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Mary Worth, 5/20/24

Yeah, sorry I didn’t talk about Wilbur making a beautiful flowered coffin for his dead fish Stellan Sunday, but I just sort of stared at it for a little bit and couldn’t process it properly, so I’m glad I have a chance to reassess today. Anyway, pretty fucked up, huh? Ha ha! My dad had a fish tank when I was a kid and over several years we got more and more fish and upgraded to bigger and bigger tanks. Obviously fish died over time but I don’t really remember us doing anything special for them; I assume we probably just flushed them or threw them out, and we had so many fish that even though you would get attached to individuals there were enough that losing one wasn’t a huge tragedy. Then one day we went to our usual fish store and there was a real crazy looking fish in there and we were like “What is this?” and the guy was like “Just got it in, honestly couldn’t tell you” and we bought it and over the next few weeks it ate all the other fish and then died. Not sure how my dad dealt with that, since the horror ended when I was at my mom’s, but I bet he didn’t give it a big funeral either, even though by that time it was definitely too big to flush. Anyway, tune in over the course of this week to see if I have any other vaguely topical anecdotes to help us all forget about the nightmare of what Wilbur is doing!

Curtis, 5/20/24

On Twitter, once, I saw a guy do an entirely earnest tweet thread about how Silicon Valley disrupted old-fashioned, conformist business uniforms like suits and ties for a more comfortable and unique aesthetic, illustrated by pictures of multiple fiftysomething dudes wearing identical chinos-and-fleece-vests. Anyway, I just want to note that the stuffy shirt and tie were a casual alternative to more formal codes of dress once, and in the Curtis-ruled future, a baseball hat tipped jauntily just so will be a requirement for entry into polite society, to be worn at all times.

Beetle Bailey, 5/20/24

Yeah, man, usually when someone gets arrested, they are in big trouble. That’s a good observation, Killer, thanks for keeping us informed.

Alice, 5/20/24

Alice, you were kidnapped by aliens last week! That seems like a pretty big deal or at least a conversation starter.

Tina’s Groove, 5/20/24

I’m a 49-year-old man and my entire life I’ve assumed that a “halfway house” is called that because it represents a way station halfway up the path between your troubled past and the better future that you’re working towards. Does it … does it not mean that. Is getting closer to one bad in this metaphor. Do you want to go all the way down to zero, so you have no house at all. I gotta go lie on the couch quietly for a while.

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Tina’s Groove, 5/8/24

So Tina’s Groove is one of the “new” comics I’ve been reading lately, though in the interest of total accuracy I should note that these strips aren’t new at all, seeing as Tina’s Groove stopped publishing in 2017 and a cursory glance at the copyright date would reveal that this strip in particular is 15 years old. But who cares! I still hate on Crock despite it being in perpetual reruns, because the people want my opinions [note to self: double-check on this] and anyway, the origin of this site was me making fun of whatever happened to be in the paper’s comics section that day, and now we’re just letting “King Features’ Comics Kingdom website” stand in for “the paper” in a transition that definitely explains why the economics of journalism are in total freefall.

Anyway, a fun thing about these older strips is seeing that even in fairly recent history some terms we take for granted had not quite gelled. Was there really a time, when this blog was already a going concern making jokes about how Dr. Jeff’s daughter accidentally fell for a bigamist, when people were calling fist bumps “knuckle bumping”? Or was Tina’s Groove just extremely unhip? I’ll just say that it could’ve gone worse.

Gasoline Alley,5/8/24

Speaking of linguistic evolution and being extremely unhip, has there ever been a worse rebranding in history than Twitter becoming “X”? This is a name that literally nobody uses in real life, and I speak as someone hopelessly addicted to the site (they briefly banned me for no reason I could ever establish, then decided that the harshest punishment they could give me was to let me back on). Basically the only people who ever use the “real” name are publications that feel like they have to and people trying to ingratiate themselves with Elon Musk. I honestly feel like getting Gasoline Alley to use it is a real coup, and I think they could’ve dispensed with the “formerly known as Twitter” bit because it’s not like the strip readership has ever heard of it. They already started panicking when they read the word “internet”!

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Dennis the Menace, 3/22/24

The most menaced person here is the guy in the background, who spent all day hand-painting this snazzy retro “Information” sign and was just about to proudly show it off to his boss. You just know she’s going to be like “Enh, the kid’s right, maybe it’s a little much.”

Tina’s Groove, 3/22/24

Diving into the world of Tina’s Groove, I’m finding that it’s not just about Tina’s friend, who’s an alcoholic, but actually about alcoholics in general.

Mary Worth, 3/22/24

Jeff, Mary, I can assure you pretty firmly that Gandhi and Desmond Tutu did not have a comfortable retired couple looking out at the moonlit ocean from the boardwalk of their exclusive beachside community in mind when they said these things. I implore you to research what they were actually talking about! You’ve got the free time!

Beetle Bailey, 3/22/24

“He’s super dead. We’re free, Killer! Free!”