# Oh god, 9 Chickweed Lane is going to have a baby in it soon **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 24, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618 "2007-11-24T17:37:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/1 "2007-11-24T17:37:53Z")
[Saturday’s strip gives us grave forshadowing.](http://www.comics.com/comics/chickweed/index.html) There’s been something off about this strip for about a year or so (is the author a really old man or something, that all his characters are so … unpleasantly old-fashioned?), but this oughta kill it for me. On the plus side, they’re not the main characters, so maybe they’ll have a kid and disappear. Or maybe the strip will take another right turn and start following their lives instead of Edda and Amos. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/2 "2007-11-24T18:05:19Z")
But wth is going on with Pibgorn, the nerdy guy, his sister and the old guy? ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/3 "2007-11-24T18:24:15Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > is the author a really old man or something, that all his characters are so … unpleasantly old-fashioned? Right [down to the cardigan](http://www.featurebank.com/?title=Bio:9%20Chickweed%20Lane%20Dailies), baby! I honestly don’t see how people read these “For better or for worse” type comics. My god, the premise/joke for the Nov 20,21,22 strips were all the exact same and the 23rd wasn’t too far off either. Gak! I can’t believe people get paid for that. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/4 "2007-11-24T18:35:03Z")
But they had Pibgorn and her pals at the wedding, sitting on the groom’s side of the church! How frickin’ cool is that? ---
**Author:** ![postcards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8e8cbc/32.png) [@postcards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postcards)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/5 "2007-11-24T19:12:08Z")
And I should point out that ‘the old guy’ (in Pibgorn) is Thorax, from ‘9 Chickweed’. Apparently the quantum anomaly in his garden shed allows him to transit between the strips. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/6 "2007-11-24T19:13:25Z")
Well, Erik and Seth will just love having a babyaround to dote on, and maybe it will jump-start Edda and Amos. I really don’t see Brooke focussing on the baby much otherwise. Not his style. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/7 "2007-11-24T20:03:04Z")
[QUOTE=postcards] And I should point out that ‘the old guy’ (in Pibgorn) is Thorax, from ‘9 Chickweed’. [/QUOTE] I was referring to the skinny old guy that the Succubus zapped. The pibgorn story is confusing. Perhaps I missed something. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/8 "2007-11-24T20:09:33Z")
I just couldn’t believe that an ex-nun and ex-priest would be able to have a full three weeks’ worth of such continuous, mind-blowing sex that they’d even be unable to remember where they traveled to. And if they’re still devoutly Catholic (it seems so), then they sure as heck didn’t use any contraception during that time period, and Francis is sorely deluding himself as to how soon they might become parents. Oh well, at least Diane finally wiped that horrifying rictus grin off her face. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/9 "2007-11-24T23:18:08Z")
I’m just waiting (apparently in vain) for Amos and Edda to get it on. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/10 "2007-11-24T23:50:23Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] I was referring to the skinny old guy that the Succubus zapped. The pibgorn story is confusing. Perhaps I missed something. [/QUOTE] I think in the Mozart Does Manhattan storyline, it came out that he’s some kind of timeless Flying Dutchman-_cum_-Wandering Jew sort of fellow, obsessed with serial incarnations of the same woman throughout the ages. Or maybe he reincarnates as well, like Merrick in _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._ Or I could be totally wrong. But there are only so many ways you can draw a creepy old guy with a hard-on for toying with faerie folk (and their ilk), and McEldowney seems to have come up with a pretty good one. Hard to blame him for sticking with the form, even if the fact of such a character cropping up in so many adventures does seem a bit recycled. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/11 "2007-11-26T23:10:17Z")
Sorry for not babysitting (heh - no pun intended) my own thread - I started it then went on a vacation weekend. Oops. You know, you guys have got me wondering why I’m still bothering with this strip at all myself. I don’t really have a good answer for that - it isn’t particularly funny or entertaining, and it actively gets on my nerves way too often. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/12 "2007-11-27T00:43:00Z")
Maybe because when it’s on, it’s **on**. Dr. Burber is the kind of teacher I want to be when I grow up. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/13 "2007-11-27T00:44:21Z")
[QUOTE=featherlou] You know, you guys have got me wondering why I’m still bothering with this strip at all myself. I don’t really have a good answer for that - it isn’t particularly funny or entertaining, and it actively gets on my nerves way too often. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure, either. Besides this, there’s McEldowney’s disturbing tendency to turn the strip into a pinup show - but the women are _expressing their power_ by wearing skirts cut up past the waist, naturally! (and at least Edda is no longer jailbait, ew) - and yet real explorations of sexuality tend to be hampered in one way or another. I guess the most healthy is seen in Edda’s parents, with her (about literally) [pussy-whipped father, and cougar-emulating mother](http://www.comics.com/comics/chickweed/archive/chickweed-20071125.html). Francis and Diane were such good Catholics that they renounced their holy vows (wasn’t that considered much more of a Very Bad Thing in recent years/decades?) and waited until marriage in a Catholic church plus a second ceremony via a probably insane farmer before they had sex. Which they did with such vigor that they completely forgot the basics of human reproduction, not to mention experiencing retrograde near-amnesia about most of the other events of the prior three weeks. (I’m predicting the impending pregnancy will trigger a crisis of faith, a-freaking-gain, in Francis.) Then there’s Edda and Amos, who right around high school graduation were embroiled in a “did they or didn’t they?” plot that IIRC caused them to flee from each other, only to flee to the same place, The City. Once they finally got past their issues over what they Did or Did Not Do (which we still don’t know), they became caught up in a not-really-platonic relationship in which Amos regularly horrifies and insults her by comparing marriage to insanity, and in which the closest I’ve seen them come to consummating the relationship is the two of them pretty much dry-humping through a door. (Not a doorway, a door.) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/14 "2007-11-27T01:44:29Z")
Nitpick: It was her step-father that fainted in the cited strip. AFAIK, we have never met Edda’s biological father. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/15 "2007-11-27T02:17:18Z")
Judging by the character’s chins, I think the cartoonist must fall somewhere between Ardipithecus and Australopithicus on the evolutionary scale. Unpleasantly old fashioned, indeed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/16 "2007-11-27T02:22:37Z")
This strip was in the local paper for about a year, and I never could figure out what the heck was going on in all that time. Obviously, no one else could, either, because it is now gone. The “pinup” strips were…interesting, and I could at least see what the point was to them. However, the strips that were supposed to tell you what was going on in the storyline were always baffling indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/17 "2007-11-27T02:33:56Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] Nitpick: It was her step-father that fainted in the cited strip. AFAIK, we have never met Edda’s biological father. [/QUOTE] :smack: Right. I knew that. ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2007, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-god-9-chickweed-lane-is-going-to-have-a-baby-in-it-soon/427618/18 "2007-11-27T23:16:54Z")
I just followed **CarnalK** ’s link. I have to say, I agree. Now, I’ve had sex before, but it has never put me into a catatonic state for three days. Perhaps I’m just doing it wrong.