Seasoned Storytelling.

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Mindy’s been so dumb the last week, I’m half surprised panel two didn’t go like this:
Mindy: “You drew this on my shirt!? You live in Sri Lanka? Because that’s where it says the shirt came from! I knew it was ‘custom’ but wow,and it only cost me 30 bucks! Does it get tiring drawing on shirts all day?”

And sure you’re seasoned. I bet you’ve got a lovely Blue Emu rub all over your arthritic hands, combined with peppermint essential oils. Embalmed is not the same as seasoned.

As many pointed out yesterday, how many famous old artists and actors does Batiuk intend to shove into the twilight years of his strip? At this point we’re up to five or six random octogenarians wandering in the strip so younger characters can show their comics cred by squeebleing all over them.

That vaguely Maoist hat, combined with a granola munching quirky appearance, makes me suspicious of this plotline though. Like we’re about to get a ‘serious’ story about how a woman was idealistic about America in the old days of institutionalized racism, sexism, and South Asian proxy wars, but now that Trump is in office she’s realized the error of her ways now supports Bolshevism.

There She Is…Miss American

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Many apologies for the late post.

An odd plot related strip for a Sunday. Batiuk seems to prefer to keep Sundays self-contained and make sure there’s a joke, in order to placate the Sunday only papers and readers. This strip must seem absolutely nonsensical to people who only read the Sunday funnies.

But we learned something today. This elderly gallery owner was also involved in comics. Because everyone everywhere in the Batiukverse was involved with producing comic book related material at some point in their life.

Nocturnal Dietitians

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So they left an hour after the fair closed…and then drove a funnel cake to the Bedside Manor? How late is it? Our county fair closes at 10:00, and I’m guessing that is about standard. It’s got to be approaching midnight. What kind of nursing home lets people just wander in at midnight?

And poor old Gramps has been abandoned alone in his wheelchair, completely clothed, in the middle of the night. Where’s the nurse on call? The only reason he’s calm and smiling is from huffing the cheap nitrous oxide they slip into his ‘oxygen’ tanks to keep him passive and pliable. What kind of cut-rate elder warehouse is this? The kind where the miserable staff hide from the patients in their break room snitching jello snacks and swapping pills.

I mean, look at the heavy lidded eyes of the lady in panel one and tell me she isn’t baked out of her mind on a delicious cocktail of the nursing home specials, oxycontin, seroquel, vicodin, and Miralax. Dinkle could come marching in with an entire rock band, and she would barely be able to blink.

Scare Thee Well.

Link to today’s strip

Well Mindy has not only annoyed all the exhausted carnies cleaning up the grounds by sticking around an hour after close, she’s now terrified them by randomly shouting into the darkness.

And we’re supposed to be touched as Mindy waxes all nostalgic about a fair trip where they stood in one place for upwards of five hours and blew several hundred dollars on a Tawny the Not-Talking Tiger rip off?

I just realized that the Tiger is Mindy. They were both handed out as a prize to someone who hadn’t really done anything to earn them except hang around too long being pathetic. Pete was just as enthusiastic to get Mindy as she was to get the tiger. Both are pretending they’ve won something great when in reality they’ve been given a cheaply made air-filled squeeze toy by a bored uncaring carnie clown who is tired of waiting for his shift to end.

Consolation Prize

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Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh! This is awful. The only possible more awkward engagement involves a shotgun in one hand and a pregnancy test in the other.

Pete was going to propose tonight? On a night they just sort of randomly decided to go to the fair because Mindy wanted to? He wasn’t going to wait to plan a more meaningful or romantic date? And he was either going to propose without a ring, or he’s got a ring in his pocket, bought off credit, that he now has to return.

And his response to losing his ring money is just awful and pathetic. He just offhandedly tells Mindy this. It’s worse than a non proposal. It’s a non-proposal proposal. “I was going to ask you to marry me, but now that I’ve wasted money I would have spent on gold and jewels that retain some monetary value in the long run I’ve instead wasted hundreds on a stuffed tiger worth 5 bucks. But I still want you to marry me, so I’m basically asking the question in the form of a passive statement.”

My sister was going to get proposed to over Christmas. She and her boyfriend had traveled to spend the holiday with our whole family, and her boyfriend had the ring mailed to my parents house so he could propose on Christmas morning. The ring arrived damaged. SO HE DIDN’T PROPOSE THEN. He didn’t even tell her. He waited to get the ring fixed and then set up a date to propose to her later at the place they first met. He eventually told her the story about what happened over Christmas, sure. Because it’s a funny story. But telling her ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, would have gotten him run out of the house.

You can’t tell someone, “I was going to ask you to marry me, but…” Unless the ‘but’ is something along the lines of “I don’t actually want to marry you.” Otherwise it’s a proposal.

I miss Chien. You remember when they sort of implied Pete and Chien had some attraction during High School? That girl was sassy, and snarky, and smart. She was a stereotyped goth-chick, sure, but in a sea of skinny blondes she would have stood out. And she wouldn’t have squeebled over a stuffed tiger. She would have given Pete a dirty look, and then a piece of her mind. I wish Pete was marrying Chien. Mindy is dumb as a box of rocks.