Day By Day: Ruined! Curses!
Posted on September 3rd, 2006 by Gavin M.
Check out this new, super-startling cliffhanger of a Day By Day strip.
Wow.
Chris Muir has a soul after all. This is just pure human drama.
Well, when we’ve recovered from the shock, let’s insert these frames:
HAHA! See? Comedy gold! Take notes, right wingers.
That license plate cracks me up. The subtle, nuanced, vaguely ironic understanding of liberal thought that Muir puts into his comics reminds me of some classic comedy gold from yesteryear.
Like, I dunno…..the Amos and Andy show?
At first, it looked like the reverse street light caused the accident (red->yellow->green). Then I thought the truck crossing the street before the intersection was the problem. Maybe it emerged from a nearby building.
However, my suspicisions were confirmed when I saw this interpretation. It was the Mexicans .
The sticker on the cop car suggests this strip takes place in Alabama.
I’ve spent some time in Alabama, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a hip interracial bipartisan couple there. Or a new Volkswagen, for that matter.
Huh? I don’t get it. Did she leave her car parked in the middle of the intersection?
And please don’t tell me that Chris thinks law enforcement and first responders are too stupid to notice when there’s no body in the car.
So, is Kill Whitey going to be more worried about the potential loss of his blastocyst-American or his scoliotic girlfriend?
I’ve spent some time in Alabama, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a hip interracial bipartisan couple there.
That’s because the KKK drives 18-wheelers.
Otto Man: I think that’s supposed to be a Florida state trooper.
Oh, my bad. So someone else was driving her car?
So learn this lesson guys: When your woman doesn’t call you when you want her to call you, it’s because she has just become a flaming highway death statistic.
The flag on the cruiser looks more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida Florida then ‘bama. Which jives with her outfit.
Which means the car was DEFINATLY stolen. Probably by Cubans.
Republican Cubans?
Leaving aside my prejudice against this guy and this strip, it’s not terrible, though “act of God” disasters often reflect hackneyed storytelling. But seriously, what is with the stoplight going from red to yellow? Is she running a red light in the Land of Backwards Time?
I lived in Tallahassee (real-life motto: Florida With a Southern Accent). Northern Florida is basically the same state as Alabama.
Not a lot of hip interracial couples there either.
So, wait…this guy thinks cops, at the scene of a gruesome highway accident where someone was most assuredly killed in a horrific way, would just call the last person called on an apparently randomly found cell phone and ask, “So, yeah…umm, did you know anyone in a VW?” The fuck? Now, I’m no fan of the thick blue line and I know how slow Florida highway cops can be*, but that’s dumbass shit that’ll get your ass fired. I covered a pretty ugly wreck on I-75 when I lived in Gainesville – a little jeep went airborne and was t-boned by an 18-wheeler going about 85 – and the top cop I spoke to said they make damn sure who’s dead and who ain’t before they call anyone. And the car’s too hot? Hey, how about using that phone to call the goddamn fire department.
Hell, I don’t even know where to begin inre: the oddball light change. Maybe whoever’s driving the car was digging for a good CD and let the green light circle past them. Took awhile to sift through all those Indigo Girls and Steve Earle records.
* Know why they wear them wide-brimmed, Smokey The Bear hats? Keeps ’em from walking into trees.
jpj,
I lived in Tallahassee (real-life motto: Florida With a Southern Accent). Northern Florida is basically the same state as Alabama.
Which is why the rest of the South refers to everything north of Lake City as “Lower Alabama” or LA. Tallahassee…man, that is one Wal-Mart of a town, ain’t it?
In no particular order:
What, there aren’t any fucking phones in the office?
She has to drive the car to call the fucking black guy?
The fucking cell phone makes a loud ringing noise on the caller’s end?
The cops can’t run the fucking license plate to i.d. the driver?
“Maybe whoever’s driving the car was digging for a good CD and let the green light circle past them.”
That explains why it looks like the semi rear-ends the car. It sure looks more like that than like a crash at an intersection.
“this guy thinks cops…. would just call the last person called on an apparently randomly found cell phone”
Yeah, I thought that too. But you put it better than I would have.
Okay, I think I have this sussed out now.
The VW was stopped at a red, the the light turns a very yellow shade of green. and the VW get’s T-boned by a semi running a red at about 50, maybe 60, MPH. Which makes sense, cause I know all MY inner city intersections have 55 MPH speed limits and tons of semis driving on them at 9:30 at night.
Incidently, there’s no way the axel could be where it is in panel 5. Not only becuase it would have to move violently in the opposite direction that the VW is moving, but because the semi somehow managed to pick up the VW and flip it in a counter clockwise motion relative to the viewer, with a slight horizontal turn.
This also wouldn’t happen, as the VW is well below the semi’s center of gravity and wouldn’t be flipped up so much as crushed underneith. I”m assuming that this VW was mosly entirely infront of the semi at the time of impact, given how everything in front of the trunk shows impact damage.
It’s hard to tell, I’m going by what I can make out in the very sloppy art.
Also, cars almost never catch fire. Unpressurized gas, like what you have in the fuel tank and on the ground after an accident, is suprising hard to set fire to. If there is a car fire, it’s usually contained to the pressurized fuel within the engine itself.
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ click to the part about cigarettes. I’m not saying it would nevah evah happen no wais, but it’s a safe bet that it wouldn’t.
Also, calling random numbers on a dead person’s cell phone is just sloppy, unprofessional police work. All the information you need is on the SIM chip, and a five minute stop to a Cingular store will tell you everything you need to know.
And people say I’m boring. What could be more fun the physics!?
O.K., I figured it out. She an undercover CIA operative and is taking notes of the meeting of shady terrorists figures behind her. Even though her Volkswagon ™ with all her super-secret spy equipment was stolen, she still feels compelled to record the meeting in her special high-tech notebook.
She suddenly realizes that she can call her boyfriend who can report the theft of all her ‘things’ and she can continue to monitor the meeting and get the theft reported at the same time! After all, the fate of the free world is at stake!
But the CIA, suspecting her of pregnancy-induced ditziness, has been monitoring the situation all along and sends their special trucker hit squad to rig the stoplight to work backwards, momentarily confusing the diabolical islamofascist cuban-mexican-puertorican terrorist car thieves and setting them up for the hit.
Lobbing an incendiary device into the car to ensure the destruction of all evidence, the trucker hitmen speed away, leaving the cops with only charred corpse(s) and a cell phone which, when redialed, will led the bosses at headquarters know that the job has been completed.
She will be liquidated by the CIA at a later date. Or maybe Richard Armitage will let her name slip to a couple of close friends… er… journalists.
The call to Damon is just someone trying to get him to join the 700 club.
Can I add to Roger’s questions —
“So are we asked to believe that neither of these people have downloaded a cutesy ring-tone?”
Good God, G!
She is CIA!! She isn’t going to be downloading cutesy ringtones. And he is a black Republican, so ditto. Sheesh!
I just wanted to add that my theory explains the physical law violations described by Some Guy since it’s a special secret spy Volkswagon and, when it’s crunched by the trucker hitmen, it kind of flies apart in funny ways because of the super secret equipment and features.
See? It all makes sense!
Well, her back is going to be really fucked up now.
This is like if the worst, unfunniest, most trite sitcom ever had one of its characters come down with cancer during sweeps week. Maybe Charles In Charge or Gimme A Break.
I don’t think this will work. Not even the dittoheads who like to heh-indeed themselves to Muir’s punchlines give a rat’s ass about his “characters”.
Well I think it would be a darn shame, wouldn’t be supportin’ the culture o’ life at all, if the person what hit that VW Bug didn’t get charged for a double homicide.
Now, back to mah very epileptic reading list. Heh, heh, heh…
KTH,
Muir has punchlines?!
Leaving aside for a moment the possibility of her emplyment as a CIA opperative, what the hell IS her job? I mean, she sits at a table in the bushes, not at a desk and not in a cubicle, she has no computer, her job apparently is comprised of writing in her diary. Not a sketchbook, like if she was a designer, but a little diary type notebook.
And Some Guy? I LOVE physics. What side of the string theory debate do you come down on?
mikey
If she’s CIA her phone ought to at least play the James Bond Theme.
Okay, now let me try. I know nothing of the backstory of this strip.
So it’s 7 p.m. and she’s reading a book or magazine and drinking coffee from a go-cup at some location with plants and recessed ceiling lights where it’s appropriate to wear a midriff-baring top and jeans, and there are lots of other people milling around. What kind of place would this be, anyway? Does she routinely hang out in the lobbies of office buildings? Look at the table and stool she’s sitting at — this is not her office; she doesn’t have a computer there. Is this a campus student union or a library? Why doesn’t she have a purse or backpack? Why doesn’t she have anything besides her book and her pen and her go-cup? Yeah, you can leave your phone in the car, but you don’t leave your purse in the car.
Now it’s 9:30. She’s spent 2 and a half hours sitting on the same uncomfortable back-less stool, with the same book or magazine, without even throwing away the go-cup? And everyone else is gone?
So…she routinely spends her idle evening hours alone in public places dressed in skimpy attire without need of a handbag or money, and she needs to check in with her guy.
What, is she a hooker and he’s her pimp?
Ah, I guess that could be Florida’s flag with the little seal in the center of the St. Andrew’s cross.
Whatever. Not much difference between those parts of the Redneck Riviera.
Next 3 frames. Her car is facing a red stoplight with a building on the right. The brake lights are on, meaning the car is oocupied by someone who is driving, and it’s stopped. Is he in the car or is someone else?
Within the car, her abandoned cell phone rings. She’s the only person on the planet whose phone rings like “brrringggg!”
Who’s calling her phone? Is it the guy? But no, she just said she should call him. So is she calling her own phone? Or is it just some asshole from Dish Network calling the wrong number (I got six calls like this over the last 3 days). Is she somewhere calling the guy?
And when is this happening, anyway? is this happening at the same time she is thinking she should call the guy, or has enough time elapsed since 9:30 to put her in the car and on the road?
As the driver’s foot comes off the brake, the stoplight cycles backwards, turning yellow.
Suddenly from behind and to her left – yes, look at the relationship of the truck to the building, the truck is not in the intersection but travelling perpendicular to the road somewhere behind the intersection – a truck comes out of nowhere and, in an amazing violation of the laws of physics, impacts the car from the side yet manages it flip it end over end upon the hood of the truck.
Jesus. You can tell I dont have anything better to do today.
G.,
See? Her being a CIA operative is the only rational explanation. She’s at some trendy coffee joint monitoring a terrorist cell meeting. Why else would someone neglect to report the theft of her belongings right away? Why else would she be more interested in noting the doings of the Islamofascists behind her than letting her significant other know she was a victim of theft?!
And, as you noted, why else would someone with severe scoliosis sit on a hard, backless bench for two and a half hours? Scoliosis makes your back hurt, man! But she can take it because of her secret CIA training and all.
And look at the second frame – she has cleverly concealed her notes with some pieces of scrap paper. Sure, it looks accidental, but there are no accidents with the CIA!!
G,
I don’t have anything to do, either – damned Ernesto! But let’s move on to the accident scene as you described it. The truck comes out of nowhere because it is a special super secret CIA hit-truck! The lights cycle backwards because the CIA has a special controller for every single stoplight in America!
And the Volkswagon jumps up on the hood of the hit-truck because the collision triggers some of its special double-super-secret hydraulics and smoke bombs and oil slick generators and such.
See?
Resuming –
The cell phone amazingly flies out of the car and lands, un-harmed, right next to the flaming wreckage.
Someone has called the fire department, for which response time should probably be about 15 minutes.
It takes a while to put out the flames, probably another 15 minutes. The firefighters put away their gear and take off — probably another 15-20 minutes. Now it’s just the Staties and the coronor’s office guys there. On a priority list of tasks to be done in a fatality investigation, checking the call history on a cell phone seems to be pretty far down the list, wouldn’t you say?
So let’s say that since she realized “It’s late! Better call Damon!” at 9:30 p.m., approximately 4-6 hours have passed.
So…the guy is reading the newspaper and it’s 2:00 – 4:00 in the morning and he’s finally going, “Hey, it’s late, where is she?”
Someone figure out the stoplight sequence. Please. I’m begging. It’s like CSI for wingnuts.
By the way, I think the next strip is going to be sponsored by whoever makes that brand of cellphone. I mean, that’s tough.
The timing is all wrong.
If we supposed to believe, in some kind of O. Henry twist, that the police call Damon at exactly the same time he would expect her to call him, and, HORRORS, he believes her to be dead — the wreck would have had to occur some 2-3 days prior, given normal law enforcement practices. The cops would surely try to notify her next of kin before calling a random number on her cell phone.
So that explains it. It’s a time warp. Time is travelling backwards.
g, that’s the reason you never want to buckle your cellphone in — so it can be thrown clear of the crash and the cops can call your loved ones. At least that’s what they taught me in driver’s ed.
Oh, wait, we didn’t have cell phones then…I must have just imagined it.
Well, in the “Back to the Future” car, they did.
G,
You’ll feel a lot less confused – and safer – if you just buy into the CIA agent theory. It explains everything.
And that way, I won’t have to put out a hit on you!
It’s all our fault for messing with the strip. See what happens?
In a topical strip like this, Muir can’t have more than a couple of days worth of strip in the can. I like the fast response.
I’d like a tall glass of Liberal Guilt. With an olive, please.
Doodle, can you do that little flashie thing, like in “Men in Black”? Then I think I’d be OK with the CIA thing. Is Kiefer Sutherland involved?
A whole strip without an asscrack? Is Muir ill?
G.
Sheesh! Kiefer Sutherland is an actor. And the closest the CIA has come to the MIB flashy thing is a stint in Gitmo. You volunteering?!
THis is the best S,N! thread in a long time. I have nothing to add- I guess I originally read the strip to be a fantasy of her thinking “why is Damon not answering the phone” thinking he got into a car wreck, but he’s just reading the paper. Muir is that obscure. Thinking he’s driving her car. If Muir pulls that shit and somebody isn’t mangled, there’s gonna be hell to pay.
It’s HIS car? I thought it was HER car?!!!
If she left her phone in his car, whose phone is she using to call with, and why is she calling her own number?
This is the best thread ever! There are at least 5 different possiblities for this strip, and NONE of them make any sense.
It can’t be his car….check out the license plate.
Remember,
in any American soap or tv drama, the evil leftist woman who has spent 6 episodes debating whether to get the abortion or not will eventually have the option taken from her by an act of “God”.
Because God punishes women who think abortion is even an option by aborting the kid Himself.
Then the evil leftist woman spends the next six episodes dealing with the loss of what she now realizes was her “precious womb-baby”.
It isn’t supposed to make sense. A license plate with KRY RULES (It has 8 letters plus a space?). I think the “cartoonist” wanted to draw a VW, mangled and in flames, so he could masturbate.
What is he cartooning about? I don’t get it.
You guys are all missing the big picture. Muir has discovered backgrounds!
Um, could somebody help an ignorant furriner out? What’s the deal with the KRY RULES plate?
Bistroist: John F. KerRY RULES
P.S. Yesterday’s cartoon set it up with an explicit Kerry reference.
I totally don’t get the yesterday cartoon. What is the thing about handicapped parking supposed to mean?
But it does make it clear that it’s her car.
She’s doing research? Oh. What looks like an office building lobby is a bookstore?
Typical bookstore. Just one without books.
I think Muir is just engaging in wingnut eliminationist fantasy wish fulfillment here; evil, liberal woman has entrapped “innocent” black conservative man by becoming teh knocked-up, but Jehovah has other plans and turns her into road pizza with His 18-wheeler of DOOM, and what’s more, the beeyotch deserved it!!1! And wouldn’t it be so frickin’ keul if we could toss all liberals under, as it was, the bus? And especially the bitches. But really do it, fo’ real! That’s what Muir is saying here. Nice guy.
Which one is Michael Moore, the big green blob or the bigger thing that hit the green blob?
BTW, looking at the previous day’s strip, it becomes slightly more clear that she was not at the office, or indeed in a lobby, but at a bookstore doing “baby research.” Mwah-ha-ha! That’ll teach her! Yahweh wants wimmin barefoot, pregnant, and completely uneducated! See, reading kills! Bwah-hah-hah-haaaaa!11! Oh, and Kerry vanity plates.
I just noticed that the red light is ON TOP- which makes it even worse- so he clearly meant to have green- maybe he will blame some intern or his editor a la Domenech.
Didn’t I read somewhere that Muir doesn’t really draw his strips but just has stock poses and backgrounds that he cuts and pastes?
How does the truck manage to blow both axels off the car? I mean, I thought VW’s were built to not be giant firebombs, at least that’s what those weird commericals with the german guy rapping led me to believe.
Marq, I do believe you just pegged this as a Jack Chick tract with more daring, if as inept, draughtsmanship…
After staring at this comic for a while, I’m wondering if we’re supposed to think the ringing in the shots of the car are what she’s hearing through the phone as she is attempting to call him? Maybe?
I have no idea. *sob*
“I’m wondering if we’re supposed to think the ringing in the shots of the car are what she’s hearing through the phone as she is attempting to call him?”
I wondered that too at first, but it doesn’t make sense, its HER phone in the car, and he has his phone on the table back at wherever he’s reading the paper.
Like I said, it doesn’t make sense.
I can’t get beyond “Why is she wearing a sports bra at the office?”
Everyone here is currently the only people actually reading this strip. It’s like Apartment 3-G.
I lived in Tallahassee (real-life motto: Florida With a Southern Accent). Northern Florida is basically the same state as Alabama.
Not a lot of hip interracial couples there either.
So did I, but I do remember a few hip interracial couples there. In fact, I was (the white, un-hip) part of one for a while.
I’d take issue with the idea that Tallahassee is essentially interchangeable with Alabama. Now, once you get five miles outside of town, and the influence of both universities drops off sharply, then yeah – it’s Deliverance country.
OK, it took me three readings of the original strip plus the previous day’s strip, plus everything in this thread, to even figure out what the hell Muir was trying to convey. And it’s completely ludicrous. Other people have pointed out some of the major stupidities — the cops using redial on a cell phone to try to ID a victim being perhaps the biggest one — but what about the idea that she left “everything” in the VW to begin with, including her cell phone? No way. In the first place, if you regularly use a cell phone, you carry it with you. And if you do happen to leave it in the car, you don’t sit in a bookstore for 2-1/2 hours without (a) realizing you left the phone in the car, (b) swearing and (c) going out and getting it. I speak from extensive personal experience.
My first impression was that it wasn’t her in the car — someone stole it.
As she’s sitting in the bookstore remembering that she left her phone in the car, the thief is driving it away while the boyfriend is calling her. That’s the only explanation that I could think of for her phone ringing in the car. The boyfriend’s number would be on redial because she called him from the parking lot (in the previous strip).
But now I’m thinking that it was really her in the car after all and that the poster who thinks there’s going to be a double homicide charge has nailed it – this is where Muir is taking this thing. In that case there is no explanation for the phone ringing in her car any more than there is for the light going from red to yellow.
having read this thread, i’m not even slightly tempted to read the damn cartoon.
can someone just synopsize it for me, so i can pass on the movie rights once and for all?
See, that’s the problem, Robert.
After having spent two or three days on extensive exegesis of this thing….I don’t think any of us actually know what it’s about. Somebody thinks they’re pregnant, and there’s a car accident. Anything other than that is up for grabs.
Tallahassee…man, that is one Wal-Mart of a town, ain’t it?
Tally is actually a very Democratic town. And our Wal-Marts (I believe there are 2) are more strictly regulated for appearance and enviromental concerns than most towns in Florida. It’s really quite an accodating town for liberals.
Just sayin’…