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People, people: the moment you’ve all been waiting for has at last arrived. Aldomania 2006 merchandise is ready for purchase!

In anticipation of overwhelming demand, we have four shirt styles available: a ringer T, a junior baby doll T, a baseball jersey, and a junior raglan. PURCHASE! CONSUME! CONSUME! I DEMAND IT!

And once you’ve purchased and consumed, you need to send me a photo of yourself wearing your newly acquired product. Faithful reader bootsybooks recently let her friends and neighbors know where they can find more information about licorice:

C’mon, Comics Curmudgeon-gear purchasers, I need those pictures! I don’t have a “Hat Man” hat pic yet, which is clearly a crying shame. Just to show that I’m not above being pictured in ludicrous poses, I offer you this picture of myself in my snazzy finger–quotin’ Margo shirt:

Yes, I am at the Minnesota State Fair making finger quotes in front of a finger-quotin’ bear carved out of a log with a chainsaw. You kind of had to have been there.

Finally, for those of you who didn’t see it in the comments, you should all of you, those of you who enjoy 17th century poetry and those who do not, appreciate faithful reader Uncle Lumpy’s homage to our favorite mustachioed stalker and Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.

To Aldo’s Coy Mistress

HAD we but world enough, and Time,
This coyness, Mary, were no crime —
An age to lounge beside the pool,
And suffer some damn chinbeard fool,
To squander half a human life
Conversing with his moron wife,
To gab the gab of Charterstone,
And scarf croquettes with my sweet crone.
O Mary! If but time allowed,
You could have done as you have vowed:
Be true to Jeff, your noble doc!
Keep one eye, dreaming, on the clock
That when he’s fixed up the displasia
Of every lip in Southeast Asia,
He’ll break free of his houseboy’s arms,
And fly to your uncertain charms.
But I, like water on the stone
Infest the nest that Jeff has flown
And — mixing metaphors with glee —
Insinuate my love on thee!
The fear, the rage, the angry glances
Which now repel my sweet advances
In time will grow attenuated
While my own Fires rage unabated.
In Time my Mojo I’ll unleash,
For time is on my side — capisce?

But always at my back I hear
A distant siren, drawing near
Foreshadowing my interdiction
By those of my old jurisdiction
Who think I may have killed my wife —
The fingerprints, the bloody knife,
Do little good to exculpate me —
I fear a jail cell may await me!
So Mary, Mary, shed that dress —
Though lips say “no”, your eyes say “yes”.
As much as I enjoy the chase
My trophy shall be your embrace.
And no fair rose will be as sweet
As your thin lips when mine they meet!
I’ll stake my claim and take my rest
Upon your desiccated breast
Just like those swans who mate for life.
So don’t you make me get my knife!
Oh, pardon me, you needn’t worry —
Just move it, bitch, I’m in a hurry!
And don’t you dare to cry out, “AAUGH” —
I’ve tapped your phone! I’ve read your blog!
Don’t sink my heart in dark despair —
I demand this be a love we share!
Who spurns the Stalkeroo’s affection
Can take a nap ’til Resurrection.

Oh, and lest we forget our cartoon favorites of yesteryear: Fencepost Frank has a MySpace account. (If you need a refresher on Frank, one of the most awesome Rex Morgan, M.D. incidental characters ever, click here.)

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So in a comment on yesterday’s post, faithful commentor Harry said something that stuck with me:

The last panel of Rex Morgan looks remarkably like the posters for Brokeback Mountain.

Considering how much time we all spent snickering about “Brokeback Morgan” some months ago, it sure got me thinking. Here are the two images next to each other for easy comparison:

It’s even more striking if we flip Jake and Heath around the other way:

It sure is … interesting.

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Family Circus, 8/7/06

I’d like to think that little Jeffy is finally asserting himself violently, like a Frenchman whose honor has been insulted, while Billy is suddenly whining like a little baby Italian. But longtime readers of this feature know that Jeffy has neither the cojones to take on his brother’s sternum with his forehead nor the leg strength to take the flying leap depicted in the top half of this panel. The only logical conclusion is that he once again is a pawn in someone else’s game: presumably some other Keane who has a gripe with Billy (Mom? Dad? Dolly? Barfy?) has hurled Jeffy at the offending towhead.

Apartment 3-G, 8/7/06

Speaking of red cards, if Tommie doesn’t do something really dramatic tomorrow — I’m thinking suicide, or at least some sort of ritual cutting — then I’m citing her for drama. “Sorry, Professor, I wanted to ask if you’d watch Crossing Jordan with me last night … but now it’s too late! That is, at least until next Tuesday at 10 p.m., on NBC!”

By the way, panel two features a rare example of the King Features coloring monkeys actually making up for a defect in the original drawing. That cool cat Ari somehow lost his mustache between the first and second panels, making him look all too much more like Mary Worth’s Professor Ian “Chinbeard” Cameron. In an attempt to maintain facial hair continuity, the colorists didn’t daub his upper lip with “caucasian peach” in panel two, leaving him looking like he has one of those icky “got milk?” mustaches.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/06

Something about Rex’s bolded-italicized phrase in panel one makes me want to repeat it over and over again, Zippy the Pinhead style. It sounds like it could be a rhyming catchphrase from a Jesse Jackson speech. “Your life was an escalating deception … as you tried to create a dishonest perception! Now you need to make a whole-hearted correction!”

In a comment in an earlier post, faithful reader Laura noted that the little blurb at the top right of the first panel (“As Rex begins to walk away, Troy stops him!”) is, in her words, the “GAYEST. OMNISCIENT NARRATION BOX. EVER.”, which made me chuckle. What I’m wondering is how this so-called omniscient narration box failed to figure out that “Troy”‘s name is actually “Adam,” since everyone in the strip, up to and including Abbey the Wonder Dog, has by now been clued it.

The Middletons, 8/7/06

I suppose it’s strictly accurate to say that it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “rockin’ and rollin’.” Since nobody has actually used the phrase before, any meaning you attribute to it would be “new.”