Canceling my newspaper subscription for a few weeks has been akin to a painful withdrawal program from some recovery process. It is not too hard to stay up on national and international news because the airwaves are full of news briefs, email notifications and periodical headlines. Recently I was whining about missing my daily dose of "Get Fuzzy", a comic strip created by Darby Conley. A friend mentioned that I could probably read the strip online every day but I forgot about that suggestion until this afternoon.
I should have known that comic strips would have their own web 'home' and discovered it was easy to find "Get Fuzzy" online. I've just scrolled through three weeks of the strip that chronicles the life of "Rob" - the human, "Satchel" - his dog, and "Bucky" - his Siamese cat. Darby Conley's ability to take every day words, phrases, or concepts and re-create them into some nonsensical form is brilliant. "Bucky", the cat, is usually the cunning and dominant character, riding rough-shod over the poor, defenseless and dimwitted dog, "Satchel", BUT every now and then, "Satchel" has had 'enough' and "Bucky" gets his comeuppance. Recent strips have had the cat convincing the dog that alligators lived in the sink.....all because Rob used the word "allegory". Satchel then begins pouring salsa, black beans, and other canned goods down the drain, trying to rid the sink of alligators. Somewhere in the mayhem, the cat gets the idea that "fiction" is a country and that we should rid the country of illegal 'ignorants' who are from the country of "Fiction".
You really have to read the comic strip for a while to appreciate Darby Conley's gift for the absurdity of what his cat and dog characters 'say'. I'd love to meet Darby and I'm not even sure Darby is a 'him'. All I know is that the strip is always tongue-in-cheek, witty, wacky, and often makes me chortle aloud. "Get Fuzzy" is one of my life's small pleasures - cheaper than liquor, calorie- free, and goes well with coffee.
It doesn't get any better than that.
Ancora imparo
