You ask me to show you something funny, I'll show you a little kid who fell down.

I'm sure you'll all have a mild (but debilitating) stroke when you see I'm actually back on schedule for my monthly rants, but you'll get over it. Remember people in wheelchairs lead rich fulfilling lives and there are olympics to boot.

Speaking of rants, this month we're going to completely skip over the 'How has Zach been for the past 15-30 days?' section and jump right in to main attraction. Every once in awhile something jumps out and tickles my rant reflex (I think it's just to the lower left of my gag reflex...if you reach my lungs you've gone too far). This is one of those things...it makes writing the ZCCNL SO easy:

First and foremost, I recently had the opportunity to sit down and read the Sunday "Funnies". I say "Funnies" with quotation marks because obviously that title is now used as the loosest meaning of the word. Last I checked the word 'Funny' had something to do with HUMOR. Out of the 17 comic strips, THREE I found humorous, and one was entertaining, but not what I'd call 'funny'. Here's some suggestions I have:

1. Put Garfield to sleep. Seriously. I'm not a Garfield hater, in fact I still have all the treasuries and collections from my childhood and used to find his antics highly amusing...but there are only so many times you can have the vocally-impaired feline steal Jon's dinner, kick Odie off the table or say "I hate Mondays" and have it be a freaking punchline. I haven't seen Nermal in years, at least that would be SOMEWHAT refreshing.

2. Stop the &*%#^@! Political comentary. Ok, scratch that. The BLATANT political comentary. I don't mind in the least when a cartoonist puts a little message in their strips, but when it's spelled out and slaps you in the face like a Pimp asking for his money....BAD!!i!!i!!111!i! If you're anti war, fine. But if you're a cartoonist your job is to entertain me and take me AWAY from the woes of the 'real' world for the fifteen minutes I'm reading the comic section of the paper.

3. All the strips that have two panels and have a lame joke like (Panel 1): "Oop, I left the stove on!" (Panel 2): "Derp!" need to be removed savagely and without remorse. These same strips usually look like Corkey and helen keller's love child doodled it with their deformed dorsal fin-like appendage, so their not only offending my intelligence, they're offending my eyesight too.

4. Can ANYONE tell me what Doonesbury is supposed to be about? I've been reading it for years and I still don't get it. Is it one big ongoing story, so if I missed the very first strip I won't get the rest? Gary Trudeau, give it a point or give it the axe.

5. 'Blondie' without the 'Blondie' character is like T without A. We all connect with Dagwood and his pathetic foibles, but if he's the primary character, why not name the strip 'Dagwood?'

6. Yeah Family Circus is "cute" and family friendly, but it took me five minutes to understand what was going on in the strip I have in front of me right now. I can't even describe it. I'd rather read a page of Cosmopolitan than another Family Circus strip.

I could go on, but I feel I've said enough for now. I severely miss Calvin and Hobbes. Yes, the stories were similar, but there was just enough of a twist on them they SEEMED new and exciting. I know even that strip isn't perfect...Bill Watterson himself even admits the messages about environmentalism is pretty heavy-handed at times, but that strip was as close to perfection as you can possibly get. In an era where all the faimlies in the comics were cookie cutter "Hi honey I'm Home!" types, you had this snotty like S.O.B. with parents who even joked about wishing they'd bought a dog rather than had their kid. Genius.

A plea to Bill Watterson: BRING CALVIN AND HOBBES BACK AND SAVE US FROM THE EXREMENT THAT HAS INFILTRATED OUR NEWSPAPER COMICS SECTION. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, MAKE EVERYTHING RIGHT AGAIN.

Thats it, my rant bag has been filled again. I'll see you next month... and I know you're all on the edge of your seats wondering if I'll do a Christmas rant? Perhaps a New Years rant? Well stay tuned...you're liable to be diappointed no matter what, so keep those hopes high. Your anguish sustains me.

This is Zach as always saying "Please don't add me to your block list."