Category: Son of Stuck Funky

Every Day the Paperboy Brings More

And I recommend that you
Stop watching the news
Because the news contrives to frighten you
To make you feel small and alone
To make you feel that your mind isn’t your own

Morrissey, “Spent the Day in Bed“

So Funky’s rationale for staying sober is that, even if he drank all the alcohol in the world…in the whole world…that the “insanity” of life would continue. Isn’t that setting the bar (no pun intended) a little high (still no pun intended)? Couldn’t he just drink enough to stay drunk and not care so much about the world? If he finds the news each day to be so upsetting, why doesn’t Funky just stop watching the news each day? Once again Batiuk attempts to tackle a serious subject and buries himself and the rest of us under “the weight of substantial ideas.”

Extinction Tourism

PharmDawg
January 3, 2018 at 11:22 pm
If this was an AA meeting, somebody would have stopped Funky mid-sentence by saying, “In keeping with our singleness of purpose and our Third Tradition which states that ‘The only requirement for A.A. membership
is a desire to stop drinking,’ we ask that all who participate confine their discussion to their problems with
alcohol.”

Comment of the week right there, folks. Of course, what we’re seeing is not an AA meeting, but what Batiuk thinks an AA meeting is like. Hence, we see people drinking coffee (which does happen) and smoking cigarettes (which is not allowed indoors in most places, including Ohio).

Of course, no list by Batiuk of What Ails the World would be complete without a mention of climate change, and everyone’s complicity in same: “We’re sending cruise ships…” Watching glaciers melt, or grass grow, or paint dry would be far more interesting than wading through a week of this dreck.

The Gods Must Be Lazy

With his “home of the fearful” riff yesterday, it appeared Funky was about to launch into a political diatribe; however, today he veers into that other topic we’re supposed to never discuss in polite company. “Every day there’s news of one religion or another [emphasis mine] trying to elbow each other out of the way”? Uhh, ok. I guess he’s talking about those militant Presbyterians. Where the hell does Funky get his “news”?

‘Fraid New World

beckoningchasm
January 1, 2018 at 9:44 am
Why does it have to be a stupid acronym like ARID? Why not just use the real AA? You could publicize an organization that has actually done some good.

I suspected ARID’s clubhouse might be another Real Place in Ohio. When I Googled “ARID twelve and twelve,” the first result linked to a very outdated site, hosted at tripod.com and apparently the work of someone with a serious axe to grind with Alcoholics Anonymous. I won’t bother linking to it, out of my personal respect for AA and other twelve step programs (which the “ARID Site” dismisses as “recovery cultism”). A little more searching turned up the “Akron Arid Club”, an AA group which according to the Beacon Journal closed in 2011. The location still can be seen in Google Street view; other than being made of bricks, the building bears no resemblance to Monday’s exterior.

Now that we’ve cleared that up…Funky frets that his son and prospective daughter-in-law, two Army vets who met while clearing landmines in Afghanistan, may have difficulty dealing with today’s political climate. He should be more concerned about Cigarette Guy, whose plume of smoke threatens to cloud the whole room.

Alcoholics Eponymous

I guess we shouldn’t complain: having split most of the last couple years between indulging his comic book fetish and flogging his latest collection of strips, Tom Batiuk’s finally gets around to featuring his comic’s titular character. The last Funkycentric storyline we had was in March, in which he explored an abandoned house in the woods while pondering mortality. Funky’s funk has not lessened, driving him back to AA where he assumes a Jesus pose and bemoans the absence of his book-touring best friend Les (“un-Moore-d”, get it?).