Dog Bytes Man

At a glance, it may be a standard-issue "These Days Everybody Is On The Internet!" joke. Garfield is usually surprisingly in-touch with technology for a strip about a cat and a guy sitting around at a table; it's in a rare league with Dilbert and Fox Trot of strips that don't blow it every time a computer appears. Everybody Is On The Internet is not a particularly offensive or ignorant joke anyway, and this one comes with added Garfield venom.

Everybody is on the Internet, even those people with no real reason to be. If there is any knowledge or entertainment to be gained from the official Tabasco Sauce website, we are hard pressed to find it. Garfield's joke points out that not only is everyone on the Internet, and not only do they not need websites, but some individuals and experiences cannot/ should not be translated to the medium. The dog is so swept up in the perception of a website as modern necessity, that he contradicts the purpose of his sign in the first place, namely as a warning to avoid the dog. As a MAD Magazine fold-out poster said, "DO NOT READ THIS SIGN".

The strip confirms the central hollowness of virtual replacement for real-world experience, no matter how miserable (e.g.- getting bitten by a crazy dog). All Garfield has to see is "www" before glancing out at his audience to confirm our mutual disgust. Do not read this Internet.

Paws On-Cup-orated

The awesomeness of Jon's ineptness with women is that he is not nerdy and shy around them, but nerdy and far too confident. Nebbishness wears thin for me, misguided bravado does not.

Yes, yes, Jon's pet name for Liz is weird and yes, would've been funnier if it were "Snooky-Wookiee", but I think we all know the meat here is in panel three. A lot of people would've had the punchline be that the overweight ugly receptionist gets excited by Jon's come-on, but Jim Davis allows no character to feel loved: she's horrified.

RE: Panel Three
-Surely I am not the only person who at first glance before reading the word balloons thought that in panel three Jon morphed into a fat lady named Nel? The layout of all three panels is so identical that there's no reason to suddenly think we've "cut" to a different building... especially since that happens about twice a year in Garfield. This might've been remedied by, say, putting Nel's computer on the opposite side of the frame, or her body in a position that doesn't exactly mirror Jon's. I offer these solutions though I don't want it remedied.

-As do all good veterinary receptionists, Nel keeps a green condom in her pencil cup.

-And a tiny blue Odie serves as Salacious Crumb to Nel's slug-bodied, earless Jabba.