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Dennis the Menace, 5/2/18

Ha, yes, Dennis, we do exist in a world of corruption and decay, where we ingest not only the cooked and dismembered corpses of our fellow beings but also the dead microorganisms that once hitched a ride on, and in, their bodies, a slurry of organic matter from a thousand different ecological niches, most of it invisible to us. This is what being an animal is, of course: you eat other things that used to be alive. Like most of Dennis’s menacing, today’s incident is just ripping the polite mask off of our brutal, grotesque, and complex reality.

Pluggers, 5/2/18

One thing that I will always say when I try to explain why Pluggers annoys me (and I seem to annoy other people when I say it, but so it goes) is that it’s smug. Not always, but often! The not-so-subtle implication is that these salt-of-the-earth folks are better than you, you big-city elitist, somehow simultaneously simpler but also smarter. Today’s a great example: A plugger just sleeps on an ordinary pillow filled with feathers and not … some presumably much more suspect alternative to this? Yes, if you’re like me, you had to Google “My Pillow” to discover that it’s a poly-foam pillow heavily advertised on late-night infomercials, marketed by a company that was forced by numerous lawsuits to stop making various specious claims about its health benefits. Anyway, who’s morally superior? Pluggers, who are extremely smug about not having been taken in by the “My Pillow” scam that they’ve seen advertised endlessly? Or me, who’s never heard of it in the first place because I don’t watch infomercials but instead spend my aimless late nights reading articles about subway systems and 18th century wars on Wikipedia???? CHECKMATE PLUGGERS!!!!!!

Marvin, 5/2/18

So Marvin is sucking the life force out of his grandfather so he can remain forever an infant, un-potty-trained for all eternity? Sounds about right!

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Mark Trail, 5/1/18

I had a friend once who insisted that since luck could be good or bad, saying that someone is “lucky” shouldn’t by right indicate whether or not they had good things happen to them more than they would to an average person, but rather should mean that the luck they experience is just far from the mean in either direction, which, that’s not how language works, man, but anyway, Mark seems to be definitely buying into this worldview! Like, how “lucky” can a man be who’s suffered through multiple boatsplosions and also the aforementioned volcanic eruption, you know? Thank goodness they’re headed to Mexico, where volcanic activity is unheard of, they’ll probably be fine.

Hi and Lois, 5/1/18

Wow, I’m pretty sure the Flagstons haven’t had a ginormous Last Supper hanging on their dining room wall before this? Like, it seems like it’s the sort of thing I would’ve noticed. Anyway, while everyone else is squabbling about the pizza and whose fault it is that it wasn’t here ten minutes ago, Trixie is contemplating the fact that one of the others that she’ll be dining with tonight will definitely betray her.

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Crankshaft, 4/30/18

Man, Crankshaft sure drops a lot of pills, doesn’t he? Remember when he had to beg the doctor for more pills, because he keeps dropping them? I don’t know his specific medical situation, but I’m assuming he needs those pills to live, right. And he keeps dropping them. I think you see what I’m getting at, wink wink, nudge nudge (it’s Crankshaft dying of some preventable disease because he kept dropping pills, and nobody being sad because he’s a mean old jerk who everybody dislikes).

Six Chix, 4/30/18

I’ve got a lot swirling around my mind looking at this panel — like, what’s a robot’s “family”? is this supposed to be in a bar or a kitchen in someone’s house? since circuit boards are what robot brains are made of, is this cannibalism, or just the equivalent of eating meat, assuming the boards’ specs are lower than the ones inside the robot? — but I can’t get past the idea of the robot eating. Like, eating? Putting a circuit board in its mouth-slot and … eating it? Nah. Not working for me. Sorry, Six Chix, I’m gonna pass on this one.

The Phantom, 4/30/18

I know I normally don’t “get political” on this website, but I know that some of my followers are keenly interested in depictions of young, ripped, mustachioed Mitt Romney engaging in some recreational breath play, and who am I to fail to bring them the good news?