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Six Chix, 9/24/17

This comic is like one of those ambiguous Gestalt pictures from Psych 101 — how you interpret it depends on where you focus.

Concentrate on the pavement crack that disappears in the lower panels, and the horrifying Cyclops-girl somehow “poings” all the concrete back into place, trapping the pavement worker’s jackhammer, and he struggles to release it. But focus on the resemblance between the jackhammer and the pogo stick, and the worker suddenly realizes that tedious work with a noisy tool has replaced carefree play with a favorite toy, and he cries for his lost childhood.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/24/17

Funky prepares a Thermos® of coffee to take on his run but leaves it at home. Now Runner’s World seems to favor drinking coffee before a run, but I’ve never heard of anybody drinking it during one. And out of a Thermos®? He’s not wearing a backpack; how did he plan to carry it? How would he drink out of it, anyway — wouldn’t he have to stop, pull it out, and open it to fill his cup? And wouldn’t most of it spill out once he started running again? Maybe that’s the plan, to bring coffee along so he has an excuse to stop every once in a while? He might need to stop a lot, since he has prostate problems and probably needs to pee pretty often. Maybe all that’s wrong and he drank his coffee at home before his run, but out of a Thermos® instead of a mug? But why would anybody do that when there’s a set of drinking glasses right there? Wait, why is there a set of drinking glasses next to the coffee maker?

Why are the throwaway panels on the bottom this week?

Lockhorns, (panel) 9/24/17

I would’ve gone with A Rake’s Progress, but OK. What’s the conflict here? Border dispute? Feud between the Binner and Bagger clans? Mulch ado about nothing?

That’s it for me — thank you for a lovely time!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 9/15/17

My occasionally achy body, my bifocals, and the act of subtracting 1974 from the current year all conspire to inform me that I am indisputably in my middle age. This happens to all of us, if we’re lucky; my main goal as an increasingly older person is to not be so out of touch with young people that my image of them becomes completely divorced from any plausible reality. Like, young people, ha ha! Always with the writing their own vows, and the non-monogamy, and the “Is this, like, a hypothetical?” catchphrase that they probably got from Gossip Girl or rap music! You know? Not virtuous, like we were when we were young!

Pluggers, 9/15/17

On this topic, I am reasonably certain that there’s at least one Pluggers panel from the mid-’00s that features an irritated manimal being technologically overwhelmed by having to deal with a then-state-of-the-art device that we would only now anachronistically call a “flip phone.” Time makes pluggers of us all, is what I’m saying.

Blondie, 9/15/17

As the parents of teens, one would expect Blondie and Dagwood to be in their mid-50s at the high end and perhaps as young as 40, so the idea that Dagwood finds omnipresent technology like tablets or smartphones baffling rings false. I do 100% approve of his decision, between panels two and three, to theatrically turn his pockets inside out. That’s the kind of solid commitment to shtick that really keep a marriage lively!

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Blondie, 8/31/17

OK, let’s pass over the “joke” of this strip, which is … I’m actually not sure, but I think it’s that Dagwood gave himself permission to gorge at a fancy (?) French (??) restaurant because of this costumed tout’s sob story. Let’s linger for a moment over “That must be a fun gig! Getting paid to wear a duck suit!” Like, he’s a little too into it, you know, and it makes me wonder if he’s secretly [GOOGLES “FURRIES BUT FOR BIRDS”][IMMEDIATELY REGRETS IT][NEVERTHELESS READS THE SECTION OF THE AVIAN ARTICLE ON WIKIFUR ABOUT VARIOUS TECHNIQUES FOR ANTHROPOMORPHIZING BIRD WINGS][BEGINS TO WONDER IF DAGWOOD’S BIZARRELY LONG THIGHS AND WEIRD BENT-KNEED GAIT ATTRACTS HIM TO DIGITGRADE SPECIES][HOW DEEP DOES THIS RABBIT HOLE GO][EXCEPT I GUESS IT’D BE A DUCK BLIND][OK LET’S JUST CALL THIS WHOLE THING OFF NOW]

Dennis the Menace, 8/31/17

Uhhh HEY Dennis the Menace, let’s have less of Dennis’s darndest-things-saying/fat-shaming and more of the backstory of why Mr. Wilson is still painfully hung over in what I assume is the middle of the afternoon???

Six Chix, 8/31/17

WHAT IS THAT DOOR ATTACHED TO

IN WHICH DIRECTION DOES IT “CLOSE”

WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON HERE