Discuss.
UPDATE: As of now (about 12:30 AM Eastern time), I have gleaned two more theories from the comments here and at joshreads.com, and added a sixth one of my own:
- “Buy physical books instead of eBooks.” (HAT TIP: Colonel Chrome in the comments). Lillian is as a brick-and-mortar bookstore owner, writer of books that are presumably not in eBook form, and resident of a place where physical book signings are central to the economy and social structure. So this makes total sense as a position she would hold. (I include Y. Knott’s “download only from spinner racks” in this category.)
- “Do something more productive than downloading.” This was inspired by a Comics Curmudgeon comment.
- “Download from somewhere other than the Internet.” This is a new reading that I noticed. It makes no sense, but that’s never been an obstacle in the Funkyverse.
I can’t edit the poll without losing existing results, so if you want to vote for one of these, use the “something else” poll option above, and also like the appropriate post in the comments.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I have no idea either
Did you enjoy your 19th birthday?
yes
A much belated birthday wish to you-I hope you had a nice day!
It’s interesting to me that you say this. I often wonder how younger people view the internet, since it’s been around all their lives. I have distinct “before” and “after” phases. And, there are eras: I call them the AOL era (early 90s), the Napster area (mid 90s-mid 00s), the social media era (mid 00s-mid 10s), and the disinformation and advertising era (mid 10s-now). Obviously there’s a lot of overlap, chronologically and functionally.
This strip looks like a re-run from the 90s or 00s, pre-social media. Downloading, which means acquiring physical files, was the big Internet controversy at the time for the first half of its existence. But downloading has become far less important, relative to things like identity theft, stalking/harassing, and disinformation.
🌟Don’t download from the internet🌟 became so popular that the Lizard had to make a pattern and offer it on her website at minimal cost. 😎
It’s obvious that Lillian is losing business to ebooks. That’s the clear meaning of this. If she sold something other than physical books, there’s a lot more meanings to it.
(Family Feud clap) Good answer!
Though it would have been more clear if Batiuk had used any of the four word balloons to hint at this, instead of pointless “what are you doing?” discussion. Or if the sampler said Don’t Download BOOKS From The Internet.
It’s called writing.
Today’s Crankshaft
WHY WHY MUST WE ENDURE THIS SIDE OF LILLIAN WHY
Also: Happy Mother’s Day
The meaning is clear: download ONLY from spinner racks.
Another good possibility.
As opposed to what, exactly? Downloading from the library? Downloading from your local pizzeria? Downloading what? As usual, BatYam is trying to make some sort of larger point here, but (as usual) it’s unlikely he knows what point he’s trying to make, or why. It just “is”.
That’s exactly the problem. We don’t know what this stand is against. Batiuk seems to think his declarations are universal truths, that we all instantly understand. We don’t, because Batiuk has no theory of mind, and no concept that other people don’t see the world exactly as he does.
It’s obvious that we still stick in his craw. Before the web, editors stood between him and horrifying questions like what he was actually trying to say.
Like this post if you chose the “Something Else” poll option, and your vote is for “Buy physical books instead of eBooks.”
Like this post if you chose the “Something Else” poll option, and your vote is for “Do something more productive than downloading.”
Like this post if you chose the “Something Else” poll option, and your vote is for “Download from somewhere other than the Internet.”
If you chose the “Something Else” poll option, and your vote is for something other than the three possibilities listed in the update, upvote that post. Or, write your theory in its own comment and upvote it.
He reminds me of Brooke McEldowney when he does this. About ten years ago, McElnazi got all smug and sneered about beefwits like me who used the phrase ‘way station’ when a clever jumped up snotty thirteen year old boy like him KNEW it was weigh station. When his wife pointed him to a dictionary, The Delicate Genius took down his crowing bullhuckey so he didn’t, you know, apologize or admit being ignorant.
I assumed he meant “don’t download my stuff.” As in how he calls one Amazon, and another fleaBay. Amazon he gets a cut of the sale; eBay he doesn’t. I suppose he also doesn’t like it when someone buys used a signed copy.
But who steals Funky? Is there a big black market for Kindle files? Is he mad McMeel put FW’s archives online, threatening his surely lucrative Ohioana revenue stream?
Technical notes: If you say the words “Chief Tommy” on GC, your comment becomes invisible, so he must certainly just be some rando commenter and not Tom. Also, am I the only one seeing that some comments here get weird text running down them vertically, always ending in “ava tar”? Oh crimeny, it must be some failure to display people’s avatars! Ok, answered my own question, but it can make your comment as unreadable as invoking the name of the Chief. (If you’re curious, I posted the inviso-comment at the end of the last thread)
Guess it’s not just me that’s having that avatar issue here. I had assumed it was just my browser acting weird. (I KNEW I shouldn’t have downloaded it off the Internet!)
It’s displaying your name as
“Gre
en
Lut
hor
ava
tar”
I figured something out! On my own! Without turning something on and off again! I’m as proud as that time I won my Oscar for Best Gaffer!
Anyone want a free Oscar? It smells like gaffer. Also, is “Ava Tar” Eve Hill’s evil twin from LaBrea? Eviler, whatever.
My evil twin? I say thee nay. How could my twin be more evil than ‘Eve Hill’? I AM THE EVIL TWIN!
😈🦹♀️
Bwah ha ha, as we used to read in Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League stories.
Oh, no—I had no idea I was making an actual comic book reference. I just thought “I AM THE EVIL TWIN!” sounded dramatic. Clearly, I’ve tripped into the comic book realm by accident… as usual. 😅
An inadvertent comics reference? Nah, couldn’t be.
Um… anyway…
“S’all meaningless! Like the color of my suit, and also th’ length of my tie.”
“SNICKER! Heh heh! I understand fashion, I’m wearing a plaid bathrobe, held together by green…cloth things! Heh heh!”
Please tell me this is from a DC comic. Otherwise, I’ll have to renounce my membership in the MMMS.
Yeah, it’s a DC. It’s even a Flash comic, although the Wally West version, not Barry Allen.
Me: “Who is ‘Golden Glider’?”
Internet: “The Golden Glider is an Olympic-level figure skater. Thanks to a pair of experimental skates that create their own ice, she is able to skate on any surface, including mid-air.”
Dude. That’s like “She can skate into traffic on the interstate, and get hit by the top of a semi.”
I haven’t looked up “The Alchemist,” but if he can turn lead into gold, but not change his clothes to anything that doesn’t look like he just stumbled out of bed at 4PM with a hangover muttering something about “hair of the dog”…
At least I have something to talk about with my DC fangirl niece! When I tell her about SWARM, Marvel’s radioactive Nazi skeleton made of BEES no I am not having a stroke, that happened.
I suppose he also doesn’t like it when someone buys a used signed copy.
There was a brief period of time in the mid-90s (the same time as my one-year country music radio career) where Garth Brooks declared himself the Lars Ulrich of used CDs. He thought he should get royalties everytime a CD gets resold, and initially refused to send his latest release to stores who did so. This didn’t go very far, because it was ridiculous, and it annoyed country music fans, who tend to be working-class. In the end, it didn’t piss them off nearly as much as Chris Gaines did.
Back in the 1980s, we were told how “home taping” was “killing music”. I remember when CD writers were kind of new, and one artist (I think it was Eminem) released a “copy proof” CD, which was defeated by a Sharpie. And I remember the “used CD” kerfuffle too. The really irksome thing about it all was how the industry rarely ever came out and said “we will lose money”, and instead painted it as a genuine moral problem that would inevitably lead to the death of entertainment.
And VCRs, too. There was a Betamax Case where Universal Studios tried to ban the things to prevent copying. They lost in part due to persuasive testimony from one Fred Rogers of Latrobe, Pa. Good guy, that Fred Rogers.
I remember that too. And how cable TV would destroy the film industry. Always with the dire, dire predictions re: the death of the medium “the fans” (as Gene Simmons like to call them) are killing with their criminal greed and frugality.
I took a required Broadcast Law class in college, and my final paper was about the Betamax case. I remember that it centered around whether or not recording a show on a machine with intent to view later (referred to as “timeshifting”) constituted a copyright violation. If I’m recalling correctly, my conclusion was that based on the existing language at the time it did closely border on copyright infringement; however, the home video market boom that came afterwards pretty much negated all of the original concerns. For a law paper, it interesting reading though-one of the few research papers I actually enjoyed doing.
When I was in college in the early 90s, this was taught as “Timeshifting is legal.”
Having been a big-store record dept manager back in the CD days, I have some knowledge of how our 1990s computerized reordering systems worked. Used CDs were pretty a last-ditch defense against the Big Guys. Did Garth expect tiny indie stores to implement the massive inventory systems that they couldn’t afford, in the earliest days of the kps-speed net, so he could surveil their every sale, so he could get another nickel? Was he gonna pay for it?
Of course, denying him this nickel led to where he is today. He and Lars Ulrich live in a broken van down by the river, catching frogs for food.
I know I am the last human to remember “Muppets Tonight”. He was on it, as both Garth and Evans. It would explain why he kept staring at Kermit like he was Doc Hopper.
I mean hey, Lars is always a convenient whipping boy, but bear in mind how that man had to wait THREE YEARS to get the helipad on his second yacht resurfaced. The glare from those worn tiles made his onboard art gallery totally unbearable if the ship was facing west from 2:30PM to 2:37. So it isn’t like illegal downloading didn’t cost him anything. That poor, poor man.
What hurts the most is that Metallica was never, ever supposed to be THAT guy. They originally had an ethos of being for their fans, not for their record company. People like Eddie Vedder and Tom Petty took strong, consistent stands against TicketMaster and record companies, and have enduring respect for that. By choosing to be the face of the corporate fight against Napster, Metallica forgot their roots. And no country performer should ever take this kind of stance, because authenticity is important, or at least still was in the 1990s. Garth was gigantic enough to get away with it, but it probably damaged his reputation. Again, it didn’t do as much harm as Chris Gaines did.
Banana Jr. 6000: I’m dating myself here, but “back in the day” I used to frequent a small record shop owned and operated by the guy who became Metallica’s first manager, and who mortgaged his house to get their first record made. He once badgered me into buying a copy of their demo tape. So I was there for the birth, as well as the rise. It’s true, no respectable record company wanted anything to do with Lars And Company back then, until they saw the number of units they were shifting. So hearing Lars shilling for the industry was kind of sad, as he was always well aware of how that business worked back then.
One aspect of the Napster debacle that’s been kind of lost to history was the death of the movie soundtrack album. Back in the 1990s, it became popular for the big labels to release soundtrack CDs that contained a BRAND NEW TRACK from various huge acts, like Metallica, RATM, and so forth. Of course, they weren’t “new” tracks at all, but simply outtakes and B-sides recorded during previous sessions, but the labels knew devout fans and completists would race out to drop $16.99 on those CDs, just to obtain those songs. So it was a lucrative thing, until Napster/file sharing completely cratered it. So to some folks, Lars wasn’t really defending his intellectual property as much as he was defending his employer’s ability to squeeze consumers for every last dime. And yeah, it definitely went against the grain of the ethos they used to preach. But then again, you get older, and those priorities change.
I could rant a lot about “you get older and priorities change.” It’s true, but it doesn’t mean you throw away your core values. I once believed a lot of things I don’t anymore, but I haven’t forgotten why I did, and they still guide my decision-making somewhat. I’m no longer willing to take risks I would have when I was younger, but at least I’m honest about it. My job also doesn’t depend on young people buying my output, like it does for a heavy metal band. Ulrich really turned off a lot of loyal fans with that stand. He forgot who he was and where he came from.
My half-baked theory is that TB wanted his own “Cow Tools”, and decided to go about it in the most TB way possible.
“My half-baked theory is that TB wanted his own “Cow Tools”, and decided to go about it in the most TB way possible.”
It was a dark and stormy TB Far Side…
“WATCHA DOIN’ COW?”
“I’ve made the finest Bean’s End & Beyond Big Lots fourteen tined cigar-rolling komix-bagging obsidian adamantium unobtanium hand-forged in the very pits of HELL by Nero, Hitler, and that guy who made fun of my comic books when I was 12 who shall burn forever, this salad fork! Watcha you doin’, Pam?”
“Oh, just updating your life insurance and last will, Dad!” Suddenly, she chokes up. “This–this reminds me of LISA! Her long and painful death, and how it made Les’s life inconvenient! If profitable!” SOB “Oh, and also…the wife. Black one, you know. She was at some book signings maybe? Also, Dad, your tools are useless and made of twigs. Why is that funny–Oh! Got it! Ha ha ha! It’s funny because it says here in your medical statement you should fall over dead from being 115 years old and an asshole right about–NOW.”
THUD
“Ah ha ha ha! COW TOOLS, DAAAD!”
The Funkyverse has the same problem Cow Tools did: it’s so poorly executed that the joke’s intent is indiscernible. But The Far Side was compelling enough that people wanted to know the answer. The non-snarking world gave up on the Funkyverse long ago.
Indeed. To me, “Cow Tools” is the strip that proves the greatness of the The Far Side. Its meaning was debated extensively by fans at the time and letters to the editor demanding an explanation were written all because no one could fathom that Gary Larson drew something that wasn’t funny; people thought there must have been something they were missing because Larson’s output to that point had been so unflappably brilliant.
I admire that Larson himself never really tried to defend “Cow Tools” He admitted that he didn’t think the gag through and thus produced something that was nonsensical and unfunny. It actually seemed to deeply frustrate him that he didn’t produce the best version of what he was going for, even more so than that one of his rare missteps became one of his most famous pieces of work.
There was also a time when The Far Side‘s caption got switched with Dennis The Menace. Larson was embarrassed because it made both comics much funnier.
And I agree with your take. There is no shortage of incomprenhensible things in the funny pages; few inspire people to find out what the artist meant. No one ever wrote the editor asking what the hell today’s 6 Chix or 9 Chickweed Lane or Pardon My Planet was about. Or Funky Winkerbean, for that matter. The reaction to Cow Tools proved that people were invested in the strip, even though it happened early in its run.
I also respect Larson owning up to what happened. Which is something Tom Batiuk can never do. His ego is too big to admit something didn’t work, something had an unintended effect, that readers have a good reason to dislike his characters, or that Lisa’s Story didn’t have 1% of the impact Aldo Kelrast did.
I always read my print comics in a certain order. Far Side I read first, Zippy I read last, because they could be the 2 strips I had to think about before getting them sometimes. I stared for a long time at Cow Tools. I thought “Those tools would be useless–Oh, why would cows need tools anyway?” and decided “I guess that’s the joke” and forgot about it.
“Don’t Download”…ya got me. The best I could come up with was “It took 25 years for her to stitch that. I guess that’s the joke.” Even though when I said that, I knew that that info only came via the Sunday throwaway panels, so any paper that cut them out would render the “joke” inoperable. And CS has the most throwawayish throwaway panels of all time. Every Sunday they add nothing to the strip, not unlike the “improved” Star Wars. Forget that Han shot first, the shit-sucking 1995 CGI of Jabba that immediately follows just repeats the same dialog. Five minutes that added nothing! Like TB’s 5 panel Sundays that could be 2 or even 1 panel.
So we should just put this down to “Tom knows what he meant, but like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop–The World May Never Know.”
Speaking of Gary Larson and The Far Side, every time I see this comic on thefarside dot com, I think of you.
And now, we’re back to the retention failure arc.
My guess is that it’s a Gary Larson/Metallica reference, and the “joke” is that when Pm says, “You’ve been working on that cross-stitch for a long time”, she means decades — so long that the text is no longer relevant.
Plausible, but that’s awfully elaborate for a Batiuk joke.
I think it was mistyped from “Don’t down low on the internet,” meaning, don’t believe any information you get from the internet. Subscribe to your local newspaper instead, and make sure they carry Crankshaft.
Today’s Crankshaft
And we’re back to the GOD DAMN BUS DRIVER SHORTAGE STORYLINE
“Who’s that on the wall?”
“Pop Clutch. He’s a former bus driver who’s not with us anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear. What happened to him?”
“He had a heart attack, and another bus driver him left to die so he could win a traffic jam-causing competition.”
“My lord, that’s terrible! Whatever happened to that driver?”
“He’ll be doing your training. Meet Ed Crankshaft!”
(mental breakdown)
Lillian should have done an anti-Trump political message instead…
But half of folks might like that.. and if Lillian has one defining trait it’s behaving in such a way that EVERYONE loathes her.
You know that’s not Lillian, right? In the first panel, it’s a FunkoPop bobblehead rejected for being “too hydrocephalic.”
I’m going to file it under ‘Something Else’.
Ugh! Why can’t Batty take three frickin’seconds to review this stuff so he can notice that the comic strip doesn’t work?🤷♀️
1.) Apathy for his work?
Batty: This particular strip, I must confess, emerged from the dusty recesses of what I fondly refer to as my “reject file”—a purgatory of creative endeavors that, for one reason or another, never quite saw the light of publication. It was conceived no less than fifteen years ago, in a different time, under different stars, when inspiration visited me with a half-formed idea and then cruelly abandoned me mid-thought. The central dilemma, you see, lay in the embroidery—a detail both small and significant. I could never quite decide what clever phrase or pithy remark should adorn it. Every attempt felt hollow, insufficient, lacking that elusive spark of wit or resonance. And so, it languished.
But as the old adage goes: waste not, want not. In the spirit of frugality, both artistic and contractual, I find myself compelled to offer this orphaned work to the syndicate, not with pride, perhaps, but with a sense of obligation fulfilled. The strip must be submitted, if only to honor the letter of my agreement and, of course, to ensure that Dan Davis receives his duly earned ten percent—a modest share, yet a significant one, of this small echo from the past.
2.) A lack of sympathy for his readers?
Batty: You people—honestly, do you truly not grasp it? Is the nuance, the subtext, the very essence of my work so elusive, so utterly beyond comprehension, that now I am burdened with the additional indignity of having to explain it all? Explain my work—can you imagine?! The sheer audacity of it! Must I now hold everyone’s hand, walking them step by laborious step through what should be a self-evident masterpiece? Jeez! At this rate, I might as well be responsible for every cognitive function in the room. Do I have to do all the thinking, all the interpreting, all the heavy lifting and the cleanup?
It’s moments like these that truly illuminate the tragic divide between those who strive and soar intellectually—and those poor souls who, regrettably, were left behind, marooned on the distant shores of mediocrity. One begins to wonder: is it my art that fails, or is it simply the limitations of its audience?
Where did the embroidery quote come from? It seems to me that Batty hadn’t chosen the embroidery “punch line” until he saw a warning from his credit card company warning him about scams and not to download from any suspicious links on the internet. Batty edited to ensure the saying fit the embroidery panel.
I’m going to file it under ‘Something Else’.
Ugh! Why can’t Batty take three frickin’seconds to review this stuff so he can notice that the comic strip doesn’t work?🤷♀️
1.) Apathy for his work?
Batty: This particular strip, I must confess, emerged from the dusty recesses of what I fondly refer to as my “reject file”—a purgatory of creative endeavors that, for one reason or another, never quite saw the light of publication. It was conceived no less than fifteen years ago, in a different time, under different stars, when inspiration visited me with a half-formed idea and then cruelly abandoned me mid-thought. The central dilemma, you see, lay in the embroidery—a detail both small and significant. I could never quite decide what clever phrase or pithy remark should adorn it. Every attempt felt hollow, insufficient, lacking that elusive spark of wit or resonance. And so, it languished.
But as the old adage goes: waste not, want not. In the spirit of frugality, both artistic and contractual, I find myself compelled to offer this orphaned work to the syndicate, not with pride, perhaps, but with a sense of obligation fulfilled. The strip must be submitted, if only to honor the letter of my agreement and, of course, to ensure that Dan Davis receives his duly earned ten percent—a modest share, yet a significant one, of this small echo from the past.
2.) A lack of sympathy for his readers?
Batty: You people—honestly, do you truly not grasp it? Is the nuance, the subtext, the very essence of my work so elusive, so utterly beyond comprehension, that now I am burdened with the additional indignity of having to explain it all? Explain my work—can you imagine?! The sheer audacity of it! Must I now hold everyone’s hand, walking them step by laborious step through what should be a self-evident masterpiece? Jeez! At this rate, I might as well be responsible for every cognitive function in the room. Do I have to do all the thinking, all the interpreting, all the heavy lifting and the cleanup?
It’s moments like these that truly illuminate the tragic divide between those who strive and soar intellectually—and those poor souls who, regrettably, were left behind, marooned on the distant shores of mediocrity. One begins to wonder: is it my art that fails, or is it simply the limitations of its audience?
Where did the embroidery quote come from? It seems to me that Batty hadn’t chosen the embroidery “punch line” until he saw a warning from his credit card company warning him about scams and not to download from any suspicious links on the internet. Batty edited to ensure the saying fit the embroidery panel.
WTH? Why was this post submitted twice? I created the one post and clicked the ‘Reply’ button once?
Is WordPress trying to make up for all of my posts that disappeared to “Bit Heaven” or were stuck in the torso chute?
WordPress Special, Today Only: Post One comment, Get One free? POGO?
The many mysteries of WordPress.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Well Eve, you dared WordPress to prove you are the most Evelist Be Ware of Eve Hill there is. Your brand of Eve Hill has now cursed WordPress. Your dark contagion has infected and enveloped billthesplut. No one is safe from the wonderful clutches of the most Eve Hill. Be Ware!❣️
If you did not ketch this the first time, you may ketch up when WordPress posts it again. Mustard we go through this time and again, and again?
May all my Eve Hill’s be the Evelist!
💝💚💖🫂🌺💐🌹
Oh SorialPromise, your flair for prophecy is only rivaled by your punmanship! If being the “Evelist” means haunting WordPress with sass, spice, and a hint of Dijon, then consider my crown polished and perched.
Yes, I dared—and WordPress blinked. Now billthesplut wanders in stylish disarray, wrapped in the velvet fog of Eve Hill’s delightful doom. You’re right: no one is safe, especially not from alliteration, wit, and whatever condiment pun you’re cooking up next.
So ketchup if you must, mustard if you will—but relish this: I’m not just Eve Hill. I’m the full picnic.
Be Ware? Oh, honey. Be prepared.
🫨Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Slather me in honey,
I could be made no sweeter.
Bask me in Mayo,
I still remain tart and firm.
Pandiculate till the cows come home,
I am of stronger stuff than WordPress.
You have met your match.
Good is better than Eve Hill
‘Cause he’s nicer.🫨
(I will concede and admit thine worthiness,
if thou canst tell me the source of the last 2 lines that I most cleverly alluded to.)
[Clock’s a ticking!
No time for nose a picking.
I be a booger if you get it right!]
Perhaps the mavens of fast fashion say I dress, in my 25 year old black jeans, equally dark-hued Converses of the high-top variety, and my ebony except where it isn’t “Plan 9 From Outer Space” tshirt that I bought online from a reputable firm and not “fleaBay” (unless I have donned my Shonen Knife shirt, whereupon an anime child drools over a stack of luscious pancakes, or possibly my Camp Kaiju shirt, whither Godzilla and Jet Jaguar toast weenies), that I “dress like a slob.” To wit (and my wit is bounded only by my great humility), I prefer to say “billthesplut wanders in stylish disarray.”
DAMN it’s hard to write like that doorknob Tom! You have to eat a thesaurus and then talk around the subject! And never get to your point! Did I give you the full backstory of how I didn’t have cereal milk for my bowl? Of cereal. Kix, or Alpha-Bits, I remember it like yesterday, like my dog. I have a dog. I remember him frequently. Or her, not really sure. I asked me if my dog bites. My wife said “DOG?! THAT’S THAT FUCKING POSSUM AGAIN!! WHY DO YOU LEAVE THE DOORS OPEN EVERY NIGHT!”
Byron: “She walks in beauty like the night.”
Eve: “billthesplut wanders in stylish disarray.”
(shrugs) I’ll count it as a win.
It’s not that you never get to the point. It’s that you never have a point. Except “show everybody what a good writer I am!”
Your Batiukian writing was so choice and amazing the site glitched and posted it twice.
I like it so much I refuse to delete the duplicate.
Thanks, CBH. Batiukese, A.K.A. verbose mode. With hindsight, I should have included a few comic book references.
Thankfully, WordPress seems to have recovered.
It was a work of Batiukian wonder. Very well done, BOEH!
Of course, it defies credibility that Batiuk has a “reject file”. Could he possibly have rejected ANY stray thought or quarter-baked notion that flitted through his remaining neurons in the last twenty years or so? Given the evidence of what does make it onto the page, one shudders to think…
There’s something very Amanda McKittrick Ros about Tom Batiuk. “My chief object of writing is and always has been, to write if possible in a strain all my own. This I find is why my writings are so much sought after.” Well, she wasn’t wrong…
“We have only one kid riding the bus!”
“We have a bus driver shortage! For the one kid!”
“We’ve lost a bus driver to the bus rodeo! We all know what THAT means!” (nothing)
“We have a bus driver shortage–so we’re hiring them 3 weeks before school ends!”
PICK ONE TOM, IT CAN’T BE ALL AT ONCE
“We have only one kid riding the bus!”
“We have a bus driver shortage! For the one kid!”
“We’ve lost a bus driver to the bus rodeo! We all know what THAT means!” (nothing)
“We have a bus driver shortage–so we’re hiring them 3 weeks before school ends!”
PICK ONE TOM, IT CAN’T BE ALL AT ONCE
PICK ONE TOM, IT CAN’T BE ALL AT ONCE
WordPress: “Oh, yes it can! I contain multitudes! Of your post! Here’s your post AGAIN!”
WTF, WordPress.
Crank, 5/13:
Is this a dime novel from 1880, where Tom gets paid by the word? “Why not lower the driving age to 6?” NO HUMAN ALIVE CAN DECODE THAT SENTENCE.
“To 6, so as to drive to the school. Not to the mall. Not to the dog racing track. Not to the Dark Side of the Moon. Not Narnia, because you ever see a wardrobe after a VW Golf drove through it? Not to the secret COBRA base Destro built by the mall and will use to smash the GI Joes and Jem and the Holograms, oh have I said too much? Not into the vacant parking lot that is my head. Do dogs hate gerbils, and, if not, why not? What–what are in these brownies, Lena?!”
If WordPress likes this post, it’ll put it up twice!
God, Andy’s just so pleased with that joke, isn’t he? He’s drawn like he just dropped the most vicious one-liner in the history of comedy. You can just hear the audience “oooooooooo” sound bad sitcoms add to what they think are key moments. And the reactions are all over the map. You’ve got Lina (contempt), Ed (surprise), Mary (“I’m keeping an eye on you”), and Rocky (performative smirking).
Today’s Crankshaft
Andy, why the fuck would you even suggest that the driving age should be lowered to 6 years old?
Because Tom thinks “Bus Driver Shortage” is a bottomless well of hilarity. Remember when they going to outsource–TO AMAZON?! Oh, my achin’ spleen!
This may come off as Cow Tools, but I saw this today and automatically thought of Tom and his grueling 5 minutes a day writing schedule, and how he thinks of his readers:
Heathcliff is basically Cow Tools: The Comic Strip. But it doesn’t work if you’re trying to do it.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 3 of Crowded Bus Storyline
That idea of yours, Rocky, sounds incredibly stupid
CS, 5/15: Rocky’s idiot plan both did and didn’t happen to me in high school.
There was a stomach bug that started going around and I was among the first to get it. Only lasted 36 hours, but it kicked the shit out of you. “Shit kicking out of you” was a symptom.
The next day, I was told “You were lucky to be sick! Your bus broke down, and they sent another bus out to take the kids home, but it broke down too! Three hours later, they had bus drivers go out in their own cars. The girls had to sit in the guys’ laps!”
I knew exactly who from my route would end up in my lap–my super crush/ limerent object Alison. Would that break us of our mutual shyness? Then I thought–Would that perfect 14 year old ass in my 15 year old lap lead to us never making eye contact again, due to my inevitable raging boner?
But it never happened. What did happen was that within days that bus of kids all got the stomach bug, then the whole school.
“Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a stupid idea out of my ass!” “But that trick never works!” “This time, for sur–HOO WALP!”
“And now for something you’ll really like, that doesn’t include projectile vomiting!” “You gotta admit, Rocky, I got some good distance there.”
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 4 of Crowded Bus Storyline
This storyline is just too painful to think about
It’s not a storyline. It’s a very basic joke template. “The bus driver shortage is so bad…” “How bad is it?”
A very basic joke template that often contradicts itself, and the purported “quarter inch from reality” nature of this world. Which means Batiuk will going back to it for years.
I know I’ve done this gag before, but I just think the word “edibles” is hilarious. Go ahead! Say it out loud. Edibles. Edibles. See?
I also like the word “bordello”. It’s a hard word to work into a casual conversation, though.
This is glorious. I demand you repost it on the new post. I want it front and center longer!
Oh boy, you have to create an account and sign in on GC now, not just to comment but even to leave a like.
They’re turning into CK. Next step will be making you pay to even read a strip.