Bring back the ducking stool

Leaving aside the nutty overrating of BC, this tribute would be more moving if it weren't THREE MONTHS late. What, Tinsley just emerged from his drunken stupor, realized his alleged hero was dead, and just HAD to barf out a perfunctory tribute? And is that the most leaden, joyless rendering of a BC caveman EVAH, or what? I suppose it's POSSIBLE he's meant to look grief-striken, but he actually just appears to be hung over--a condition, I think we can assume, with which The Tinz is intimately familiar.

Is it in poor taste for me to mock this little exequy? Maybe, but blimey, the extreme lateness, coupled with the half-assed drawing and the text's hyperbolic desperation, don't exactly scream "sincerity" to me.

As for today's Mallard Bloodpool...

...I just want to note that when he says "according to this book" he almost certainly actually means "according to this article in USA Today." Oh, Bruce--you're so cute when you pretend to read books.

Mallard Bloodpool

I can't believe it took me so long to come up with that. Any Actraiser fans in the house? Seems appropriate, especially with this moronic global warming denialism thing he's had going lately. I feel that I'm experiencing a snark deficit here--I don't really know what to say. He's really taking this to the point of psychosis. I can't understand why anyone who isn't a giant corporation who benefits financially from being able to fuck the environment would cling like a rabid rat to this obvious delusion. Well, yes I can: libruls are fer it, so ahm aggen it. This would all be sort of funny if it weren't DESTROYING THE FUCKING PLANET. Fuck you Tinsley, you loathsome little apparatchik.

This post wasn't very funny, was it?

A brief, extremely tasteless, bit of duckfuckery

Mostly Bush's jizz, I think.

I think we need more Walter Williams strips

Seriously, even by Tinsley standards, this is some weakass shit. What point, if any, is he trying to make? Presidential candidates want other Presidential candidates gone? WHOA. STOP THE PRESSES. And might I note that to be Obama's mother, Clinton would have had to have given birth at the age of fourteen? There ain't THAT massive of an age difference, Tinz.

As his hero sez, words mean things.

Dude: NO. You did NOT threaten him. You demanded he run for President, and then you published his email address. There was no intermediate phase here that could be said to have constituted a threat. A threat would have looked something like this:



THAT is a threat. Possibly not the most effective threat ever, but seriously, dude, you're a crank cartoonist whom everyone hates and whose work newspapers only run in a misguided attempt to "balance" Doonesbury. It's the best you can possibly hope for.

Quick driveby

Tinsley thinks that black voters don't care about actual issues; they'll just mindlessly vote for any candidate who happens to also be black. All while he's accusing Democrats of racism. Mind-boggling.

Feeling like a DEAD DUCK

Wow. Uh...that's certainly chutzpah for you. Any chance of you actually providing a source for this alarming quote, or are you just slandering "the media" because it's become reflexive for you? No vague, semi-legible URL, even? I guess he must have blacked out before he got that far. I keep thinking there must be some sort of incredibly subtle anti-Obama thing here that I'm just not bright enough to get, because how the HELL can you make a statement like that given the current Obama lovefest going on, but...yeah, Tinsley doesn't really do subtlety.

And Tinz, you may not have met anyone who claimed that they wouldn't vote for a black candidate (although I somehow doubt you've done a comprehensive survey), but, uh...how many black Republicans are there in congress? Oh, that's right...zero. I'm sure it's entirely coincidental. And I'm sure conservatives in Ohio resoundingly forgot to vote for Kenneth Blackwell because of his stances on the issues. Yes indeed.

I'm all out of good duck-related titles

Surely he can't seriously be delusional enough to imagine that he's spearheading an actual movement...? But you know, I'm thinking he just might be. Excessive alcohol DOES sometimes lead to an inflated sense of self-worth (will I EVER get tired of making drunken Tinsley jokes? No...no, I don't think I will). You've almost gotta feel sorry for this Walter fellow--if he's really a regular Limbaugh guest host, you know he's gotta be a first-class shithead, but jeez, having to endure whatever portion of Tinsley's audience is deranged enough to actually write to him...that's rough. Pretty goddamn inconsiderate of Tinsley to harass this guy in his quixotic--and very, very stupid--crusade. Then again, maybe he'll end up only getting emailed by sarcastic liberals. I sent him the following:

Dear Dr. Williams,

A cartoon duck told me to tell you that you should run for President. I think he may have been drunk, though.

Best,
GeoX

We'll see if this has an effect. Incidentally, it looks like Tinsley doesn't understand the meaning of the word "threaten." Unsurprisingly.

Holy SHIT

Mallard HAS been sort of tepid of late, what with all the dopey new year's resolutions inexplicably forced into doggerel form...but man alive, now he's BRINGING the crazy. If there were a competition like American Idol, but where the idea was to be really batshit crazy rather than sing, and there were a whole bunch of deluded wannabe contestants who got rejected because they THOUGHT they were completely insane but really they were only mildly neurotic, Tinsley would be the one who would go in and start barking about how Howard Dean is worried about his cartoon duck's campaign to get some random dude to run for President, and Randy would be like, Dude! You BROUGHT it! And Paula would practically be in tears, and Simon would give his little half-smile and say, Congratulations, you're going to Hollywood, and Bruce would start screaming and jumping up and down in glee, and MAN. I would TOTALLY watch this show if it existed.

More Mallard Mallarky

I would like to note with pride that this blog is the number one google hit for the word "Duckfuckery." That'll go on the ol' CV.



Ha ha ha hoo boy. To preview the rest of the week, I think we can expect one or more variations on the following:

-The media is liberal!
-The media is racist!
-The media is racist against conservatives!
-I'm really insufferable!

Okay, so we get that last one every week. Whatevah.

I think racism is certainly going to come up, because otherwise, why this whole deeply unlikely hypothetical scenario? Never mind that it's a bit rich of him to be accusing OTHER people of racism. What makes this even more excruciating than usual is the ridiculous premise. So, um...WHY would you urge some random right-wing crank with no chance of winning to run for President? Why, so you can make lameass anti-media jokes, of course! Was there ever a more forced set-up?

Question: Is it interesting that he can't come up with any actual "RACIST AGAINST REPUBLICANS!!!11" rhetoric to attack and thus has to make stuff up? No, not really. It's pretty much par for the course.

Other Question: could Tinsley REALLY come up with no better way of introducing this guy no one's heard of than by awkwardly sticking his credentials into his letter's salutation?

Third Question: Do you think those few celebrities whom Bruce likes (cf Tom "lesbian orgies in high school bathrooms" Coburn) go "oh god, PLEASE no" when he mentions them, but feel obligated not to say anything because he's nominally on their side?

Fourth Question: Is he actually going to get around to threatening Williams later in the week? 'Cause if not, I'm gonna feel cheated.

Fifth Question: "Bon vivant?" Seriously? Admit it, Tinz: you just thought using a French phrase would make you sound smart. Think again.

Final Question: Why don't you fuck off and die, Tinsley? Seriously, all this good-natured ribbing aside, the fact remains, you're a repugnant little man with no redeeming qualities. Also, a drunk.

UPDATE: Actually, I kind of feel bad about that last one. Tinsley may well have redeeming qualities. It's just that none of them are apparent in his public life, such as it is.

This oughta be good.

It's true that I am paying rapt attention to Bruce's headlong dash towards rock bottom, as are a few other folks, but does he really imagine that being relentlessly mocked by a handful of low-traffic weblogs is the same as having the attention of "the media?" Sorry, Tinz, but I'm afraid that if you really want the media's attention, you're going to have to go on another drunken bender. Good luck with that!

Tinsley finally loses it

I know I've said that, or words to that effect, before, but MAN. Here's yesterday:



So it turns out that the last few days, about dog obesity and then about Chinese obesity, were just the set-up for a "joke" about Chinese people eating dogs. Ha ha! But of course, the real fun is in the footnotes, where he really GOES CRAZY! It's quite extraordinary...he really seems to think that "USA Today" is an adequate citation. This is bound to annoy people who, as college students, actually went to the trouble of researching papers and providing sources for said research. If only they'd known they could just write down vaguely-remembered concepts and at the end include a works cited page that simply says "the library." That would have given them a LOT more time for binge-drinking. As it does Tinsley.

As for the third link...well, you could *try* googling "dog-eating," but on the first page, at least, your results would be limited to, A) dog-eating in Korea; B) dogs' eating habits; and, C) hot-dog eating contests. Or, you could check the BBC (I can't believe I'm actually humoring Tinsley here), where this article seems to contradict his assertion that the industry is growing.

I think he barraged us with so many footnotes because he was aware that with this strip, people would accuse him of being racist, not that bright, and drunk all the time. All of which he has more than adequately demonstrated elsewhere. What the hell is going on in his head that made him think that making this unspeakably lame "joke" was WORTH all of this projected ridicule? Science may never know.

Then today he boldly forges ahead to make things much worse for himself:



This is almost too easy, BUT:

More from Bruce.

This is the part where we make today's MF funnier and more coherent by substituting the dialogue with the captions from random Family Circus comics.

Bruce stops trying

MF strips rarely contain actual jokes, but typically they at least include sort of vaguely joke-shaped punchlines, so that if you squint hard enough, you can convince yourself that there's at least some token essay at humor going on. This one is notable in that it doesn't even make a pretense of effort. "Fat dogs...media liberal..." And THAT is all we get! Is this really acceptable? Sure, Family Circus and Blondie and fucking Shoe may all be pretty feeble, but at least they invariably contain jokes. Feeble, pathetic excuses for jokes that no one in the entire world has ever laughed at ever--but at least they're following the implicit comics code, where you're meant to at least pretend to try to amuse your audience. If Bruce is unwilling or unable to abide by this code, perhaps he should take his cranky right-wing brain-farts to a more appropriate medium, such as poorly-mimeographed leaflets handed out on street corners.

Dig Tinzley'z mad citations skillz

Maybe we should give him a break, given that the alcohol has eaten away substantial chunks of his brain.*



*source: my ass

Mad Duck Disease

I know it's an exercise in futility to respond to Tinsley in any way other than by laughing at his incoherence and assholishness while at the same time cruelly mocking his alcoholism, but what the hell--I'm feeling punchy.

I don't know what you're referring to when you say "family values," Bruce--I doubt even you have an entirely clear idea what your dipsomaniacal ravings are about. But since it all boils down to teh secks for the family values crowd, I would guess that, in some incoherent way, you're upset about depictions of characters who have teh secks--or, even worse, teh ghey secks--without then going to hell. But the thing is, Bruce, if this stuff was socially unacceptable, it wouldn't sell, and thus it wouldn't continue to get MADE. Hellyweird didn't become the multi-billion dollar unstoppable killing machine of your nightmares by making movies that people hate. I know it's probably hard to wrap your brain around, but there's this thing called "capitalism," and under this system, companies make money by supplying the people with things that the people want. I somehow was under the impression that you were a fan--but maybe I was wrong!

Yeah yeah, I know--you're an embattled minority, in spite of controlling two out of three of the branches of government and having controlled the other one 'til just this week. Boo fucking hoo. You hear this? It's the world's smallest and whiniest violin. If you don't like capitalism, move to Cuba, America-hater! But I'd hurry--this may be a limited-time offer.

Mallardrunkenness

Sometimes I think just reading Mallard is enough to make one drunk. Not that he's ever been coherent, but I get the distinct impression that, post-election, he's just kind of given up--that he's realized that it really doesn't matter what he says. No one's listening. Actually, he should be thankful for that last one. Anyway, if there were a left-wing equivalent to Mallard, I think it'd look a li'l something like this:

Endless duckfuckery

Seriously, the nuttiness is coming so fast I can barely keep up.



I. Um. I. Just...wow. Fucking WOW. You've got to admire the chutzpah. I want to SAY something about this, but I'm afraid nothing I could come up with could possibly do it justice. And why does Pelosi look like Siouxsie Sioux? As with much Mallardiana, it is a mystery!



So which do you think is more likely: that Tinsley REALLY wanted to decry the shameful censorship of vegans and Marxists...or that he was so completely blasted while he was writing that he lost the thread of what he was saying between speech balloons, moving mid-thought from bashing academia to randomly listing people he hates? I know which side my money's on!

UPDATE: okay, okay--now I see that he must have meant "me" to be the first item in the list that includes "minorities," "vegans," and "Marxists." You can hardly blame me for not getting it, though. The way this little snippet of doggerel is written, it's counterintuitive to assume that there's supposed to be a comma rather than a dash separating the two. I don't know why Tinsley's been so obsessed with including horrible "poetry" in his comics lately, but he really needs to stop. He's even worse at it than he is at his usual shtick.

God knows what it is he imagines, in his diseased brain, that colleges are censoring to avoid offending Marxists and vegans (two great tastes that taste great together?), but what I'd *really* like to see is a series bemoaning all the racist things that he wants to say but can't for fear of offending minorities. What a barrel o' laughs that would be! And honestly, barely different than what he's been doing for years. Hey Tinz--your party's in the minority now. No need to bother with the thin veneer of PR-necessitated civility. G'wan and wallow in your hatred like a big fat piggie. You know you want to.

CORRECTION: a big fat drunken piggie.

More Mallard

Yes. Goldangit, the Republicans just weren't rabidly conservative enough. Maybe if they'd invaded the shit out of just one more random country, or interfered in the affairs of one more dying woman, things would have turned out differently. Sigh...dream a little dream. Of course, I have no doubt that Tinsley would be every bit as vociferous in his criticism of the goopers had they won last month. Can there be any doubt?

One more thing: Compared to some of the people at places like dailykos, my political junkiedom is pretty mild, but I still find it strange that I have no idea who the fuck this "Pence" person he wants for President is. Okay, that's not really true; a google search reveals that it's probably this guy. I assume this is Tinz's congressman, but seriously--what the hell is he smoking? When's the last time a representative has been elected President? Has it ever happened? I certainly hope that the fact that Tinsley is floating this random, unknown guy for President is an indicator of just how shallow the gop field is. Yeah yeah--not that the Dems are all that much stronger in that regard. Help us, Al Gore--you're our only hope!