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Hi and Lois, 2/10/06

Sally Forth, 2/10/06

B.C., 2/10/06

A recent study has shown that many online arguments start because it’s difficult to convey one’s tone through text alone. Thus, we must pity the poor cartoon character, trapped in a world where all conversation is conducted via written letters floating just above hair level in word balloons. How are they to detect that most important arrow in any post-modern humorist’s quiver, sarcasm? Maybe Chip isn’t being fresh; maybe he has some sort of horrible disease that’s throwing his body temperature out of whack. When Hi is weeping bitterly over his son’s early grave, he’ll no doubt be begging a cruel God to let him go back in time and never spout this little quip.

The Forths over in Sally Forth at least have been given a vital clue for text based communications — the quotation mark, which as we know often indicates sarcasm (especially when it takes the form of “air quotes”). Still, Ted doesn’t pick up on it, proving his dorktacular cluelessosity (as if his peach-colored golf shirt weren’t clue enough).

Finally, if you need someone to take things too far into total incomprehensible insanity, well, you can always count on B.C. How many Nurenberg-level Crimes Against Punctuation are perpetrated in this strip? Panel two at least deploys the correct method of nesting punctuation marks (double on the outside, single on the inside), while panel one uses British-style single quotes for no good reason. Putting that aside, though: are the quotes around “gag rule” meant to “clue us in” that they’re going to be “key” to the upcoming “punchline?” Do we need quotes around “hurling” because otherwise we won’t get that it’s a synonym for “vomiting”? Does “voted-in” need quote marks at all, or for that matter a “hyphen”? These questions will never be answered, but it’s “important” that they be asked.

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Herb and Jamaal, 2/9/06

I had hoped to take the high road and simply ignore the current Herb and Jamaal storyline, in which Herb hopes that by parading his dwarfish, half-naked, pot-bellied body around, he’d get Jamaal and Yolanda to admit that they love one another, if only to make him stop. That was before today, when we see that this feature has made the unfortunate decision to mine the supposedly rich vein of son-in-law-wearing-mother-in-law’s-drawers humor. So here’s my pronouncement on the matter: if Herb and Jamaal had an embassy, I’d burn it down.

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The eagle-eyed among you have no doubt noticed the NLHN doodad up there at the top of the left-hand nav bar and are (since you dedicate so much of your time and energy thinking about this site) buggin’ out. Has the site been sold? Is Josh now getting fat paychecks from the bigwigs over at National Lampoon? Will this blog now be written by National Lampoon interns while Josh sips umbrella drinks poolside at the National Lampoon compound with Beverly D’Angelo and Randy Quaid? The answers to these questions are no, no, and, sadly, no.

Basically, my being in the NLHN means that you can use that drop down menu to visit the other sites in the network, and readers of those sites can use said menu to visit me. In the next few days, I’ll be adding a new box down there with the ads that will provide links to the latest posts from other NLHN sites. There will be changes made to how I sell the ads on my site to go along with all this, but I’m sure you care about that as much as you care about how I currently sell ads, which is to say: not at all.