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Pajama Diaries, 11/1/19

Ha ha, remember when an innocent discussion with her daughter about social media profile pics led to Pajama Diaries Mom Whose Name I Forget chattily bringing up the constant intrusive thoughts she has about her imminent kidnapping? Well, tonight, when she’s just out having some fun drinking wine with her gal pals, she talks about how one extremely normal recurring worry she has is that for some reason in the future she’ll be in a coma indefinitely, technically alive but insensate and trapped in an interminable kind of living death, yet still subject to the crushing demands that the patriarchy makes on women’s personal appearance. Imagine your mind trapped in a useless husk of a body, screaming endlessly but silently because you think the doctors who occasionally stop by your room to change your feeding tube will think “gee, this one has really let herself go”! They say people want to see representation of others like them in the media, but as a guy with anxiety, this all just makes me increasingly uncomfortable and I’d honestly rather not!

Hagar the Horrible, 11/1/19

I was going to point out that taking a dog for a walk for “exercise” is generally a euphemism for getting him out of the house so he can pee, but then I remembered Hagar is a uncultured Viking living in a tiny dirt-floored hut in rural Norway. He probably pees on the floor himself if it’s cold out!

Gil Thorp, 11/1/19

Oh wow, it turns out Chance only threw scissors at another kid because he hates injustice so much. C’MON MAN. I’ve now totally revised my opinion on this plot, Chet is absolutely right to air as much of Chance’s dirty laundry as possible to put this self-righteous jerk in his place and get his stepson that starting RB job.

Dustin, 11/1/19

“Like, I don’t want cereal that helps me poop! I want cereal that I want to fuck.”

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Pajama Diaries, 8/9/19

Despite its occasional unpleasant excursions into kink, the obsessive-neurotic Pajama Diaries has slowly wormed its way into the hole in my heart left behind by the obsessive-neurotics at Edge City (not that they didn’t have their own problems with off-putting sex stuff). Today’s strip does a better job at being even-handed than fellow battle-of-the-generations feature Dustin. Ha ha, it’s funny because young people are obsessed with carefully curating the impressions they make on others via social media, while their parents are obsessed with the violence always lurking at the edges of civilized society. What if they come and kidnap you tonight? What if they murder your whole family so that the only clue the police have to go on is the last photo you uploaded to Facebook? What if they need to be able to see every wrinkle, every imperfection, in order to identify your body when they eventually find it bloated and rotting in a ditch somewhere out in the countryside?

Mary Worth, 8/9/19

Mary has long been into taking cognitive-behavioral reality-shaping to extreme lengths, like the time she told a lady devastated because her fiance had stood her up at the altar that “the past only exists by how you remember it,” so all she had to do was remember things differently and she wouldn’t be sad anymore. Now Mary’s applying this theory to the present as well. All Dawn has to do is concentrate on being happy every moment of every day, and then she’ll always be happy! Hugo here? Happy. Hugo not here? Happy. Pretend Hugo never existed the moment he leaves? If letting go of object permanence is the key to happiness, then it’s a small price to pay!

Judge Parker, 8/9/19

Oh, turns out it’s Norton. Norton, everybody! Norton’s back, and he’s, uh, very sunburned, it seems.

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Pajama Diaries, 7/16/19

I freely admit that it’s entirely irrational, but I’ve developed an extreme aversion to the strips where Pajama Diaries gets horny. Like, it’s not Luann-level distasteful, of course, but it still squicks me out, possibly because nobody actually talks like this. “Hey mom, be sure to make me a special second dinner for tonight, because after my dinner date I’m gonna go fuck somewhere, then come home later and eat that second dinner, because if there’s one thing having sex does it makes you hungry, right? Post-sex hunger is a thing? Because of all the sex exercise? This is exactly how I talk to my friends in my dorm, and I’ve definitely had sex before.”

Funky Winkerbean, 7/16/19

I dunno, man, in this flashback Young Cliff Anger looks less like a guy whose best friend just went to jail for a murder he didn’t commit and more like a guy who’s pretty jazzed to be the new owner of a chimpanzee named Zanzibar. Ha ha, the chimp is smoking a cigar and wearing a shirt! He thinks he’s people! Anyway, if Zanzibar turns out to be the real killer in this storyline, I’m willing to forgive a lot about the past few weeks in this strip.