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Slylock Fox, 11/13/09

Some readers have claimed that in my past commentaries I have unjustly slandered the reputation of the noble raccoon, and perhaps this is true! But I am certainly not alone in fomenting negative media images of these clever creatures. Check out this masked fellow, tightly gripping onto his “lunch,” a wide-eyed still-living fish gasping for oxygen in the terrible waterless realm outside his home pond. “For the love of God,” it begs with its eyes, “put me out of my misery! This is agony!” But the raccoon just grins mischievously. “Oh, this? Yeah, I scooped this fish out the lake. I’ll probably eat him, eventually, but I thought I’d just carry him around for a while and let him thrash first. So, what have you been up to?”

Baldo, 11/13/09

Oh, look, it’s comics crossover fun in Baldo! This strip is actually surprisingly realistic: most crossover strips show comics characters laughing it up at some big party, but if you think about it, if you saw a group of fictional characters, all with wildly differing proportions and basic bodily structures, you too would react by staring at them in silent, wide-eyed horror, as everyone in the third panel appears to be doing.

Mary Worth, 11/13/09

“My advice? Oh, Adrian, dear, you know I don’t like to use that word! It implies that you have the option not to obey me. I prefer the term ‘unbreakable divine command.'”

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Guys, I totally spaced on this, but if you are in Melbourne, Australia, you can listen to me on the Crimes Against Pop radio show at 94.9FM RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT (i.e., between noon and 2 pm local time on the 13th, 11 pm and 1 am US east coast time), or live on the Internets here! But don’t worry, it will also be available in podcast form later, which I will link to when available.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/12/09

Dr. Pappagoras is cheerfully pressing on with his campaign to win the Most Unethical Therapist statuette at this years Psychie Awards! Most head-shrinkers I know (and I was raised by several) do not consider it a “nice surprise” when their goofball-addled patients show up at their office without an appointment and with some bullshit story about, you know, just being in the neighborhood, just wandering around the block seven or forty times in the rain and thinking about pills pills pills PILLS PILLS PILLS. I was originally going to come up with some joke here about transference and countertransference, but then I realized that strictly speaking those phenomena only arise in the course of actual patient/therapist relationships, and not in drug-seeker/quack-doctor-who-wants-to-bone-drug-seeker relationships.

Pluggers, 11/12/09

Speaking of pills, it’s nice to see that pluggers aren’t waiting for some government bailout to pull them out of their tough economic times. Police looking for the distributors bringing insane amounts of black-market oxycodone into the county will never suspect the simple, down-home chicken lady!

Dennis the Menace, 11/12/09

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” –Matthew 5:38-44

So, apparently Dennis has been sent to Earth by his Father to teach us about peace, and then die for our sins. This … this is not very menacing at all.