Haiku-ly Offensive

Today’s strip is same
Joke as rest of this week’s strips
What did you expect?

“Merry Gentlemen”
Not offensive to Batiuk
Workaholic? Ha!

Depressive also
Not offensive to Batiuk
It is his trademark

Nate’s “war on Christmas”
As long as Six Day War but
There are no winners

What will Sunday bring?
I’m on sleeve pins and needles
I know you are too

Boondock Nates

Hey, did you like this joke on Tuesday? How about Wednesday? Thursday? Today is the fourth verse, same as the first. I swear that today’s strip is properly linked, and that you aren’t looking at one of the earlier strips from this week. “Seriously?” Lefty asks? Seriously Mrs. Howard, seriously.

A more valid concern about “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” for Nate is that Pa Winkerbean might start singing it during the performance. OK, that’s not really fair of me, because at this point I’d welcome that happening in any of this week’s strips.  Anything to break this up, even a joke TB obviously repurposed from a Crankshaft draft.

You know, I just saw this strip in the dictionary next to “slog”. Whoever’s footprints those are in the snow in panel 2, headed away from this den of insipidity… I envy you. I truly do.

Thursday, December 10

Today’s strip was not available for preview. This is kinda like getting a Christmas present from that relative who always gets you socks… if those socks were also made of broken glass.

Speaking of that relative, you still have time to get them a truly meaningful gift. For the third consecutive year, this TB-signed letter from the future world of 2990 is for sale on eBay. A great collectors item for the true Funkyfan in your family, especially if their name is Andrew and you hate them. Act now to get that 10% discount, it’s a real bargain at under $540!

Blackburn Ordinances

Today’s strip is a serious reach. I mean, given that this is a band Holiday Concert I assume this is all instrumental, can’t Lefty just alter the program to say “The Christmas Song”, as us beady-eyed nitpickers (and everyone who bought a Christmas record ever) know to be the true title of “Chestnuts Roasting”?

Not that I expected this gag to match some absurd reality in Ohio, but for what it is worth, the Ohio EPA’s open burning regulations allow for “barbeques, campfires, and cookouts” provided these conditions are met:
– Wood stack no larger than 2 ft. high x 3 ft. wide.
– Use clean, seasoned firewood or equivalent.

Nothing that would prevent roasting chestnuts, of course. Also, big kudos to the Ohio EPA for titling their pamphlet on how your local fire department needs to be involved should you decide to raze a structure you own using fire “Burning Down the House: How Your Fire Department Can Do it Properly”.

Discr-hymn-ination

Mild-mannered principal Nate springs out of character in today’s strip and demands that Lefty remove “Faith Of Our Fathers” from the Holiday Concert program.

Yeah, yeah, seen it before. Public school has to alter Christmas performance, removing an explicitly Christian song or statement in order to maintain an apparent separation of church and sta- WHOA! Nate has an entirely different reason for wanting “Faith Of Our Fathers” removed from the program? Oh ho ho, Tom, you got me. You got me good. I was totally thinking the one thing and then, BAM! Never saw this “mothers” thing coming.

It’s a classic bait-and-switch, like when the table of contents of my newspaper says the comics are on page E6, and I turn to E6 and find Funky Winkerbean.

“Faith Of Our Fathers”, by the way, is a hymn written about/in memory of English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation period. When TB picks a theme, by gum, he sticks with it.