Enemies Real and Imagined

See it here.

As if we needed more proof, today's panel further pegs Burl as a crazy old curmudgeon. For starters, if you look at his posture, you can easily imagine him in a rocking chair on the porch, a shotgun within reach, shouting "you kids stay off of my lawn" at every passerby, youthful or otherwise. And his grand leap of logic, from a mention of TiVo to cable company upselling, is a textbook example of the curmudgeon's Pavlovian response mechanism in action.

His brain is a catalogue of keywords, indexed to a particular sworn enemy. He sits quietly on the sidelines of every social event, listening for any occurrence of a keyword. When one of those keywords is used in conversation, Burl launches automatically into a tirade about the evils of whatever group was mentioned. Guests are pinned to the walls in horror while a red-faced (and probably drunken) Burl loudly decries enemies real and imagined.

In this case, the mere mention of TiVo is the trigger for his tirade, ascribing blame for all of societies ills to the cable company. We only get to hear the first sentence, admittedly, but you can be sure he will keep up this family filibuster for the next 30 minutes while he catalogues their many sins.

On the other hand, I suppose this could just be a clever charade used to distract Joy until she forgets about purchasing the salt and pepper Lazy Susan and matching cozies. In which case, you have to applaud the creativity of his effort.

And now I have managed to confuse myself...

You marginalia get off of my lawn!

• "Act now in the next 10 minutes." Since when did "now" start meaning "anytime in the next 10 minutes or so"?
  
• Why do you figure it was deemed necessary to put something representing TiVo on top of the TV? The item doesn't really resemble a TiVo, especially since it is smaller than the box containing the movie. And it's not like being able to actually see the TiVo device adds to the panel in any way.
• Given the awkward position of Joy's chair I have a hard time believing she is actually watching TV. Are we supposed to infer that Joy is trying to engage Patty in conversation but Patty is ignoring her by watching TV?