Shoe and Hi and Lois

Aw, yeah! Two federal deficit jokes in the same day! The comics sure know how to reach out to today's youth!

It's interesting that they're both talking about the federal deficit, and yet no one else really is. I mean not in those terms. People are talking about the value of the dollar going down, the housing market collapsing, sluggish job growth, decreases in real wages, the increasing income gap, etc., but not really the federal deficit.

I'm beginning to think that "the federal deficit" is non-political political joke fodder in much the same way that "those politicians!" or "taxes are bad!" are. Either that, or these cartoonists need to pick up a paper.

I don't know what to think about the Shoe kid's test. There aren't any man (or woman!) made objects on Earth that can be seen from the moon. More inexplicable than that, the kid didn't just write "A big butt."

I worry about the youth of today, I truly do.

Monday's comics queer themselves!

Ha ha! You tell 'em, Shoe! All the best men out there are gay! I haven't heard that one before!

Shoe'd be on the cutting edge of comedy if this comic were printed in, I don't know, 1980. But in 2007? Still with the gays are the perfect lovers for straight women? Sheesh. I think that when a joke's been a full episode of Seinfeld, was turned into an entire character on SNL, and was turned into a successful prime time show, it's time to stick a fork in it and call it done.

I do find it charming that dating services in the comics are always a woman at a desk, instead of a website, which would be a little more realistic. Even if it's explicitly a "computer dating service", there's still a woman to visit at a desk somewhere. I'm guessing that comics artists everywhere gave up at love fifteen years ago.

But I'll help out Shoe here with the queer culture. There isn't, nor has there ever been, to my knowledge, a gay male dating service that involved going and visiting someone at a desk. There are online dating services that have replaced the bar scene for a lot of people, but we just don't go to real-live dating services.

Unless "Gays-R-Us" is actually referring to a bathhouse. At least that'd explain the look of horror on Roz's face as she imagines the cabal of the wild anal sex happening just next door to her now, perhaps even on the same tree as her diner.



Call him a heel all you want, ladies, it looks like he just came back from bonin' Patroclus, and you're not going to bring him down from that high.

Friday's Shoe

You know, if you can tell your joke without using any of the characters in your strip even being present, then that joke is not best suited for the comic strip format.