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Six Chix, 6/29/23

The verb scoff, dictionaries will tell you, means to speak derisively about someone or something, or treat them with scorn, and that’s how I’ve used it pretty much my whole adult life. But recently I began to have a panicked feeling that I’ve been wrong, because in closed captioning for most movies or TV shows, the word is often put in brackets to indicate that a character is making a dismissive little noise like “tcha” or thereabouts. Was the noise scoffing, and I had incorrectly extended it to metaphorically describe the attitude that the noise conveyed? I had not, but was primed to worry about this because it would be the opposite trajectory of a habit I had in my youth, when I read Peanuts anthologies obsessively and correctly understood from them that “sigh” was an expression of melancholy, but didn’t understand that in those strips it was standing in for a nonverbal sound so I just went around saying the word “sigh” aloud when I was sad or wistful. No adult ever corrected me on this, presumably because it was very, very funny. Anyway, that’s what I always think about when I see the word “sigh” in a comic or indeed anywhere else. I have no idea what today’s Six Chix is getting at.

Dennis the Menace, 6/29/23

I absolutely love the look on this lady’s face. She just met Dennis and has already determined that she has zero time for his shit. Honestly, more people should take this attitude towards him, it might improve his behavior considerably.

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Hi and Lois, 6/28/23

The word “organ” in English originally referred to the musical instrument, and the process by which its sense drifted so that it came to also mean a body part used for a certain function, while the adjective “organic” now primarily means “free from pesticides and fertilizers” is complex and, like most etymological changes, arbitrary. (A parallel process in French produced biologique as the analogue to “organic” in English, which always tickles me.) But, look, here’s the thing: babies, though you might be tempted to think of them as people with fully formed minds but very little information about the world, which leads them to try to reason everything out from first principles, are not in fact like that at all, especially when it comes to language acquisition. They just learn words they hear people say and figure out their meaning from context, so they’re going to be able to tell what “organic” means independent of what “organs” are and might not make the connection for years! Also, how much are Hi and Lois talking about organs in front of their baby? Seems suspect. Let’s put a pin in that for later.

Mary Worth, 6/28/23

Obviously if one of my beloved pets had vanished and I had been primed by sensationalistic local news coverage to believe that they had been kidnapped, I would be distraught. But I feel like I have enough distance from the situation here to point out that (a) Greta’s disappearance was, like several days ago and (b) even if Max could track Greta’s scent, he definitely couldn’t track the scent of the van that Saul thinks took Greta away. What I’m trying to say is that it actually does not matter how fast Saul hustles on this mission, so he shouldn’t endanger his health just so he feels like he’s putting in his “best effort”.

Beetle Bailey, 6/28/23

OK, I retract my statement from Monday, Sarge/Beetle secret romance content is fully back and it’s better than ever

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Gil Thorp, 6/27/23

Oh wow, it looks like the WOKE FCC won’t let America’s millions of high school sports fans hear fraught language or see a father-son relationship fall apart, with devastating emotional effects that will leave both parties wounded for years, THANKS A LOT PRESIDENT BRANDON

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/27/23

Good lord, I thought Snuffy knowing common French phrases was bad, but I absolutely cannot abide by Hootin’ Holler’s citizenry acting as if they all accept the germ theory of disease.

The Phantom, 6/27/23

Savarna and Wilbur: The superstar teamup we didn’t know we needed!