Laugh Tracks

Earthweek's Pig of the Year!

“We used to take it out for a walk every morning and afternoon, but now it's too lazy, and too fat, to do it. So we're feeding it only twice a day.” — Zhu Jianqiang’s keeper.

Though I usually get a direct RSS feed to any story about oversized Chinese pigs, I found this delightful year-end story via Earthweek, the weekly Universal Press feature by Steve Newman that he calls a diary of the planet. For the past 21 years, Steve has used Earthweek to chronicle stories of climate change, natural disasters and trends in animal behavior -- basically anything having to do with Earth's natural history. 

This Friday on Earthweek.com, Steve will be posting a series of stories looking back at the big events of the past year. However, it's the story of Zhu Jianqiang that I'd like to draw attention to today. 

'Pig of the Year' a Hero in China

A pig that survived China’s catastrophic Sichuan earthquake on May 12 by eating charcoal and drinking rainwater while trapped under debris for 36 days has been voted the country’s most inspiring animal, according to state media.

The swine, known as Zhu Jianqiang, which means Strong Pig, was sold after the quake to the Jianchuan Museum, an attraction that has promised to keep him away from the butcher as a reminder of the nation's resolve to cope with the disaster.

The online forum Red Net said the 2-year-old pig “vividly illustrates the spirit of never giving up, and has become a model for Chinese entrepreneurs” amid the current economic downturn.

But the animal apparently hasn’t tightened its belt due to the tough times.

“It's gotten fatter and lazier by the day,” the China Daily quoted a museum staff member as saying.

And the pig’s keepers say it “has developed a temper that many of its fans may not want to see.”

- LW

Did you know you can make comments on gocomics.com?

On the recently redesigned gocomics.com you can make "comments" on your favorite strip.

Cool, right?

Notably, fans of Pigborn are to be saluted for their devotion and the depth of their knowledge about the strip. Pibgorn routinely gets 200+ comments and there's a small competition to see who can get the first post in once the new strip is posted at around midnight (CT). I wish I had fans like these. I'm not even sure that my dad knows my middle name.

Today's Cornered had some tragically awful beautiful puns in the comments section. Part of me wants to use a term I learned from a friend of mine who got his MBA. A little phrase called "value added," but I thought it sounded too similar to something my friend who got his MBA might say ... he's sort of a jerk.

Check below and on gocomics.com.

Comments (3)

Post a comment:

 

wndrwrthg says:

He gets a real bang out of his work.

m_ortal says:

He has job security. It’s hard to find another man of his caliber.

DigitalFrog says:

Is he asking her out to launch?

-JG

W.T. Duck a Finalist for 2008 Weblog Comic Strip of the Year

Our beloved Walter Duckett, esquire, has been named as a finalist for this year's Comic Strip of the Year as part of the 2008 Weblog Awards. The Weblog Awards, as you may know, are the world's largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in 2007. 

Voting begins January 5, which also happens to be the print launch date for W.T. Duck (the oh-so-slightly sanitized handle for What the Duck -- check out WTD creator Aaron Johnson's version of these events in his hilarious video below). 

 

Here's to wishing W.T.D. a great 2009. - LW

From the updated Politicians' Handbook ... (with an all-new foreword by the Devil)

I take no pleasure in making easy jokes about politicians or lawyers or the guy at work who wears clogs (Greg Moore is his name BTW), but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that today's Garfield is soaked in 2008 poignancy.  

-JG

Can you guess what comic this is from?

 

The excitement is palpable here, folks. It's after hours and all the management has gone home. Do you know what that means? Yes! It means it's time to play "Guess that comic!" (Shame on all of you who were thinking about something that involved breaking stuff in Lee's office).

So look carefully ... and keep in mind

1) It's from today 12/30/2008 and

2) You can find it on gocomics.com

The winner is the first one to respond in the comments and as a reward for their work they get their name in the blog and perhaps a poem or two written about them. BTW, not accepting entries from guys who were once from Nantucket.

-JG

2008 / 2009

A couple of year-end illustrations from Richard Thompson and Lalo Alcaraz, respectively. For some reason the image of Baby Barack in a diaper cracks me up. The shocked look on everyone's faces in Lalo's drawing makes it even better. 

A few of my favorite blogs ...

If you're like me and you can't get enough of your favorite comics, one fun thing I like to do is read cartoonists' blogs.

Comic blogs are a like a window into the soul of a cartoonist ... you can see into their creative processes and get some historical perspective. You can understand their motivations and influences, and sometimes, if you look close enough, you can see the emotional scars from childhood that have turned them into what they are today.

Something like, oh I don't know, maybe as a child your their mom said that you they had a bad singing voice and you they never forgot it and when it was time to sing Christmas carols in the office you they felt self-conscious and just mouthed the words and the person standing next to you  them wondered what the hell you they were doing because she could tell you they weren't singing. That kind of hypothetical stuff.

 Pooch Cafe blog

Fake Rockstar (Corey Pandolph) "Toby" "Elderberries" "Barkeater Lake"

- Cul De Sac blog (Richard Thompson) Richard's Poor Almanac, illustrator

Tom the Dancing Bug

Argyle Sweater blog

-JG

Calvin on Blackberry

Watching Missouri play Northwestern last night in the Alamo Bowl ... saw this Blackberry commercial ... and what to my wandering eye should appear? The Complete Calvin & Hobbes ...cutting-edge technology meets technical edge cutting. Which is an Inside joke between me and the folks at RIM.

-JG

Uclick in the New York Times

The last few months have been filled with dire news of layoffs and economic difficulties within the newspaper industry, so the New York Times wonders in this article (which ran in the Sunday print edition ) what happens to comic strips when their traditional distribution channel is struggling to stay afloat. The answer: digital distribution. Douglas Edwards, Uclick CEO, is interviewed and Uclick is spotlighted, particularly for the GoComics.com comics portal and our recent comics launches on the iPhone. Click here to read the article.

2008 in Review

2008 was not a good year in a lot of ways ... the economy ... newspapers relevance ... my gout ... so I'm not sad to see it go. And in this poignant video, a certain Mr. Tom Gammill speaks to our unrest.

-JG