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Beetle Bailey, 12/6/05

Curtis, 12/6/05

Egads! Not one, but two comics today revolve around foul aromas arising from the bodies of their title characters — and yet there’s a complete absence of stink lines! Curtis is admittedly emitting visible anger radiation waves and a couple of Cathy-style sweatballs for good measure, but it’s not enough for me. I want stink lines! Give me stink lines!

The trio of uniformed soldiers, their identities effaced by those soulless, dead-eyed gas masks, seem to me to be not so much “jovially teasing Beetle about his smelly feet” but rather “creepy as hell.” They look like they’re part of some surrealist anti-war performance art piece, or possibly back-up singers for Devo. I’m pretty sure the guy on the right is Killer. I was trying to figure out the other two when I suddenly realized that I was spending time and energy determining the identities of gas-masked characters in Beetle Bailey, briefly had a serious moment of contemplation about the direction of my life, and then stopped.

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The Middletons, 12/5/05

Old people … they don’t know anything about the new days … watch. “Hey, granny, pretty soon you’ll need to go on the Web to make sure you get your Social Security checks! What? No, the Web doesn’t have anything to do with spiders! It involves a computer, which you’re terrified of using and can’t afford on your fixed income. Don’t cry, though; I hear the supermarket gives out week-old donuts and damaged cans of dog food after closing time on Thursdays!”

The Middletons have waded into the comedy gold mine that is the generation gap before, though usually in this strip the humor content (such as it is) derives from the elderly lady here being much more hep to modern-day cultural touchstones (like the rock and roll music that’s all the rage these days) than her son. Of course, this joke is so soul-searingly hilarious that it’s totally worth it to throw out this established aspect of her character.

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Since I’m so terrifically self-effacing, I normally refrain from drawing attention to my own awesomeness, since I assume that it’s obvious to pretty much everyone. Nevertheless, in the past few days my overwhelming excellence has been externally verified in several contexts, so I thought I’d detail them here for your edification:

• Sunday’s New York Times Book Review contained an essay written by John Hodgman on several recently published comics collections. Not only was my blog cited in the third paragraph, but it was even referred to as “popular.” Read it here (you need to register with the NYTimes to read it, I think, but doing so is free).
• Some outfit known as the “Weblog Awards” has me as one of the ten finalists for “Best Humor/Comics Blog” for 2005. Though I have not previously heard of this awards feature, my presence on this list totally proves its validity, as far as I’m concerned. Also, apparently the winner will be determined by reader votes, so I think you all know what you need to do.
• As near as I can tell from my referral logs, a link to my blog is being circulated on Totalfark.com, the for-pay version of Fark.com, which, if you don’t know what it is, is kind of hard to explain, but it has an enormous readership. If anyone is a Totalfark subscriber and would be so kind as to explain what’s being said about me behind that subscription wall, I’d love to hear it. If a link to my site appears on Fark’s front page, I’ll probably either become a millionaire or be responsible for reducing my Web host’s servers to a heap of molten metal.

All this is enough to give a guy a big head. Fortunately, I’ve also had some online help in keeping humble. A while ago, I posted here a photo of myself at a particularly awkward age. Said photo has been reused for somewhat humiliating purposes at a Spanish-language Web log. All I can say is: the Internet is weird.

Update: Apparently it’s considered polite to link to the other nominees for the prestigious Weblog Awards, as I’ve been getting lots of traffic from them. So here’s my competition:

• Day By Day by Chris Muir
• Cox & Forkum
• Jesus’ General
• Iowahawk
• Beautiful Atrocities
• Scrappleface
• Hog On Ice
• The Dilbert Blog
• Six Meat Buffet
• Hate Mongers Quarterly
• Fafblog
• IMAO
• Protein Wisdom
• The Comics Curmudgeon
• Achewood

Now get over there and vote! Remember, you can and should vote for me once every 24 hours. Right now I’m getting my ass handed to me by Jesus’ General, but don’t let the power of Christ compel you to hold back.

Update #2: Also, my site has found its way onto Pointless Waste of Time’s Mirth Canal, which consists of more fun fun clicky clicky ratings of sites by you, the unwashed Web-surfing masses. Again, I humbly solicit your votes.