A Kernel of Truth

In today's Dinette Set, Burl and Joy return to the Doctor for the purpose of:

• Making the reader question why Joy accompanies Burl into the Doctor's office, as if she were his mother.
• Demonstrating that a joke based on a kernel of truth (patients' blood pressure tends to be slightly elevated from stress) does not necessarily assure success.
• Perhaps suggesting that Burl's weight is over 700 lbs, but not being clear because of the inability to either print clearly or accurately draw a scale.
• Use the musty upside-down "This End Up" gag incorrectly and in the wrong context.
• Place a band-aid on a Doctor's head for reasons passing understanding.
• Insinuating that the Doctor's office is a haven for voyeurs.
  

Peanut Butter and Bacterium

In today's Dinette Set, Burl and Joy discuss food poisoning for the purpose of:

• Illustrating that The Dinette Set is only topical in the most inappropriate instances.
• Accidentally creating a parallel between the phrase "born yesterday" and the fact that Joy and Burl purchased peanut butter yesterday, despite the fact that there's nothing to be gained from examining the parallel.
• Demonstrating that there is no such thing as a toilet joke worth making when you don't fully grasp the distinction between being scatological and simply being gross.
• Deeply saddening the reader with the knowledge that Burl and Joy will survive eating those jars of peanut butter.

A Visit to the Doctor

In today's Dinette Set, Burl and Joy visit the Doctor for the purpose of:

• Asking a stupid question only to set up a dubious punchline.
• Visiting an Escheresque space in which the receptionist area appears to be several feet below the floor level.
• Exposing the reader to one of the stalest puns ever syndicated.
• Seeing a secondhand sign mounted in a doctor's office despite the rather unusual use of the word "lobby" instead of "waiting room."
  
• Seeing a large amount of space used to make an unnecessary comment about the timing of doctor's appointments juxtaposed with the current time.
  

Meta-Post: Another Go

For whatever reason, The Dinette Set has really been bothering me lately. Enough that I decided something had to be done. I still don't have the energy for a full-blown deconstruction, so I am going to try a simpler format here and see where it takes me.

As always comments welcome, especially since they are likely to be the best part of the blog ;-)

Swivel Chair, Swivel Head

See it here.

I damn near fell out of my chair when I read this particular Dinette Set.

The joke, such as it is, seems to be that Joy and Burl have set their AB-swivel chairs up in front of the TV so they can tone their flab into rock-hard abs while they watch TV, except that they have set the chairs up facing away from the TV.

For the first time I can think of, The Dinette Set is demonstrating a meta-awareness of the fact that its characters are capable of swiveling their heads 180 degrees.

It certainly raises the question of what the author's intent is in doing so. Is the purpose to pretend that their swivel-headedness is and has always been a deliberate choice on the part of the author rather than a by-product of ham-handed artwork? Or is it that the artist simply did not notice that the chairs were facing away from the TV in making a flaccid joke about Burl and Joy's flab?

I leave it to you to decide.

Rock-hard marginalia in 48 hours!

• Honestly, are we to believe that Joy's bust is too dainty to fit the entire Everlast logo? Hardly.
• I never want to see a reference to Burl's groin again, ever.
  

Meta-Post: Shenanigans!

the duck never skips a beat, but we have to wait for weeks on end for some blather? i call shenanigans.

For background, in case you don't know, I also do a blog about Mallard Fillmore which just makes me so irritated every day that I almost have to write something about it. That's what the duck reference is about.

I confess that I have been taking a break from this blog. Whereas it takes 5 minutes to dash off a post about Mallard Fillmore, since that's shooting fish in a barrel, it takes at least an hour every night to write up something to say about The Dinette Set. Not to mention figuring out just what to say about it. And with the current pace at my work and travel, The Dinette Set became a bit of a burden.

Plus, truth be told, I have come to despise the characters in this comic so much I often just can't bring myself to even think about them.

I see three possibilities for this blog from here.

• I may re-charge my batteries on it and come back.
• I may find a shorter-form version of commenting on it; something that takes less time to conceive and articulate and maybe something that invites more reader commentary. I'd be open to suggestions from readers about that. At one point I though of just doing a sub textual commentary, a'la Joe Mathlete, but he's so damned brilliant, I don't want to thieve his idea, and how many days in a row can you actually get away with just saying: "Burl is an asshole."
  
• I may give up. I don't want to do that precisely "because stuff like this should not go without comment."

Reduce. Re-use. Reimburse.

See it here.

In their inimitable way, Burl and Joy transform the environmentalist's credo (Think Globally, Act Locally) into something more aligned with their own outlook (Think Selfishly, Act Selfishly).

Timmy, always representative of youthful hope for the next generation in The Dinette Set, is (as always) having that youthful hope crushed by Burl and Joy. You know when Timmy appears in a panel you're going to come away depressed at the state of humanity, so long as you equate Burl with humanity as the panel asks you to do.

And yet, this particular panel holds out a tiny glimmer of hope. Sometimes people can do the wrong thing for the right reason. It isn't much, but it's better than just waiting around for Burl and his ilk to die off.

Love your marginalia:

• Ewwwwwwwwww. Joy's shirt. Ewwwwwwwwww.
• While it may fit in with today's selfish re-use theme, I think the artist would have done well to think twice about Burl's shirt as well. Violating Indian Burial grounds is really not funny when you get right down to it.
• Can that last item on the sign actual say "parsley container"? I would love it if Marlene actually owned a container specifically for her parsley.
  

Meta-Post: Again...

God help me, I am off again on yet another trip, starting tomorrow. Hopefully this is the last one until February.

Burl is what?

See it here.

I'd like to spend this post giving The Dinette Set credit for a level of technical sophistication that most comics don't show. Making a joke of the fact that responding to SPAM, even in an attempt to make it stop, has the perverse opposite effect shows a level of technology awareness that most comics can only dream of.

I'd also like to spend this post giving credit for dovetailing the background with the overall theme, into a seamless commentary on the overload of useless information that is part of life in the Modern World.

I'd like to do that.

But I can't get past the realization that Burl is someone's boss, with all of the horrifying implications that brings.

You've got marginalia:

• That is a more voluptuous rendering of an obese man's ass than I can actually handle.
• Rolex stuff?
  

Habla Anglais Herr Burl?

See it here.

It's not that surprising to see a topic like English as the national language crop up in a panel which tends to elevate provincialism to an art form.

And yet, as is so often the case, The Dinette Set undermines its own provincialism and raises the overall quality of discourse in the process.

In this particular case, it's impossible to pretend this is a comment on simple-minded xenophobia when Burl himself obliterates the English language with such panache. How can one take him seriously as a commenter on linguistics when Burl fails to recognize that "Flaming Pu-Pu Platter" is not a word, and that it is basically redundant to refer to something as the "only" national language.

We also have to examine how much sympathy we should have for folks who have, somehow, managed to stumble into a Chinese restaurant that does not have bi-lingual menus for native-speaking patrons when you can find restaurants in China with bi-lingual menus catering to travellers.

Finally, in a signature Dinette Set moment of winking acknowledgement, Burl chooses as his example of a word Cinnamon, which is Phoenician in origin. This particular touch completes the panel in so many ways. The xenophobe who is unaware of the origin of the term can hoot in agreement. The person looking for a simplistic joke can assume that "cinnamon" is foreign in origin and chuckle. The erudite reader will understand that they have been gifted with one of the most subtle etymological gags in the daily comics in many years.

Try the Kung Pao Marginalia:

• I don't know what kind of Chinese food you get in Illinois, but apparently it never involves dessert. (If you follow that link, by the way, you'll find that Chow King has ceased buffet service since November.)
• The artists' scrawled Chinese is pretty much indistinguishable from the scrawled English that appears regularly.