Avoid the Freud

Dr. Alfsheim Facialhair has adopted a sort of paganistic psychoanalysis, a breezy naturalism (naturism?) that allows him to keep his friendliness whilst forcing his patients into a sort of zoo animal mentality.

Ziggy's paying through the nose for this percussive psychology. He should have worn pants to his appointment.

Kill the Pig, Make it Bleed! (Dark Days Ahead For Ziggy)

Poor Zig's financial woes have forced him into some kind of back-alley dentist's office. The certificates on the wall are meaningless; health standards have no home here. This unmasked, ungloved androgyne is all set to plunge his/her sweaty, hairy hands into Ziggy's terrified mouth along with six inches of metal. Novocaine is for pansies, right? I half expect to see restraints on Ziggy's chair.

Look at something like this and Gahan Wilson suddenly doesn't seem so bad.

Even OnStar Would Hang Up On You

Odd - usually the "body shop" puns aren't depicted literally. I know the people of the world have pretty much made it their mission to screw with Ziggy, but it seesm a bit wasteful to go to the ends they do, considering that the most extreme reaction they get these days is a vaguely nonplussed, mostly-disinterested glance toward the "camera".

They could be circling around him, dressed in vampire drag, yelling: "Your car is DEAD, Ziggy! DEAD! And you're next! BWAHAHAHA!" And he'd merely keep up that look that says "Oy vey, life. What can you do?"

Ports and Ports

Comcast has a way of doing that.

Oy, He Waits a Month to Post For THIS!?

Well, the breadth and depth of my behind-ness has finally earned the descriptive predicate "woeful". That's right - I'm now woefully behind. I apologize - I've had some medical gookiness to work through lately (still working through it actually), and up until now it's killed my funny.

These two flamer cops have apparently ignored Ziggy's monk-like appearance. That type of bagginess and that color scheme may be well and fine for a monk, but if Ziggy can't attract the righteous indignation of the self-proclaimed fashion police with his getup, I have to wonder what sort of fashion disaster prompts them to actually make an arrest. They should have an entire dossier on Ziggy by now.

Ziggy Gets Mugged

This "ATM" boasts a difficult interface, to be sure: no less than twenty plain, gridded white buttons and what appears to be an oversized coin slot. The sheer difficulty of the machine, plus the fact that it's plainly not a real ATM, leads me to believe that perhaps Ziggy's facing down an Automatic Taunting Machine.

Suddenly, a searing shriek fills the heavens and the scene before us shifts:

Ziggy: Officially in Hell

Gad, that's cruel.

Fly Sauce

I originally wrote paragraph after paragraph analyzing avian dietary concerns, just which condiments go well with seed, and the courtesy of complaining about such a trivial element of such a beauteous bounty.

Then I figured that I was over-analyzing things and wrote the copout you see above. Bottom line - if you're a parrot who can talk and you're eating birdseed, it's your own fault.

Fire Sauce

"Dave" has built his chili palace of torment, pain and internal hemorrhaging - a proud fact that has not escaped the notice of his menu. The escalated pricing scheme for increasing levels of anguish only proves that Dave is the reigning monarch of this hellish mound of capsaicin and promises of future diarrhea. Even the napkins are laced with habañero extract. Meanwhile, Ziggy awaits his meal like a death row prisoner, keeping company with the sort of gustatory masochists who would frequent a place like this.

Mom and Pop Store

Ziggy looks especially pudgy today, and his feet resemble fleshy diving flippers even more than usual. He's also passing an establishment whose perpetual fear of the family patriarch must create some awkward dining situations. A sign like this in a restaurant makes "*Slap!* Get in the kitchen!" especially redundant.

.bat

Ziggy's got to be doing something slightly advanced to have encountered this sort of rebuff from his passive-aggressive computer. His system's quoting old Humphrey Bogart movies at him and all he wants to do is play Taipei. The Americanized tile-matching one - not the real one.


DISCUSSION QUESTION: Will Ziggy's senior citizen target audience understand the technology reference?

Bottles Not Books

Holycrapholycrapholycrap - the door must have been opened for the Apocalypse, because today's Ziggy is everything that I could have ever wanted, and it's a multi-panel endeavor to boot! It makes me forget yesterday's self-plagiarism. Presented, unmodified as always, as originally printed. This wonder requires a panel-by-panel, stream-of-consciousness analysis:

Panel 1 (after the unmodified-as-always throwaway panel in all its hospital-green splendor): Look! Ziggy's buying a sizable stack of books! That book on stress avoidance should come in handy. "Plink! Plink!" the excitable keyboard says as if in agreement.

Panel 2: "Coping With Persecution"! No way! "Plink! Plink!" Don't forget stress!

Panel 3: Anxiety and embarrassment. Pshaw! "Plink!"

Panel 4: Oops! You forgot your bag, Ziggy! Beep. . . beep. . . beep. . . - like some kind of fiendish water torture, it rains upon you.

Panel 5: Ziggy wipes sweat, tears and shirt lint all over the exit doors as he frantically shakes his fanny in a horrific parody of surrender. The Man converges upon him, prepared and eager to do their civic duty by riddling him with lead and anger.

Whoever said that Ziggy wasn't the darkest comic in the papers?

Bow Before the Grease Monkey

Look at that mechanic's bloodshot, sleepless eyes - he's a tweaker. It takes a goodly number of unnecessary repairs to finance such a lavish meth lab as the one brewing in Blueshirt McNametag's basement. The mechanic may be sufficiently confused to get Ziggy's lemon of a gas-guzzler confused with some fancy-schmancy organic car, but he knows what he'll be doing with his unfairly-sizable commission when his shift finally ends. Bubblers, beakers and benders - oh my!

More Commands

Not much to say here. Just a perfectly normal, passive-aggressive sign with an attitude. The ruthless suppression of dissent doesn't really get to me because it's difficult to imagine Ziggy complaining about anything. Ziggy's mind would really blow if the last line were: "And NO reading this sign!"

Vicarious

This is barely even satire. The worst news stations, particularly local news, try to shield you from bad news, but the national news stations have no such options. That's why most national news stories are about events happening far, far away, or to imaginary people in the future ("is [substance] in your water? Find out at nine!"). If the parents of the major news networks, most of whom manufacture weapons, wanted you to hear the news that applied to you and that would affect your future, they would report it. It's good this is my last post for the day because now my ire is up.

Violenza Domestica

What a nice little food triangle developing. In a way it's Ziggy's own fault for placing the bird's perch directly above the goldfish bowl, well within dunking distance. This parrot's evil glare is intense and inescapable - nobody escapes from this evil maw.

It's always possible that the bird has no intention of eating our glum little fishy anytime soon - he's too caught up in the power structure of sadistic threats and pressure afforded by his position. If this trend continues he may have to be put down soon.

Irate Reprobate Service

Ugh. . . I don't know what's gotten into a young Bob Barker that he's taken up work for the IRS, but I shudder to imagine a future wherein penniless citizens are probed with a "metal detector" (actually a crude torture device hooked up to a car battery) upon announcement of their status.

His grotesque expression shows that he gets his kicks out of this sort of thing.

Bitter Harvest

Having misplaced his trust into the hands of purported experts, Ziggy now reaps the bitter harvest gleaned through ill-pointed reliance. The empty uniform on the left regards Ziggy with a sort of indignant suspicion, shrugging off his incompetence with the sort of wishy-washy explanation that his charge is likely to accept, while indirectly assigning blame to the one who called this "expert" in the first place.

The mechanic on the right (who we know is a different guy because his hat and jumpsuit are different colors, obviously) has apparently bypassed mere incompetence in favor of pure unbridled insanity, committing punny acts of Amelia Bedelia proportions. Ziggy is an apt target for mechanical misconduct - his world lacks the concept of malpractice suits or even well-founded anger. Even when individuals wrong him, Ziggy rarely assigns blame, more likely ascribing the mistreatment to the wheels of an inscrutable universe.

Death and Taxes

Some of you may be familiar with the short story "The Lady, or the Tiger?" - a lovely, frustrating little thought experiment involving a choice between two unknowns. More of you may be familiar with a horrible joke told by Martin Mull involving a choice granted by a group of unusually libidinous cannibals.

Nevertheless, I don't think Ziggy has much of a choice here. Income taxes were due a full week ago. Those doors are awfully close together, and even my twentysomething's experience with the government indicates that they both lead to the same place. It's an obvious joke, and an expensive one: I'm giving half of my income to tell it, and you are too.

Run, Ziggy!

What a sight - I won't go for the obvious joke and say that this guy's plainly not a quack, or he'd be holding a duck! (Pause for laughter.) I'm just above that sort of humor.

This medical practitioner obviously believes that it's better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, and the sight of him lumbering toward Ziggy like so many Stay-Puft marshmallow men has a way of stirring a sense of primitive terror in my mind. Heaven only knows what this doctor has in mind, but I'll just say that when your MD starts deep-probing you with poultry, it may be time to find alternate sources of medical care.

Finals week means that these posts might be shorter for a few days, but I'd like to point out the possibility that this is merely a screenshot of the first boss fight for the upcoming Ziggy console game. Don't get too close to him.