Wally goes full-on “Doug Funnie talking to Patty Mayonaise” in today’s strip because… that’s what this story arc requires?
Adeela is not exactly winning Miss Manners’ stamp of approval here either though. She also seems to think she has already introduced herself to Wally (or expected him to eavesdrop when she introduced herself to Professor Forehead, I guess). Is she just not a Three Stooges fan or is she one of those people who prefer Shemp to Curly?
“And remember in your contacts with locals that muslems consider dogs unclean. So practice the ‘vanish’ trick with your pets, as Buddy has demonstrated superbly.”
Five minutes of searching on Wikipedia brought me to an Afghanistan culture page that specifically says greetings involve a handshake, unless the two people are different genders. So just saying “don’t shake hands with the locals” is wrong. Typical Batiuk, yet again.
Once a spazz always a spazz I suppose. This military flashback stuff is really grating. Leave it to BanTom to have his main “war casualty” character flashing back on the mundane stuff from his time in the army. Even his character’s psychological problems are boring.
Batiuk has really been milking the photo album flashbacks hard the past several years. I have a feeling the main reason is because adding the flashback panels in lets him drag out plots even further, without having to do any real work.
Karen Moy gets the elastic plot award for 2018. For a whole week Mary Worthless has been trying to coax her angry older neighbor into an animal shelter to pet puppies.
http://maryworthandme.blogspot.com/
Well Shemp IS the guy you want to have on your depth chart!
Shemp has a higher WAR than Joe Besser and Joe DeRita.
And you called the splash reveal!
Thanks for that!
Not for Cotton Hill…
Anyway, F that noise. The local custom in Ohio and the U.S. is to shake hands when meeting.
This Adeela character might be more loathsome than Les. Or am I missing some backstory here?
I once heard they don’t shake because they wipe themselves with that hand. Literally THAT HAND. True or not?
From what I understand it’s wipe with the left, eat with the right, which is why they cut off the right hand as punishment for stealing.
So, my source on this is some guy twenty years ago who both worked for the local foodbank and was a big fan of Dick Armey telling a group of us stories from his days (themselves some further twenty years removed) stationed at an Army radio listening post somewhere unspecified in the Horn of Africa. According to him, he and his buddies would get a kick out of shocking the locals by sticking their left pinkie finger in their mouth. I have no reason to believe he was lying about the reason the locals were mortified by that.
There is a joke somewhere here about how The Finalist wipes his ass with his readers’ expectations but I’m not gonna make it.
Hey Moe! Hey Moe!
Captain “shaking hands isn’t done” giving new meaning to the term “Army fatigue” in panel 2. I’m with him.
Leaving aside the “I was only half-way listening when they told me how people greet each other over there” stuff, what strikes me as being annoying is not that we’re having the expected freak-out. We’re having him be Andy Hardy in fatigues…..
“My name’s WallEye. As you can see from this jacket, I was in the Army. I’ll wear this jacket every day so you don’t forget I was in the Army. I’d much rather be ‘WallEye, who was in the Army, and now has shellshock’ than ‘That homeless guy over there who can’t hold a job.’ And you’re Adillydilly? Haha! That sounds a lot like a catch phrase from a Bud Light commercial. DILLY DILLY! Haha! I bet you get that all the time. [Oooh, I’m such an idiot!] Here… shake! [Oh, crap! Not supposed to shake hands with those people. Dang!] Look, I don’t like you people, and you don’t like Army Guys, but let’s work together anyways. Haha! I say ‘anyways’ because I’m from Ohio. That’s in the USA. Maybe we can get lunch! There’s a great pork bar-b-que downstairs. [Oh… hold it… Can they eat pork??] Ummm… heh… Is it getting hot in here?? I’m just gonna take off my jacket for now. Want me to hang up your hoodie?”
“I’m going back to whatever miscellaneous middle eastern country I came from. Goodbye.”
One of the odd things with the sepia-toned flashbacks is that they are “flashing back” to scenes that were never shown in the strip. Also, who would choose to memorialize photos of these events in a photo album?
Leaving aside for the minute the fact that Islam is a worldwide religion and that we have no indication which country Middle Eastern or Central Asian country Adeela may hail from (or even that she may be born and raised in Ahia from immigrant parents), given that Wally spent significant time with Khan, adopted Rana after her family was killed, and went back to Afghanistan to clear mines, he should have a pretty thorough understanding of the country’s culture.
Will you two just cut to the chase and screw already??
I guess it was my upbringing, but I was taught to always offer to shake hands with a man and never offer to shake hands with a woman, instead acknowledging her with a head nod and repeating her name back to her as a greeting. However, always shake her hand IF she offered it first repeating her name back to her. So regardless of religious upbringing, to me Wally screwed up big.
She probably thinks the Stooges were just marking time until Joe Besser showed up.