Another fine product

Be your best self

It's a re-run Sunday. 

Not FDA approved

I'm a travelin' man

In other news, I obviously don't know what 7 billion people looks like.

Cleanliness

Mental Health

Unsatisfied with the bland old word 'clean', Benito resolved to use 'cleanlinessacious' from then on.

I suddenly have so much to lose

Entanglements

Mental Health

"Look, I'm just not...in a position where...I'm ready to...commit..."

The arresting officer rolled her eyes. "Well, you were sending mixed signals, weren't you? With the public indecency and the incoherent professions of love to strangers and statues?"

This will all make sense later

Dopping lette aws

Acceptable substitutes

Mental Health

When the paternity test showed that the man was not only not his biological father but, incredibly, not even a human being, Roger was more impressed than anything. After all, none of his friends could claim an alien stepdad.

Mostly, I just wanted to draw a demon.

Uncommon decency

Mental Health

"You've gone well beyond the limits of common decency, sir," they said as they took me away. "We don't even know how to place what you've done on a scale labelled 'decency' at all."

Home improvement

Mental Health

"Yup, when we bought this house back in '98, it was a very different place. Some of the improvements came right away, like getting rid of the tacky doors and windows. But of course you can see that not too long ago, we decided to eliminate the walls completely! It's so much more open and free now."

Well, happy...spider...day

In which my mental condition continues to deteriorate.

Curiosity has its limits

The weirdest cold I've ever had

The webcomic equivalent of a clip show

Thanks, dad, for raising me in a home with Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. 

Dad-relevant re-runs:

That's why you always pick up your toys

Do you want to give your kid a complex? Because that's how you give your kid a complex.

Try this one simple trick

"Don't listen to him," said the floating head of Salvador Dalí. "He doesn't understand what we have together. He's jealous."

Buy organic

"Oh, no thank you. I'm a mineralarian. We only eat inert, non-organic matter."

Matters of proximity

Mental Health

Lewis was mostly angry at the bar for turning away his laughably fake ID with well-deserved derisive laughter, but the bar was on the other side of town, and he was in deep enough trouble for "borrowing" the car that it wasn't worth the risk to take it again. Instead, he extended his anger to apply to buildings in general, finding several such structures much more conveniently nearby and defacing them to his temporary satisfaction.

Accessory to murder

Mental Health

In the Trial of the Sandwich Killer, the judge had to spend an inordinate amount of time clarifying that a sandwich eaten by its rightful owner is considered dead of natural causes, while it's murdered if eaten by anyone else. The ignorance of both sides was appalling, without even mentioning the jury.

Offering competitive compensation

Mental Health

Well, no, I can't offer you as much money as our competitors. Are you trying to tell me that all you care about is money? Our company has so much more in terms of extrapecuniary benefits. See that hole in the wall? Don't worry, it's been declared structurally sound, and it lets a pleasant breeze right into the office. Still not sure? How about this: you get to build your own custom desk! All this scrap wood is free for the taking, so you can get exactly the desk format that works for you. I seriously doubt you'll find our competitors to be so accommodating.

Natural inclinations

Iiiiiiit's a re-run Sunday. Enjoy this timeless message.

The unexamined life

To fit a description

Mental Health

The Royal Society for Pedantry and Quibbling faced a serious dilemma: against all odds and in open defiance of every expert's prediction, the nation's youth were learning every pathetically tiny detail the RSPQ could throw at them, learning them and mastering them and even sending tomes of correspondence requesting clarifications on rules that the RSPQ had never even thought of.

After months in a private chamber, the robed sages, defenders of detail, debated what to do next. Some claimed that their purpose had been fulfilled, and they should disband. Others saw no harm in their taking a less active role, since enforcement of technicalities now needed so little attention. But the vastest contingent pushed forward a new idea, one that gained followers and increased in devious design until it was officially approved by the entire council:

 "We propose to maintain the spirit of the RSPQ in the face of this development by undertaking a campaign of obfuscation: every rule currently mastered by the public will be altered, but unpredictably. Some, we will reverse, while others will change only slightly. The end result will be mass confusion and an opportunity for us to retake our lost ground."

After another week debating the merits of hyphenating or not hyphenating 'retake', they reached an accord. And so began the Grammer Warz.

I sure do

Mental Health

The singer-songwriter kept pushing back his stringy, intruding mid-length hair with his right hand in the middle of the song, trying desperately to keep it out of his eyes and at the same time, to make the song sound like it was supposed to have silence whenever he stopped picking at the strings to deal with the hair problem.

Teaming up

Editor's note: I'm pretty sure Crustacean Singles has run nearly identical comics in the past, but I am feeling way too lazy to check or come up with a different idea. Plus, there hasn't actually been a real original thought on Earth in who-knows-how-long, so whatever.

Practical guides

Mental Health

Self-Help and How-To Cinema were genres that absolutely zero scholars and critics saw coming back in 2014, and when the wave hit and the billions of dollars were made, they (the scholars and critics) were understandably bitter, complaining that anyone could have made a feature film about, for example, making a tin of particularly difficult and involved bran muffins. And they were technically right, but they'd missed the point entirely: anyone could have made these films, but very few were in touch enough with the so-called zeitgeist to know just when and how to make them.

Appearances

Mental Health

"It's not enough to keep up appearances!" the magician wife stormed to her magician husband. "You have to disappear first, or people just get confused. Plus, you keep appearing at other people's shows. You scared that poor Jay-Z guy half to death when you materialized on his stage, last week."

This is a sad B-side that makes me sad, but I drew it and I'm posting it anyway. Helen, girl, don't worry what they think, but maybe get your hair did. Also, try to avoid kidnappers. Not all attention is good attention.

Double the moustache, double the fun

And now for something completely different:

Mental Health

The warden led me down a dark hall. "You've been at the job for what, six weeks now?" I nodded. He said, "It's time you saw what we keep in the basement of D block. You need to know, in case anything should happen to me." I didn't dare ask what was coming, or why the blueprints for the compound didn't show a basement on any of the buildings. I could see the warden's hand tremble as he pulled out a key, not from his usual keyring at his belt, but from around his neck. We came to a door marked "UTILITY" on the side of D block and he unlocked it. 

"You'll hear 'em before you see 'em. That's the worst part," he said. 

"Them, sir?" 

"The babies."