Smells and Stinks
Lynn Johnston likes jokes about smelling things. Thanks to AMU Reprints, I uncovered 54 jokes about smelling in their archives of For Better or For Worse. Believe it or not, not one of those times repeated the very obvious joke of today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse. Today we have the standard wordplay on the 2 different definitions for the word “smell.” “Smell” means “to smell something” and also “he stinks”. Even though Lynn hasn’t used it, my kids do this joke all the time; so it feels used to me. Maybe Lynn can do the “Why the chicken crossed the road?” joke tomorrow. I don’t think she’s used it in her strip before either.
Aside from this, Lynn Johnston returns to her theme that obedience school is not working with Farley. We even have a slam on the use of the command “heel”, which I am surprised Lynn did not turn into a pun. She has upgraded the strip to show Michael using a retractable dog leash on Farley. I did a quick internet search to find the history of those, but was not able to find anything conclusive as to when retractable dog leashes came into being.
On the plus side, Farley seems to be happy. He is not being abused. The joke doesn’t have anything to do with waste materials produced by dogs. If it wasn’t a joke I had not heard several time before, I might be pleased by today’s strip. Because I have, the joke is old and the setup for it is very laboured. It seems like the kind of strip my kids might have written back when they were 8 and 10.
Aside from this, Lynn Johnston returns to her theme that obedience school is not working with Farley. We even have a slam on the use of the command “heel”, which I am surprised Lynn did not turn into a pun. She has upgraded the strip to show Michael using a retractable dog leash on Farley. I did a quick internet search to find the history of those, but was not able to find anything conclusive as to when retractable dog leashes came into being.
On the plus side, Farley seems to be happy. He is not being abused. The joke doesn’t have anything to do with waste materials produced by dogs. If it wasn’t a joke I had not heard several time before, I might be pleased by today’s strip. Because I have, the joke is old and the setup for it is very laboured. It seems like the kind of strip my kids might have written back when they were 8 and 10.
posted by howard at 10:43 PM
5 Comments:
howard,
If it wasn’t a joke I had not heard several time before, I might be pleased by today’s strip. Because I have, the joke is old and the setup for it is very laboured. It seems like the kind of strip my kids might have written back when they were 8 and 10.
This sort of thing is why people have started to think that Lynn is in the early stages of Alzheimer's; contrasting her zombified performance on Canada AM and her manic minutes with Strombo makes it look like she's suffering from sundown syndrome so it's plausible that her brain is starting to erode.
Ugh, I cannot imagine letting my six-year-old, just-finished-kindergarten son and a peer take our dog out by themselves, especially if the dog were clearly ignoring commands. What's to keep Farley from pulling Michael out into traffic? What'll Mike do if someone else's aggressive dog comes tearassing out of a yard and attacks Farley? And he should definitely not be using one of those extending leashes--he needs a short leash for maximum control.
DreadedCandiru2,
This sort of thing is why people have started to think that Lynn is in the early stages of Alzheimer's; contrasting her zombified performance on Canada AM and her manic minutes with Strombo makes it look like she's suffering from sundown syndrome so it's plausible that her brain is starting to erode.-
My experience with Alzheimer's is limited. My grandfather had it before he died and so did my wife’s grandmother. The first time I noticed it with my grandfather was when he started repeating things he had just said. With my wife’s grandmother, she started asking people what the time was a lot. I really can’t associate the use of a very old joke in a comic strip to it. It seems more to me like Lynn is creatively tapped out. To me, she would be much better off writing a strip where Elly and John go to Oaxaca, Mexico and make rude comments about the natives and get sick eating raw, improperly-washed carrots. She has no source material for dogs and kids anymore.
aprilp_katje,
Ugh, I cannot imagine letting my six-year-old, just-finished-kindergarten son and a peer take our dog out by themselves, especially if the dog were clearly ignoring commands.-
Of course not in a real town like Albany. You have to think about this the right way. This is Milborough, where 4-6 year-olds roam freely without fear of anything.
What's to keep Farley from pulling Michael out into traffic?-
Nothing, but Farley is a wonder dog, who would never do that. The more likely scenario is that Mike will pull Farley into traffic.
What'll Mike do if someone else's aggressive dog comes tearassing out of a yard and attacks Farley? -
You are mistaking Milborough for Mtigwaki, where dogs roam freely on every street. This is Milborough, where only Mrs. Baird-approved dogs live.
And he should definitely not be using one of those extending leashes--he needs a short leash for maximum control.-
But if he used the short leash then Lynn would have to deal with all the animal cruelty people who jumped on her when she started talking about sending the real Farley to the happy home on the farm. Plus, the retractable leash lets us know that the time period for this strip is in modern times, and not in the past.
howard,
I've just learned that most of Lynn's comments on the fourth day of her trip are ready for public dissection.
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