Salt Farming

I been out of the loop for a few days, as harvest ratchets up to a fever pitch I haven’t had much time for anything else. I had read the dumb pumpkin patch Sunday strip, and then blithely ignored the internet for the next few days. But as I was taking wagons of soybeans into the elevator this afternoon I was musing over the next installment of my dumb fanfiction, and had decided to try to make an effort to work on it tonight.

I open up the blog, my GoComics, and BLAM! Right in my face! The turgid, forbidden, presence of that most verboten of blog topics: Politics.

You want to debate immigration reform vs enforcement? Go on over to GoComics and preach your gosh darn heart out. It’s what Batty and his entire crew are praying for, a little attention, a good old slap fight, a bit of salt pouring from peoples’ keyboards giving a shot of bitter flavor to Batiuk’s bland, white bread, existence.

Here let us all point and laugh at Batiuk for, once again, taking a serious issue and making it all about himself by tacking real world controversy to his 60-years-past high school achievement.

Let us ponder what the juxtaposition of past Les Moore panels in a story being narrated by Batton Thomas about his own history, and Batton claiming it’s a fictional representation of himself, means for the decaying logic of this entire Funkyverse. Remember Les Moore and Batton Thomas know each other! They’ve met multiple times!

Did they just have very similar experiences? Did Les Moore plagiarize Batton’s earlier essay? Did Batton include a fictional Les Moore into his fictional comic strip, based on the life of a real person he knew and presumably stalked after he noticed a similarity in their life experiences?

Is Batton so senile that he cannot tell his own memories from another’s? Does Batton secretly desire to BE Les Moore and fantasizes about taking over his life in a twisted Talented Mr. Ripley situation? Has he been stalking him his entire life, fictionalizing it all the while in a strip no one in the Funkyverse bothers to read?

Who really mixed up the scans of Lisa’s cancer that led to her treatment being interrupted for months? Someone who wanted to write about a writer writing about his dead wife and needed a ‘model’ to work off of?

Is this entire years long interview just an incredibly dedicated undercover operation where Skip seeks to expose Batton for the murder of Lisa Moore?

I promise an end to my stupid fanfic, just as soon as I stop being so mad at Batiuk for shoving politics in my safe space while I’ve been suffering through months of life in a battleground state. For Halloween I’m going as a Incredible Pulp made entirely of unsolicited political flyers. Does anyone else want to go as one? I’ve got enough of the darn things to outfit an entire parade of pulp monsters.