Waiting on the Levy

We finally leave behind the music educators convention to get back to something we all know and loathe: Les, Cayla and perennial third wheel Linda taking in a girls’ women’s basketball game. Aaaaand we get the annual school levy begathon. “If the new school levy doesn’t pass”, I think Westview’s staff would be worse than “decimated”…do they even have ten teachers?

31 thoughts on “Waiting on the Levy”

  1. You can tell Les is really pissed off because he was going to use that joke before Linda butted in. I’m sure he’ll get his revenge when he anonymously puts Linda’s name down on the suggestion list for teachers to let go in the spring. Asshole.

  2. Sadly, I actually got this one right away. Welcome to Westview, where abysmal wordplay and wry smirks are the preferred method of communication. So it’s already time for another school levy arc? “Ten teachers”, eh? By my (admittedly informal) count, that’d leave a cool negative three or four or so. No worries though, the laid-off teachers can easily find work in Westview’s thriving pizza and comic book industries which are seemingly always looking for help. That science teacher (Klabichnik) and Art Teacher would fit right in at Komix Korner, Bull could become the world’s fattest physical therapist/personal trainer, Linda could cook the books for Montoni’s and Becky has a lot of experience delivering food one-handedly (those f*cking turkeys). Les, of course, can easily live off his movie option money as soon as he gets final permission from Dead Lisa, which should be happening any year now. Plus he wrote a book about John Darling, or so I’ve heard. And in any worst case scenario, they could just sell their priceless comics collections, right?

  3. Um… yeah, but “decimated” meant “kill off one out of every ten men,” not “kill off ten men.”

    And this is something a history (or Latin) teacher would be familiar with, not a math teacher.

    Batiuk just revels in his ignorance, doesn’t he?

  4. “When the levee breaks, mama you’ve got to move.”

    Move? That would never occur to Les or his ilk. No, Leslie, stick it out in this 1/2 horse town. Subject your entire family to the misery in which you revel. That way, you and your “friends” at Montoni’s can revel in your war stories of misery and deprivation, even more so than you do now! What fun!

  5. Well if they lose ten teachers when the staff is decimated I quess they have ten minyans of teachers at Westview. Your move TB.

  6. >>I think Westview’s staff would be worse than “decimated”…do they even have ten teachers?<<

    Doubt it.

    Most of them seem to be moonlighting with bit parts in a dystopian comic strip.

  7. Does that mean one of ten Westview High teachers will be chosen by lot to be stoned to death by the other nine? Hopefully all ten pieces of paper will have Les’s name on them.

  9. Once again, Les has to explain what’s going on or what’s being said. This is like the let-me-explain-Funky’s-actions bit from the “new Montoni’s t-shirts” Sunday strip. “Sorry, he wasn’t thinking.”

    Is there any wonder Les is the most loathed character of all time? The best three week FW arc would be Les slowly dying in a filthy ditch.

  10. Yeah, math teachers can’t hope to aspire to the heights of wit and cunning wordplay that those wonderful English teachers can reach, amirite?

    At any rate, this joke was a lot funnier when the Master did it.

  11. “Decimate”? Algebra-ha-ha! TB, bringin’ the calcululz!

    Ugh. What a degenerate conic comic…

  12. After weeks of no Les, today’s episode is a mindboggling train wreck of Les. The cheerful reader has his or her utter disdain for Les renewed with an adult dose and it all happens in a single panel. Look, if you can, at P3. He all but spits the words “math teacher humor” at a bewildered Cayla. Apparently while we were down the rabbit hole, Les was getting fed up to here with Cayla and her brand of physical abuse and he pulls out all the stops to assert that his is intellectually her better, sniffing that she wouldn’t understand “math teacher humor”, the unspoken portion being telegraphed by the look on his mug. His girlfriend Linda digs it, too. You can tell by her first-order heavy-lidded smirk, deployed as Les lays on the harsh jive. Will this week’s arc end up as a statement on gun control?

    If this keeps up, TGF will be much different than I dare say anyone has imagined.

  13. LES: “Get it? Because ‘decimate’ starts with ‘deci-,’ it sounds like it has something to do with the number ten! Wordplay!”
    CAYLA: “Um, ‘decimate’ DOES have something to do with the number ten, but it means something completely different. That’s not so much ‘wordplay’ as it is ‘not knowing the meaning of the word.'”
    LES: “Hmmph! I guess some children WERE left behind!”
    CAYLA: “Would those be the children who don’t care what words mean?”

  14. Good question. Why doesn’t Les leave Westview? He’s never reminisced at how wonderful it is, whether a charm that cannot be explained, or an idyllic small town. He treats his friends with contempt. His daughter and Cayla’s daughter have both left for KSU. And all his students (presumably new ones) hate him already. What reason could he have for NOT moving?

  15. Amid all the profound lameness and stupidity of today’s episode, what surprised and puzzled me the most was that these nitwits are at a girls women’s Lady Nannygoats basketball game. Maybe I’m just one if those stump-dumb, pig-ignorant, Neanderthal heterosexual men BatYuck despises, but really, who goes to high school girls basketball games unless they have a friend or family member on the team? I mean, can we be honest with each other here? Is this the only sport at this school? Must be. It’s all I’ve seen in the couple years since I’ve come back to reading this dreck.

    Here comes more tax begging. Keep that crap over in Ahia where it belongs. I know that in my effed up state, the policy isn’t “tax and spend,” it’s “tax and piss it away.” Hey, screw these jerkoffs who want to jack us up for more taxes when O’Bummer’s economy is still in the toilet.

    That’s okay. I don’t expect 60-something Ponytail Boy to know whats going on in the real world while he’s locked in his mommy’s attic.

    Anyway, today’s forced attempt at humor is bad even by Batom, Inc standards. People don’t use “decimated” as a mathematical term. Decimated is just “thinning out the ranks big time.” If Goatee Prick didn’t point it out, it never would have occurred to me that a (slap nuts funny) pun had taken place. But as others have pointed out, it’s a failure as a pun because decimated originally meant ONE in ten. Is this still called “writing,” Swishy Tom? ‘Cause I don’t know WTF you’re trying to do any more.

  16. Akron’s population has been in a steady decline since 1960 (dropping from 290k to 199k) yet the Akron School District is the city’s 5th largest employer with 3131 employees. There seems to be a lot of fat that can be cut, starting with certain pompous high school English teachers.

  17. What deus ex machina will Batuik employ to stave off layouts when the levy fails to pass?

    Bake sale?

    Raffle?

    Discovery and subsequent donation of treasured rare comic book?

    Principal Nate’s discovery that lay offs are not mentioned in the student handbook and therefore not allowed?

    Stroke?

    Long lost daughter that no one mentioned?

    Hand waving by a gay person from behind a castle?

    Donation by Les of his proceeds from his movie options from Lisa’s Story?

    Darwood;s wife Jessica finally completes her documentary about John Darling’s murder and donates her Nobel Prize money to Westview?

    Bull Bushka is hired as head coach of the Cleveland Browns and donates hi salary to Westview?

    Lisa uses her ecto-plasmic properties to star in the remake of Ghostbusters and being not only Saintly but dead and having no use for earthly treasures donates her royalties to Westview High?

    Ed Crankshaft dies and leaves his estate (which for some reason runs in the low 9 figures)to Westview School Board?

    Or the levy fails to pass and the school-board tightens its belt like other governmental entities in absorbing the cuts by salary freezes, not replacing workers who retire, leave, die or are fired?

    Well the last one I say in jest cause we KNOW that it impossible in the FW universe.

  19. Why are Les & Cayla still going to basketball games? Both of their kids graduated?

    I can understand Linda going, being that Bull, her husband is coach, so she has to show that she actually gives a shit about their marriage….but why Les & Cayla??

    I guess in Westview your entertainment options are short…watch terrible basketball or try to attempt to hang yourself from the rafters for the sixth time.

  20. I’m hoping for a storyline, in which Nate, driven to insanity by his rapidly decaying marriage, dons a druid cloak and demands that there be a blood sacrifice for the school to continue.

  21. You know, TB, votes on school levies take place the same time every year. It’s a process.

    Maybe that’s why they’re always in trouble. Nobody ever plans anything, so they have to scramble desperately when something comes up. They only vote on levies when the school district runs out of money.

    By the way, how are we having girls’ basketball this year? Did Funky’s raffle pay for TWO years of sports? Surely they didn’t have another out-of-season levy that DID pass, did they?

    Come to think of it, ignoring a minor triumph like that would be howTB rolls.

  22. There is no hope for the girls basketball team without Fishstick Annie coming up with those nifty trick plays she learned from the 30’s.

  23. Bye, bye, Miss Westview High
    Drove my Chevy to the levy
    But the levy won’t pass…
    The levee of my animus for TB’s political arcs is breaching.
    Perfectly timed to the sequester hysteria.
    Do school districts get their operating budgets through levies? Bonds?
    In my state, bonds go to capital improvements. But I digress.
    TB, like the good socialist that he is, is beating the drum for higher conficscation. Hey Tom, have you seen the price of gas lately?

  24. TheDiva: “At any rate, this joke was a lot funnier when the Master did it”

    HERE…COME…THE DRUMS!!!

  25. Señor Tortilla, Les doesn’t move away from Westview because years ago, the town took a pledge never to brutally murder one of its own citizens. This was before Les emerged in his full doucheness, of course.

    If he moves to another town, he won’t live out the week.

  27. Thanks John! I knew Linda was never shown teaching math, but didn’t know why I knew that. On the other hand, if WHS only has less than ten teachers, maybe she does double duty?

  28. She’s also the librarian, school nurse, cafeteria lady, and in her spare time works as the custodian.

  29. I knew Linda was never shown teaching math, but didn’t know why I knew that.

    FWIW, I pointed that out for some reason when I bothered to look up exactly what position she had, when I was taking stock of which subjects the school has “name” teachers for. I know you saw it because you helpfully added links referring to what I had written.

    But yeah, Linda’s an algebra teacher, but I don’t believe we’ve ever seen her teaching that. I guess she’s just that random teacher that every school has that fills in whenever something needs to be done, which makes me wonder why SHE isn’t the girls’ basketball coach.

    She’s also apparently five years or so older than Bull. I knew this because I was wondering if it was just possible that TB was so uncreative that he had every single marriage in the strip take place between former high school classmates. So Linda apparently robbed the cradle to get the great catch that is Bull Bushka.

  31. So why WOULD the taxpayers of Westview vote “yes” on this year’s school budget? To fund a high school full of disinterested, snide teachers lording over a bunch of slow-witted dullards? To fund dismal, never-improving sports programs lorded over by a dimwitted obese boob? To support a marching band program that annoys the entire town on a yearly basis by knocking on their doors and trying to sell them spoiled poultry? To fund “convention” trips by former faculty members/current blowhards who have nothing better to do? To pay the salary of an English teacher who’s constantly going on “leave” to hawk cancer books and who was at the center of a sex (ewww) scandal involving another teacher who ended up fleeing the town in abject shame? I’d hit the “no” lever too if I was a (dear God no) Westviewian.

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