THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A JOKE www.msn.com/en-us/news/w...

Hey, I just met Queequeg And Nantucket's got fish-smell Some years ago---never mind how long precisely---having little or no money in my purse and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I'd sail about a little and see the watery part of the world So call me (Ishmael)

12th grader's essay: "La Bella Dame Sans Merci starts off with a woman bringing a man to her shed."

No, common mistake, but it's just French for "the Claypool"

Between "open a 401(k)" and "start an online macrobiotic cooking course," everyone started to suspect me of taking a dive in the "what would you do if you had one year to live" party game

Reading question: "Why does Mary feel sorry for Dr. Craven?" 12-year-old's answer: "Because she got soft"

I went book shopping for this and accidentally got a knockoff, "The Let-Them-In Theory," by "Totally Not a Vampire"

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u... Truly the greatest. She explained the doctrine of substantial performance, "the court says, 'we are going to make you give a little something---something---back.'" After class we asked who noticed "Barbara Black just said 'a little sumpin' sumpin'."

Dangit, I'm already in my forties. Hopeless

"6-7? More like L-7, for you guys are---" (I make the "square" shape with my thumbs and forefinger, thereby owning the flock of 12-year-olds harrassing me)

Just read ALL the comments to see someone put "The Gang Joins ICE" in the Always Sunny font, and internet, you are falling asleep on the job

Keep it clean, Ishmael

Posted 12 hours now, and NOT ONE commenter has chimed in to say "hate to burst your bubble but that darkling thrush has been dead for ages now" or words to that effect. Maybe there is hope for the internet....

RIP duck://player/gD-uTtOBF54

Kind of embarrassing to realize only at this age that the ground around Wuthering Heights (that is, a prominence or escarpment emerging from the grasses of the moors) was probably capable of being described as a heath-y sort of cliff. A heath-cliff, if you will

Eight comments so far, and NOT ONE has made a joke involving "Moons Over My Hammy." Shaking my gosh-darn head....

Thinking of developing a stage persona "Milton John," doing passages from Paradise Lost to tunes from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

In addition to being a wonderful and hilarious cartoonist, Zach always asks very interesting questions here, ones that I usually want to know the answers to. (Less fortunately, his commenters are mostly people like me. And l don't know but want to offer my speculative, unhelpful musings.)

"Look in the mirror and take one thing off." --Coco Chanel, inventing strip solitaire

Some troubling historical resonance as Venezuela responded to the US deployment of the carrier USS Gerald Ford by sending out the cruiser "VS Airplane Boarding Stairs"

You're falling down on the job, internet

Check it out, dude---the Jacobins are celebrating ya moms

I refuse to believe this is true and, therefore, conclude that some Wikipedia vandal has, evidently, done Tom Stoppard incredibly dirty

Good argument that the most "alpha male" guy of all time is the protagonist of "Omega Man"

IN THIS HOUSE at R'lyeh WE BELIEVE Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu

It's kind of neat that there's a city in the Americas named Cartagena, which is named after a city in Spain named Cartagena, which is named to mean "new Carthage," which itself was named "new city"

Remember: it's lie / lay / lain; lay / lady / lay

"The Hoodlum's Lament" Outnumbered, outgunned, disarmed & unmanned Things haven't gone exactly as planned

On the one hand, the second American revolution, if it comes, will reinvigorate democracy and the commitment to human rights. On the other hand, we'll get new calendar days called the 13th of Hay Fever, in celebration of kale

"My kid could paint that" --Mark Rothko's dad