and it wasn’t even me! Faithful reader Kaycee recognized Mrs. C, since I constantly plaster her picture all over the site. I wasn’t there, but I was assured that it was a very exciting moment. So a shout out to you, Kaycee! Though hopefully these encounters won’t become so frequent that we have to start putting on sunglasses and baseball caps whenever we leave the house.

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So we went and got married. It was real nice, real nice, I tell ya. Then we went to Greece for two weeks. That was real nice, too.

A couple enterprising Cardinals who knew us before this blog gave our nuptials a worldwide audience attended the blessed event and have posted pics on this forum thread, if you’re interested. Pix start on the fourth post, so scroll down.

After returning from our honeymoon, we arrived home to a huge pile of mail and a mysterious box from some glass-blowing outfit. We opened it with some trepidation, only to find inside, courtesy of yellowjkt, two painstakingly hand-crafted blown-glass symbols of marriage: two swans, birds that, if you haven’t heard, mate for life.

Hopefully these won’t be rudely shattered by some ungrateful drunken houseguest years after my tragic demise. You can’t really see it in this pic, but the glass making up the little beaks and wings is golden colored. They are simultaneously two of the most hideous and wonderful things I have ever seen.

Tomorrow, I think, there will be real, actual, new comics commentary and content. Also, I will get around to reading the comments on the ULTRA POST — congrats on hitting quadruple digits, by the way. And soon, a redesign of the redesign, with legibility in mind. But while I’m still on my gettin’-hitched high, I wanted to share one more thing with you. See, we asked our guests to e-mail us wedding-, love-, and us-themed haiku for our wedding; a friend of Amber’s wrote them onto little flags that were hung around the wedding site. She also set up a little station where people could write more haiku during the reception. Some of them were sweet, some were silly, all were wonderful. But the one I wanted to reprint here was from our friend Sam Wiley, who loves Mary Worth as much as I do:

They’re not like Tommy
Who sold that guy some bad stuff
Their love is good stuff

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OK, with less than 48 hours of single life left, I am posting my last pre-wedding-and-honeymoon post. A few bits of housecleaning:

*Just over a year ago, when I went to France for two weeks, I held a “Summarize the soaps” contest. I encouraged readers to e-mail me an amusing summary of what had happened in one of the soap opera strips while I was gone. I got some pretty good responses, and at the time my traffic was about a tenth of what it is now, so I’m expecting some very good responses this time around, dig? Feel free to summarize the soap of your choice, or even a non-soap if it’s feeling soapy. Winners get nothing tangible, but will have their entries reprinted by me in the blog and singled out for adulation.

*One of last year’s winners was one of this blog’s most venerable Cardinals. You know him as Smitty Smedlap, but he has a fine blog of his own called Subdivided We Stand. I’m singling him out because he’s just started a new feature called I Read Leviticus So You Don’t Have To that will hopefully keep you entertained in my absence. It’s just like my blog except, you know, with the book of Leviticus instead of the comics.

Oh, yeah, and now for the new concept: the ULTRA POST! Basically, it goes like this: this post is going to be the top one on the blog for two weeks. How many comments can you accumulate during this time? Only time — specifically, the next two weeks — will tell. But the comments section will get ULTRA BIG. However, I must say that just posting gibberish or “First Post!” or what not constitutes cheating. The ULTRA POST will only be brought to its ULTRA STATUS by the kind of witty commentary that I’ve come to expect from y’all. Now get crackin’!