People Are Strange

Even When You're Not A Stranger

Are people more weird now? I used to always be the weird one. Right away, reading comic books put me into the weird crowd. I was resentful at first, but the idea of being an outsider and not a part of the main group was comforting. After all, weird people obviously didn’t run things and I was exempt from all responsibility and blame.

Now everyone is weird. The people in power are definitely weird. Weird has become more of a qualification than anything derogatory. Weird has become cutting edge and unafraid. Comic books have become quaint in contrast. If anything, comic books have become the sort of long form reading that’s a major turn off to people who don’t like to concentrate for more than 30 seconds. They require too much focus and attention to reach the status of weird. I’m not even going to mention actual books.

I’ve got to blame the internet for the normalization of weirdness. Thirty years ago, you had to put in some real effort to be truly weird. You had to get a library card and use it, filling your head up with weird knowledge that was outside of parent and teacher supervision. Then you had to do something drastic, possibly even going to college, to connect with other weirdos.

Now, you can quickly scan a few memes and connect with your weird group. Connecting with others is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but it has neutralized the superpower of being weird.

Normal and boring people are getting harder and harder to find. The truth that most people are just a little bit wacky has become normal and it’s really flipped the whole thing on its head. When I write comics about weird customers, I really have to replace the word “weird” with “hateful”. Otherwise, it would be the pot calling the kettle black.

Wait, aren’t more and more people openly hateful now? Whatever, I’ll still make fun of them.

This goes for anything else. Bad people don’t worry about being bad. Good people worry about doing bad things. Bad people are just having a great time.

This was a part of my annual “Winter tries to propose to April Bloom” attempt, which surely would be a great animated special. This time, Tabby was their witness.

The subtle rising of Tabby in the background was just for me.

I’ve quit many jobs in my life, and it usually follows consistent dreams about them. I dreamt about one job for a few years after quitting it. Negativity builds in my brain, becoming a black hole, and it seeps away in my dreams. Very slowly.

This happens. If you interrupt a customer mid-rant, they’ll start over. They have to. They have to get it out and be heard. Oftentimes, I understand. I’m more pro-customer than I come off in these comics. Other times, no, I’ll play solitaire while they rant.

I do this, mentally, and yes, it is possible to slip up. Write what you know, kids.

Every summer I rant about fruit. Maybe I’ve reached the age when I start ranting about fruit, or maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that once upon a time tomatoes and peaches were honest to-god-delicious things that were joyous to eat and not something that makes me want to play baseball with this new, weird baseball that’s being passed off as something edible.

Peaches, I understand. Pick them early, let them theoretically ripen on their long journey to stores, and watch them predictably remain gross. But tomatoes? My mother grew up on a farm in the South. My father grew up on a farm in the North. Both warring factions came together in the form of the homegrown tomato. No more. There are generations that only know the tomato as a tasteless, pink bicycle tire, which is sliced from a red fruit that is defiantly round.

We have lost the tomato. We have lost our soul.

I loved this one, but I misspelled Mr. Thompson. A reader on GoComics commented that she didn’t realize she had been misspelling Mr. Thompson. Subsequent comments from her call him Mr. Thomson. I discovered these comments many weeks later. I’ll just have to slip the correct spelling in another strip and act like everything is ok. That’s how I solve a lot of problems.

Mr. Thompson is based on a real Mr. Thompson. I have a picture of myself as a baby next to him. He died when I was ten. My mother named him and nobody knows where she got that name from.

Berle is back! He was never the man he could be.

This is based on the reverse of my own experience. I’ve had a couple of jobs where older, wiser employees would caution me, “You better watch what you say to the bosses. You have a good career here. Don’t mess it up!” A career? I honestly didn’t look at it that way. My only career, really, has been this.