(Link available on request. There may be copyright problems with the one I was just about to include.)
RE: Today’s Beetle Bailey cartoon, August 14.
I’ve prolly been reading Beetle since about 1960, or even earlier, before there were even “Beatles.” Maybe somebody can fill me in about how the running gag of Sarge ending up on a tree limb on the side of a cliff. Either I don’t remember the first time it was used or it goes back to before I started reading.
Maybe there isn’t any point here, because there isn’t any “new” information to be had from seeing, or having described to me, the first instance. But I’ve often felt that there was something more to the running gag that I wasn’t seeing.
Also-- Do you get the feeling that more than twice means something? Suicidal tendencies, maybe? * Perhaps inhaling whole trays of food and knocking out some of Beetle’s infinite supply of teeth don’t quite relieve Sarge of whtever is… eating… HIM!
And also, just what would that be?
True Blue Jack
P.S. Other possibilities exist, of course. Not enough attention received?
Hanging on a branch on the side of a cliff is symbolic of the existential dilemma that all men face in their soul crushing lives. This device pre-date Beatly Bailey and it even pre-dates existentialism. Shakespeare used this symbol in Three Gentlemen of Verona and a Baby and in some versions of Exodus, Moses not only speaks to a burning bush, but he has to hang on to the burning bush while hanging on the side of a cliff.
It may well be that Beetle was responsible for many occasions, including the first few. But Sarge could still have been suicidal, in terms of not having Beetle transferred away from him. (He has even regularly hung out with him!)
:eek:
See, folks, that’s what happens when we depart from the one, true KJV (A.D. 1611).