Working the Monthly Letters

I am pretty much leaving the Liz monthly letter alone. Constable Paul Wright is the natural one to snark it, but he is frankly too close to the subject to be able to read the business about Liz looking for a job. I suspect he will be the last to find this out, and considering the way the monthly letters have been matching the strip in time, which is to say, not at all, then we don’t know really what is going to happen to Liz except she is leaving Mtigwaki. Paul is going to have to fade out on any strips or any letters which talk about it, until Liz gets around to telling him. Plus qnjones does Liz, and should have the first opportunity to do her take on Liz and this whole story.

I opted for Jeremy to take on the strange behaviour of Deanna, the pharmacist. She is so erratic in her May letter, that it does not take much to snark it. Jeremy Jones became her foil, since he is young enough to potentially qualify for the lice checking which dominated her letter this time around. The sequence was very odd, but I did not have to push it far from the monthly letter to achieve that oddness.

Howard tackled the part of Mike’s letter that dealt with Weed and Carleen. I know that back in Mike’s October, 2005 monthly letter, he mentioned that Weed had already bought his building and he utilized it for its air-conditioning. The strip never mentioned it, and I suppose in retrospect, someone figured out that buildings aren’t cheap and had to come up with a viable reason for Weed to be able to afford it. Hence cometh Weed’s estranged parents who pony up the money. However, for snarking purposes, it was more amusing to me for Weed and Carleen to lie about already owning the building so they could get the money. Mike referred to Weed as being a Designer / Photographer and a quick internet search on those terms together, showed me that what this means is that the photographer can put computer graphics into the pictures. I have never seen Weed do anything of the sort, so I presume one of his staff of 3 does that. Mike’s portrayal of Weed is interesting, because he gives him the same “hard work” = “success” line that he does for all his friends, but at the same time gives credit to Carleen as being a partner in his success and lists what Carleen does, which always seems to me to be the items that would actually make Weed a success. I also had fun with the language in Mike’s letter which implied the hidden side to his relationship with Weed. That has been two monthly letters in a row, in which a sexual relationship between Mike and Weed could be inferred. I think someone in Corbeil has been reading our Mike and Weed snark, and decided to play along.

Aside from that, there is the usual snark on the increasingly ridiculous Liz storyline. Liz is probably going to find out she is not going back to Mtigwaki, until after she has gone to Milborough and while there is accepted for the job in Markham. So I think what we are seeing is the Jesse Mukwa / Liz farewell sequence, or as close as we can get to it, without having an official farewell. It is just as awkward as can be so far, with Liz feeding Jesse straight lines, just like she has done for most of their relationship. Jesse does not seem to be anywhere near as broken up about the idea of Liz leaving as he was at the end of her first school year. I guess he is resigned to the fact that Liz is not going to be his girlfriend after all.