Lesser Whark’s comment on today’s strip: “Darin shows a rare flash of awareness that his plans are needlessly convoluted.” Tony, bless his little heart, is at least trying to pick up on the lingo. Funky is content to peer through his dollar-store half-rim specs, opting to remain silent and be thought a fool, rather than opening his mouth and removing all doubt.
Tag: the internet
iPie®
Lesser Whark
April 21, 2011 at 5:52 amOh dear. I’m an iOS developer, so Darin is speaking about a subject very close to me. Is this how zoologists feel about Mark Trail every day?
So began a well-informed and well-liked comment on Thursday’s post, wherein Lesser Whark proceeded to dismantle TB’s portrayal of MBA slash pizza-shop manager slash webdev genius Darin. Since the saga continues to unfold this week, I’ve asked Lesser Whark to lend some more of his insight.
LW: “I can’t comment on the technobabble in the first panel, but hopefully you have another reader who can.” My Googling tells me Darin’s probably referring to the Common Short Code Association, who assign numbers (“short codes”) to which an SMS or text message can be sent. Or the Ohio-centric Batiuk could be giving a nod to the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts
LW: “Wrong: you don’t host the mobile barcode scanner app on your own site. Instead, you link to the app store for their smartphone.”
The punchline (not shown here) has a clearly overwhelmed Tony wishing for “the good old days” of about five years ago. Outta the way, Pops! We’ll have more commentary from Lesser Whark as the week goes on.
Stepfather Meets the Godfather
True to his word, Les engages in a sit-down on Darin’s behalf, with Don Montoni and his consigliere. Les frames the discussion in terms of how hiring Darin would benefit Funky, since Tony already spends more time away from the business than in it.
It’s heartening to know that, at least in Westview, “things are turning around”, since it was less than a year ago that Montoni’s was struggling. Don’t expect to see Darin the MBA flipping dough or bussing tables with Wally and Rache: Les sees his stepson in a management role. After all: Darin did design Montoni’s website.
Cease and Desist
Well, now we know why sonofstuckfunky.wordpress.com (and stuckfunky.wordpress.com) got the plug pulled. Here is the letter that Batiuk’s lawyers sent to the WordPress.com folks. They are not happy with the “unauthorized use of the Funky Winkerbean name, trademark, or comic strips” on the site. They go on to ask the WordPress people to provide them with my name, address, and email address.
I’m still reeling from having the plug pulled, then was feeling great about being able to move the blog so quickly. Now I’m feeling pretty anxious. I don’t have a lawyer, I (obviously) don’t have a deep knowledge of copyright, and really don’t need to get sued.
This turn of events ought to tell you everything you need to know about Tom Batiuk’s sense of humor.
I will collect my thoughts and decide on the course of action going forward. In the meantime, thank you, friends, for your support.
Stay Funky.
TFH
Service Dog Thingy
If “it’s called writing“, how come Batiuk gives us whole strips where nobody says anything? That’s called “padding”.
Below: I edited the last two weeks’ strips to demonstrate that this story could have been told in one week, and still leave Sunday to show Funky being a dickhead at the car dealer.
Son of Stuck Funky 
