The traveling green shirt lives up to its name in today’s strip, moving from a now unseen black student yesterday to Shermy and his crew cuttiest crew cut today. As an extra bonus, Cayla’s original actress cameos in the front row in panel 3.
So, 4 days into this story and the EMU reps finally get to do what they came to do, talk to students about college… and they open by insulting a good percentage of the class. No only that, they do so with an insult usually used by college grads against grads of a rival school.
Don’t forget about Saturday’s Winter Concert. You could try to, but TB isn’t going to make it easy.
And now for the recurring use of a somewhat related Emo Philips joke:
“I left for college that September.
My dad said ‘I’m going to miss you.’
I said, ‘Well now that I broke that sight off of your rifle…’
Yeah, my parents threw quite a going-away party for me, according to the letter.”
– Emo Philips
Today’s strip is a triumph in forced perspective. See how the spindly tip of Owen’s chullo appears to be scratching the temple of a young Spike Jones in panel 2. Remarkable.
And don’t forget to pick up your tickets for Saturday’s 8:00 PM Winter Concert. That is a thing that is going to be happening, a stark contrast to this strip, which is the very opposite of the definition of “happening”.
Not-quite Emu quote of the day: “I ran three miles today… finally I said, ‘Lady, keep your purse.'”
– Emo Philips
Today’s strip called for a post title so obligatory, TB himself would probably be disappointed if I didn’t use it. We can’t have that, can we?
As we learned back when Dirigibles Unnerving Ingrates Diversity University Ironton was trying to hire him to coach their football team, one of Bull’s few motivations in life is the prospect of free clothing. Bull was probably one of the first people to move to Chia Earth (17 internet points to all who get that reference).
Those of us who won’t have the opportunity to sit through Sarah Silverman and Jo Jo White’s presentation on how to incur obscene debt can still get our very own EMU t-shirts right here.
Also, daily Emu Emo Quote:
“I thought I was being followed by a paid assassin, but it turns out the guy’s a volunteer.”
– Emo Philips
Today’s strip see’s the return of TB’s latest shot at a running gag, places of higher education whose acronyms have other meanings. For those of you weren’t around for the second week of my first round of guest authoring back in November, we had a whole week of strips built around saying Diversity University Ironton’s name and acronym as much as possible. What a coincidence!
To TB’s credit, the acronym gag does distract significantly from the general discordance of this strip. If the presentation by the EMU reps is on Bull’s calendar, why are they introducing themselves and their purpose? Why does Bull exclaim “absolutely!” when he was not asked a question? Wait… Bull teaches classes? I had to read the strip 5 times before I started asking these questions.
Since “emu” is but a line closing the u away from “emo”, I leave you with a relevant and humorous quote (something about all this ought to be humorous):
“My name is Emo, as opposed to an Emu. Which, as you all know, is an Australian bird–a tall, ugly, skinny creature with a big beak. No similarity there.”
– Emo Philips
If there is a teacher at Westview High less competent than Les Moore, it’s Jim Kablichnick, the ostensible teacher of science, as today’s strip aptly demonstrates. And, argh! Is this the intro to the annual “school levy fails” arc? Have we had that yet this cycle (I can’t be arsed to check)? Let me tell you—I’m a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but I’d vote against this band of nincompoops getting any more tax money!
“[T]he map” in Jim’s classroom “was so old,” he tells Linda, who fails to reply, “How old was it?”
“[T]he continents, which are major land masses surrounded by water, too large to be considered mere islands—the continents, I say—the continent of South America and the continent of Africa—those continents were still conjoined, united, and fitted together in some sort of ‘super’ continent, which would be a nice topic for a comic book,” Jim does not quite say, although Bantom cannot prevent himself from composing Jim’s speech in a loquacious manner, because—I don’t know—he’s never heard of The Elements of Style’s admonition to “omit needless words.” Also, Jim thinks his colleagues are ignoramuses who don’t know what South America and Africa are.
This might have been a mildly amusing joke if not for two flaws.
The punchline should have read like one of these
And the map was so old that Africa and South America were still joined together.
And the map was so old, it only showed Pangaea.
And the map was so old, it had “here be dragons” instead of Florida.
And the map was so old, it had Amerigo Vespucci’s autograph.
This image of a smartphone in Les’s delicate hands, from yesterday’s strip: If only there were some way to see up-to-date maps in 2015! If only!
Strips like this drive me to drink, and for that, and that only, thank you, Tom Batiuk!
Here endeth my current stint as your guest snarker. Many thanks to TFH! The gloriously acid-tongued Epicus Doomus takes over tomorrow.
Son of Stuck Funky 