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Thursday, January 29, 2009

That damned package

What's Mallard raving about today?

President Obama, Collectibles, Pensions.

My 401k lost 40% in 3 months. I'd have been better off putting my money into Obama collectibles recently.

On the plus side, Chet's is hiding his penis chin behind that package!

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

4 days in a row about Barack Obama collectibles.

4 days in a row about Barack Obama collectibles.

Rock climbing, Joel. Rock climbing.

Neo Tuxedo said...

It has nothing to do with Obama. It has nothing to do with collectibles. It has everything to do with hurting. Right in the pherv.

ajm said...

Thanks for the MST3K reference.


Word verification: evally.

Anonymous said...

Deep hurting!
Deeeep hurting!
Maybe Tinsley has taken over for Dr. Forrester and is trying to drive us all mad with his endless, unfunny funnies. Worse than Manos!

Anonymous said...

Tinshley's more like Torgo than Dr. Forrester, really. In fact, it helps to imagine Torgo's theme playing whenever you read the strip.

Word verifcation: malizopy. Dunno what it is, but it sounds unpleasant.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, next week he'll have moved on to a month's worth of Mallentines.

Anonymous said...

And if it turned out that those glasses really were valuable 30 years down the road?

Then what, ducky?

Anonymous said...

I don't have a fucking clue what Tinkley was trying to tell us today. I mean usually it's one of the obvious tropes: liberals are racist, liberals hate freedom, liberals like taxes, or whatever. But today? It's almost perfectly incoherent.

Is it more faux-populism? No. I might say yes, but his standard liberal elitist character is about to get screwed by corporate mis-management.

What is it? Is it anti-bailout? Is it pro-tax-cut? Is it anti-Obama? No, no, and no.

Wait! I've got it! It's pure, un-allayed, sui generis bitterness! This is possibly the perfect example of Tinkley using bile as ink. No target, no goal. Just bitter through and through.

Anonymous said...

Oh, God. The Mallentines are coming, aren't they? I'm going to have to dig my Horrible Drunken Poetry Helmet out of the storage space again.

Michael Foley said...

There's now as many references to collectibles as turnips. Surely it deserves its own tag.

Maybe Mallard was hoping the company would sock the retirement accounts in right-wing stock tip scams.

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Is it just a coincidence that "Mallentine" sounds like "evil valentine?" 'Cause it seems almost TOO appropriate.

word verification: abiontic--you only WISH you could be biontic.

Unknown said...

...because no president in the last however many years has ever had goodies for their inauguration.

I think this must be Tinsley's deep seated hatred for those smart cookies who came up with ways to make a quick buck before he did. Remember, kids: capitalism is good, unless Tinsley didn't think of it first.

rewinn said...

Michael, what would you bet that Mallard spends a whole week condemning the Bush Administration for deciding to ignore FBI reports of mortgage-industry fraud, as far back as 2002?

Obama collectibles or a nation-crushing fraud? What a hard choice!

rewinn said...

Scary thought: recently Tinkley's drawn non-crotch-shot Mallard; today he brings back TWO characters and actually has a (short) flow of story.

Could he be learning from our criticism?

I hope so. The subversive part is this: the more Mallard becomes realistically character-driven, the less it can be an ideologically-driven hate screed. Once you introduce human complexities, you have to recognize non-draconian subtleties. And reflecting on the plight of workers today with any sort of realism leads to criticism of corporate America, as today's strip amply demonstrates:

Chet: I'm doing something dumb
Mallard: Who could be as dumb as Chet?
Noseworthy: Our corporate leadership can!
(All laugh!)

Kaitlyn said...

He's criticizing two parts of capitalism today!

The collectibles, and the company his characters works for.

Wow.

But Obama is the socialist.

ajm said...

Speaking of MST3K, Mike and the bots' topical satirical revue "Supercalifragilisticexpealiwacky!" was infintely funnier than every Mallard Fillmore strip combined.

But don't take my word for it...

Kyle said...

Kaitlyn, you may have an interesting theory. Perhaps Tinz is like Vito's character in The Sopranos: Vito was so afraid of being gay that he put on an overly tough facade. Tinz is actually Marxist so he puts on this mask in public.

But like Vito found in S&M gear with other men in the city, Tinz spends his days off (see: seven days a week and for the 23 hours 47 mins. he has free after scribbling this awful cartoon day) publishing anonymous ultra-left newsletters.

It would explain why he makes such obnoxious, glaringly wrong and factually baseless: by being as awful as possible he's actually bringing down the right wing from within!

But, most likely I wasted 200 words when he's in fact a bitter hack who draws poorly.

Michael Foley said...

by being as awful as possible he's actually bringing down the right wing from within!

This Modern World had a similar theory, but as the cartoon points out, it's a difficult thing to pull off.

brashieel said...

Honestly, if I were Mallard I don't think I'd want to draw attention to what's been done to retirement funds right about now.

On the other hand, the number of characters in the strip seems to be going up. So that's... something.