Despite the punch line of this strip, the ridiculous restrictions on women don’t end with the pregnancy. Even after giving birth, they still recommend women abstain from drinking because (SHOCK! HORROR!) some of the alcohol can actually transmit to the baby when breastfeeding. Of course, there are women I’ve known who use this to their advantage by getting all liquored up before a feeding and effectively knocking their wailing kid out for a few hours thanks to the sedative effects of the devil’s brew. I’m not saying I applaud their mothering skills, but I do admire their ingenuity in getting two servings from a single bottle.
The facial expression of the doctor in that last panel really makes this strip work. He’s just so insane. Coincidentally, I added the beloved doctor to the character list on the site. I thought it only fair. I mean, he’s been in the comic more than a number of other listed characters, so I might as well give him official recognition.
July Voting Incentive NOW UP!!!
It’s July, and that means Puck’s pulling out ALL the stops by giving you a voting incentive that has everything you ever wanted! And when we say everything, we mean EVERYTHING!
CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR PUCK!!!ALSO…
I realized that I’d really fallen down on the whole incentive availability thing in the store. People have been making a rather large number of purchases made lately, and none of the voting incentives from November of last year onward were available. Shame on me! I’ve made all of those pics (14 in all!) now available for two bucks. Or you can get all the pics for a fiver. (The money, by the way, all goes to the comic to pay for hosting costs, advertising and the like. I promise you that I don’t buy KFC with it. Most of the time.)
Hey, I bought myself KFC for the first time in years just last week. Got me my two-piece meal with macaroni salad and fries. It was heavenly. Have you noticed that after having legally changed their named to KFC (instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken) they now don’t even use the name ‘KFC’ much? I recently showed a KFC flyer to a co-worker, and nowhere on the whole ad was the name ‘KFC’. There was just that stylized pic of the Colonel and their new ‘So Good’ slogan. Weird. My co-worker thinks it’s because they’re afraid of the word ‘fried’.
That’s the same theory I’ve heard for years. Besides being the no-name chicken place, they almost always have a Taco Bell built in or are right next to one. That trend started a few years ago. Same ownership, I’d bet.
Kentucky Fried Taco Hut. One of them is usually in another. I’ve been keeping an eye out for the triumvirate in a single location, not that I’d set foot in it. Yum Brands (formerly Pepsi fast food division).
YUM® brands has since changed its name to sumthin else, can’t remember what. But it was an unholy trinity. Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC, all owned by PepsiCo international. They have lots of the “KenTacoHuts” (that would be all three food joints in a single location) here in the Midwestern US.
Nothing unholy about that. KenTacoHuts sound AMAZING. We have NONE of that up here. In fact, Pizza Hut is becoming a bit of a dying breed in my general area – especially the sit-down restaurants. A lot of them are being turned into ‘take-out only’ places. So the KenTacoHuts sound like the promised land to me.
Actually, the reason they changed their name *did* have to do with one of the words in it… that word being ‘Kentucky’. Yes, the state of Kentucky wanted KFC to pay royalties for the use of their name. So it got changed.
That last panel actually did make me chuckle out loud. And you’re right — the expression on Doc’s face in the last panel is great.
His bio is showing up on the cast page, but not his picture yet. And is it just me, or is he one mustache away from resembling another fictional doctor? The one with the funkiest skylight in Greenwich Village?
When I went to the cast page the first time, his pic didn’t show. Then I refreshed and it popped up. Not sure what’s going on there. It’s the same script as the rest of the images. Anyway, I’m not culturally with it enough to which doctor you mean. And typing that statement into Google just resulted in lots of ads for skylight installation.
Hmmm. Now I sort of see the resemblance. But seriously, this Doctor seems to remind everyone of someone different. I always thought he sort of looked like Eugene Levy, but my wife insists he’s the spitting image of her grade twelve French teacher, and now we’ve got Doctor Strange in the mix. I say for a reasonable Doctor Strange resemblance, you need the facial hair. Unless Doctor Strange recently shaved and I wasn’t aware of it.
I can see how OarBoar can see Doctor Strange, because the original drawing of Doctor Strange done by Steve Ditko didn’t have the beard. Yep, the iconic beard wasn’t part of his original design! Look below and see! 🙂
There need to be more doctors in liquor ads, I’d say: “Jägermeister: the drink recommended by doctors everywhere!” Funny thing is, that’s actually what many liquor ads looked like a hundred years ago, back when they used to play up the ‘medicinal qualities’ of alcohol. Yeesh.
But the problem comes with the baby isn’t taking in some of the mother’s immunities from the breast feeding.
Then again, I don’t know how much of an effect that actually has. All my brother’s kids were bottle fed, and they are healthy. As was my best friend’s kid, and except for a freak thing he’d rather me not talk about, his daughter is healthy too.
Well, my doctor (who is a very good doctor, unlike the doctor in my comic) put it this way: take any adult and challenge any medical professional to determine whether that person was breastfed or bottle-fed. Can’t do it. They’re both good options, and people get WAY too hung up on this issue.
Lol. Puck’s trying to skirt around the pain. Even if she were so lucky, she’d need that pint for the afterbirth pains alone being this is her first child and all..
Oh, Puck… *shakes head* Don’t you know you won’t be able to get sloshed once the kid is out, either? You’re going to have to take care of it and be alert 24/7 for at least five years. I mean, I’d sort of trust your hubby to care for the offspring, but you won’t.
I personally don’t care. Puck is immortal, so what is marriage to her?
And if they’ve been dating for ten years, what’s a ring and a piece of paper?
Yes, I’ve got a low view of marriage. My mom has been married 3 times, and divorced all of them. My dad has only been married once, but has dated several women who have been married more than once. All my aunts have been married more than once, and so has one of my uncles. And don’t even get me started on my best friend’s issue with his future ex-wife. And it’s not like I’ve had a lot of luck in love, either.
By that same logic, marriage shouldn’t be too big a deal for her; she’s going to outlive Colin anyway, so why not do it? They get along reasonably well, they’re having a kid, so it’s fine. At the very least, it’s a chance to eat wedding cake and all the rice Daphne will scavenge from the ceremony. ^^
I’m not married myself, though I’d like to be someday. My image of marriage is not pristine – I had front row seats to a marriage disintegrating in a BAD way – but I am hopeful. I have seen some very good marriages.
Exactly. I could have easily skipped over that milestone by saying it happened in the lost years, but it’s too fertile a comic ground to let go to waste.
Well, I choose to keep hope alive. ^^; Puck has invested more in getting this kid onto the world than she did with Daphne, who was basically abandoned on her doorstep.
And really, honestly, I don’t think she did a terrible job of raising Daphne either. Sure, Daphne’s a shyster and a con artist, but she arrived on Puck’s doorstep like that. She’s done a decent job of giving the kid a vague moral center and the confidence to do what she does. So yeah. I have hope too, when it comes right down to it.
The monstrous amount of stuff I couldn’t eat or drink was motivation enough. Seafood(coming from new orleans that was the lowest ebb), coffee, liquor, certain kinds of dairy and my favorite wtf nuts! Nuts got the ban hammer for three years for breastfeeding and three for her own Cheetos encrusted orifice. Modern medicine makes mothers suffer.
Modern medicine really does seem to be designed for the suffering of mothers. The infuriating thing is that usually they don’t even need real evidence that such-and-such food is a problem. They just need a theory that the food might possibly be a problem, and BAM. Food banned! Their logic? “Better safe than sorry!” But they don’t get it. They’re messing people’s lives up!!! Seriously! And half the time they don’t know what they’re talking about. Like the nuts. Now I’ve heard some medical professionals expressing the view that the ban on nuts for pregnant and breastfeeding women may actually be causing nut allergies.
Am I the only one bugged by how the doctor is taking off his glove in the first panel? I mean, he hopefully remembers where that hand has been, and he’s pulling it off with his bare fingers?
Latest medical news seems to connect heavy consumption (mainly binge drinking) at a very specific time in the baby’s development to F.A.S. but they still don’t know exactly when that specific time is, or how it works exactly. The ‘no alcohol at all, even in tiny amounts’ concept has pretty much been debunked.
Tell that to the state of Colorado, which carded my middle-aged a£z on my last beer run… for O’DOUL’S. That’s right, the busybodies in my state consider “way less than 0.5%” to still mean “some”. Give me a break.
Arizona diagonal from us is much less stupid. They say if it’s more than 0.5% it’s a “spiritous liquor”; so O’Doul’s is not. The Feds don’t seem to care.
> The facial expression of the doctor in that last panel really makes this strip work.
Both his and Puck’s. The last panel is a smorgasbord of hilary for those of us who haven’t been there.
(I’ve seen people die of cancer which is totally not funny even if you do not care one bit about the person dying, but I have not seen a woman give birth, and I am kind of glad about it).
This is an accurate depiction, believe me. It might not be realistically accurate, but it is poetically accurate. I do recommend witnessing the experience, though. It’s not until you witness birth (and care for a baby) that you start to understand in your very gut the life cycle of man. I’ve watched someone die too, not long before my first child was born, but I must say that watching a birth is a good counterpoint.
Read the doctor’s dialogue in Eugene Levi’s voice (as per the previously mentioned resemblance from waaay back in comic #68). Oddly, this is the FIRST time I did that, but that last panel did peg the absurdity meter.
Should be “babys in the correct position” not presentation.
And Jagermeister is disgusting. But other than star anise, I find anything that tastes like black licorice disgusting. And yet I want to try salmiakki ..
Fine. Im a ball of contradiction and hypocrisy.
Im ok with it.
I stopped drinking long ago, so the whole thing is distant and most of the flavors unappealing to me now. I don’t mind black licorice, though. I’m one of the few people under 80 who doesn’t.
That doctor has some excellent motivational skills. I ain’t pregnant, nor a woman….. However that little speech just made me start pushing for all I was worth. (Can I file a malpractice suit since crapping my pants was a direct result of following his medical advice?)
By the way, Satan seems to like hanging out in the same city as Phoebe. She must be the baby of the family and likely something of a black sheep, seeing as the most evil she’s done is recommend Tracee for a job on his campaign.
It’s July, and that means Puck’s pulling out ALL the stops by giving you a voting incentive that has everything you ever wanted! And when we say everything, we mean EVERYTHING!
CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR PUCK!!!
ALSO…
I realized that I’d really fallen down on the whole incentive availability thing in the store. People have been making a rather large number of purchases made lately, and none of the voting incentives from November of last year onward were available. Shame on me! I’ve made all of those pics (14 in all!) now available for two bucks. Or you can get all the pics for a fiver. (The money, by the way, all goes to the comic to pay for hosting costs, advertising and the like. I promise you that I don’t buy KFC with it. Most of the time.)
No KFC? The Force is strong in you, weedhopper!
Hey, I bought myself KFC for the first time in years just last week. Got me my two-piece meal with macaroni salad and fries. It was heavenly. Have you noticed that after having legally changed their named to KFC (instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken) they now don’t even use the name ‘KFC’ much? I recently showed a KFC flyer to a co-worker, and nowhere on the whole ad was the name ‘KFC’. There was just that stylized pic of the Colonel and their new ‘So Good’ slogan. Weird. My co-worker thinks it’s because they’re afraid of the word ‘fried’.
That’s the same theory I’ve heard for years. Besides being the no-name chicken place, they almost always have a Taco Bell built in or are right next to one. That trend started a few years ago. Same ownership, I’d bet.
Same ownership, I’m pretty sure. It’s a two-headed monster of unhealthiness! And deliciousness! Though I’m not much of a Taco Bell man.
Kentucky Fried Taco Hut. One of them is usually in another. I’ve been keeping an eye out for the triumvirate in a single location, not that I’d set foot in it. Yum Brands (formerly Pepsi fast food division).
YUM® brands has since changed its name to sumthin else, can’t remember what. But it was an unholy trinity. Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC, all owned by PepsiCo international. They have lots of the “KenTacoHuts” (that would be all three food joints in a single location) here in the Midwestern US.
Nothing unholy about that. KenTacoHuts sound AMAZING. We have NONE of that up here. In fact, Pizza Hut is becoming a bit of a dying breed in my general area – especially the sit-down restaurants. A lot of them are being turned into ‘take-out only’ places. So the KenTacoHuts sound like the promised land to me.
Actually, the reason they changed their name *did* have to do with one of the words in it… that word being ‘Kentucky’. Yes, the state of Kentucky wanted KFC to pay royalties for the use of their name. So it got changed.
Weeeeeeiiiirrrrddddd.
Now they got a new Colonel – and I don’t like him.
He’s besmirching the name of the original.
Some trademarks are really iconic. I recall seeing a billboard that consisted of a picture of Ronald McDonald and an exit number.
Because nothing says ‘come to me’ like a creepy smiling clown.
It’ll never be as creepy as the Japanese Ronald McDonald.
@ Lady Alexis Isn’t the Japanese version a female? I’m fairly certain I saw it somewhere.
Personally I think that Puck is going to start screaming yelling and begging for a C-section before you know it.
Well, just wait for the next comic!
That last panel actually did make me chuckle out loud. And you’re right — the expression on Doc’s face in the last panel is great.
His bio is showing up on the cast page, but not his picture yet. And is it just me, or is he one mustache away from resembling another fictional doctor? The one with the funkiest skylight in Greenwich Village?
When I went to the cast page the first time, his pic didn’t show. Then I refreshed and it popped up. Not sure what’s going on there. It’s the same script as the rest of the images. Anyway, I’m not culturally with it enough to which doctor you mean. And typing that statement into Google just resulted in lots of ads for skylight installation.
Sorry about that. I’m referring to Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange.
Hmmm. Now I sort of see the resemblance. But seriously, this Doctor seems to remind everyone of someone different. I always thought he sort of looked like Eugene Levy, but my wife insists he’s the spitting image of her grade twelve French teacher, and now we’ve got Doctor Strange in the mix. I say for a reasonable Doctor Strange resemblance, you need the facial hair. Unless Doctor Strange recently shaved and I wasn’t aware of it.
I can see how OarBoar can see Doctor Strange, because the original drawing of Doctor Strange done by Steve Ditko didn’t have the beard. Yep, the iconic beard wasn’t part of his original design! Look below and see! 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dr_Strange_by_Steve_Ditko.jpg
Well, that’s just wrong. Ditko, you’re WRONG! About a character YOU CREATED!!! SHAME ON YOU!!!
The doctor should run liquor ads.
There need to be more doctors in liquor ads, I’d say: “Jägermeister: the drink recommended by doctors everywhere!” Funny thing is, that’s actually what many liquor ads looked like a hundred years ago, back when they used to play up the ‘medicinal qualities’ of alcohol. Yeesh.
Jaggermeister? That dreck…oh my, SWMBO would have gutted the doc with at dull side of a rusty butter knife for that.
How is the finest spirit that Germany has to offer dreck? Approved by metal bands everywhere!!!
Try mixing it with tequila, and you may get to taste it twice. Bonus!
Mmmm. Barfy.
You can’t mix continents! No classy person would do that.
Sixty plus years ago a teaspoon of Whiskey was often used for babies. Often it was burnt to get rid of the alcohol content though.
Burning it to get rid of the alcohol totally negates the point of giving it to babies.
Seconded.
Wait.. if you’re burning alcohol to get rid of the alcohol… What are you left with, exactly, to give the baby?
I believe the culinary term is ‘a reduction’ but I think a better term is ‘useless’.
Ten comics and counting until Gecko says the baby must be born.
As for the “booze after the baby is born”, it’s not a problem if the kid is bottle fed.
Exactly!!! Bottle-feeding here we come!
But the problem comes with the baby isn’t taking in some of the mother’s immunities from the breast feeding.
Then again, I don’t know how much of an effect that actually has. All my brother’s kids were bottle fed, and they are healthy. As was my best friend’s kid, and except for a freak thing he’d rather me not talk about, his daughter is healthy too.
Well, my doctor (who is a very good doctor, unlike the doctor in my comic) put it this way: take any adult and challenge any medical professional to determine whether that person was breastfed or bottle-fed. Can’t do it. They’re both good options, and people get WAY too hung up on this issue.
If everyone breast fed, it would take away about 10% of our trucking business.
The rest is a mix of office furniture, auto parts and brewery stuff.
So, everyone keep driving to work and boozing it up afterwards (or, during)!
That kid is about to fly across the room with exceptional force only to collide with the wall…
Don’t worry, we have booze to dull the pain.
This is the sort of pain that needs a LOT more than booze to dull it.
She’s not THAT motivated.
Lol. Puck’s trying to skirt around the pain. Even if she were so lucky, she’d need that pint for the afterbirth pains alone being this is her first child and all..
On her first kid, my wife was stuck for five hours at this exact point: she wanted the kid out, but the prospect of delivery was too scary.
Man, that sounds rough. o_o Did they induce labour? And how was she for the second one?
She wasn’t induced. And it’s always rough, no matter what. Her second pregnancy was WAY faster.
Oh, Puck… *shakes head* Don’t you know you won’t be able to get sloshed once the kid is out, either? You’re going to have to take care of it and be alert 24/7 for at least five years. I mean, I’d sort of trust your hubby to care for the offspring, but you won’t.
Considering Puck’s history with Daphne, I doubt she’ll be the one taking care of the new kid all the time.
Also, Colin and Puck aren’t married. They’ve been dating for a decade, but they aren’t married.
Yes, they are living in sin. That may change at some time in the future. (Can anyone say ‘future story arc?’ CHA-CHING!!!!)
I personally don’t care. Puck is immortal, so what is marriage to her?
And if they’ve been dating for ten years, what’s a ring and a piece of paper?
Yes, I’ve got a low view of marriage. My mom has been married 3 times, and divorced all of them. My dad has only been married once, but has dated several women who have been married more than once. All my aunts have been married more than once, and so has one of my uncles. And don’t even get me started on my best friend’s issue with his future ex-wife. And it’s not like I’ve had a lot of luck in love, either.
Well, I’ve known lots of people who were miserable in marriage. I’m not one of them. I’ve been married twelve years now, and it’s been great.
By that same logic, marriage shouldn’t be too big a deal for her; she’s going to outlive Colin anyway, so why not do it? They get along reasonably well, they’re having a kid, so it’s fine. At the very least, it’s a chance to eat wedding cake and all the rice Daphne will scavenge from the ceremony. ^^
I’m not married myself, though I’d like to be someday. My image of marriage is not pristine – I had front row seats to a marriage disintegrating in a BAD way – but I am hopeful. I have seen some very good marriages.
Puck and Colin at least know what they’re getting into. And if they don’t by this point, I call that ‘willful denial’.
Huh. For some reason I thought they were married, and it was just that Puck couldn’t remember it.
But I’m looking at the bright side: Wedding storylines are a diamond mine for comedy.
Exactly. I could have easily skipped over that milestone by saying it happened in the lost years, but it’s too fertile a comic ground to let go to waste.
Well, ‘responsible parenting’ is her middle name, so of course this is all going to end well!
Well, I choose to keep hope alive. ^^; Puck has invested more in getting this kid onto the world than she did with Daphne, who was basically abandoned on her doorstep.
And really, honestly, I don’t think she did a terrible job of raising Daphne either. Sure, Daphne’s a shyster and a con artist, but she arrived on Puck’s doorstep like that. She’s done a decent job of giving the kid a vague moral center and the confidence to do what she does. So yeah. I have hope too, when it comes right down to it.
I do not use my middle name either.
Is it ‘Danger’ like mine?
The monstrous amount of stuff I couldn’t eat or drink was motivation enough. Seafood(coming from new orleans that was the lowest ebb), coffee, liquor, certain kinds of dairy and my favorite wtf nuts! Nuts got the ban hammer for three years for breastfeeding and three for her own Cheetos encrusted orifice. Modern medicine makes mothers suffer.
Modern medicine really does seem to be designed for the suffering of mothers. The infuriating thing is that usually they don’t even need real evidence that such-and-such food is a problem. They just need a theory that the food might possibly be a problem, and BAM. Food banned! Their logic? “Better safe than sorry!” But they don’t get it. They’re messing people’s lives up!!! Seriously! And half the time they don’t know what they’re talking about. Like the nuts. Now I’ve heard some medical professionals expressing the view that the ban on nuts for pregnant and breastfeeding women may actually be causing nut allergies.
What if the baby has the same disorder the elephant man had?
It’s weird. I hate Jagermeister, I hate Red Bull, but I frickin’ *love* Jager-bombs.
True fact: I’ve never tried either, alone or mixed. I live a quiet, boring, thoroughly unentertaining sort of life.
Am I the only one bugged by how the doctor is taking off his glove in the first panel? I mean, he hopefully remembers where that hand has been, and he’s pulling it off with his bare fingers?
Nope. You’re the only one. 😉
Pretty sure the breastfeeding + alcohol theory has been debunked now.
Latest medical news seems to connect heavy consumption (mainly binge drinking) at a very specific time in the baby’s development to F.A.S. but they still don’t know exactly when that specific time is, or how it works exactly. The ‘no alcohol at all, even in tiny amounts’ concept has pretty much been debunked.
Some mothers drink beer to promote lactation.
Really, unless you’re totally sloshed, the amount in the milk is negligible. Even drunk, it’s way less than 1%.
Tell that to the state of Colorado, which carded my middle-aged a£z on my last beer run… for O’DOUL’S. That’s right, the busybodies in my state consider “way less than 0.5%” to still mean “some”. Give me a break.
Arizona diagonal from us is much less stupid. They say if it’s more than 0.5% it’s a “spiritous liquor”; so O’Doul’s is not. The Feds don’t seem to care.
Really? O’Doul’s? That counts as a soft drink up here.
Hey, it’s doctor’s orders…
Who are we to dispute?
> The facial expression of the doctor in that last panel really makes this strip work.
Both his and Puck’s. The last panel is a smorgasbord of hilary for those of us who haven’t been there.
(I’ve seen people die of cancer which is totally not funny even if you do not care one bit about the person dying, but I have not seen a woman give birth, and I am kind of glad about it).
This is an accurate depiction, believe me. It might not be realistically accurate, but it is poetically accurate. I do recommend witnessing the experience, though. It’s not until you witness birth (and care for a baby) that you start to understand in your very gut the life cycle of man. I’ve watched someone die too, not long before my first child was born, but I must say that watching a birth is a good counterpoint.
Read the doctor’s dialogue in Eugene Levi’s voice (as per the previously mentioned resemblance from waaay back in comic #68). Oddly, this is the FIRST time I did that, but that last panel did peg the absurdity meter.
Eugene Levy’s voice makes everything funnier. Always.
Should be “babys in the correct position” not presentation.
And Jagermeister is disgusting. But other than star anise, I find anything that tastes like black licorice disgusting. And yet I want to try salmiakki ..
Fine. Im a ball of contradiction and hypocrisy.
Im ok with it.
I stopped drinking long ago, so the whole thing is distant and most of the flavors unappealing to me now. I don’t mind black licorice, though. I’m one of the few people under 80 who doesn’t.
Black Licorice is ok – until it pulls a filling out.
It’s a dying candy. About 1% of the younguns today actually can stand it, compared to 73% of most seniors.
Ditch the Black Licorice.
I want a bowl of scalding hot Indian Pudding, topped with Vanilla Ice Cream.
Aww, baby’s first White Russian.
Get ’em started early!
That doctor has some excellent motivational skills. I ain’t pregnant, nor a woman….. However that little speech just made me start pushing for all I was worth. (Can I file a malpractice suit since crapping my pants was a direct result of following his medical advice?)
No, you cannot. But he might feel sorry for you and give you the bottle.
Proper motivation. It works EVERY time.
Just need to find which motivation is proper.
Are we sure he’s not one of Phoebe’s brothers?
By the way, Satan seems to like hanging out in the same city as Phoebe. She must be the baby of the family and likely something of a black sheep, seeing as the most evil she’s done is recommend Tracee for a job on his campaign.
Is she going to get a little brother or a sister?
No babies. Already we had one pregnancy. The comic couldn’t sustain a second.
The Big Guy may not be that fertile either.