holidays – Page 8 – Son of Stuck Funky

Supersedure

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?

Mort-uary Madness

Link to Today’s Comic.

Holly’s thousand yard stare into the middle distance is absolutely haunting today. If she actually managed to look at her son, she would realize that he seems to have de-aged about ten years.

It’s also seemed strange at first that Funky has pulled up a wooden chair rather than sit on the couch with his father. But then again, I wouldn’t want to be sitting on anything contiguous with my father’s loins when discussing carnal matters. Also Funky is probably afraid of getting crabs.

Looks like the rest of the week will be this conversation between two doughy-faced doppelgangers barely differentiated by hair color. Yay. My booze budget will be through the roof.

The Unfair Penitent.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Yes Funky, you are living proof that your father had intercourse with your mother at least once. That is, in fact, how humans reproduce. Not the asexual budding process that you seemed to have assumed for the first sixty years of your life. I would say we need a paternity test to be sure it was Mort who knocked on heaven’s door to bring to earth your doughy face, but given the the family resemblance, we can safely go with Nasus semper certa est.

This is nearly unbearable. However, let us at least attempt to learn and grow from our pain.

According to Webster’s online: “Lothario comes from The Fair Penitent (1703), a tragedy by Nicholas Rowe. In the play, Lothario is a notorious seducer, extremely attractive but beneath his charming exterior a haughty and unfeeling scoundrel. He seduces Calista, an unfaithful wife and later the fair penitent of the title. After the play was published, the character of Lothario became a stock figure in English literature. For example, Samuel Richardson modeled the character of Lovelace on Lothario in his 1748 novel Clarissa. As the character became well known, his name became progressively more generic, and since the 18th century the word lothario has been used for a foppish, unscrupulous rake.”

[insert barf emoji here]

Link to Today’s Comic.

Comic Book Harriet back again. I stayed up late waiting for this strip to drop.

I am now drinking heavily in an attempt to simultaneously write about and forget it.

So Mort’s regeneration has extended from mind, to body, to virility. And now the nursing staff assume he is completely capable of remembering safe sex instructions from his son… and taking Mort’s ability to consent for granted.

You remember when Mort’s Alzheimers was so bad he was reduced to a blankly staring, practically non-verbal, vegetable in a wheelchair that couldn’t even recognize his own son? I really really REALLY wish he’d stayed that way. Because this week is going to be agony.

Happy Smirksgiving

Link To Today’s Strip

That is one long, narrow table. And I assume that’s Rachel’s kid sitting next to her, even though I’m pretty sure he should be in high school by now. He’s definitely going to be in my nightmares for a while though, the way he’s staring right at the viewer for some reason. He looks like he should be in a horror movie, where none of the people can actually see him.

Wally’s expression is also pretty uncomfortable, although it’s more of the incredibly smug variety then creepy. I guess his expression is supposed to be saying “hey reader, look how awesome I am, having MUSLIMS at my (uncle/cousin’s) THANKSGIVING! Isn’t this mind-blowing, and award-worthy?! Damn, Tom Batiuk sure is one HELL of a writer”.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 🙂