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Foob, everyone’s favorite made-up Canadian slang word, made an appearance in today’s FBOFW:

Of course, true comics devotees know that, unlike January’s now infamous made-up sex slang, foob has an origin that was actually depicted in the strip: it’s a portmanteau that April and her 4 Evah bandmates created by combining fool and boob. It’s a neologism that I find charming enough to overlook the fact that any modern-day 12-year-old would only use the word boob to refer to the part of the female anatomy of most interest to the artists at Blondie and Rex Morgan, M.D.

Anyway, the comics-reading public at large apparently does not remember this definition, and as a result, I knew that foob made an appearance in today’s strip before I even opened the paper. I got a mini-surge in traffic today that was almost entirely driven by people plugging foob into search engines in a desperate attempt to figure out what this crazy jibber-jabber in the comics pages was all about. Even now, at midnight, they’re still going at it, as you can see from this screenshot from my statistics site:

(Yes, yes, I know: one of these things is very much not like the others. And no, I don’t know how cricket figures into it either.)

Anyway, all this search engine talk made me realize that it’s been ages since I last posted some amusing search engine terms, so here’s some recent favorites: “family circus is not funny” (duh), “do you still love me as much as you used to hagar the horrible,” “baby moses bath cartoon” (this one keeps cropping up — can somebody explain it to me?), “site joshreads.com not funny” (hey!), “nude pictures of andy capp,” “how to make a character like beetle bailey and ziggy” (it’s not hard), “joshua fruhlinger birthday” (it’s July 17th, but I accept late presents as well as early ones), and, in an example of what I can only hope is someone using search engine terms to mess with my mind, “mary worth porn comics.”

This is as good an opportunity as any to share with those of you who don’t read the comments two excellent poetic efforts that have appeared there over the past few days. First off is this impressive sonnet from daChipster, whose heart ached for Anna’s barren state before today’s dramatic revelation:

As trees with blighted roots can bear no food
or those with buds untimely nipped by frost
So Anna cannot raise her Brian a brood
She might as well just keep her stockings crossed.

Enough already please quit with the cryin’
It doesn’t matter what you say or think
These ruminations by the Wife of Brian
Are just a waste of bad cartoonist’s ink

Why not adopt some orphan Asian child
With jet black hair and oddly-tinted skin
Or buy a kid from some gig that’s been wild
Like Tommy’s little roadside neice — Miss Mim

Whatever, just get over giving birth
‘Cause you’ve been cursed by that Witch, Mary Worth

Less highbrow, but just as satisfying, is fuzzmaster’s take on Becky’s internal monologue today, set to the tune of “We Will Rock You”:

Foob-foob-hottie; foob-foob-hottie
Lady you’re a gig make a big noise
Playin’ in the street gonna be a grade 12 some day
Hangin’ high on yo’ case
You big disgrace
Hands-on, been there all over the place
You are you are roadside!
You are you are roadside!

Finally, after my recent cutting, classist comments about the relationship between working men and professional women, I feel compelled to relay the details of a brush with the proletariat I had toady. We woke up this morning to find that our hot water heater had at last given up the ghost and was leaking water all over the basement. Since my fiancée’s typical workday involves crazy stuff like “putting on clothes” and “leaving the house,” I was left to deal with the domestic crisis. By noon, I had secured the services of a father-son team of hot-water-heater experts, who, while showing no evidence of tooth loss, did manage to present me with a Fence Post Frank-style horrifyingly large bill. Anyway, after the new, non-leaky heater was installed, the older of the two gentlemen informed me that “you’ll have hot water again by the time the Mrs. gets home.” “I think you mean the Ms.,” I corrected him. After that, he just made a series of whipping noises, which I didn’t really grasp the significance of.

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Mary Worth, 3/22/05

I’ve read the comics obsessively for a long time, so I think I can say with some authority that one thing you very rarely see depicted in the funny pages is someone holding a hand to his or her mouth in order to prevent vomit from getting on the rug. It’s even rarer that said vomit is the herald of good news, as Anna’s barf clearly is meant to be. Given the stately and deliberate pace of this strip, I expect at least two or three days of Mrs. Dr. Brian on her knees bowing before the porcelain god, her body giving rapturous thanks for the precious new life germinating in her hitherto barren womb by desperately trying to expel last night’s dinner into the Santa Royale municipal sewer system. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing how the sound effects are transliterated. Hopefully she’ll just drop the phone to the floor as she dashes into the bathroom to hurl, so we’ll get some more of Mary’s nonverbal bafflement indicators as well.

Mary Worth isn’t just entertaining; it’s also a message strip. And today it’s clear what the message of this storyline is: if you refuse to deal with a problem long enough, it will eventually solve itself.

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Judge Parker, 3/21/05

“But seriously, Josh,” I hear you asking, “What’s been happening in Judge Parker for the past month?” Well, I’ll tell you: a whole lot of nothing (or, as they say in the strip’s current south-of-the-border locale, nada). Sam has arrived in Mexico, spoken with Gloria, and gone back with this priest to his church. That’s taken something like five weeks. It makes Mary Worth look like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The strip is so parched for excitement that an entirely gratuitous exclamation point has been added to the first panel’s exposition in an attempt to make the “short drive out of town” sound like some kind of adrenaline-fueled car chase sequence.

That being said, I’m kind of intrigued by the underlying religio-cultural tensions in today’s dialog between Sam and Father David. To that end, I’d like to introduce what could (if I feel like it) become the first installment of an occasional feature: What They Say and What They Mean.

Um … OK, so that was in poor taste. Watch this space for a future installment of What They Say and What They Mean, assuming I’m not fleeing for my life from the combined forces of the Jesuits and the federales.