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Marvin, 3/2/07

All right, Marvin, listen to me: “like that popular toy” isn’t something that any human being would ever in a gazillion years say. An actual human being would say “like Dancin’ Elmo” (and substitute the actual brand name of whatever animatronic Taiwanese-manufactured hunk of plush crap is being demanded by all the little squallers this year for “Dancin’ Elmo”). The only situation in which you’d say “like that popular toy” is if you had a law firm on retainer that was terrified of angering some major toy manufacturing concern vetting your dialogue before you speak it.

Of course, these are all Marvin’s thought balloons, and I suppose that we don’t really know how pre-vocal infants think, so it’s possible that their internal narrative sounds like it was composed by a committee of overcautious corporate lawyers. But I kind of doubt it.

By the way, Floppet, if the way I’m interpreting that last panel is correct, as soon as Marvin starts walking around and shaking his diapered butt vaguely in time to the Barney song, you’ll be finding yourself in a box at the Salvation Army in short order.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/2/07

I find it charming that Ezekiel’s mom looks so horrified that her son is apparently making the essentially arbitrary choice of underwear style by a somewhat whimsical method. Presumably, if she knew the truth — that Ezekiel had gone through some horribly misguided career-selection algorithm that boiled things down to two possible life paths, one of which involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in education expenses for her, the other involving her son being repeatedly punched in the head until he’s left a near vegetable at the age of thirty, and that he’s using random chance to determine which road to take — she’d be totally fine with it.

Family Circus, 3/2/07

P.J. from the Family Circus + pornstar mustache = my weekend ruined, thanks a lot.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/1/07

Now, what’s this I hear about some of you actually complaining about this apparent climax to the current Rex Morgan, M.D., storyline? Are you people insane? What better way to nicely encapsulate the utter incompetence of everybody bipedal in this strip — health care professionals, cops, drug dealers and all — than to have the main villain — who, let me remind you, is (or until recently was) armed, like, with a gun — cowering and begging for mercy before some kind of spaniel mix who can’t weigh more than, what, forty pounds? Abbey the Wonderdog is awesome. I look forward to the next plot, where she successfully begins second-guessing Rex and June’s medical diagnoses. “Well, it’s probably flu, but — what’s that, girl? You think I should screen for pneumonia? Will do!”

Luann, 3/1/07

Don’t let the fact that I managed to snag such a lovely and charming wife fool you: in my single days, I wasn’t always 100 percent sure on just what it is the girls dug. Thus, rather than make assumptions, I’d like to pose a question to the ladies out there of appropriate persuasion and age range to date, if not Brad, then someone vaguely Brad-like. If some guy you had recently started seeing invited you over to his swingin’ bachelor pad/gingerbread house, and you walked into the living room and it was painted entirely black, which of the following would be closer to the first thing that would come to your mind?

• “Wow, an all-black living room! This is pretty cool! I dig this! I’m totally going to have sex with him!”
• “OH MY GOD HE’S BROUGHT ME INTO HIS RITUAL SACRIFICE CHAMBER GET ME OUT OF HERE HELP HELP HELP”

Dick Tracy, 3/1/07

I’m just putting this up here as a helpful reminder so that if anyone ever asks you, “Say, when did Dick Tracy stop being a reliably odd chestnut and start being a horrifying acid trip,” you can say, without hesitation, “March 1, 2007.”

Pluggers, 3/1/07

So … Cathy’s a plugger?

They’ll Do It Every Time, 3/1/07

“You sire a child, and for eighteen years they expect you to pay attention to them when you’d rather be watching television. Then they finally get out of your hair, but … wha-a-a-a-a? Now they have kids that you’re supposed to feel warmly towards! OH YEAH!”

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Do not think that the clamor for a “MARGO! BOXCAR! SATURN!” t-shirt, using the fab graphic from faithful reader willethompson, has gone unnoticed by yours truly. I have been dithering because I am in something of a fit of minor disillusionment with CafePress. I don’t want to bad-mouth them because they have allowed me to sell merch without having to have any experience or expertise in item-creation, and without needing to keep an inventory. But their user interface is a bit clunky, and the color choices are a bit limited, and I only make $1 or $2 per item sold — I wonder if I couldn’t do better. So I’d like to open up this thread to anyone who has any suggestions on places that would make t-shirts and other related crapola. My goal would be to (a) not have to have a big inventory (since I almost never sell more than 10 or 15 of any particular item) (b) perhaps be a little better quality than CafePress’s digital printing process, with more colors available and better integration between logo colors and shirt colors, and (c) make a bit more per item than $2. This may be a pipe dream, and if so, I’m happy to stick with CafePress, but I did think I’d ask to see if anyone had any better ideas.

Also: I’m about to upgrade WordPress, the software that runs this site. You shouldn’t see any changes; all that should happen behind the scenes. Let me know if you encounter any problems.

Update: OK, that seemed to work — after a harrowing thirty seconds or so where all the blog content went away, that is. Ugh. Let me know if you see any other problems.