Once again priorities are mixed up

I've gotta say that while a real playoff system for college football would theoretically nice (although what do I care? Most of the colleges I've attended didn't even have football teams, and those that did were so low in the hierarchy, they took public transportation to away games), it would be even nicer if people wouldn't be declaring the elections over after exactly one state has had its say.

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Ummm, what?

So apparently Payton Manning is in a lot of commercials. That doesn't really make this a joke.

On the other hand, looking at the artwork this week, the duck appears to be somehow affixed to the side of a giant pillow while staring at something that might be a television, except that it's too thick to be a flat panel and too thin to be a CRT TV. I think maybe he couldn't afford a real TV, so he's made a fake one out of heating ducts. Bruce Tinsley himself is trapped inside it which explains the lame joke emanating from the front of the box.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Is there a joke here?

Really the thought balloon coming from the balding white guy's foot probably should have read "they're not affected by writers' strikes." Then it would have made sense.

So for those who don't have a knee-jerk unions=bad reaction to any strike news, what's at stake? The writers think that they deserve a little more than $.04 per DVD given how much money is being made on the DVD market (which is far bigger than would have been predicted back in 1988 when almost nobody ever bought VHS cassettes... they just taped movies off of HBO).

But the big issue is how much money the writers should get for online sales of TV shows and movies. The writers would like to get more than $.04/download. The producers think that the writers should get nothing.

Which brings us full-circle back to the strip. College football where millions are made and the players get, well, nothing. Yet another thing for a right-wing ideologue to like about college football.

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Maybe it's better when he doesn't try for the joke

I admit it. I've got nothing here. They keep pushing the super bowl back, and maybe someday it'll happen on Valentine's Day.

Which would be a good set-up for a joke, rather than a punch-line. Picture, say Mrs Williams griping at Walter E for spending the fortnight leading up to valentine's day worrying about the Super Bowl big game instead of finding her some nice lingerie or something. Now that could be a funny strip.

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Rant-free Sunday

I keep staring at this strip, looking for the offensive, misinformed conservative rant. I don't see it. Can it be? A rant-free Mallard Fillmore? Has the descendency of the Republican party mellowed Bruce Tinsley? As we'll no doubt see tomorrow the answer will clearly be, "of course not." Apparently, in the spirit of snark-free Sunday, the duck has decided to treat us to a rant-free Sunday.

Which is not to say all is well here. Today, Bruce didn't forget to include a joke, but the joke is kind of lame and cliched and feels like it could be any Blondie. And back-up remote? Umm, Bruce, you do know that you can change the batteries, right? Or perhaps that's the stealth joke in today's strip and it is actually funny.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Oh boy I caught the duck in hypocrisy...

.. just like every day.

Coaches moving on to jobs with better pay? Oh dear, what would Milton Friedman think of that?

Need I add that the "poetry" is so arhythmic, that I didn't even realize that it was supposed to be a poem until the third time I looked at the strip and noticed the word "ode" in the first panel?

Bruce Tinsley, please don't talk about the Cubs

There are some things that I believe very strongly in. Two of them are that the DH rule is the product of Satan, and that you should cheer for the baseball team from the city of your birth for the entirety of your life. This means that when I have kids, they'll be raised to be Dodger fans, even though I'm a Cubs fan.

So as a dedicated Cubs fan, let me just say, Bruce Tinsley, you have no right to talk about my team. Just by acknowledging their existence in passing in a poem with no discernible meter, you make me feel like I need to take a shower.

And there's a reason people don't, as a rule, talk about sporting events in comic strips: By the time the strip hits print, nobody cares. The exception that proves the rule, of course, would be the Get Fuzzy strips about the Red Sox winning the world series.

But when it comes to college bowl games, come on, two weeks later, no one can remember who played in which one, let alone who won. People are busy worrying about more important things, like the NFL playoffs.

And speaking of the NFL playoffs, even though I'm Chicago-born and bred, I'm not rooting for the Bears. I will boycott them until they get rid of that abomination that they've desecrated Soldier Field with. It's fugly. And evil. L.A., meanwhile, has managed to lose not just one, but two teams in my time here, so now I just don't really pay attention to football at all. But that's OK, baseball season begins in just over two months.

Glory Hallelujah!

We only had two days of Saddam Hussein limericks. Maybe after the latest fiasco, Tinsley got on the phone to the syndicate and begged them to pull what was planned to be a week-long series. Or maybe we'll be treated to some really tasteless attempts at poetry in a couple of weeks. The question in Tinsley's mind: "does Iraqization rhyme with decapitation?"

Today's strip carries the implication that with all that's wrong about Mallard Fillmore, apparently what really inspires people to send a letter to Indiana is what the duck has to say about bowl games. I don't know much about college football, I have to admit (I went to a division III school, we had a football team which consistently lost to such athletic powerhouses as, um, actually, I have no idea who they played. Neither did anyone else that I knew). But I do tend towards conservatism when it comes to sports. That means that I'm summarily opposed to sports league expansion, think that their should be ten schools in the Big Ten, and that the super bowl is supposed to be a match-up between the best school in the Big Ten and the best school in the Pac Ten, and who cares about all those other bowls?

So maybe the Boise State punchline really is funny. I have no idea. I suspect not. What would be funny is if Boise State was some bad team that got to play in a big-time bowl, but they apparently went 13-0 and won the fiesta bowl in overtime.

Score today: Right vs wrong? Maybe right. Funny? Not even close.

And I think that this was meant to be a poem with the emphasized rhyming words at the ends of lines 2 and 4, but again, there is no rhythm. Yo Bruce, if you get some rhythm, some music, and your girl, well, who could ask for anything more?