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Gasoline Alley, 12/16/24

So the whole point of these uncanny children going to space in the first place was so that they could write a school report about the solar system, and despite the fact that they almost died out there and had to be rescued by their evil talking doll, they didn’t even bother applying the awesome knowledge they acquired first hand to their assignment and just had an AI write it. And it did a shitty job! Which they should’ve known it would do, because it was the thing that almost got them killed in space in the first place, due to its incompetence! And yeah, sure, writing a report for elementary school is a lot easier than navigating an interplanetary craft, but I’m sorry, if a machine comes close to killing me, I stop using that machine, even for lower-stakes stuff. I’m not going to say these kids deserved to die on the cold surface of Mars, but they definitely deserve bad grades on those papers.

Family Circus, 12/16/24

The joke here, I guess, is that Daddy has forced Jeffy to say this to a hapless mall Santa because he wants to set Jeffy’s own expectations correctly, but look at that face. That’s a guy who still Believes. “C’mon, Santa,” he’s thinking, “don’t fuck this up for me this year.”

Alice, 12/16/24

Uh, gee, Alice, do you think there’s an alien base on the moon? Alice’s boyfriend (?)’s attitude towards Alice (the character) really represents the reader’s position vis-a-vis Alice (the comic strip) here: Asking neutral questions, not making direct eye contact, sitting very still, hoping for the best.

Pluggers, 12/16/24

“Pluggers don’t wear gloves outside in Minnesota in December” is I think the point where we start doing wellness checks on the pluggers in our lives. Don’t wait until they end up in the hospital getting their fingers amputated!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/15/24

Geez, man, what kind of weird Slylock Fox-ass riddle-telling meteorologist do these Snuffy and Lukey listen to. “Frozen precipitation,” oh ho ho, you’ve really tricked all your listeners. Jerk. Oh, if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed, is that it? I guess I forgive these guys for living in a violent culture where civil society and independent information sources are regarded with suspicion and paranoia if this is the kind of shit they have to put up with.

Mark Trail, 12/15/24

Oh, not much to see here, just Mark and Cherry Trail urging you to go out and buy some GROW LIGHTS for your indoor “herb garden.” That’ll spice things up, will it??? This is clearly about DRUGS and you two should be ASHAMED.

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Mary Worth, 12/14/24

OK, reading this almost sent me into a downward spiral — and here I will pause to tell you that after typing that, I thought, “Hmm, is this really a thing I want to admit out here in public on God’s own internet?” but then I realized that you guys have read this blog, I’m obviously in the top percentile worldwide of people who are most likely to have been sent into a downward spiral by a Mary Worth comic — but anyway, I got sent into a downward spiral by the thought that Dawn had a whole-ass relationship that I had forgotten about. Who is this “Billy” character? When did we meet him? True, Dawn said they only went out for a “few weeks” but Mary Worth chronology is notoriously languorous, so that could refer to a storyline from months or years ago. I think the last time we heard about Dawn’s love life was when she fled down to go live with her mother because she was still broken up about her comical drip of an ex Jared, only to return when it turned out that her mother didn’t really care for her either, but it nags at me that there might be an entire earlier “Billy” storyline that I’m somehow forgetting. Was Billy the guy with a tiny face she ogled at the zoo? Some dude she picked up at da clurb? Or just some loser so dull he didn’t even rate an appearance in the syndicated comic strip Mary Worth? Anyway, I look forward to learning whether Dawn’s newfound veganism is a pathetic attempt to spite him somehow or an even more pathetic attempt to win him back.

Judge Parker, 12/14/24

I was going to object that Judge Parker Senior lives in leafy suburbia on an estate large enough to have its own hedge maze, so it seems weird to think there’d be CCTV cameras around, but then I remembered that he’s a notorious criminal himself, so the local authorities are right to be careful.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/14/24

Today’s Hagar the Horrible is about Hagar’s emotional life and how it affects his interactions with his friends and family. Honestly, I like it!