Like Alzheimer’s, CTE is a brain disorder, thus it holds nearly limitless comedic potential. Forgetting stuff, unpredictable mood swings, high-risk behavior, the massive all-encompassing burden it places upon family and loved ones…you know, just good old-fashioned funny page wackiness. Like in today’s strip, where we see Linda and Bull’s doctor sharing a chortle over Bull the imbecile putting the Philadelphia Cream Cheese (way to fill a word balloon by being unnecessarily descriptive there, BatNom) in the (guffaw) bathroom soap drawer. Just wait until he puts the bleach and the ammonia in one container to save space, that’ll be a hoot. And just wait until he’s unable to feed or care for himself anymore, it’ll be laughs-a-plenty then.
Tag: Bull
It Neh Ver Works Out How You Think It Will
In grade school one year I had a very strange, kind of “out there” art teacher who once told us the following joke. There’s a guy named Benny who’s walking along the railroad tracks. A train is coming and a passerby grabs Benny and pulls him out of the way to safety. Benny thanks the passerby, turns to walk away and gets hit by a second train and dies. He is then cremated. The moral of the story, of course, is that a Benny saved is a Benny urned. I believe that if I was ever to accidentally become stuck in an elevator with BanTom we’d probably get along nicely.
The jokey light-hearted tone of this arc belies what supposed to be actually happening here, but because it isn’t actually happening I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyhow. Of course the natural punch line here is “nah neh, I don’t have any change on me” but Batom missed that one somehow, remarkably enough.
Weighting Room
North Carolina? I’m assuming there must be some sort of “real life” CTE research center in North Carolina, as it just seems so random otherwise. As I pointed out last week, it’s really sort of odd how they’re only going to see a specialist now, two and a half years after Bull’s initial diagnosis. But given how time works in the Funkyverse it might only be a week and a half since he retired, there’s just no way of knowing, no absolute frame of reference to establish that OK, we are “here” right now. It’d be real helpful if instead of hand-drawn signs and bricks the joker who draws this thing would hang a f*cking calendar in the background once in a while.
But anyhow, because it’s Bull we’re treated to some typically Bull-like jock sporto idiocy before his potentially life-altering trip to the doctor. Things have been getting way too serious around here anyway, what with the FW fan community still recovering from the shock and horror of Bull losing that Brownie Point DVD last week and all. I have seen this much gravitas and solemnity since what’s her name got cancer, you know, the really annoying pious one Les used to always talk about.
The Brain Scan Revealed Nothing
The CTE arc originally began in late summer 2016. After talking to Les about her concerns regarding Bull’s recent behavior, Linda convinces Bull to see a doctor, who diagnoses him with an incurable brain disorder caused by football. Bull retires and goes home to forget things and die.
Two and a half years and one insufferable new character (Buck) later, it’s March 2019. After talking to Les about her concerns regarding Bull’s recent behavior, Linda informs Bull that she’s arranged for him to see a doctor. Not only hasn’t the CTE story progressed in any way, it’s actually managed to loop all the way around itself and come up on itself from behind, only to stop slightly short of where it began in the first place. So, the introduction of that Buck asshole aside, LITERALLY less than nothing has happened in the Bull CTE story. Bull has already experienced inexplicable tantrums and he’s already seen a doctor, yet here we are again, right before where we were when we started.
Beady-Eyed Nitpicker’s Corner: Why has Linda waited for two and a half years to get the permanent disability ball rolling for Bull? BatYak never really explained it but Bull retired immediately after being diagnosed, thus one could assume he was already ill enough to not be able to work anymore, yet according to today’s strip he hasn’t even been officially declared disabled by a doctor yet, all of which seems somewhat, uh, incongruous, let’s say.
Coming in September 2020: After talking to Les about her concerns regarding Bull’s recent behavior, Linda convinces Bull to see a doctor. Linda finally calls the state disability hotline to see what forms she’ll need to fill out.
Crazy Is As Crazy Does
The CTE is really starting to kick in now and Bull appears to be losing the few marbles he had left, although it’s admittedly really tough to tell unless you’ve been following this crap for a while. Obviously Crazy would have no use at all for an old football video unless it was made from pizza or comic books (was it???), which seems unlikely even in the Funkyverse. Seriously though, this is the darkest CTE strip since the very beginning, back when Bull was dropping things and driving recklessly. It’s amusing to me how even this dramatic moment in the story centers around something so incredibly mundane and stupid. It’s likewise kind of amusing how Bull immediately remembers that Crazy converted his old VHS tapes into DVDs, a fact it took me a few seconds to remember and I don’t even have CTE, as far as I know, that is.
Son of Stuck Funky 