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[littlefallsmets]

I wonder if this is the week when Chris gets drunk in a darkened house and watches Eraserhead, as I think we all do sometimes.

La la la la, la la la, EraaaaaaaserCANNED!

[Pedro Picasso]

"Silence!"

Welcome, valued new member.

I figured the hen business was Onstad's reaction to the recent semi-glorification of prostitution in major media.  Now it's as if he didn't get the revulsion he wanted out of that, so he decided to go for broke on the disgusted-by-prostitution angle.  Then at the last minute, he decided that was sophomoric and tried to distance himself from it for a 'meta-joke'.

That analysis probably has nothing to do with the way it went in real life, but either way this strip's a garbled mess.  I'd call it uninteresting, but then I was interested enough to try some arm-chair analysis.

I am a garbled mess.

[colmore]

It so happens that the comic strip tires of being a comic strip.
It so happens that the comic strip goes into tailorshops and movie theatres
wilted, impervious, like a felt swan
floating over a sea of origin and ash.

The smell of barbershops makes the comic strip cry its heart out.
The comic strip just wants a rest from wool stones,
From establishments and gardens,
from wares, from spectacles, from escalators.

It happens that the comic strip tire of its feet and its nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens that the comic strip is tired of being a comic strip.

Even so, it would be delicious
for the comic strip to frighten a notary with a cut lily
or kill a nun with a blow to the ear.
It would be beautiful for the comic strip to go through the streets with a green knife
and yell until the comic strip froze to death.

The comic strip doesn't want to go on being a root in the darkness,
wavering, stretched out, shivering from sleep,
downward, in the wet tripe of the earth,
absorbed and thinking, eating each day.

The comic strip doesn't want all these misfortunes for the comic strip,
The comic strip doesn't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone underground, as a warehouse of corpses,
terrified, sorry for itself.

That's why Monday stings like gasoline,
when it sees the comic strip coming with my its face,
and howls in its path like a blown tire,
and with steps of hot blood goes into the night.

And it leads the comic strip towards certain corners, to certain humid houses,
to hospitals where the bones come out the window,
to certain cobblers' that smell of vinegar,
to streets as frightening as cracks.

There are sulfur-colored birds and horrible entrails
hanging from the doors of houses that the comic strip hates,
there are forgetten dentures in a coffee pot,
there are mirrors
which should have cried from shame and shock,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and poison, and navels.

The comic strip strolls along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfulness,
The comic strip goes on, passing offices and orthopedic shops,
and patios with clothes hung from a wire:
underwear, towels and shirts that cry
slow dirty tears.

[piecewise]

I figured that the orifice'd meat was originally intended to be... more defined, but when Chris asked the Achewood machine for a prostitute it just churned an ill-defined sack of flesh out onto Beef's floor.

Which might explain Ray's receipt of a hen and her mixed-race child, too. He got in before the going got too bad. Although I guess Beef didn't follow through, so he gets a small victory there.

[Toaster]

I realized that maybe these last two comics are each Ray and Beef's respective visions of what a prostitute would be. To Ray, a prostitute is a random girl of a random species  who comes from the agency and wakes him up. She brings her mixed-race kid, and Ray feels that he must have sex with her out of politeness. To Beef, a prostitute is an ill-defined sack of meat that has semen leaking out of its orifices. He asks himself, "Is it dead? Was it ever alive? Is it a man or a woman?" He finds that it knows his name. He screams. I expect that Lyle's vision of a prostitute is simply a floating hole, as we have learned that he is a "hole man".

Also: What is a "Hyderabad"?

[littlefallsmets]

A city in India, according to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is usually quite solid on the general details of things like that.

I'm not so sure if Hyderabad's main exports are "CHRIS BENOIT 4EVER" and "i cant beleeve dad grownded me" but... y'know... the general details are sound.

[colmore]

Ah, nuts, i figured one person would catch the reference to Space Ghost.  they flashed that poem, only with all the "I's" and "Persons" and "Mans" replaced with "Television Show."  They cut Goldie Hawn of 1 second into her interview.  Pavement were introduced as "The Beatles."  The episode was called "Brilliant Number 2" and I kind of feel exemplifies the 90s at their stoned culturemashing best.  It's originally by Neruda, but I know it from the cheap late night cartoon.

Anyway, somehow reminded me of the spirit of the few strips, which I like a great deal.  But I also buy a lot of comics that aren't funny ever.  Personal taste.  Chris is definitely in a different place artistically than he was 3 years ago.  I think it's a little less entertaining, but there are reasons to create other than to entertain.