***
Girls & Sports
(when they weren't running sports jokes):
"I don't usually go on blind dates, but Joann spoke so highly of you."
"Oh? Did she tell you about how I'm getting a second Ph.D, or that I run marathons?"
"No"
"She must have mentioned my charity ventures, or that I'm a Rhodes scholar"
"No"
"She told me you were cute"
***
Pearls Before Swine:
Pig: What are you doing here, Rat?
Rat: People are always letting me down. So I wanted to find a place where I could be around people who would never disappoint me, never lie to me, never let me down.
Rat at graveyard: EUREKA!
Rat: It's strips like this that differentiate us from 'Ziggy.'
Rat: What's that music?
Goat: Chopin's 'Funeral March'... It's coming from over there.
*Ice cream truck drives past*
Rat: That guy needs some marketing help.
Rat: I went to a 'Starbucks' on Monday. It was 11:00 A.M. The cafe was filled with people all sitting around. I began to ponder some of life's greatest mysteries.
Goat: Like what?
Rat: LIKE WHY DON'T THESE PEOPLE HAVE JOBS?!!
Rat: It's the question of our age.
Pig: What are you doing, rat?
Rat: I got a job writing motivational posters for the workplace.
Pig: What are those?
Rat: They're these posters that businesses put up on their walls to inspire their employees... Here, I'll show you one...
See, it says, "Team." And each of the letters stands for something... "Together...Everyone...Achieves...Much!"
Pig: Awwww... That's sweet. You wrote that?
Rat: No, No... I wrote this...
*This Employer Annoys the @#*# out of Me*
Pig: That's not very inspirational.
Rat: Profanity is the key to any good motivational poster.
Rat: Hi folks, it's me, Rat. Think the comics are just for yucks? Think only 'Doonesbury' does social commentary? Well, you're wrong.
The truth is, syndicated cartoonists are doing social and political commentary in their comics almost every day. You're just not seeing it.
Don't believe me? Why just look at this 'Hagar the Horrible.' The symbolism is, of course, obvious. But for those of you that can't see it, I've provided some helpful notes.
*Here we have a commentary on the various religious sects fighting for power in Iraq. Hagar, representing the Sunni minority in Baghdad, is returning to a neighborhood destroyed by sectarian violence.*
*The real estate agent, a metaphor for the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (note the all-black coat) is attempting to lure Hagar into a poorly-protected home, an obvious trap.*
*Helga, who symbolizes the ineffective Nouri al-Miliki regime, stands passively by, unwilling or unable to help Hagar.*
*Do the sects resolve their differences? Of course not, as illustrated by the gathering clouds in the distance.*
Rat: Join me next week as I reveal the connection between Garfield's lasagna and the re-emergence of the totalitarian state in Russia.
***
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