Oops! longer posts are hard! Take this bit of Csroberto inspired nonsense in the meantime!
wAadiiignaon!
35 thoughts on “wAadiiignaon!”
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Oops! longer posts are hard! Take this bit of Csroberto inspired nonsense in the meantime!
Comments are closed.
Son of Stuck Funky 
You know, I’ve read lots of comic strips over the past half-century or so. I even own books which collect whole runs of strips. And one thing I’ve noticed in that time is that most “gag strips” (when they’re not doing a serious storyline) tend to include a daily joke or punchline. And then came the 3/8/24 C’Shaft…
“I like their parking garage better”? Is that anywhere in the vicinity of being funny? Could someone please enlighten me as to what sort of subtle humor I seem to be overlooking here?
This is something I’ve been meaning to say about Crankshaft’s stupid “causing traffic jams” game. It makes no sense, because the Funkyverse is Podunk.
Westview and Centerville are distant suburbs of Cleveland at best, not midtown Manhattan. Look at this spot where a kid is being picked up: https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2023/09/18. That’s either a rural house, or a suburban mansion. Either way, there’s no traffic around, and plenty of room to get around cars. Causing a traffic jam would take hours.
And there wouldn’t be a “Westview Branch” of anything, ever. Especially not something medical, given the reputation it would acquire from The Town That Killed Lisa.
Is this a copy of the comment that was deleted on GoComics? Really?! Did you receive any replies?
I noticed that several comments were deleted from yesterday’s Crankshaft. It seems that Jack the R̴i̴p̴p̴e̴r̴ Moderator is moderating the Crankshaft comments again.
There has been a substantial amount of post deletions lately. The rate is perceptibly increased. They tend to let the posts come then delete them weeks later, but now they’re wiping stuff clean mere hours after posting too.
And that’s fine. They get what they want. Bland and pointless comic strip, bland and pointless comments – all twelve of them that remain.
I never realized the moderator deleted certain comments days after the fact. Why bother? How many people are going to read the comments days later? I guess GoComics believes they’re required to maintain the image that we’re all one big happy family.
I have to admire J.J. O’Malley. They delete his comment only for him to repost it hours later. He says, as if standing on a chair and refusing to be silenced, “Still here”. 👍
Sitting in a chair, actually. Luckily, I am a writer by trade and spend many afternoons and nights on the keyboard.
And yes, there were one or two replies to my original post that were exterminated as well. In the meantime I’ll keep plugging away like Sisyphus and see what happens. Have you had any of your comments axed, eve?
Plenty of mine have been wiped. You all know who I am there, but I won’t spell it out 🙂
But yeah, tons of mine are gone. Go take a look at that post with Pop Clutch saying that he was murdered. Look at how many comments remain now. Go back a few months (6+) at random – some of them only have a handful of posts remaining now, as in less than 10.
@J.J. O’Malley
It’s a shame no one wants to converse with you. Rather than try to change your mind they rely on the moderator to silence you. It was a decent question. Perhaps they didn’t care for the sarcastic tone?
Not too many of my comments get deleted. Primarily because I don’t post them until the afternoon. Most of the pearl-clutchers and Flagee-McGees have already read Crankshaft by then.
I couldn’t sleep last night and was up late on the computer. I left a couple Lillian critical comments in the Crankshaft discussion at about 1:30 AM EST. Both were gone early this morning. It’s the same comment I posted below about Lillian being a buzzard-faced assassin of joy. The other comment was a poll asking how many readers would like to see Lucy’s force ghost haunt Lillian.
Assuming the comments would be deleted, I copied and pasted them into notepad. I’ll repost them on GoComics later. 😉
Lillian has fans? Who knew? As the saying goes, “There’s no accounting for taste.”
@[0]
So that commenter is you, eh? At one time or another I have suspected that commenter to be one of about four different SoSF regulars. You were one of the “suspects.”
I just don’t see the point of deleting comments months later. Only a handful of people reading through the archive will read them. Hardly worth the effort. Perhaps the flagged comments have a several month backlog? 😂
Again, Batiuk’s inability to understand what sounds funny to other people bit him in the butt. I’m sure it’s comic gold to him but, well, he’s kind of out there, ain’t he?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Chien: Ms. McKenzie, This is a library, not a hospital.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Man, I still can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss Funky Winkerbean (especially the characters, Owen, Cody Mooch Myers and Chien).
I miss not being able to see THAT MONSTER WHO RUINED HER SISTER’S LIFE JUST BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T HANDLE THE FACT LUCY WAS IN LOVE WITH EUGENE!
I wish that was Chien, all growed up to the age of…Oh, who the hell knows with this strip? In Real Time, she’d be early 30s, but in Tom Time she could literally be anywhere between elementary school age like the post-high school Shining Twins, or she was a nurse in the Crimean War.
I want it to be her, because Chien wouldn’t put up with the lizard.
I think Chien would be 38 or 52 years old (blame the timemop)
I also think her height would be 6’0″ (and incredibly self-conscious about it)
From the Act III character guide, Chien was 28 at the start of Act III, like her classmates Boy Lisa, Mopey Pete, and Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered. Canonically, the strip ended 22 years (comic time, not real time) after the start of Act III, putting her at 50 at the time of the Lost Finale.
(Also, in testament to Batiuk’s ability to both overexplain AND underexplain things, while rummaging through the archives, I found out why she’s called “Chien”. Sort of. See, it’s said that she’s called that because of the collar she always wore. Which… only helps a little, since he doesn’t bother to explain what “chien” itself means, leaving us to turn to Grandpa Google for help. It’s French, for “dog”. So she’s called “Chien” because she wears a dog collar. Not that Batiuk would explain that for anyone who doesn’t know French, of course. Not when he can constantly remind us that John Darling Who Was Murdered was murdered, or that Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered is the daughter of John Darling Who Was Murdered, or that Batton Thomas Creator Of The Comic Strip Three O’Clock High created the comic strip Three O’Clock High.)
(Also also, as the resident Goth Chick, Chien was taunted by her peers. But she could deal with it, because – get this – it reminds her that she’s not like them! I don’t know if this was the first usage of that particular Batiukism, but it does predate the Jefferson Jacks story, so… yeah.)
As Ms. Parks is female, her name should be “Chienne,” which is the feminine in French.
In English, that would be “bitch,” a word you don’t normally see used casually in what’s called writing (save in John Steinbeck’s *Of Mice and Men*).
“La Chienne” is also the title of Jean Renoir’s second sound film from 1931 (no, Zanzibar, that is not a typo), which Fritz Lang remade as “Scarlet Street” in 1945.
So I guess we can add “French” to the “things Batiuk knows nothing about” list? (Or, according to Grandpa Google, the “des choses dont Batiuk ne sait rien” list?) (I never studied French.)
To be fair, people who presumably know French still get gender wrong (the plantation in *Streetcar Named Desire* should be “Beau Reve”) and think “bienvenu” is the proper response to “merci” (it’s “de rien”; “Bienvenu” is for something especially pleasing, which is why Cellini’s father called him “Benvenuto,” as a son was “welcome” after several daughters).
Had Heather been called “chienne,” she would have invited a riff on the *Doonesbury* “We Are the World” storyline, in which one of the artists asks to throw in a bit of an African language, and another gives a go-ahead while saying that “it’s not a very nice thing to say about your own sister, though.”
“Dog” is the only name for Columbo’s dog, though he pondered “Beethoven” briefly.
Don Thompson speculates in *All in Color for a Dime* that the creators of Toro, the Human Torch’s sidekick, must have thought that “toro” had something to do with flame, which it doesn’t.
“Toro” is Spanish for “bull.” In French, it would be “taureau.”
In English, we’d say “taurus.” (Hello, Cornelius van Lunt.)
Tweet length review of this week’s Crankshaft:
There are few things less endearing than a consumer hemming and hawing to hourly wage workers who don’t get to make decisions over corporate-mandated changes they don’t like (the employee might not either).
I was at a Taco Bell earlier this week where they no longer take orders at the counter, customers must use kiosks placed in the middle of the restaurant. Yes, this is confusing (at least from the standpoint that the counter and its registers are still there) and poorly noted by this Taco Bell location and I don’t blame anyone for choosing to take their business elsewhere if they don’t like it… but I felt far far worse for the poor guy who had to walk up to the counter from the grill to tell people they had to order on the kiosks (this happened 4 times in the 30 minutes I was there) than I did for anyone who stood around the counter tapping their toes while I fairly easily ordered a burrito without that jalapeno sauce that I don’t much care for.
twitterslashx
I call it “Ex-Twitter.”
I call it Xitter. The X is pronounced like the X’s in the name of the Brazilian singer Xuxa.
The idea is that the cog in the machinery has power because s/he works there.
Since we’re in the SoSF waiting room filling out forms, and soon there’ll be 105 comments here anyway…
I was *not* surprised that this place can quote Plan 9 from memory, and I recall that this was the Ninth Plan: “Ah, yes. Plan 9. The resurrection of the dead. What is it?” “We shall raise a VAST ARMY of THREE DEAD GUYS, and march them on the world’s capitols! The world leaders will so fill their Depends, they will SURRENDER!”
I ain’t following the logic there. I ask you: What were Plans 1 through 8?
“Ah, Plan 1. What is it?” “We shall run up to homes of world leaders, ring their doorbells, then run away! When they find no one at the door–They will go MAD!” Dudley Manlove nods.
“And Plan 2?” “It shall be the same as Plan 1, but include–FLAMING PAPER BAGS OF DOGGY DO! And, we’ll be wearing Angora sweaters.”
Dudley, rubbing forehead: “Uh-huh. Plan 3 is…?” “We shall make a school bus driver CREATE TRAFFIC JAMS, so that the human spawn may not attend their schools, and so they will all will become STUPID! STUPID MINDS!”
I leave it to you guys. What were Plans 4 to 8? Bonus points if it includes the Funkyverse. Why aliens would want to conquer that, I dunno.
Obviously, one of the plans (we’ll go with Plan 4, since that’s next) involves switching medical results so that people with cancer don’t get potentially life-saving treatment. Diabolical!
Plan 5 is taking knives to comic book collections. The fiends!
It’s not clear what Plan 6 is; they only ever call it “The Burnings”.
Plan 7 is a lot like Plan 6, but they only call it “The Byrnings”. Somehow, people are able to tell it apart from Plan 6 even when talking aloud.
Plan 8: CLIMATE DAMAGE!!! And not even the most effective weapon on Earth – comic book covers – can stop it!
Hmm… I’m starting to think one of those plans might involve a torso chute…
LEROY!
APOLOGIES! THE TORSO CHUTE HAS BEEN UNCLOGGED!
Thank you! (Not sure why the torso chute has chosen me, but it seems like a few of my posts are getting clogged of late. But then, the torso chute is capricious in who it’s going to pick on.)
This is why reading Crankshaft makes me angry. And I don’t mean “peeved.” I mean “wishing evil upon.”
If Crankshaft was written by a 5-year-old, I would say, “Oh, that’s cute.”
But it’s not. It’s written by an ass-grown man who should, after 50 years, know better. He should know that the amuse an audience, you should TRY to amuse an audience, and not simply assume that his confusion about kiosk screens is universally hilarious.
Tom Batiuk should have retired decades ago. He was funny in the last century. He has never been funny in the 21st.
Yeah, act 1 FW had some decent gags. But after he dedicated himself to writing “very special story arcs” he lost his sense of humor.
Look at today’s strip…What is new school and old school? Nobody talks this way, save for Mary Worth.
What did happen to Batiuk’s sense of humor? Lose it in a deal with a devil to become a writer of serious drama? Lose it in a card game?
Is a sense of humor like muscles? Batiuk didn’t exercise his sense of humor so it atrophied?
And we end the week not with a bang but with a lying simper. Lizard Woman can’t do new school because she’s a mouthpiece for the technologically blind author.
Dear God. I never thought I’d miss Batton Thomas. Can we please end the current story arc ASAP? Who the hell enjoys reading story arcs featuring this chicken-headed buzzard-faced assassin of joy?
#LillianSucksMajorLeagueBigTime
Referring to the current Crankshaft strip, of course.
Does anybody remember when bad things happened to Lillian? For example when she asked Crankshaft to water her houseplants only for him to flood her house? *sigh* Good times. Good times.
In the last few years Lillian has become another one of Batiuk’s Mary Sues. No Ill will will ever befall her. Boo. Batiuk. Boo.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Lillian: I never really graduated from old school. (smirk)
Chien: Get the fuck outta here, Lillian.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Chien: I’m not repeating myself, Ms. McKenzie. Get out. You’re far worse than the racist old bastard who used to drive me to school.