My spouse and I used to read the Bloom County comic strip religiously. Reading the comics sitting together side by side was one of the rituals of our courtship. We read in specific order, snaking our way up the page and back down again until we ended up at Bloom County. We bought all the Bloom County books.
As a consequence, our speech is laced with allusions to the comic strip. I keep finding myself wanting to use these allusions in my writings but I can’t because most people won’t know what I’m talking about. One allusion I like in particular is saying something is, “Benji saves the universe bad,” so I’ve decided to post the strip so I can link to it in the future.
Transcript:
Panel 1: “George Phglat’s new film “Benji saves the Universe” has brought the word ‘Bad” to new levels of badness.”
Panel 2: “Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene… simply bad beyond beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.”
Panel 3: [Opus pauses for a moment of contemplation.]
Panel 4: “Well, maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn’t good.”
A lot of things are Benji-saves-the-universe bad. The Iraqi Mortality Survey springs to mind.
There is a great deal of value to be found in popular culture. I have been watching The Penguins of Madagascar on Nick with my son a lot lately. King Julian is greatly reminiscent of Obama, with his self-importance and half-baked sayings; Maurice is of course Rahm Emanuel, and Mort is any member (take your pick) of the White House press corps. Once I realized it I can’t watch it without thinking of Julian as Obama.
Off topic Shannon, but is there an intrade market for Cally IOUs yet? There should be.
> A lot of things are Benji-saves-the-universe bad.
And, amazingly enough, Obama Foreign Policy seems to manage to be worse.