Ciao, i miei amici.

Lungo tempo non vedere.

I've just returned from a two-week non-Prickly-City-reading sojourn into the wilds of Italia. And I feel great. I'm tanned, rested, AND ready to dive back into thrice-weekly Shrubville posting. Nothing's gonna stop us now.

[Brief interlude while I catch up on two weeks worth of strips.]

Oh mio Dio.

Ho voglia di merda.

Rendono fermata.

Vi prego di inviarmi indietro.

Ciao-ciao.

Yesterday's punchline: Katie Couric.
Today's punchline: Michael Dukakis.

In an article in the New Yorker published in 1936, H. L. Mencken argues that "k words" are funny. "K, for some occult reason, has always appealed to the oafish risibles of the American plain people, and its presence in the names of many ... places has helped to make them joke towns ... for example, Kankakee, Kalamazoo, Hoboken, Hohokus, Yonkers, Squeedunk, "Stinktown" and Brooklyn."

Well, at least our fair author knows his core audience is oafs.

TODAY'S STRIP

Question: Why would Katie Couric have to give a concession speech?

Answer: She wouldn't.

Conclusion: Scott Stantis is the worst comic strip writer in the industry today.

I mean I "get" what Stantis was going for, but couldn't he have found a better way to say it? What if Winslow said, "Hey - this isn't my concession speech - this is the script from Katie Couric's last show on CBS!" That might suck, but at least it MAKES SENSE. Bah. CJo, save us!

While negotiations continue to secure the return of CJo to the Shrubville fold, if & when he does come back he can be confident that he'll be able to pick up where he left off, as it seems word of the Lady Clinton suspending her campaign has just reached Alabama. 'Bout time. Well, it was either that or it was just so goddamn important to get the Starbucks storyline out there because that, my friends*, was Acapulco comic Gold, baby.

*Oddly enough, although Senator McCain often speaks to "my friends" he's never actually speaking to my friends. Maybe I should nudge him or write on his wall on Facebook, because it just seems like the friendly thing to do, and we're obviously both friendly people.

P.C. feels like a repeat. Something about Winslow eating Carmen. Make of that whatever you wish.

Instead, did you hear that the prime minister of Iraq has endorsed Barack Obama's plan for withdrawal? This comes on the heels of the White House announcing a plan for a time "horizon" (not a timeline, of course, but a horizon - as E.J. Dionne pointed out, isn't the horizon something you can see but you can never actually reach?). Oh and there are plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, something Obama has been pushing for all along. And then of course there's Bush basically calling Obama an appeaser for saying we should talk with Iran - and this week Bush sent one of our diplomats to talk with - you guessed it - Iran.

Can you imagine if this had been the other way around? What if Maliki had endorsed McCain's 100 year plan? The media would be all over it, talking about how Obama doesn't have the experience and this just proves that McCain should be our next dictator - er, I mean "president." Instead, I'm guessing the Maliki story will be buried, and they'll continue to find ways to gush over McCain while trying to destroy Obama.

Check out this glorious quote from John Kass of the Chicago Tribune:

Asking whether TV network news shops had liberal bias was a bit like wondering what would happen if you left the hungry little boy alone in the room with the large box of Turkish Delights.

So it was reported last week that since June, the network news spent a thin 48 minutes covering crusty Republican Sen. John McCain, and 114 glorious minutes covering the cool guy they love, the liberal Democrat, Illinois' own Sen. Barack Obama.

This guy might actually be more delusional than Stantis. Where is it written that everything said or written about Obama is POSITIVE? Hey Kass, did you take into account how much of that Obama coverage was because Jesse Jackson said he wanted to cut his nuts off? In the meantime, John McCain's top economic adviser said that Americans are just a bunch of whiners and that the economy is great, McCain repeatedly referred to Czechoslovakia as a current country, and made crude jokes about killing innocent Persians because that's just "McCain being McCain."

Does John Kass honestly believe that Barack Obama got 114 minutes of positive coverage this month? Really? Somebody get this guy a comic strip, because he could give Stantis a run for his money.

But that's how the conservative mindset of "heads I win, tails you lose" works. "Look at how much coverage Obama gets compared to McCain!" is the storyline, but don't you dare explore exactly how much of that coverage was negative (my guess: most of it). Yet John McCain's had a month so bad it would have ruined other presidential contenders, yet he's doing better than ever thanks to the mostly positive media coverage he gets.

Unfortunately it's just going to get worse. The media critics will still ramble on about a "liberal media" that only exists in their little minds, John McCain will be portrayed as our next president, and silly Barack Obama will be branded a lefty liberal loon who can't be trusted for various (mostly racist) reasons. It's a shame that people in the media don't take Carmen's advice about rising above that type - instead they're all just like Stantis, and won't let the truth get in the way of a good smearing (or attempted joke).

It's Copy And Paste Saturday at Prickly City, where Winslow suddenly has a radio show. But being a radio show host like Rush Limbaugh is hard work, just like being a comic strip artist. I mean look how much effort Stantis puts into his work - four panels, all the same - man, I feel bad for Stantis. This must have taken minutes for him to churn out.

Don't get me wrong - GOOD comic strip artists do have a hard job if they want to be entertaining. But not good ol' Stantis. He has one of the easiest jobs in he comics, as he just churns out Republican talking points and slaps together strips like today's where he only draws one fourth of the strip and then pastes it over and over and over.

Rush is good at his job too. I may not like the guy, but he does know how to keep his "dittoheads" entertained. Stantis is more like the John Gibson of the comics - nobody knows how he got his job, or how he keeps it since he's so awful, yet there he is getting paid to be conservative. Must be nice to enjoy the corporate media's own version of welfare.

Just when we were in full-on "What's he going to say about Starbucks next, because I'm totally prepared to laugh my ass off" anticipation, he's throws a curve.

Panel 1: (Carmen) Rush Limbaugh just got a $400 million contract!
Panel 2: (Winslow) That's a lot of Oxycontin up the nose. Where do I sign up?
Panel 3: (Carmen) Haha! No seriously, Winslow, are you prepared to go deaf and dumb?
Panel 4: (Winslow) You mean he wasn't deaf and dumb before he started funding terrorists through his drug use?

No real complaints with today's P.C. For Stantis, this is as good as it gets.

However I am left to wonder why he's making Carmen look so bad. Isn't she the campaign manager and running mate? And is there anyone else even working on the campaign? Guess that didn't cross Stantis' mind.

Where in the world is CJo?

While I regret to inform you that the GoComics Prickly City webpage refuses to come up for me today*, and while I might give a fake promise to check back on it and come up with the proper assessment without actually intending to do so, I must take a moment to comment on something strange that many of us have probably noticed: what a highly charged political topic!

And by regret I mean huzzah, despite the fact that replacing 'regret' with 'huzzah' would render the sentence completely meaningless, or rather, more meaningless if there were any meaning to be found in the first place. You just can't replace a verb like that without consequences.

It seems that people aren't going to Starbucks anymore because they ain't gots the funds, because despite the fact that they may have the skills to pay the bills, this wonderful economic recession 'slowdown,' as our first MBA president declared it to be, won't allow them the luxury. Way to zing the lame-duck president, our fair author.

I don't drink coffee.

I'm really shocked and amazed that our fair author would have the audacity to publish such a strip today, Monday, July 14, 2008. The fact of the matter is that this is truly a Sunday-quality strip. 4 panels. 2 blank panels. 1 word. A horribly out of date 'joke.' That's some top-notch work right there. Perhaps he decided to use the one about airline food and how awful it is, in addition to those bags of peanuts they give out and how hard it is to open them and then you tear it and the peanuts fly everywhere and there are none left to shovel into your mouth.

Unintentional theme today: Bastille Day 2008. Starbucks, grown on the back of their famous French Roast coffee, is laid low by the revolting peasants. And by laid low I mean they're still making a Carl-Sagan's-estimate-of-the-number-of-stars amount of money.

Back during my favorite period of SNL, Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest played two characters named Willie and Frankie. They were night watchmen at various places, and when they crossed paths during their rounds they would talk about the painful things they had done to themselves, then complain about it. The skits are known as "You Know What I Hate?" Here's a sample:

Frankie: You know what I hate?

Willie: What?

Frankie: I go into the kitchen, I open the drawer, you know?

Willie: Uh huh?

Frankie: And I take out a, uh--

Willie: Carrot scraper?

Frankie: Right. And I stick it up my nose, you know, and I'm rootin' it around, and, you know, gettin' all the mucus membranes out o' there, you know? And then I take one o' them, uh--?

Willie: Mentholated eucalyptus cough drops?

Frankie: Right. And I stick it-- wedge it up there, you know? I take a couple o' whiffs, boy. Heh, ya feel like your head's gonna explode.

Scott Stantis would have fit in perfectly with Willie and Frankie. Like today's strip - he's once again bitching and moaning about how the campaign lasts months and months. A guy who MAKES HIS LIVING talking about politics is now going to complain that the media spends its time talking about the quest to be president. I can just picture it now...

Scottie: You know what I hate?

Frankie: What's that?

Scottie: I get paid to do this comic strip, you know? So I have to introduce a new character. One of those uh -

Willie: Armadillos?

Scottie: Right. And so I have him become the campaign finance manager for the coyote I got running for president. But I don't know what to do with him, so I have him uh -

Frankie: Buy several gallons of gasoline and matches and have him threaten to set himself on fire?

Scottie: You got it. Hoo boy, that was painful (for my readers). But you know what I really hate?

Willie: What?

Scottie: This presidential campaign of ours. I mean, I had to have that coyote start running for president last April!

Frankie: You had to have him do that?

Scottie: Well, I mean, I guess I didn't HAVE to have him to do that, but I write a political comic strip.

Willie: If you don't like writing about politics, then why do you have a political comic strip?

Scottie: I like writing about politics, just not all the time. I mean, in England their campaign only lasts a month.

Frankie: So you're saying you'd rather we go back to being like the British.

Scottie: Exactly.

Willie: You know what I hate?

Frankie: What's that?

Willie: I hate Republicans who whine and complain that elections in our country last a long time, when they're the ones who spent the last 8 years not just ruining our country, but politicizing every part of our government so we don't have a choice but to campaign all year long.

Frankie: Yeah, I hate that too.

Hey Scottie - nobody's saying you have to write about politics. I'm sure there are a few night watchmen jobs opening up that you'd be perfect for - just quit and enjoy whining about politics on your own time and quit wasting ours.

Yesterday: Winslow and Carmen interviewed an armadillo for the position of finance director on their campaign. All he could say was that they're doomed.

Today: We learn that...

- Winslow and Carmen hired the armadillo. I guess they likes them some "straight talk" (which is different from John McCain's Straight Talk, which is to tell everybody that everything is going great even when it's not).
- The armadillo is named Vaughn. Not sure if that's a reference to Vince Vaughn or what.
- Vaughn the Armadillo is going to set fire to himself. Winslow thinks he's going to burn the campaign's financial information - nope, Vaughn just wants to commit suicide. Good morning, kids! Hope you enjoy the hilarity of self-immolation while you're eating your froot loops!

I looked for the funny in today's strip, but I haven't been able to find it. Is it funny that the armadillo is so depressed by the job he interviewed for (despite saying they were doomed over and over) that he wants to kill himself? With gas costing over $4 a gallon why waste it when he's got all that paper around him? Sorry, I'm spending more time thinking about this than Stantis did.

Maybe Vaughn should spend some time with John McCain's leading economic adviser Phil Gramm. He'll tell you that things aren't bad - the recession is "mental" and we're a nation of whiners. Straight Talk!

Then again, considering Gramm's ties to Enron and the mortgage crisis, maybe Winslow and Carmen already interviewed him for the job this past Wednesday.

Seems to me...if one were to give our fair author the benefit of the doubt and take it at face value that his guest character in Wednesday's strip truly was a tapeworm*, and combine that with Senator Clinton yesterday followed by what appears to be an armadillo today, it would appear to be thematic. Politics, money, parasite, roadkill. I'm not buying it, are you?

*Although tapeworms don't have fangs, perhaps (once again feeling generous, as it's Friday and I'm looking forward to enjoying a solid summer weekend, so what the hell I'll be giving the benefit of the doubt)...perhaps he had wanted to do both a tapeworm and a snake but ran out of room and settled on a hybrid.

If CJo wasn't out of the country, I think the term he might use to describe today's PC would be "ham-fisted."

Scott Stantis still desperately wants to make fun of Hillary Clinton. So it doesn't matter to him that it makes zero sense that she would be interviewing for the role of financial director for Winston's campaign, which has NO MONEY. If she herself has campaign debt, why waste her time with a candidate that's just as broke as she is?

But Stantis never lets "logic" ruin his attacks on Senator Clinton. Attacks which are just a little bit more than sexist, but hey - par for the course when it's a Republican trying to be funny.

After yesterday though I have a newfound respect for Hillary. She voted against the horrible FISA bill, something that Obama didn't do. If I had known that back during the primaries, she would have gotten my vote. Instead, we're now a country where the government can spy on its citizens without warrants, the president can tell corporations to break the law and they can do it without fear of penalty, and while we know that the telecoms did spy on us illegally for years, we'll never know what they were doing because they're immune from prosecution. Thanks, Senator Obama - nice to know that you and the rest of the Democratic leadership in Congress are willing to bend over backwards to give President 23% Approval Rating everything he wants and more.

Sorry Mrs. Clinton - instead of being the nominee, you get guys like Stantis making fun of how you dress and how you look.