Haikreepy

18 thoughts on “Haikreepy”

1. This is not the way a storyline involving a crazy old woman telling Les “I remember you from high school” and then pulling something out of a bag should end.

2. Les Moore should be murdered. This could be honestly a compelling storyline. He’d be promised some revelation, lured out to some lonely spot, commenting all the while about how bleak it is, and then several angles showing how it all happened.

   Honestly, if done right, it would win way more than a stupid Pulitzer. It would win the hearts of a dozen comic-strip fans.

   Oh, wait, I forgot. Tom Batiuk has zero interest in “fans” of his “comic strip.” All he wants are awards. Oops. Sorry, everyone.

   1. I sure hope that angry guy in the masthead is the one to do the deed.

3. I swear this is Gayle from “Bob’s Burgers!”

   1. Ha, yeah she does look like Aunt Gayle. I still like how Cindy looks like a teenager, but this lady looks like a senior citizen.

      1. Acts like Gayle too! A bit obsessed and way needy.

         1. Of course Bob’s Burgers has better writing and artwork.

            That said, this season has been a little weak.

4. This one surreal even by BanTom’s standards. Why would this woman hold on to Les’ old high school essay for all these years? He never went anywhere that wasn’t within a twenty mile radius of Westview, why didn’t she look him up before? And, most importantly, why would she think anyone would want to buy it? This is another one of those seemingly innocuous FW gags that has all kinds of deeply twisted subtexts running through it.

5. Once, when I was living in Singapore, I heard a knock on my apartment door at something like 3 am and so I didn’t answer. In the morning I found at the door a couple bags of groceries, including some milk and orange juice and stuff that probably shouldn’t be sitting in the equatorial heat even through the late hours of the overnight.

   A couple weeks later I got a card from Ann Arbor explaining the oddness: the woman was leaving the country, and meant to give her last perishables to a friend, and got the apartment number wrong and she just hoped I did something good with the groceries. (I had given them to the apartment office, because while I make a lot of dubious choices about the things to put into my mouth, this seemed a little much even for me.)

   So I can attest from personal experience that midwesterners will occasionally deliver all sorts of odd things to people they do not really know. Nevertheless: what the flipping heck is wrong with you, Funky Winkerbean?

6. The reason Les’ old essay didn’t get a nibble on Fleabay (ugh) was because this lady was asking too much for it. She should have priced it below what she was asking for her collection of Les’ baby teeth.

   1. Why does Batty always give online services a goofy, slightly degrading name? Today he could have just called it EBAY.

      1. Because that would be free advertising and we all know how much he hates free plugs. /s

7. So instead of turning his essay over to someone in charge in hopes of getting it back to him immediately, she holds onto it for forty years in hopes of auctioning it off so Batiuk can make a dumb joke about how Les can’t get arrested. Right. Yeah. That makes no sense at all.

8. Les was an underachieving loser in high school, and was never depicted as being capable of producing an essay anyone would want to read, never mind save because it was the work of a budding genius.

   1. The problem is that he’s an underachieving loser in the present day but doesn’t realize it. He still has no idea of what’s going on around him, he’s still a gutless drone who can’t make up his mind and he’s still convinced that he rates higher than he actually does.

9. Funny, I seem to recall Les said “Fallen Star” was “straight-to-Ebay” instead of Fleabay. I assume that’s because anything associated with Les has to be exalted.
   Personally, though, I’d love to see the listing:
   “Prize-winning essay by Lisa’s Story author Les Moore!!! You MUST own this precious prose!!!!” Okay, now I’m getting sick just thinking of it.
   I wonder if this is in reference to the Tom Batiuk autograph that’s been floating on Ebay forever?

   1. That crossed my mind too.

10. “Realistically” all she had to do was call WHS. “Oh yeah, Les Moore works here now, he never really left!”. Stuff essay in envelope, mail, bing bang boom it’s done. But not in the Batiukverse. I mean who the hell holds on to a stranger’s classwork from high school? Why? I think about high school maybe twice a year, these people re-live it each and every day…this despite how they were utterly miserable during it.

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