I know one way the school can save money. If you’re having a guy who’s been retired for over a decade come in and do a significant part of your job for you because you’re too busy with other stuff to do it, then you probably shouldn’t have that job anymore.
So, Becky is so busy trying to steal money designated for the football team that she can’t oversee practices? What is she doing in that time? Emailing the school board? While she’s actually on the clock for her job? That seems bad.
Dinkle commenting about returning to band land is one of the funniest things in this strip in years. He has never left. He has no life outside of band. Near as I can tell he spends every day lurking behind Becky. And the only times he’s not doing that he’s writing biographies about band.
For a guy who went pretty much deaf long ago, being able to differentiate between “raising” and “raiding” is pretty damn impressive. Far, far less impressive is the fact that the “band room” is crappily taped to the inside of the door. Rather than the outside where it would actually do any good.
Tag: badly taped signs
It’s Just the Wasted Years So Close Behind
So: this makes a walloping four times a strip has been unavailable for preview during my latest hosting period. That’s gotta be a record of some kind.
Of course, two of those times were Sundays, and Sunday’s strips are always unavailable for preview. Because why should he give us time to point out the shortcomings practically leaping all over his work?
Over at Shankcraft, for example, Apple Annie is about to sign her first author: Lillian. But–
–didn’t Ann have Les as a client? It seemed only a short eternity ago that Lillian was hosting Les’ launch party for his book about John Darling, who was murdered. I thought the story was, Les, seeing as he and his book were both garbage, tossed his manuscript into the trash (where it belonged, and where it was happy*). Ann, then a bag lady, fished it out (making it unhappy) and got it published (terrifying it), thus leading to the greatest display of egomania ever shown on the comics page. Way to go, Ann. Thanks (said all sarcastic-like). But no, apparently continuity is for losers if you can score cheap points about schizophrenia. It’s supposed to be touching, but it shoots right past maudlin and treacly and lands right in the middle of gorge-rising.
Why is it that Tom Batiuk is completely incapable of creating sympathetic characters? Does he think, “Well, she’s got a terrible mental condition, readers will love her, because they won’t dare not!”? Someday I’d like to ask him about his methods, and I don’t mean that as something nasty. I’m honestly curious about how his mind works.
Anyway, based on what’s coming next week (trust me, it’s not a superpower anyone wants), I’m thinking Sunday will be a stand-alone strip. I’m going to take stab and guess Funky’ll be in it. But who knows? All we can really say is that it will be uninteresting in every aspect.
And speaking of next week, my time in the chamber of horrors has come to an end, for now, so please give a warm welcome to your next host, snarker extraordinare Epicus Doomus!
*I have an idea about a children’s book, about a manuscript that knows it’s bad, and wants to be thrown away, but it keeps getting passed from hand to hand until it’s published. It has a happy ending, in that no one buys it and the author never tries again. Does anyone have Ann Apple’s phone number?
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.
Son of Stuck Funky 
