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As November draws to a close, let’s take a fond look back at some of the bizarre and offensive search terms that brought you here: “feminism and cathy comic,” “free picture of charlie brown sighing from peanuts” (always they want the free things, you’ll notice), “slamming meth” (can some tweaker out there please explain to me what this phrase means?), “worst comic strips one big happy” (I didn’t say it, I’m just reporting it), “foppish,” “apologies to dagwood and blondie,” “snuffy smith stereotype” (he sure is!), “unnerving search term watch” (let’s get meta, shall we?), and “i hate mondays and dilbert.” And linkbacks go to the good people at Distance, Redefined, SecretPlans.org, and the amusingly named joshrocket.net (touch my joshrocket!).

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Well, no doubt like many of you, I got swept up in holiday madness last week, and am still playing catch-up in the non-gorging-on-turkey aspects of my life. What with the two Thanksgiving dinners, the Christmas gift exchange with the cousins, the rousing chorus of folk songs from the labor movement, the avant-garde play performed by elementary school children, and the specter of 24 straight hours of uncontrollable vomiting hanging over it all (what, your week wasn’t like that?) I haven’t had time to read the comics so you don’t have to. In both the spirit of the holiday and a desperate attempt to play catch-up, I offer you a week’s worth of comics and corresponding sentence-long things that I’m thankful for.

B.C., 11/23/04

I’m thankful that B.C., having already pissed off both Muslims and Jews, is now going after the Irish, ensuring its departure from the comics pages any day now.

Dilbert, 11/24/04

I’m thankful that public discourse has coarsened to the extent that the phrase “cow’s butt” can now be printed in the comics pages, because I think cow butts are funny.

Beetle Bailey, 11/25/04

I’m thankful that Beetle Bailey has discovered postmodernism, at long last.

Mary Worth, 11/26/04

I’m thankful for Boston, because they rock, man.

Family Circus, 11/27/04

I’m thankful that at least one member of this family is beginning to question the oppressive patriarchal suburban hell in which she lives.

Doodles by Mac and Sack, 11/28/04

I’m thankful that Mac and/or Sack were polite enough to add “please” to their request that I add horns and a bell to the grazing bovine in the bottom middle panel, though I admit that I could have done without the freakish hula-hooping cow above it.

Kudzu, 11/29/04

I’m thankful to Bill O’Reilly, who’s provided days and days of jokes to desperate comic strips everywhere.

B.C., 11/30/04

And now the handicapped. Yep, any day now…

Oh yeah, and one last thing I’m thankful for is this Jonathan Franzen essay about Peanuts from the New Yorker. It’s, like, good and stuff.

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Cathy, 11/22/04

When Cathy of Cathy accepted Irving’s marriage proposal, all of us regular comics readers knew that we’d be seeing big changes ahead in the strip. Clearly the artist felt that the strip’s original concept had run its course, and wanted to move into entirely new directions, to grow creatively, to mine new comedic territory. This week’s strip is a sign of the next wave of Cathy, as the strip has finally, at long last, got to a point where it can get a week’s worth of mileage out of mother-in-law jokes.

Yeah, that’s right. Mother-in-law jokes. The thrills just keep coming! Where else are you going to get mother-in-law jokes? I mean, other than in Hagar the Horrible, Herb and Jamaal, the Lockhorns, the Middletons, and Momma? But don’t be afraid, Cathy! Blaze new trails! Excelsior!