Good afternoon, or rather good evening, (I realize as I write this that I am not as omniscient as I would like, and can’t know what time of day you all will be able to read this,) Your friendly, neighborhood, CBH is here and I’m reporting in with the local Farm Progress Report.
While I tend to keep my roadmap in my glove box (or rather my Google Maps on my smartphone closed,) I must admit that the last week has seen me sitting at a dead end, or rather a crossroads.
You see, my parents were, once again, planning to travel down south to see my sister and her family. So, once again, the care of all of the cows, and all of the chores on the farm, would be up to their middle daughter, (That’s me!) I pondered a long time whether to put the blog on a brief, indeterminate, hiatus. I pride myself on self-sufficiency and on never asking for assistance, but I also know when to be humble and admit that I need some help. Which is more often then you’d think.
So many many many thanks to Epicus Doomus and Banana Jr 6000 for filling the last couple weeks with current events and wacky nonsense, and other highly planned completely spontaneous posts. I hope to get back on the Retrospective Express and, once again, conduct you all through the sights and signposts of Act III John Howard. But for now I thought that I’d give you a little peek into the farming lifestyle.
Soybeans are a crop in my area. In fields where corn isn’t, soybeans are. Outside the window here are some soybeans. (There is a giant horse fly on the inside window of my truck in this picture. I rolled the window down after taking this picture and let him out. But only because I didn’t have a shoe sturdy enough to kill him in one mighty blow)
Corn is the other crop you see a lot of around here. Most of this corn is taller than me. Most of you are also taller than me. (Most fifth graders are taller than me.) This is what corn looks like in August around here.
Where corn and soybeans don’t grow, we grow grass. A field of grass is either a hayfield, or pasture, or a golf course. All three can make money, or all three can waste money. Like many things in life, what you get out of it is what you put in, and it’s so easy to put too much in and regret it later.
(Okay, enough horrible photos with nonsense captions.)
Mushroom. Cloud. I title this picture Farminheimer.
Corn. Pasture. Soybeans. I wasn’t exaggerating that.
We do have newer tractors, but they were all attached to haying equipment.
In contrast to this venerable machine that’s about as old as Funky Winkerbean itself, the day my dad got home we went to pick up a much newer tractor I’d found online for him.
Thus ends the dumb farm update blog. We will return to your regularly scheduled Batiukian madness soon!
Son of Stuck Funky 
1. This is wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us.
2. New Komix Thoughts about FW’s last week just dropped and hoo boy am I looking forward to the comments.
He mentions some truly irrelevant trivia, and then tells his readers what they already know. This is like some old man reading someone else’s work for the first time and trying to solve it. (“Let’s see, so that must be someone’s grand-daughter…”)
It’s such a belaboring of the obvious. Batiuk can be very cryptic, and demands his readers to get obscure references. But this needed to be spelled out? And he spelled out the melted gun story, without batting an eye at how messed up it was.
At least he chose an appropriate thumbnail image.
That’s what we’re all wondering, Tom. WHY??????
This article explains nothing. I still can’t figure out why he would do this for the final FW arc. Why not end things nicely with a class reunion or something like that? And why close Montoni’s and then do nothing? A going out of business/ retirement party would make for a nice ending too.
As I’ve said before even Lynn Johnston went out on a high note.
I just read it. Apparently, he thinks those stories were good, and clever. That melted gun arc was easily one of the dumbest things he’s ever done, and that last week was anti-climactic to a degree previously unknown to science.
And he’s gloating about “Easter eggs” that were GLARINGLY OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE within SECONDS. “And that’s Lisa’s granddaughter, Lisa Junior The Third”…”and it’s modeled after the spaceship Phil Holt drew for little baby Skyler”…uh, no shit, Tom. I mean, I read the thing every freaking day. It’s like he assumes everyone is an imbecile or something.
And, honestly, why would Lisa’s grand daughter NOT have all of the Lisa books? That’s beyond dumb. Can you imagine the descendants of a literary marvel NOT having all their books? “Stephen King? Yeah, he was my dad…you say he wrote books? Really?” “Tom Clancy? Sure, he was my grandad. What? He was an author? No way!”
“And eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that I modeled the weirdo who gave Jessica the gun used to murder her father after the collector weirdos I claim to despise, yet cannot stop talking about”. Yes, Tom, we noticed.
Seeing something actually real takes the edge off of this week’s Crankshaft quandary. Today, it’s more nonsense with Ed not seeing the problem his barbecue is causing contrasted with Ed and Jeff watching football.
“MOO!”
That is what you’re supposed to say in your car when you see a cow, isn’t it? And “HORSE!” when you see a horse? Strangely, southern New England does not have a word you yell without thinking when you see a sheep. Maybe yell “TOM!” when you pass a comic book store?
CS, 8/25: This strip answers the question “Which came first, the Crank Canadian wildfires strips, or these Lamer Ones?” I have NO idea what the punchline means, but even I know that it’s not really football season until tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the Arcamax “Spock Has A Beard” Crankiverse, Ed admits he cooks his burgers over rotting food and burning tires. No…he really does.
Unsee This:
Dan Davis: “And this strip goes out to all of you OnlyFans who linked to my ‘Bored Middle-Aged Man Wearing White Tube Socks’ fetishists page!”
Y’r welcome.
Hey, I have a cat named Fives who usually wakes me up around this time…
Is he a good soldier? Does he follow orders?
He does not, except when he executes order 66 at 4 AM.
Looks like he has a picture of a black cat on his back. Does he have four other pictures on him?
Looks like your cat is trying to pass through the mirror to get to The Far Side.
Thanks for sharing CBH! Very interesting.
Has anyone found a reason for parallel universe Crankshafts this week?
“The reason is
TUBE SOCKS!
Seriously. Look at them socks! The exquisite detail, including the droop at the toes! OH BABY! My friend, THEM are some SOCKS!”
–10/10 review written by Quentin Tarantino
Looks like they were mended in the toe area.
No, but I have a pet theory i’ll be getting into.
I added it to the “Please Stand Up” thread.
Cows!
I know why you keep that 1981 tractor working: those things are EXPENSIVE. Six figures brand new. I drove by a farm not long ago that had a row of shiny blue New Hollands. $2-3 million worth at least. Not only does farming demand a ton of work, it also demands a ton of capital.
You are not wrong…the tractor we just bought was barely shy of six figures. And it wasn’t even new! But a tractor with a loader bucket is a essential, used about every single day, and our two other loader tractors are about maxed out on hours are were getting mechanically unreliable.
My dad is the king of jerry rigging every last bit of use out of machinery. That 986 is a Frankenstein, because the engine was completely replaced with an engine bought off an old International combine.
Harriet, you’re free to post as often or as seldom as you like, as without your efforts, I don’t think SoSF would really exist anymore. I honestly didn’t think it’d go as well as it has post-FW, and that’s thanks to you (and Banana Jr, of course). You’ll be back, and whatever you crank out will no doubt be plenty entertaining, too. I don’t care about Crankshaft and I never will, but sometimes that blog of his is just too funny to ignore.
And if any of our other hosts feel like posting something, go nuts. Just don’t go as far off-topic as CBH does, as that’s kind of “her thing”, the kind of perk you earn by reading every John Howard strip ever made. And how many people can say they’ve done that?
Thanks Captain! Among the best of the best who hang out here, you are in the superlative tier.
I am just concerned that I wasn’t as obviously Batikuianly bad in my blog post as I could have been…and people will think that the first few paragraphs and pictures are accurate to my talent level.
It was supposed to be a parody, guize! Honest!
That’s the amazing thing about Batiuk’s incredible photographs. You, or I, or anyone else, CAN’T duplicate or mimic his unique style, as no one really can. It takes decades and decades of boringness to reach that level. Like how it was with FW, no one was ever able to accurately predict where his stories would go, as no one else thinks like he does. And, God willing, no one else ever will.
I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this blog was a parody of Batiuk’s blogging style. It really says something about Batiuk’s writing when you intentionally try to be as bad as him, and your writing is still so much better. Your writing doesn’t have the same put-you-to-sleep quality as TB’s. I found your blog interesting, from start to finish. Batiuk can’t keep my attention for more than a few sentences.
It can’t be easy trying to mimic a writing style Batiuk has been crafting for a lifetime. Batiuk writes as if he’s trying to impress the reader with his “gigantic” grasp of the English language. He tries to be so eloquent, it often ends up obscuring what he’s trying to say. Epicus Doomus is right. Batiuk could teach a master class on boring. Can this be the long term effect of not having an editor?
Your photo of the cow’s backside is reminiscent of an infamous Batiuk Comic-Con photo. You know, the photo of the cosplayer’s backside as she was bending over a table display. Was that intentional?
The cow backside was very intentional. And actually I had to work at getting that shot since most of the cows kept turning to LOOK at me. Batiuk always seems to take pictures of crowds and lines where most people are facing away from him, and I was trying to capture that.
I really thought lines nonsensical as ” I pride myself on self-sufficiency and on never asking for assistance, but I also know when to be humble and admit that I need some help. Which is more often then you’d think.” were pretty darn close to Batiuk nonsense. I mean, I was basically saying that I never ask for help but ask for help all the time. I guess I was wrong, lol.
I really want people to reread those first few paragraphs, before I flip to better pictures. Maybe the writing isn’t Batiukian bad, but it is objectively abysmal in most places.
I reread the blog and can recognize the Batiuk style better now, perhaps because I’m looking for it. But there’s a certain something missing.
Why isn’t my mind constantly drifting off like it does when I read Batiuk’s blogs? Why aren’t I pondering dinner plans, or how I’m going to spend my evening when I read your blog? Why don’t I have to start over and keep rereading the same paragraphs over and over again? I can’t explain it.
Batiuk’s blogs repel rather than draw my attention. It’s the same when I read or watch his interviews. He’s the least interesting man in the world.
Batiuk: Stay boring, my friends.
Me: 😴💤
The “certain something missing” is tedium. CBH’s blog post is interesting, especially to folks who don’t work on a farm or have any idea what happens there. By contrast, TB’s posts are about as boring as it’s possible to make something.
There’s also no ego-inflating in CBH’s post. It really needed “I knew I was the only one who could do it properly” or something along those lines.
Batiuk is the world’s most irrelevant blogger.
See what I mean about his photos though? It’s just like his stories, they come from a direction and a perspective that regular people just can’t fully comprehend. You had to try, but he doesn’t have to try at all. They’re the work of a madman.
“I pride myself on self-sufficiency and on never asking for assistance, but I also know when to be humble and admit that I need some help. Which is more often than you’d think.” It is Batiukian-levels of clunky, but I think the inherent difference is you haven’t been a professional writer for over 50 years, someone who should know better by now how that should sound to a reader. Sometimes who’s doing the writing makes a huge difference in how it’s read. I’ll be the first to admit my writing isn’t at a professional level, but that’s why I’m not a professional writer; I would hope that I’m not being held to the same standard as, say, the New York Times.
Also, your nonsensical statement wasn’t being written in service of selling a book no one wants to buy, so there’s that, too.
CBH,
Your exercise in attempting to emulate TomBa’s writing style shows how difficult that task is. Even when you’re trying to be disjointed and uninteresting your natural writing ability comes through.
I’m a little slow on the uptake, and perhaps also I’ve learned over the years to enjoy your writing – in other words, this was such a good parody I didn’t realize it was a parody. Kudos. (Also, city slickers like me find cows and tractors inherently interesting…briefly…)
Batiuk is like Tommy Wiseau. You can imitate his mannerisms, but you can’t imitate the way he thinks. His priorities are just so bizarre, and devoid of any relatable human values.
I admit I seldom bother with the batty-blog unless someone refers to it, and not even then. So, I didn’t properly recognize your brilliance. Mea Culpa
and not ALWAYS then
Thanks CBH, your story resonated with me. I’ve certainly never run/worked on a farm, but my life has become somewhat ag-adjacent. I was born and grew up in a top-10 urban area, surrounded by skyscrapers, rapid transit, and tract homes, but went to the top practical Ag university in my state for two degrees because they had a strong (non-ag) program in my discipline. From fellow students I learned about the business of viniculture, and how sheep were castrated. I worked in broadcasting in the area and used to do Ag news (“blackberries are $20 a lug FOB”—to this day no flippen idea what that meant—just read the script).
I now work at a Land Grant University with huge ag programs, and I teach communication courses, which often include students from our Ag programs.
To make this bovine relevant, one of our closest Belgian friends (another long story) is a now-retired veterinarian who became an expert witness in cases in which farmers electrocuted cows and claimed it was because of a lightning strike to collect insurance
CS, 8/26:
“Boy, anymore all night takes all night!” What language is this mistranslated from? English to French to Klingon to English?
Also, Pam’s hair helmet stays perfectly in place while tossing & turning in bed. Does Pam coat her hair with PAM cooking spray?
And the Crankshaft variants continue, with a waste of good salmon over at Arcamax.
I enjoy the bovine updates! So different from Suburbia.
And I too had no idea this post was intended to be a parody.
Pam probably uses this.
Big feathered hair was in when I was in high school, and Aqua Net Extra Super Hold was the hairspray of choice. Blame it on Charlie’s Angels.
Man on Television: Yes. YOU can buy it too! (points at camera, smirks and winks)
Boy in high school: That’s disgusting! Her hair looks like a brick! (crosses arms and sneers)
Batiuk made fun of the big hair trend in the 1970s with Cindy Summers and her big hair unihorn.
My late mother probably used enough of that herself to have destroyed the ozone layer
My high school grad photo. Please note the massively hair sprayed coiffure. No smoking, please!
I remember an underclassman who decided to spray her hair while sneaking a smoke behind the library in the parking lot. She wasn’t badly burned, but her was notably shorter the next time I saw her.
She wasn’t badly burned, but her HAIR was notably shorter the next time I saw her.
My proofreader has been sacked.
In the 80s-90s I worked in malls. Some of the teenaged girls could’ve had bighorn sheep head butting duels with their cemented do’s. I had a great coworker, age 16, who I still describe as “5 feet tall, or 5 foot 6 if you counted her hair.”
Graduated from high school in Western Pennsylvania in 1987, and girls’ hair was…ENORMOUS. Every once in a while I come across one of the wallet-sized photos of a classmate whose hair is blankety-blank hilarious, but I could never post them publicly, since they were actually nice people under all that Aqua-Net and I’d hate to have them mocked by strangers! That said, Kim, Andrea, Carrie – I hope you look at those pictures and smile.
CBH, what a wonderful excursion into all things ag. Mad respect to farmers all over the world, especially the farmers that grow the food that my family eats. I truly love the inside looks at your life, like that wonderful/horrible tractor. I’m with your dad; I try to keep everything working for as long as possible. With mechanical objects, I’ve learned it’s better the devil you know.
I appreciate your efforts at parody, but as always, TB is mockable but not parody-able, because no one’s brain has a hope of working like his.
All of your sentences made sense, and the only photo that really captured the “huh?” quality of Puff Batty’s was the one out the windshield.
After some pondering, I think I understand what’s going on in the mind of Batty and all the terrible photographers of the world. They are in a place or situation they want to capture. It’s giving them some feelings of some kind — awe, nostalgia, contentment, whatever. They point a camera in the general direction of the thing and press the shutter, thinking that somehow that captures what they are seeing and feeling.
That’s not how photography works. That’s not how any kind of art works. However, if someone has been through 4 years of art school, received a BA in art, taught art for several years, and had a decades-long career as an artist, and somehow has never figured out what it means to convey meaning or emotion with an image…. I think they’re pretty much a lost cause.
Right, and we can forgive the average person for not knowing how to take a great picture.
However, Tom as. Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and he writes long blog posts about “the secret sauce”, etc, so therefore more is expected of him.
“Boy, anymore…. all night takes all night!”
“Ham sandwich, bucket and water plastic Duralex rubber McFisheries underwear. Plugged rabbit emulsion, zinc custard without sustenance in kipling-duff geriatric scenery, maximises press insulating government grunting sapphire-clubs incidentally. But tonight, sam pan Bombay Bermuda in diphtheria rustic McAlpine splendour, rabbit and foot-foot-phooey jugs rapidly big biro ruveliners musk-green gauges micturate with nipples and tiptoe rusting machinery, rustically inclined. Good evening and welcome.”
.. aw crap. Leroy! Restart the ChatGPTB instance! It’s going off the rails again.
I haven’t been by in a while (sadly), but I’m glad I stopped by today. Thanks for sharing all the farm pictures and information. It looks gorgeous there.
You’ve been missed, spacemanspiff!
Today, Lillian Lizard and the Doublemint twins make with the heavy handed moralizing about book bans.
I actually liked today’s strip. It notes a topic people are willfully ignoring in this country, Censorship in the name of “Free Speech”. No, you’re not free to ban whatever makes your fat ass marginally uncomfortable, because it’s in your something something First Amanda Mint. (That was my Crank impression!)
And I will give Tom points for putting it in a new way. The Shining Twins don’t even notice. Book bannings mean Back to School now. It’s like a Purge movie. We’ve forgotten how it started, and we no longer care. It’s just there. Remember that time, only 20 years ago, when the phrase “bulletproof backpacks for toddlers” would’ve sounded super weird?
Or is he laying down essential lore about The Burnings? In the same building Lisa’s daughter’s daughter’s gerbil’s friend was in, in the distant year of Next Week?
I was new here then so I don’t recall, but…didn’t the Holy Book of the Lisa arc start in October? Like 2 months before 12/31? And now we’re like 4 months before the Ides of December…
What I like about the Crankshaft strip is that acknowledges that people ranting about wanting to ban certain books from schools is tale as old as time.
I remember when the last gasp of Satanic Panic had everyone clutching pearls over Harry Potter.
Two things are universal and unchanging…adults realize some books aren’t acceptable for children (no one is arguing for 120 Days of Sodom in the Elementary Library), and adults have very different opinions of where the line between unacceptable and acceptable is.
People always try to paint it as a ‘current year’ thing, but it’s not. And at least Batiuk has been around long enough to realize that.
Batiuk’s been around long enough to realize that and know that all he has to do is put up a panel saying “hey, look at these books that have been banned somewhere at some time” to get people to fawn over how good of a comic strip it is. Some current gocomics comments –
“Great cartooning. A+”
“What a great comic!!!”
“This is the best comic strip in months. Lillian is my hero.”
Pathetic. To think that this is all he has to do to have people praise his work.
To be fair, it probably is the best Crankshaft in months.
Which is why anxious idiots like that are putty in the hands of hucksters like Wertham who let them let themselves off the hook. That’s the slime engine that keeps moral panics in orbit: a need to blame other people or an outside threat for the incompetence and stupidity of the parents of the world.
Interesting Crankshaft today (8/24), actually.
1. Sign on Lil’s book table reads, “Banned Books. Get them before they’re burned!” Could this be an allusion to The Burnings, the highly debated incident referenced in the sci-fi finale of FW, in which apparently virtually every book store but Lil’s was burned?
2. I’ve often mentioned Pulitzer winner and cartoon-that-is-not-funny Maus, which Bats studiously ignores when tooting his own horn about how groundbreaking he is. But there it is on the book table! Something tells me that the books shown were researched and chosen by Davis.
3. The books shown include Beloved, 1984, The Alchemist, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Fahrenheit 451. In what sense have these books ever been “banned,” other than by some school library in some hick town? Have they ever actually been in danger of being burned? If they were “banned,” wouldn’t Lil be risking arrest just by displaying them for sale? Back in the real world, there are plenty of junior high and high schools that actually have some of these books in their curricula, including my son’s public high school. Something tells me the definition of “banned” is being stretched to the limits of its elasticity.
4. You should all be on notice that Tom Batiuk Is One of the Good Ones. He’s firmly on the side of Good. He doesn’t want mass book burnings, not like the Bad Ones! Nope, he’s a Good One. Please make a note of that.
5. Time-Mop has apparently come back out of the loo at last, pulled up his pants, and restored the timeline. The same CS appears on both Arcamax and GoComics.
Basically any book that has been challenged, even if it’s just by one crackpot, gets labeled as banned nowadays. Then public libraries, school libraries, and book stores sanctimoniously put them on display and call them banned. Even though all these people are actively promoting reading them. It irks me.
Step 1: Write fictional book.
Step 2: Get book published.
Step 3: Enlist friend to ask their school board to ban the book.
Step 4: Inform publisher that book has been “challenged” in that school district.
Step 5: Bask in the free publicity and profit.
There’s a few published authors among regular posters here, right? Anyone want someone else here to whip up some BS “challenge” to help bolster the numbers?
Fantastic idea! Just write yourself a book and pay off a couple bozos to protest it at some podunk school board meeting. If you’re lucky, you might get a furrowed-brow, doom-laden think piece on NPR or in the NY Times. You might even merit a mention in Pulitzer-nomination-adjacent legacy comic strip “Crankshaft!”
“Buy my book, Contemplating a Pretty Flower: Poems and Other Lighthearted Fancies! It’s so dangerous and controversial that it’s even been BANNED!* Quick, buy it while you still can, before it’s BURNED by the bad guys! Hurry!”
*from being stocked in the school library of the Otis Q. Buford Elementary School of Drycreek, Alabama (pop. 217)
Batiuk ‘helpfully’ adds in the charming tendency to have her use her authority over them to get her way. No one ever explains to her that she doesn’t actually know what she’s doing when she bowls ineptly or makes coffee that tastes like an engine additive or brownies that look like briquettes. Being told she’s bad at things seems to anger her.
@Paul Jones Authority Lena doesn’t really have. With only four employees, and only one bad schedule, she can’t deploy it on more than one bus driver at a time. And at least one driver has to take the bad schedule, so it’s something they all have to do 25% of the time anyway. It’s an empty threat, and Crankshaft would see through it.
This threat works in the military, because you command a large number of soldiers, and there are a certain amount of undesirable tasks that need to be done every day. It sucks to get KP or Night Watch, but you don’t get it that often unless you screw up, so it’s an effective deterrent. It just doesn’t work in this environment.
Score, a direct hit: It’s an incredibly trite list of books that everyone is forever wringing hands over but which are more often found on required reading lists.
I can think of a number of books that have been taken off of Amazon kindle for various political reasons. Oh sure, you’re free to buy the hundreds-of-dollars original printing, i guess, if you can find one… and i guess the original languages were printed once, but somehow they were just never translated into English… But the only stories i ever see about ‘oh no this book has been most banned this year!” are graphic novels that are literally on the most-bought list every time i open up the Comixology app.
Meanwhile I guess this confirms that comments which get deleted at gocomics are either not deleted and just hidden from everyone, or they don’t know how to reset the comment counter. As of right now the counter shows 118 comments, and there’s definitely much less than that there at the moment.
That’s too bad. There’s some rather angry people there, and they should just talk it out. Really. The snark happens for a reason, folks. There’s basically no snark to be found in pages like Drabble or Ziggy. There’s a reason.
Honeslty the GC page for last Sunday was a more pleasant read than ArcaMax for once for me. The latter had a few more persistent politically-minded people pushing the talking point of “at least ban the gay porn that’s being pushed by groomers onto kids”, which is rarely fun to deal with.
RE: Mon. 8/28’s singular Crankshaft: It appears that the cosmic machinery has realigned and we are back to one ‘Shaft per day. It’s a throwaway line about the inevitable “bus drivers’ bowling team” arc, signifying that there will in the near future be plenty of Ed insulting Lena in front of their co-workers…but hey, at least it’s not about Silver Age comics.
As @[0] noted, Jack the
RipperModerator went on a comment deleting rampage yesterday evening. Jack must have returned from summer vacation, champing at the bit.You had a nice run without a deleted comment going on there. Unfortunately, your incredibly mild comment this morning was deleted. Curious how @dac2404 decided to post a comment criticizing you this morning. It was @dac2404’s first comment in five months. I wonder if they recently woke from a coma or if the local jail let them out on parole.
My comment yesterday, suggesting Lillian was the only thing in the comic worth burning, was deleted. I expected it. Not the first time the moderator deleted one of my anti-Lillian posts. Also deleted was a post explaining why Lillian is the most deplorable character in Crankshaft strip history. The thought that some of these commenters have a soft spot for Lillian pisses me off.
I reposted both comments. Up yours, liver-spotted Lillian lovers.
Thank you, SoSF Moderator, for freeing my comment.
It’s somewhat ironic that my comment complaining about the GoComics moderator went into moderation here.
Is that irony or just a coincidence?
Yeah Ed is always being a jerk to Lena. At least she thinks of others and tries to do something nice for them, despite them all treating her like crap.
When has Ed ever bothered to pick up a dozen donuts or other treats for his colleagues?
You’d think by now Lena would’ve noticed that everyone hates her coffee and never eats her brownies. Or at least someone would’ve
mentioned it. Instead, Our Heroes just mercilessly mock and backstab her.
I get why Frankie is a bad guy (because he’s the Bad Guy), but why does Bats hate Lena so much? She’s never done anything bad to anyone, and she’s being judged as morally inferior by a guy who runs down mailboxes and deliberately strands kids away from school. And, sorry, I refuse to believe this 110 year old senile madman hasn’t crushed a kid by now. Who also thinks “PIGEON!!” is a pun. Did the real life Lena not take Lil Tommy to the Rexall once?
The whole Lena thing has always left a bad taste in my mouth.
In the context of the strip, it feels like they’re punching down, which is inherently unfunny.
In a broader context, it feels ugly and sexist. Lena is doing typical “female” things, like cooking and serving. Meanwhile, the men are never thankful for her efforts, instead hatefully mocking her behind her back.
Notice that Lena is portrayed as older and unattractive. That adds to the punching-down quality.
Just a bucket full of not-funny yuckiness that seems to date from the 1950s and would have been hackneyed even then. And it’s so wearisome coming from such a gold-star, self-congratulatory, soi-disant “progressive.”
Well, as if in response to the “What’s wrong with Lena” thread goin on here, check out today’s (8/29) ‘Shaft.
Okay, first, it’s late August now. School in most of the country has either already started or is about to start, and they haven’t assigned routes in Centerville yet (Are those parents still dropping off and picking up their kids)?
Second, there are only four drivers and Lena in the whole garage. Everyone we saw yesterday is always on the team, and Lena is always there despite her total lack of kegling ability. Why are they bothering with a sign-up sheet?
Lastly (and this is the part that gets me), does Lena have the sea sponge-level of self-awareness to understand that she is a lousy bowler? Has anyone ever tried to help her improve? Is the fact that she secures his position on the team through threatening a misanthropic driver who enjoys making kids miss their bus supposed to make us sympathetic towards her? And that’s not even considering the number of times her coffee and brownie preparation skills have been mocked right to her face.
Can’t wait to see how long this all stays up on GC.
The few times they try to explain it calmly, she gets enraged.
Being a lousy bowler isn’t a problem anyway, because these leagues run on handicap. So add “Batiuk is ignorant of his own subject matter” and “Crankshaft is being a hypercompetitive jackass for no reason” to the list of things that are detestable about the Lena stories.
Apparently the thin-skinned pearl clutchers didn’t like me mocking them. They were hurt in the feels enough to flag my comment and get it deleted. Awwwww. 😭
Jokes on them. I reposted! 🤣🤣🤣
Today’s “joke” is “Let me be an incompetent idiot who makes you lose without understanding why or you’ll be given a shift you won’t like.”
Lena: “You know, those evil Tucker twins! The ones who deliberately run mailboxes over, commit arson with massive property damage, and speak in incomprehensible gibberish!”
Crank: “For the last time, my name’s not TUCKER! No matter how many mothers scream a word like that at me!”