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Sally Forth, 5/21/06

So I got up this morning and stumbled down the hall to my office, which also doubles as the cat’s dining area, and said cat was acting very agitated and weird. It quickly became obvious why: there was a gynormous cockroach, probably two or three inches long, hanging out in her food dish. Hoagie (the cat) will gleefully carry mice around in her mouth and bat them around the floor until they die of some combination of internal hemorrhaging and terror, but she was a little wigged out by the roach, and with good reason, as it was stomach-turning and disgusting and horrifying. The way it scurried happily around the inside of her bowl, looking for tiny food particles to feast on and no doubt leaving little bug poops behind, was deeply disturbing to both of us.

I went downstairs to where my wife was eating her oatmeal, and attempted to convince her with some passive-aggressive whining that she would kill the beast if she really loved me, but she pointed out that (a) she was in the middle of having breakfast and needed to get to work soon, (b) all cat-related chores fell to me, the cat lover, and this fell into that category because the bug was in the cat’s dish, and (c) she had killed the roach she spotted in the basement last night, so I was on my own.

Going back upstairs, I took off my slippers and put on my thickest-soled shoes and a pair of socks, to get as many layers as possible between me and the foul insect. Then I came back into my office, gingerly picked up the bowl (which only sent my six-legged nemesis into a new bout of repulsive scurrying), dumped its contents out on the floor, and then began stomping on the roach repeatedly. Only after I had truly squashed it dead did I notice that I was flailing my hands around and making a high-pitched, girly squealing noise.

I headed downstairs to get a paper towel with which to pick up the corpse. “Sounded like quite a battle,” my wife said, adding, “Don’t bring that thing down here, I’m trying to eat.”

What’s my point? My point is that even I can open a pickle jar. Or at least I can if I use one of those little rubber mat thingies. They save wear and tear on the hands. You should really try one, Ted!

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Judge Parker, 5/20/06

Yeah, you’re a great guy, Randy. A great, hairy guy. Did you think that loosening your tie, unbuttoning that top button, and unleashing that thatch of chest hair would keep April from running off to the CIA? That she’d think, “Damn, why should sign I up for an exciting world of espionage and intrigue when I could be running my fingers through that sexy, sexy torso rug?”

Sadly, Randy, you’ve miscalculated. Now button up, please, in the name of all that’s good and decent.

Mark Trail, 5/20/06

Is the Lost Forest located in some county were all zoning decisions incomprehensibly take the form of a jury trial? Is the courtroom full of redheaded clones in grey suits? Does everybody forget that Tony is Evil Baldy’s grandson, not son? Why do I care about the answers to these questions? Why? Why? Why?

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Gasoline Alley, 5/19/06

If you weren’t paying attention (and you almost certainly weren’t), Gasoline Alley had a halfway exciting plotline going on a few months ago: Sheezix and Gertie were in a dark, scary forest, tangling with what they thought was an escaped psycho killer.

Then the supposed psycho killer turned out to be a cop, who was looking for the real psycho killer. Then he noticed that Sheezix’s driver’s license had expired, so Sheezix had to hire Gasoline Alley’s two horsedrawn hillbillies to tow his car home. Then he had to go get his driver’s license renewed, which meant that he had to get info from the Social Security Administration, which meant…

Well, what it really meant was that a storyline that contained suspense and action and the threat of violence was transformed by degrees into a storyline that involved an old man doing battle with surly government bureaucrats trying to get his paperwork in order.

Which brings up a question: Could this storyline be made even more boring? “More boring that the DMV?” you ask. “That’s a tall order!” Well, perhaps. But I’ve got some ideas!

• On his way out of the DMV, Sheezix has his pocket picked. Now he has to go through all the stuff he just went through to get his paperwork in order again, plus he has to go down to the police station to file a report with a bored desk jockey.
• On the street, Sheezix bumps into an old friend. “Hey, Sheezix, what’ve you been up to?” he asks. Sheezix proceeds to tell him, in great detail.
• Sheezix gets home to find that his wife is having the house repainted. “Don’t touch any of the walls until the paint dries!” she says. He sits down to watch and wait.
• Sheezix dies. His body is embalmed, placed into a coffin, and buried in the soil. Over the course of years, the wood of the coffin rots, and his corpse decays to its organic components, nurturing the soil. Some four billion years later, the Earth’s sun becomes a red giant, and the Earth is destroyed.

Also, in Rex Morgan, M.D., we learned that Dr. Troy likes clown art:

I don’t know what the hell this means, but it can’t possibly be good.