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Kudzu, 12/2/05

So, what do you suppose the joke in this Kudzu is supposed to be about?

• Christian Scientists, who often refuse modern medical procedures in favor of spiritual healing practices.
• Some pharmacists’ refusal to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception and birth control pills on “moral grounds.”
• Some sort of bird-eating-bird cannibalism reference.
• Kudzu is an entirely humor-free medium, and thus has no needs for “jokes” that “make sense” or are “funny”.

Discuss.

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Something a little different for you today: America’s coming economic collapse, as foreshadowed in the funnies. Just a couple of days ago, Lois was chatting to one of her friends about her work:

Hi and Lois, 11/29/05

Today, though, the situation seems a little different:

Hi and Lois, 12/1/05

Hi and Lois deserves kudos for not only giving Lois a job, but giving Lois a job that isn’t a cop-out extension of the “lady’s work” she does at home (I’m looking at you, Blondie, you food-addiction enabler, you). Still, she’s throwing herself into her role as a pimp for the real-estate-industrial complex with a bit more enthusiasm than perhaps is wise. First, she’s telling Brunette Neighbor Lady Whose Name I Don’t Remember that the housing market is a nonstop rocket ride to the moon, with no possible downside. I knew a lot of people who talked like this when I worked for an Internet company in San Francisco in the late ’90s; despite their ostensible business savvy, they were a lot more surprised than I was when the pink slips started fluttering down on everyone’s desks. It’s only at show and tell that we see that the housing-market balloon is full of hot air and nothing more: making your kid shill crappy suburban bungalows to other kids reeks of financial flop sweat.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/30/05

Yeah, why is she so down? Maybe it’s because she’s headed out to work, churning out awful press releases, pimping no-talent actors and playwrights, glossing over the crimes of evil multinational corporations — you know, the sort of things that keep New York, the greatest city in the world, humming, and all for a salary that isn’t going to keep a girl in Kate Spade and Jimmy Choo like she deserves. Meanwhile, the two of you, who have selfishly chosen high-paying, zero-stress jobs in the nursing and elementary-school-art fields, get to enjoy a leisurely breakfast over the paper, relaxing in your deeply dowdy but no doubt warm and comfortable robes.

Honestly, it’s like being white, unscrupulous, and upwardly mobile doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I thought that the chatter in the comments this morning had prepared me for the harrowing sight of Mark Trail’s muscular but nippleless torso. I was wrong. Hoo boy was I wrong. No one had mentioned that there was something deeply freaky about his face as well. Is that a shadow cast by his sunken, heroin-addict-style cheekbones, or is he just wearing black rouge? Whatever the case, he joins Dagwood Bumstead in the no-nips hall of fame:

Also, is anyone else as unsettled by the current teenage-jewel-theives-in-fetish-masks plot in the Phantom as I am?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.