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No. No. No. No. No. No.

Why did I stay up late waiting for this strip to drop? Now I’ll have nightmares about what the rest of this week portends.

Also, Holly knew that Funky was giving Mort a safe sex talk earlier. So she knows that Mort is a randy old lion in winter prowling for some cougars to pounce on. So she must actually approve of the notion of her mother taking a roll in the hay with her father-in-law. Remembering how uptight her mom was on that long car ride from Florida, Holly may not be entirely wrong here.

Please DON’T have mistletoe.

Link to Today’s Comic.

I stayed up late waiting for this strip to drop. And thank Dead St. Lisa, we are no longer having ‘the talk.’ Instead Holly and Funky are entertaining their only two repeat customers.

And, actually, today’s strip is amusing enough, and does point out an actual weird lyric in a famous song. (There is a historical explanation,, but it’s within character for the Funky Bunch to not know it.) It isn’t a completely dead tradition though, I remember one Christmas where, on the tree, were envelopes with cash inside. Pretty good presents on that tree that year.

I have a feeling that Holly would hate me though. As a child that grew up on way too much MST3K, my logic sensors are primed to sniff out any tiny inconsistency and snark on it. What I’m saying is, I’m really relating to Funky in today’s strip…and isn’t that a terrifying thought.

When Part D Fails You.

Link to Today’s Comic.

For someone wearing a hole in his shirt patting himself on the back for writing about safe sex in the nursing home, Batiuk didn’t even do the barest minimum of research for any part of this strip at all.

Here’s five questions that immediately came to mind when reading today’s offering. I was able to answer them in seconds using ‘Grandpa Google.’

1.) Does Medicare cover Viagra? NOT USUALLY.
The only reason you could get Medicare to cover Viagra is if you had it prescribed by a doctor to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. ED drugs are not covered by Medicare part D.

2.) Is Viagra expensive? NOT ANYMORE.
In June of 2017 Pfizer’s patent on sildenafil ran out, allowing anyone to produce generics. The price dropped from 60-70 dollars a pill, to the price today which can be well under 10 dollars for the right generic.

3.) Is Viagra a little purple pill? NO. Viagra is blue. Viagra has always been blue. Viagra is known all over as, “The Little Blue Pill.”

4.) So what is the ‘Little Purple Pill’? NEXIUM
The antacid Nexium uses the phrase, ‘The Purple Pill’ or ‘The Little Purple Pill’ in many of it’s TV commercials.

5.) If Mort’s been taking Nexium instead of Viagra, what are the likely consequences? DEMENTIA.

He knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.

Link to Today’s Comic.

“I know what safety is! A wax pessary affixed with acacia gum! Just like my dad taught me!”

This really does confuse me. One, Mort is in a NURSING HOME, not a assisted living or retirement home. Where is he getting ‘safety’ materials if neither Funky nor the staff is providing them? I assume the staff would be providing them, and thus they would know that Mort didn’t need to have this uncomfortable talk with his son. Unless he’s bumming them off a friend.

And while it’s good that he won’t be getting any young nurses pregnant, I wonder if he knows there are plenty of great STD’s that most ‘safety’ measures don’t protect against. Warts, herpes, syphilis. After Mort has had the run of the place, I’m guessing Bedside Manor is crawling with more crabs than Cape Cod.
If I were Funky I’d clean off all that pubic hair covering my couch ASAP.

Supersedure

Link to Today’s Comic.

I guess Mort really does have Alzheimer’s. Or at least some kind of tragic memory disorder. Because no matter his prowess at identifying erogenous zones, I can’t imagine he would be getting much action in school in 1945, when most girls were hoping to make it to the altar untouched, and birth control was not nearly as accessible.

He also knows exactly nothing about bees. Bees don’t have kings. They have drones. Drones have no stingers. Have no fathers. And can only have sex once because the act of impregnating a queen rips out their guts. If they don’t find a virgin queen to go out with a bang, they are driven from the hive in autumn to die of starvation and cold.

But maybe he means he is more like a male Queen Bee. When a Queen Bee is born, it immediately fights in a highlander style battle to the death with all of her virgin queen sisters. A Surviving Queen Bee gets to have sex a few times, but all within a couple days, during swarming. Once her spermatheca is full, she will never have sex again. Instead she becomes the baby factory of a new hive, creating more than a thousand babies a day, every day, until she gets too old.

When she gets old she stops producing as much queen pheromone. She is then replaced by the workers in a procedure known as “supersedure”. Her sterile worker daughters will raise new queen larvae.

When a new queen becomes available, the workers kill the reigning queen by “balling” her, clustering tightly around her. Death through balling is accomplished by surrounding the queen bee and raising her body temperature, causing her to overheat and die.

So death from exposure, disembowelment during sex, sororicide, or being smothered to death by his own progeny; which would you like to see happen to Mort?