Author Archives: comicbookharriet

by | March 7, 2020 · 10:30 pm

And On The Seventh Day, The Joke Rested.

Link to today’s strip, when it drops.

As usual, Sunday’s strip wasn’t available for preview. Which is just as well since I was getting tired of making lemonade out of absolutely nothing.

I will admit. I had a private, personal, chuckle at yesterday’s strip. Not because it was good AT ALL. But because I was a percussionist in high school. And at the time there were waaaay too many percussionists at our school. During marching season we had enough drums and cymbals and pit instruments to go around, but once concert season rolled in there would only be three or four musicians needed for every song. So the rest of the percussion section was left sitting on the floor in the back of the band room chatting quietly, texting on our primitive stupid phones, doing homework for other classes, or flat out taking a nap.

Our director, while very good in almost every other way, just let us decide who got what part, and the few who were passionate about percussion would by mutual agreement take the difficult stuff like timpani or bells every time. It got to the point where the scrubs were drawing straws and playing rock paper scissors to see who didn’t have to get up and count rests for half a song to ring a triangle or smack a wood block. The rest of us would just rather lay around doing algebra homework.

So yeah. If anyone wasn’t going to sprout into a mighty musical oak tree, it was CBH on her tiptoes trying to play one of the four chime notes in the entire 20 minute medley of music from Lord of the Rings, and missing.

Beckoning Chasm takes over on Monday, and I’m looking forward to it! I’m sure his deep thoughts and penetrating insights will entice us to dig ever deeper into this bland yet somehow fascinating universe built from the existential dread of a white bread Ohio septuagenarian scraping for meaning as he nears the end of his career and life.

Stay Funky Everyone!

27 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | March 6, 2020 · 11:36 pm

Don’t wanna work, (just want to bang on the drum all day.)

Link to today’s strip

And here we finally have the point. Delivered with all the beauty and grace of a newborn giraffe with inner ear problems trying to stand. He’s trying to pander to his band teacher ‘fans’, with Hallmark card greetings, but the message is first muddled, and then outright destroyed.

1.) Squirrels bury nuts to eat them later. Some squirrels even bite off the tiny seed leaves if they find sprouted acorns in order to preserve their food supply for longer. So I guess teachers plant ‘seeds’ in their students hoping to profit off of them later, and it is only an accident if some of those students grow from the experience.

2.) Becky’s percussion section this year is so stupid they will never amount to anything. She expects nothing from them, and so nothing will grow from them later. After saying teachers renew the world by growing the mighty forest of young minds, we are shown teachers joking about dum-dum kids they’ve deemed beyond their help.

3.) Becky blames the sun for stupid drummers.

4.) Batiuk thanks Scott Lang, Ant Man, for this entire nightmare.

27 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , , ,

by | March 5, 2020 · 10:33 pm

Zeno’s Janitor.

Link to today’s strip

We come closer and closer and closer to the point, and yet we never arrive. Because there’s always one more lame rodent pun to make. At least I have a faint, unenthusiastic, hope that this week we’ll actually have a dull dud of a conclusion. Though last week watching Funky panic over nothing like a deer on meth was more fun to look at. It was stupid, but it was weirdly energetic.

This week makes a little more sense, but all for the worse. We only have Becky, and Dinkle, and Mr. Janitor Man. Mr. Janitor, who stares at the floor with a soul crushing grimace, somewhere between pain and boredom. Inching his way past the band room one agonizing day at a time, sweeping up the trash.

This week, we are all the janitor.

19 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , ,

by | March 4, 2020 · 10:57 pm

An Object At Rest

Link to today’s strip

We are well and truly frozen in time this week. The janitor hasn’t moved, Becky and Dinkle are still in the band room. The joke is still nonsensical. (Squirrels aren’t nuts. Nuts are nuts. Squirrels eat nuts. I guess if you are what you eat..FORGET IT. THERE IS LITERALLY NO POINT.)

See what you did there Batiuk? You made me type in ALL CAPS. Like Terry Pratchett’s DEATH. Or like an elderly woman texting who can’t read her own phone screen.

Not even the coffee cup has moved. Dinkle’s coffee cup. Which he keeps in the band room as a way of marking his territory. Like leaving a coat on a chair, or purse on a pew, or a dog pissing on a couch. It hasn’t moved in years. The top of that piano must look like someone’s old Spirograph art.

23 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | March 3, 2020 · 10:30 pm

Useless Squirrel Fact #1256

Link to today’s strip

Maybe it’s the Super Tuesday hangover, but Dinkle in panel three looks just like Bernie Sanders.

Wow. Just. Just, wow. Guys, I don’t know what to do with this really. I feel like that poor janitor hanging around outside, trying to sweep something off the same patch of ground days in a row.

Last week it took and entire week for Funky not to watch the last three seconds of a basketball game. This week we have Dinkle blathering endlessly about the parallels between rodents and band teachers.

Two weeks, out of an entire year, where nothing is being gained. Neither humor, nor character development, nor plot. A good joke in a story arises from the characters as designed and forwards the characterization, plot, or emotional arc.

When has Dinkle ever been a zany trivia nerd about anything other than music? Now, overnight, he’s so obsessed with his squirrel book he can’t bear not to share it with Becky.

How COULD music teachers be like squirrels?

Well, according to the Ohio DNR: The gray squirrel was one of the most populous species of wildlife in Ohio at the time of settlement. Gray squirrels had extensive habitat in the state taking advantage of the widespread forest in Ohio. Early historical records speak of gray squirrel populations so dense that “…it took a month for an army of squirrels to pass.” In fact, gray squirrels disrupted early agricultural efforts in the state to such an extent that Ohio law required each taxpayer to turn in a quota of squirrel skins along with his tax payment.”

I guess what I’m saying is that I hope the Ohio taxpayers are out for band director hides, because there are way too many of them cluttering up the state.

24 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | March 2, 2020 · 10:46 pm

Go Nuts.

Link to today’s strip

Today’s gonna be a short post, since I’m fighting the evil forces of My Grain valley.

Plenty of humor to wring from this weird weird situation.

Even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while.

33 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | March 1, 2020 · 11:56 pm

In Medias Arrest.

Link to today’s strip

Did Funky ever get to see the game winning shot? We’ll never know.

Actually, of course he did. Because it’s 2020 and he was able to pull the clip up on his smart TV within hours. We just didn’t get to see that part, because Ayers got tired of drawing Funky trembling in fear and amazement at the very idea of a last second tie breaker in a non-playoff game for a team we never had identified to us.

Back to the old grind then. Becky and Dinkle. Blathering inanely and pointlessly.

Nice to see Dinkle stopped at the office to sign in and get the ID badge that allows this old coot to wander the halls clutching squirrel books. Why did he bring the book with him, unless he’s been converted to some kind of nutty new rodent religion and is on the hunt to proselytize. Ave Sciuridae, glandulae plena.

27 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Tagged as , , ,