Tag: Minty Pete

#abitlame

Hey, no Batton Thomas for Mr. Theskink in today’s strip! Nope, just comic people younger than Batton talking about comic people even older than Batton. That’s… better? I’ll let you all tell me.

There is, of course, an actual Hall Of Fame class inducted at the San Diego Comic-Con every year, which is part of the Eisner Awards. Not sure why TB didn’t drop the Eisner name in there before “Hall Of Fame”, but I guess that isn’t critically germane to the plot… that age-old story of a trio of 5th rate comic book company employees getting an e-mail about the acceptance of their nomination of people far more talented than them for the Eisner Awards Hall Of Fame.

Check out that list of real life Hall Of Famers, though. That’s impressive company. Even the A and B names on the first page of inductees alone is a who’s who of comic legends (I did notice the conspicuous absence of a certain B name). It says a lot about how TB wants Ruby and Flash to viewed in the Batiukverse… we’re talking Les-level here. Wowzers!

Give ‘er a Ring!

Link to Today’s Strip.

I want to thank everyone in the comments yesterday for completely ruining what I was going to post today. I was going to go on and on about how Dinkle has learned all about online fundraising multiple times over the past few years, and pull up the strips to prove it. But our crack commenters Billy the Skink and Banana Jr. already discussed it in depth. Jerks.

I mean, what am I supposed to talk about today? The fact that Dinkle couldn’t wait to call his wife over his viral cat video epiphany, and is postponing practice to do it? The fact that he apparently called his wife on a Playstation Vita? The fact that Lillian is now carrying the pineapple laptop around one handed, and it made me question if she’s been doing that all week?

While going mad trying to scrape together something passing for an amusing thought, my eyes were drawn to the wedding rings Dinkle and Harriet are wearing. It’s an interesting detail to include when the art so often seems quarter-assed. Scrolling through the strips this arc, the ring is inconsistent. It showed up Sunday, but the art on the Sunday strips is always higher effort. It showed up on Monday April, 12. But after that, it was nowhere to be seen, even when the hands were in focus.

Slipping off the ring to pick up chicks? What a sly lad.

And scrolling through archives, there are more disappearing wedding rings than last call at a dive bar. Wedding rings tend to appear when the person’s marriage is either being discussed, or the spouse is in the strip, and be absent otherwise. It’s like the rings exist in some kind of phantom zone and magically phase into being when contacted with an unseen magical matrimonial energy field.

This is best exemplified from Funky’s AA exercise rant from last month. Remembering his wife causes Funky to magically manifest his wedding ring mid-speech.

I don’t even know what I’m trying to say with this, just something weird I noticed.

Even weirder, did you know that Lillian magically manifested a ring yesterday in service of a crappy joke?

The Mystery Continues.

This has been your daily dose of Nitpicking News! Finding something to say about nothing since 2010.

Join us tomorrow as we veer off on oblique tangents to keep from going mad with boredom and frustration, and watch with baited breath as we wait to see if the downvote fairy will visit again tonight and slip us all a little present under our comments while we sleep.

“Clink!”

Link to today’s strip.

Many many apologies for the late post tonight. I was working late on the farm, trying to get a field of mown hay chopped before forecasted rain. I was out there till 10, well after dark.

As I was driving the tractor back and forth across the field stubble, watching the windrows emerge from the inky black and enter the pool of tractor light. As I jogged from machine to machine in the chilly night air, a golden Cheshire moon sinking into the horizon, the Big Dipper above me at the very apex of the sky…I had a lot of time to think over this week. And I came to one conclusion.

It is dumber than dumb that dumb Tom thought that we all were too dumb to remember the dumb name of the dumb crowdfunding site, so he had to list it by it’s dumb name three dumb days in a row, and then he expects that we’re all smart enough to remember that dumb Dinkle wears a dumb medal under his dumb shirt because he showed us a month ago.

Dumb.

Video Doesn’t Lie.

Link to Today’s Strip.

At this point Lillian is a popular mystery author, with a writing career 110% more successful, meaningful, and productive than Les Moore’s. Due the self-promoting nature of her job, she is probably more tech savvy and better equipped to navigate a crowdfunding site, than say…literally anyone I know over the age of 75.

But I don’t know if I would trust her cinematography and video editing skills.

I’m picturing a blurry image, in portrait mode. Seven elderly women in a poorly lit choir loft. The video begins halfway through the first words of the song. The audio is muffled by Lillian’s finger over the mic, as the whitebread midwestern ladies mumble their way through ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’.

The phone is obviously trembling in Lillian’s weak hands, jarring the autofocus every few seconds. Blurry, then sharp, then blurry; background then foreground. She awkwardly zooms in and out from each choir member, and when the camera zooms, the shaking is magnified, so each woman looks like she’s having her own personal earthquake. Lillian’s arms dip in exhaustion, abruptly cutting the entire choir off at the head, before she corrects herself.

Before the song even ends, she tries to shut the phone off, but fails. The last minute of the video, (Which Lillian uploads in its entirety, unsure of how to edit.) is the interior of her purse in the dark. You can distantly hear the muffled voices of the choir members gossiping viciously about the parson’s granddaughter. Six months along they say. With twins. She’s even moved in with the cad, and you know that he smokes in the house. And they say the divorce from her first husband isn’t even finalized.

“It makes you wonder…” Minty Pete says, “I mean, I’ve seen it on Maury once.”

“What’s that?” Poodle Headed Lisa Reborn asks.

“Heteropaternal superfecundation”

Take No Thought…What Ye Shall Put On

Link to Today’s Strip.

On the one hand, we have another nonsensical Dinkle strip.

On the other hand, we have a Dinkle plan failing.

So it’s a glass of poison half full kind of day.

I was kind of surprised we didn’t get an unconnected Sunday strip celebrating Mother’s Day. It would be nice to get a peek in on any of the parental storylines that have been dangling for years. How old is Skyler now? Are Corey and Rocky ever getting married? Are Summer and Keisha ever graduating college? What are Jinx and Mickey going to do for Linda? Are Crazy Harry’s children ever returning from the netherrealm hellscape they fell into?

But nah. We get an inane and confusing strip, where I have no idea what ‘think outside the choir loft’ might mean, and I can’t tell if Dinkle is shouting ‘Bingo!’ as an exclamation of affirmation, a suggestion of gambling, or the idea to sell the cat for money. And I have no idea if the old lady in the last panel is trying to let Dinkle know bingo the fundraising game is taken by another church group, or the cat Bingo has been taken by animal control.

And it’s still dumb as sin, sinfully dumb, and just plain sinful, that this church choir is expending so much effort to buy choir robes. Choir robes. A pointless boondoggle for a congregation who, if choir participation is anything to go by, is dying from lack of young people and men.

St. Peter would be very grumpy at you!

“Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.” 1 Peter 3:3-4.

For any of you readers who are Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, Dog Moms, Cat Moms, or just enjoy worrying over people who don’t dress warmly and making sure everyone has snacks, Happy Mother’s Day. Your work is valued, and you are loved. And you deserve so much more today than a Dinkle strip.