Tag: Jim Kablichnik

In Situ Whatever

Batiuk’s “Funky felt tip” has been especially cruel to Linda yesterday and today: she looks like Crankshaft backed the school bus over her. I especially like the shadow cast by her nose.

The strip at first focused on gags about teenagers at the imaginary Westview High School. Over the years, it explored sensitive topics such as cancer, dyslexia, teen suicide and alcoholism.

—From just about every profile written about Tom Batiuk

But hey: writing means that you can play sensitive topics for laughs when you feel like it, right? So let’s all chuckle at the thought of Jim the Science Guy, alone in his hotel room, draining tiny, overpriced bottles of liquor while his colleagues dine without him.

Flashback to the 2007 Westview Senior Trip: Chien continues to demonstrate the “esteem” she has for her culturally deprived classmates.

Statutory Ignorance

Today’s haphazardly drawn tableau finds the senior Scapegoats admiring a statue which their chaperone incorrectly identifies as “Eternal Vigilance” (its actual title is “Guardianship”).  I’m reminded of a quote from Mark Vonnegut’s memoir, The Eden Express: “The price of eternal vigilance is insanity.” Query whether Cory’s opinion of “shrinks” is based on firsthand experience.

Flashback to the 2007 D.C. Trip:
Chien may have been one of the (few) fairly attractive Batiuk women, but her fans may have forgotten how bitchy and unpleasant she could be…

An Inconvenient Douche

Unlike Tom Batiuk, I strive to keep my personal opinions out of my “writing”. But since he insists on preaching to us (through Jim the Science Guy) about climate change (I don’t call it global warming), I’m going to vent a little “greenhouse gas” here myself: I’m one of “those people” who  do not believe that the planet is irreversibly heating up, even after the just-ended record-warm winter (which I, not being a winter sportsman, enjoyed the hell out of). There is at least as much credible scientific opinion to disprove climate change as there is to prove it.

That’s my opinion, and you, dear reader, are welcome to your own. On to today’s strip. We find Cory actually awake and paying attention in class (because even Cory is concerned about Global Warming). He shares that he “heard someone on the radio” (these kids and their radios these days, am I right?) call Global Warming “a hoax”. Cory gives a sly, demure tilt of his head, as if to say “Gee, Mr. Kablichnik, that feller on the radio can’t be right…can he? Say it ain’t so, Jim.” Jim wearily throws up his hands; he’s heard the deniers (such fools!), and sets Cory, and the rest of us, straight.

For your pleasure: previous strips dealing with the “fact” of Global Warming:

May 25, 2008: Same premise as today’s strip (and how long has Rana been in this class?) But I gotta give props to Jim for mentioning a classic Randy Newman song.

December 5, 2010: “Of course Global Warming can actually mean we get more snow. That doesn’t make sense to you?”

June 23, 2011: Principal Nate is on board with the whole global warming thing, to the point of inserting it into random conversations:

Conference News

Oh, you forgot that Jinx was a “sports junkie“? You must not remember her excitement when step-mom Linda signed her up to play girls’ softball a few summers ago (and guess who she volunteered to coach?). The news of the She-Goats’ advancing to the state tournaments is greeted with utter indifference by everyone but Summer, Cayla, and Les, who is smirking up a storm. Jim the science teacher isn’t even looking at the TV; he just stares into space, contemplating retirement.