Shooting Fish: The Links

Tim O'Neil is now a/the man.* He clearly stands against Endemic Treponematosis; when will you take a stand????

I can't decide if it would better for carnies to visit the dentist bus before or after their nightly face-punching contest.

Best GIL THORPE strip, ever. To be fair, the not-young-looking, sorta-negroid Caucasian evidently did turn to the flatheaded jock when he yelled "HEY! HEY, CROOK!" which is probably enough to earn you a hot squat for stealing from a department store in Gil Thorpe's universe.

At long last -- all nerds' bullshit stories about their girlfriends in Canada can almost come true. Actually, as scared-stupid liberal pathology goes, this is probably best viewed as the flipside of the dementia exhibited in so many folks who claim to be liberals yet continue to give the Bush administration a blank check so long as the administration keeps them feeling "safe" from The Enemy. [It's a pity that the election's exit polls didn't include "I'm tired of pissing my pants in fear whenever I see/hear a low-flying jet overhead" as a reason for voting Bush/Kerry. That would have been far more educational than assessing perception of the candidates' "Moral Values."]

* Since the odds are you don't read funnybooks, here's the deal with the comics Tim's busting on in that link: See, the big thing in comic books these days is fan fiction written by junior-varsity-level celebrities -- like guys who pump out books like those supermarket paperbacks you buy to read during your vacation at the beach and those kind of TV shows you see in reruns forever on the Sci-Fi channel. They're doing these "darkfic" versions of the superdupers, where the villains are killing/raping the heroes and/or their loved ones instead of putting them in some inescapable trap and then explaining their whole plot to take over the world and crap like that. Meanwhile, over at THE AVENGERS: Captain America and the rest of the team have been standing around and talking in front of their destroyed headquarters while being killed off one by one. For the last three-four months of issues, with no end in clear sight. Doesn't that sound like a thrilling, stimulating read? The nerds have been eating this new shit with a spoon for quite a while, but some seem to have had a recent moment of clarity, when the BABYLON 5 guy wrote a Spider-Man comic where we learn that the Green Goblin totally cockblocked Spidey with his first serious girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. [She was the blonde one, with the hairbands, miniskirts and go-go boots -- not the redhead.] Oh, and it was Gwen's idea to fuck the Green Goblin, since she was so attracted to his strength, magnetism, power and mystery. Charming concept all the way around, isn't it? Goes a long ways to explain why comic-book boosters talk an awful lot like drug dealers.