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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.

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Awwwww, who knew that Margo had feelings too? She’s capable of love and sadness and loneliness and all that good stuff? If you prick her, does she not bleed? Or perhaps bleed, and then sue?

Margo’s tear is sort of suspicious, though. It looks like the one cried by that majestic Indian in that anti-litter ad from the ’70s, which is to say that it looks like it came out of a bottle. Maybe in her raging Margocentricism she’s convinced that Tommie or Lu Ann or her evil client or FBI Pete or whoever will see her crying and will soften their heart and open up to her — and that’s when she’ll go for the jugular.

Seriously, people, don’t let your guard down with Margo. She will fuck you up.

At least Margo’s tear looks like it might be transparent liquid of some kind. Over in Judge Parker, “Work It Like A Claw And Call Me” Randy appears to have been interrupted by his ex-fiancée while he was in the middle of a relaxing bath in a pool of mercury:

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One Big Happy, 2/7/06

Every time I decide that One Big Happy is just too precious for its current position on my mental comics map — just on the good side of the funny/not funny dividing line — it goes and keeps itself in my good graces. Today’s strip obviously didn’t wow me with its intensely lame punchline; rather, I was charmed by Joe, who’s usually overshadowed by his younger sister’s cranked up adorability. In this strip, the towheaded youngster is clearly determined to fight with every ounce of strength he has to preserve his own ignorance. I like his expression in panel one as he airily dismisses his mother’s attempt at expanding his knowledge base; but the real gem is panel three, as he silently fumes at being forced to learn something. The angry stare simultaneously conveys the fact that he (1) doesn’t know the answer, (2) is embarrassed that he doesn’t know the answer, (3) doesn’t really want to know the answer, and (4) deeply resents that he’s even having this conversation. It’s a facial expression that’s only going to get less attractive as Joe gets older, and yet I have a feeling that his family, classmates, transient girlfriends, and, sooner than later, the juvenile justice system will be seeing a lot more if it in the years to come. Frankly, if there were no fourth panel, this strip would be just about perfect.