Oh my God, we’re still doing food jokes? And not just any food jokes, but jokes that are so old, I remember being bored by them way back in grade school. Hey, Tom Batiuk, right back at ya:
What really wrings the neck of this attempt at humor is the bizarre…well, “continuity” for lack of a better word. For the past two days, Bernie and Thatsnaught have been standing in front of the vendos. Now, they’re still standing there, wearing the same clothes, as if only a few moments have passed between strip-days. So far so dull, but suddenly, there’s a professionally-taped notice on the vendos that was not there before. It’s like a low-budget movie where the script girl was out sick one day. “Okay, that’s a wrap, loves; gotta get this stinker in the can!”
I could imagine someone like Philip K. Dick could take this “off” situation and create something out of it…Eye In The Sky comes to mind; there’s actually a scene with a vending machine! Philip K. Dick could be quite irritating at times, but his imagination was never in doubt.
Unlike some people I could name.
Son of Stuck Funky 
And another week wasted. Batiuk a crapton of storylines unresolved, and a crapton of story engines. Yet he still “treats” us to a week of witless, often nonsensical, jokes. Sad.
Leave it to Batiuk to hear something in the news and force it into his strip without even an attempt at making it funny or coherent.
Here’s a better one, and one more appropriate to the mood of this strip:
“I heard they’re going to move the ‘carousel of death’ into the nurse’s office.”
“I thought physician assisted suicide was illegal.”
Dear lord. These idiots care an awful lot about these vendos no one uses. In fact it’s all they ever talk about. Maybe he should have just stuck with a week’s worth of Les in the classroom and…geez, these jokes are so bad they have me talking crazy now.
So black guy (who is apparently a recurring character despite not having a name) is making fun of the fat kid for eating junk food, even going so far as to print out an insulting “rule sheet” and taping it to the vendo so that he can read it to Piggy with a condescending expression on his face?
Because the only other alternative is that Batom has dementia, and that’s not humor.
He’s used the “Carousel of Death” joke before, and it wasn’t funny either time.
The only redeeming thing about this week’s strips is that Less only appeared in the first two.
So who is the black guy, Keisha’s Bio-Dad?
If Westview’s gonna have its own “Carousel of Death” it oughta be like the one in Logan’s Run:
The quality of that video is Batiukian. Love the coffee table books and the Christmas lights.