Sucky Funnies for October 13, 2024

Leaves are falling and it’s just about time to kick on my furnace for the first time of the season, which means I’ll discover that it’s broken again and I’ll have to call the guy with the wrench to come over to my house and hit it for an hour for $450.

But hey, at least I can seek solace in the hilarity of the Sunday funnies! What’s on tap today, ladies and gentlemen?

Pluggers

Pluggers - October 13, 2024

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Yes, we get it. We get it. Your average Plugger is a complete fucking slob who barely has enough energy to heft their bulk onto their Rascal Scooters and zip on down to the community center to pull the lever for Trump. But 10,000 calories? What is that, like eight Hungry Man meals? 20 Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supremes? 357 Marshmallow Peeps? Put the fork down, Karen from Farmersville, Texas, or else your equally slovenly husband won’t be able to scale your massive body to the top for forced, uncomfortable, heart attack-inducing sexual relations.

Stupid Pluggers.

Herb and Jamaal

Herb and Jamaal - October 13, 2024

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The joke here is that Jamaal doesn’t have enough hair to necessitate a haircut in the first place, but I’m fixated on the fact that Jamaal has no hair at all unless you count those little wisps on the side of his head that he could just shave off at home with a BIC razor in 30 seconds.

But here’s where the humor actually lies: Jamaal goes to get a haircut often enough to ask for a loyalty discount. This fucker visits the barbershop with enough frequency that he should understand the policy by now, but no. Like a braindead goldfish, he tries to haggle with the barber again about a reduction in price, a tradition he has indulged himself in every month for the last 35 years. Anyone else find that funny? Just me? Okay.

Tarzan

Tarzan - October 13, 2024

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There are so many of these serial comic strips that require keeping up lest you become lost forever. There is never any handholding, never any “previously on” segments, just a woman dressed vaguely like medieval Maleficent warning her clan of fancifully-dressed archers that, if Tarzan and his similarly mostly-naked horde of hairy elves crosses the bridge, they’ll have escaped harm forever. Who in the country is keeping up with the adventures of Tarzan?? Little Jimmy is playing Mario Kart, he doesn’t have time to read a comic strip that started almost 100 years before he was born. It’s ridiculous that this shit is still in syndication. It makes me want to poop right on my newspaper.

Although the idea of the Spock-eared elf having so little precious time to get away that he abbreviates “Tarzan” to “T’Zan” to save a modicum of breath is funny to me. It sounds like a stage name for his Wu-Tang Clan cover group, along with G of the Jungle. Werd.


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Season 9, Episode 1 – “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”

The Simpsons, Season 9, Episode 1 - The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson

“The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”

Original Air Date:
September 21, 1997
Directed by:
Jim Reardon
Written by:
Ian Maxtone-Graham

QUICK SYNOPSIS

Homer must travel to New York to get his car back, which is illegally parked at World Trade Center Plaza.

POINTLESS GUEST STAR(S)

None! Not one! Not even in the Broadway musical! I can’t even ding the episode for an erroneous cameo by Cameron Diaz or *checks most popular people of 1997* Austin Powers, yeah baby.

WHY THIS EPISODE SUCKS

OK, I guess a bad way to start a new feature about the shittiest 25 years of The Simpsons is to spotlight the best episode of the post-classic era. This episode doesn’t suck at all! It’s actually quite good, and if you’re willing to go out of your comfort zone and watch the family in an exotic locale à la “Bart vs. Australia” or “You Only Move Twice” (which, I will admit, is sometimes tough), then “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” will be your jar of pickled eggs! Minus the black one.

So, in the absence of things that actually suck about “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”, mayhaps I’ll point out the highlights. The story is coherent all the way through, with a first act that logically flows into the actually meat of the story. The B-story with the rest of the Simpson family seeing the sights of New York City contrasts nicely with Homer dancing around needing to pee, confined to the Twin Towers plaza in a city he would actually like if he got to go to a Broadway show and visit the MAD Magazine headquarters.

The problem with this episode is that it’s lumped in with Season 9, the marked decline of the show. It would have been a fucking GREAT Season 8 finale! And then it wouldn’t have the vibe of a mediocre season with episodes like “All Singing, All Dancing” in it.

The Simpsons, Season 9, Episode 1 - The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Due to the prominence of the World Trade Center in the plot, the episode was removed from syndication after the September 11 attacks. By 2006, the episode had come back into syndication in some areas; however, parts of the episode were often edited out. (Mainly when it cuts to any exterior shot of the towers is now not shown). One previously such edited item is a scene of two men arguing across Tower 1 and Tower 2, where a man from Tower 2 claims, “They stick all the jerks in Tower 1.” Bill Oakley commented in retrospect that the line was “regrettable”.
Yeah, this is some dumb shit. If you were born near or after 9/11/2001, then you may be completely unaware of just how much this American terrorist attack broke all the Boomer brains. They started editing out scenes with the Twin Towers from every movie and TV show that featured them. When they couldn’t remove scenes, they would airbrush out the towers. Episodes of TV shows were pulled from syndication. It was as if everyone was trying to pretend that they were never there in the first place, or that looking at a couple of buildings might be triggering. Any references to or depictions of terrorism, bombs, explosions and burning buildings were rewritten. It was an incredibly stupid period of an overly-frightened and coddled nation trying to be overcompensate by scaring everyone into staunch patriotism. Or something. I don’t even fucking know. Also, Bush’s approval rating soared to 90%! 90%! 90%! Anyway, calling jokes that you wrote four years before a terrorist attack “regrettable” is also stupid, especially since they weren’t “I’M GOING TO BOMB THIS BUILDING”-type jokes. Again, broken brains. What are ya gonna do?

The animators were told to make a detailed replica of the city. David Silverman was sent to Manhattan to take hundreds of pictures of the city and areas around the World Trade Center.
This was back in the days of Polaroids and Kodak disposable cameras! You had to take cameras and film into a drugstore and have them develop it for you. Isn’t that nuts?! ’90s!

The celebrity on trial in the Broadway musical “Kicking it” that Marge and the kids go see is based on Robert Downey Jr.
Oh, ok. I thought he was supposed to be Luke Perry. Let me check his Wikipedia page for a moment… … …no drugs, but cancer! No Betty Ford Center for you.

This is the first time that Lisa shushes.
Huh. Well I’ll be damned. She seems like the shushy type.

FINAL GRADE
A


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Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

* Part 4 of 6 of the Archie (Vol 2) Volume 1 collection *

Welcome to Archieness & Riverdalers Presents: Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4! In the previous installment, there’s a new girl in town! Her name is Veronica Lodge, and Archie wants to hit that so hard. SO hard, man. And Jughead’s quite annoyed about it, so he enlists Betty’s help into fixing their friend.

Eventually, Betty obliges. But it sounds like there are going to be some demons that she’ll be dredging up again…

HIGH SCHOOL MELODRAMA, BABY!

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4 [January, 2016]
Written by: Mark Waid

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Archie plugs in his guitar and gets electrocuted to death. Nearly. In real life this kid would be a crisp, but in comic book life his best friend leans over his smoldering body and goes “Maybe acoustic today.”

As an apology, Jughead offers Archie half a candy bar called “Goo-Bar”, which Archie refuses sullenly and walks away from the garage.

“Jughead reminded me of something he didn’t mean to, but he did, and now it’s gonna be stuck in my head the rest of the day,” Archie tells the reading audience (ME!). “’It’ = the thing that broke up Betty and me. ‘It’ = ‘The Lipstick Incident’”

Oh boy! Do we finally get to know about how far up Archie’s butthole Betty pushed in that lipstick tube? All the way up, I’m guessing!

“You want to hear about it?” Archie asks me, as if he didn’t already know! YES! TELL ME ABOUT YOUR LIPSTICK BUTTHOLE!

Archie instead buries the lede by talking about how he and Betty have been friends since dinosaur times. He knows her better than anyone. Then things started to change… they started to, like, be teenagers with horomones and genitals and all sorts of other embarrassing things. One day, they accidentally fall down the hill and they do the roll-on-top-of-each-other thing that leads to some kissy-kissy.

“Promise me we’ll always stay this way,” Betty says. “Promise me you’ll stay the same.”

Archie agrees that he’ll act like a 17-year-old until the day he dies (at 17).

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Yeah, just wait until you start your career as an leech trapper after dropping out before graduation. Life won’t feel so perfect anymore.

Pretty soon it’s days of fireflies and watermelons. They share a Goo-Bar one day on a playground swing set, yucking it up like the two happiest kids in the world. Betty gets covered in Goo-Bar goo, which eventually turns into getting covered by ants. She runs to the nearby public restroom where Maria and Sheila are applying lipstick. Betty nudges her way between them to use the sink. In the adjacent men’s restroom, Archie can start overhearing the the two girls outside talking about how gross Betty is.

Archie is like “don’t talk smack about my girlfriend, you hoes.” Well, since Archie is actually popular for reasons that continue to escape me to this day, Maria and Sheila don’t want to make Archie mad. So, when Betty leaves the bathroom, they both invite her to hang out.

And it’s a date!

But, as it turns out, Maria and Sheila are kinda shitty to hang out with. Sheila calls Betty weird for having her mechanic hobby. They make fun of her music. They make fun of her old lady name. How does Lizzie sound instead?!

“Is there anything you like about me?” Betty grumbles.

“Love your name, Lizzie.”

NOW IT’S MAKEOVER TIME! *”Thieves Like Us” by New Order plays just like in Pretty in Pink when Molly Ringwald was making her own prom dress out of fuckin’ scraps*

They go to the mall and Betty hates everything she’s subjected to.

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Eyebrow threading? What will they think of next? Waxing??

Betty gives up and hollers right in the middle of the mall. Maria assures her that all this bullshit is what’s needed to get high school guys to look at her. Even at all. Thread those eyebrows or you’ll stay a virgin forever.

Betty gets a call from Archie. It’s Movie O’Clock and Archie’s buyin’ the Mike & Ikes! FUCK MAN! Betty’s got a date and she looks like a slovenly mess of diarrhea! Betty doesn’t want to. This is just Archie, man. Lay off.

Later, Betty walks home from the mall looking all sexy, lips covered in some sort of incident. She catches the attention of all the neighborhood boys! Even the ugly ones! Especially the ugly ones! She smirks in satisfaction. Even later, Archie calls to tell Betty he’s ready to roll. Betty wants him to pick her up in his car even though she lives next door.

Archie shrugs and does what he’s fucking told. Betty answers the door looking like last year’s model!

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

I’M READY FOR THE STURGIS MOTORCYLE RALLY!

Archie looks visibly uncomfortable as they enter the movie theater. He keeps looking around like he’s embarrassed to be with Betty.

“Split a Goo-Bar?” he asks her.

“NO. I don’t want to mess up my dress.”

The movie involves a metamorphosis, so it’s probably The Fly with Jeff Goldblum as the Fly. The Fly Guy screams about changing, and it prompts Archie to start thinking about all the good times with Betty over the years. Ice cream sandwiches and playful wedgies! Skipping rocks and video games and keying cars! And, of course, the promises not to change.

Archie looks very forlorn, and it’s not unnoticed. Betty tears up and runs out of the theater. And Archie runs after her, as boys do when presented with a situation where their girlfriend runs the fuck away from them crying.

“Why are you being so weird all of a sudden?” Betty cries.

“I’m weird? Look at you!”

Whoops! Not correct! Betty fucking smacks the kid with her purse. She accuses him of looking at girls who get dolled up just like this, and he says he can’t help it sometimes. And those girls are different. Betty isn’t those girls! Betty is Betty! Not Lizzie! Never Lizzie!

Archie (Vol. 2), Issue #4

Keep your eyes peeling, friends! We’re at maximum incident!

Betty grabs the lipstick and swipes it across Archie’s whole face. “Funny,” she says quietly, getting right up close. “You’re still you.”

Then she runs off sobbing.

Better luck next time, Chumpus Prime.

Archie tries calling her as he walks home. No answer.

No answer.

No answer.

No.

…

uh

“We haven’t said a word to one another since,” Archie says, bringing us all back to the present. “I miss her.”

He returns to the garage to find Jughead had left. Packing it in for the day, he vocally laments the end of band practice.

“That’s a shame,” says a voice from the driveway. “I’ve love to hear you play.”

Veronica smiles. Archie straps on his guitar…

Jughead eats an enormous Dagwood sandwich in Betty’s house as she watches Archie and Veronica from the window. “Don’t sweat it,” Jughead says, taking a bite. “Have confidence. We’re here to discuss our infallible anti-Veronica plan.”

And who’s here to help? King fuckface himself, Reggie Mantle! That greasy sonofabitch.

Final Thoughts

THE LIPSTICK INCIDENT WAS A LETDOWN. The whole thing was just “having lipstick on”! Boo! Archie, you’re fired!

I think Veronica is better for him anyway. She’s rich. She can buy him a clue, girlfriend! *snap snap*

Also, kudos to Mark Waid for once. This is all pretty good. I have nothing funny to add to that. Sorry.


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Earth’s Newest Moon Is Going to Kill Us All!

Ahhhh, Earth’s moon. Ol’ Luna. The Beacon of the Sky. The Big Cheese. We’ve all grown to know and love the moon over the course of our meager, useless lives. Some of us look upon its unchanging facade on a nightly basis with awe. Some of us may worship the moon as a god, eager to sacrifice young virgins as offerings for its shining, white light. Some of us curse the moon for the monthly discharge of menses, while others praise the moon for its ability to let us surf the waves of the ocean. In any case, the moon is here to stay.

But what if I were to tell you that the moon has a new companion? Well, idiot, look no further, because as of September 29th, 2024, Earth officially has two moons.

Earth has captured a new mini-moon, 2024 PT5, a small asteroid temporarily trapped by Earth’s gravity. Discovered in August 2024, the asteroid became Earth’s second moon on September 29 but will only stay until November 25… While the idea of Earth having two moons might sound extraordinary, the phenomenon of mini-moons is not entirely new. These smaller, temporary companions are regularly captured by Earth’s gravity but typically only stay for short periods before continuing their journey around the Sun.

The moon and its denizens are not your friends.

That’s right, folks. Two, count ’em TWO, moons! Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but two moons is just one too many. Mars has two moons, and just look at that shitheap. A barren, horrible land with no water or intelligent life (except for those pesky Martians who are busy looking for their Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators). I think having two moons, even temporarily, is a terrible misfortune to plague our already-dying planet. Can you even imagine — can you even fathom — the level of destruction and terror that can only come from a second moon? I’ve consulted my tinfoil-hatted brethren on the True Conspiracy Dot Com Slash Dot Org message boards and we all agree that at least one of the following three scenarios will most assuredly befall our now doomed planet:

1) Space Terrorists

That’s right, folks. Space Terrorists! What’s this moon called again? 2024 PT5? A rather innocuous name, huh? A little too innocuous, if you ask me. It’s the perfect hideaway for radical Earth-hating guerilla forces hellbent on destroying humanity. I don’t know from whence these terrorists came, but one thing is certain: They hate our freedom. They look at civilizations like America, North Korea, Cambodia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Myanmar and think “Look at these smug punks, waving their liberated dicks in the wind at us. Well, no mas!” So what did they do? They hijacked an asteroid and now they are but a mere hundreds of thousands of miles away from our humble planet. What do they seek? What is their agenda? Is there anything we can do to appease them, or do they want to destroy us just because they can?? I tell you, folks. I don’t want to be around when the Space Terrorists collapse our societies and devastate life as we know it. That’s why I bit down on my cyanide pill two minutes ago. You won’t take me alive, you alien extremists!

2) Sun Obfuscation

Yes, a flowery term for something unholy and sinister! Perhaps it’s not Space Terrorists who had driven the moon toward Earth, but some sort of ugly, pointy alien race is surely responsible. And that can only mean one thing: extraterrestrials are plotting to block the sun completely, preventing precious light from reaching our crops, our trees, our bodies for suntanning, and our solar panels for powering our Xboxes for free. You see, 2024 PT5 is powered by thrust engines designed for easily-controlled propulsion. All this race of supreme, intelligent outer space beings needs to do is blot out our sun by maneuvering the rock in an orbit that is not only fast enough to stay geosynchronous with the speed of the Earth’s spin, but located close enough to appear as large as the sun from Earth’s vantage point. Doy, it’s that simple! You all better stock up on SAD lamps and gallons of spray tan applicator liquid, because it won’t be long before this godforsaken moon is wreaking havoc on our collective Vitamin D intake, rendering us depleted and cranky as the dickens.

Space lasers: the final gambit of the space scoundrel!

3) Laser Destruction Unit

This one is the most likely of the three scenarios: a nefarious race of ultra-intelligent aliens have built an enormous fucking laser on 2024 PT5 that is programmed to enter Earth’s orbit and shoot it to smithereens, just like Alderaan, man. Remember when that hot chick from Star Wars had to watch her stupid, useless planet explode in front of her very eyes? Well, it will be like that except it will be the far more important and useful Earth. The problem with this particular scenario is that there’s not much we can do to stop it. With Space Terrorists, all you have to do is wave a watch in front of their eyes and hypnotize them into killing each other instead of us. With blocking out the sun, all we have to do is blow up the sun! But a laser destruction unit?! You’d have to build a giant mirror in order to reflect the laser back out into space, which is fucking impossible! Have you ever tried to construct a giant mirror? You may as well train two jellyfish to suck each other off at the same time.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be on Earth if and when any of this shit starts to go down. Me and my True Conspiracy Dot Com Slash Dot Org buddies ChaosElon, JoeRoganRules, WeirdDanYankovic, and ConspiracyPeterGriffin are attempting to build a rocket in the dump made out of discarded car doors and stolen copper wiring from the abandoned building on Franklin Ave. and 26th Street. We’re going to fill that shit with Olde English Malt Liquor and blast off to Ceres, bitches. Have fun getting painfully and horribly killed by 2024 PT5 while we court all the hot ladies that we read about in The Expanse. Toodles.


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The Dragon Reborn (Book 3) – Chapter 14: “The Bite of the Thorns”

The Wheel of Time - Book 3 - The Dragon Reborn

Alone with Egwene and Nynaeve, Siuan informs both of them that news of Liandrin is not common knowledge. It’s not going to stay that way forever, so Siuan has a task for both of them. See, she doesn’t really know who she can trust anymore? Verin? Moiraine? Rudy Huxtable? You see, any one of her Aes Sedai Sisters could be Black Ajah. And she wants to quash and squish and squash the Black Ajah in its tracks! Nynaeve thinks that Moiraine is not to be trusted, but Siuan calls her an ignorant little girl and tells her to shut the fuck up. Nynaeve then tugs on her braid about 14 times while biting her tongue.

Siuan can trust the two of them because Liandrin tried to get rid of them. Therefore, here’s the task: Hunt down the Black Ajah. Sounds easy peasy, right? But Nynaeve and Egwene are merely Accepted — Egwene barely even that — and she means for them to hunt down thirteen full-fledged Aes Sedai? Is she nuts? Nuts like a fox! Here’s how nuts Siuan is: if she had it her way, she’d make Nynaeve full Aes Sedai right now! But she can only channel when she’s angry. She needs to learn how to do it under extreme pressure with full calmness, and until then it’s no shawl for you.

So yes, hunt the Black Ajah. And you must do it while going through your Accepted training. And you must do it with absolutely no one else knowing or catching onto it. Doesn’t that sound great? Wouldn’t you rather just kill yourselves right here, right now, right in front of Siuan?

When asked why Elayne isn’t involved in this, Siuan says that Morgase’s newfound distaste for the Aes Sedai following Elayne’s adventure have made things a little more difficult. Egwene and Nynaeve accept Siuan’s mission. Verin will provide portfolios and LinkedIn profiles of all missing thirteen Black Ajah Aes Sedai, as well as spec sheets and manuals for the missing ter’angreal. After Nynaeve continues to argue that, as Accepted, they don’t have authority over anything, Siuan opens her explode-y box and removes two folded pieces of paper that say the following. This is right from the book, now:

“What the bearer does is done at my order and by my authority. Obey, and keep silent, at my command.”

And it’s signed and sealed and notorized by Siuan herself. Nynaeve realizes that she can do anything with this piece of paper! She can make Lan jump into a volcano if she wanted to. Siuan agrees, but hisses to not even fucking think about taking advantage of it.

Siuan’s done with them now. Beat it.


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