9 Chickweed Lane

1-11-2022

I don't understand what's going on here.

I mean, I know that Elliot gave up on his popcorn quest to launch into an erotic (and energetic) version of the Hokey-Pokey.

I guess he's interrupting her discussing the mechanics of sex? "The building blocks of conception" sure is a weird, clunky phrase to use, though.

Then I guess she realizes that her explanation is ridiculous, possibly harmful? I don't know?

And his last statement... The Hokey-Pokey is better than sex?

I feel like I'm just not GETTING something here, that I'm missing something obvious.

Anyway, although we're seeing Elliot in this little flashback, Juliette was dating a guy named Andy who was also divorced, and who had a kid. We saw him interacting with Edda a very small amount (usually when waiting for Juliette) but we never saw Juliette (or Edda) interacting with his kid. Anyway, here's Andy.

9 Chickweed Lane 1-9-2023

Juliette started dating a few years after her divorce but it was almost entirely casual and as far as we know her sexual activity was limited to kissing on the front porch while Gran watched and glared.

Elliot, with whom she worked, was her first serious relationship. They dated for quite a while and eventually he started asking her to marry him. She freaked out each time, but he persisted. Their relationship was a bit rocky at times... she wanted him to be more spontaneous and he just isn't that kind of guy. Her therapist pointed out that her last spontaneous guy was her ex-husband and did she really want THAT? It was a nice bit of story telling.

Eventually Juliette agrees to marry him, although it's unclear whether they are legally married or not. Thorax performs a service where he mangles all the words and they just kind of go along with it. Afterward she and Elliot share her bed. Regardless of the LEGALITY of their marriage they consider themselves married.

And there's reasons for Juliette not to want to legally tie herself to someone again. Although as they're both getting older it would be easier legally for them to make medical decisions for each other if need be.

The thing is, they didn't get married until after Edda (and Amos) had left for their new lives in New York, at the ballet corps and Julliard respectively, at the age of 17 or 18.

So Juliette and Elliot wouldn't be in bed together like a cute old married couple, their tiny hands and spindly fingers delicately gripping their large hardcover books as they read themselves to sleep.

The problem with this set up for the joke is that Elliot is pretty much the only person she can share it with. At this point in her life she doesn't have any friends other than her daughter and her judgemental mother. She has an old friend named Rose who she sometimes talks to on the phone, but that's usually so she can brag about her life and feel better about things. We've never seen Rose, she only exists unseen and unheard at the other end of a phone line. Juliette also has her therapist, who we haven't seen in a long time. And this punchline doesn't really work with a therapist.

I guess this could have been set at the college she teaches at, with her talking to a TA or another professor or doctor or something. It wouldn't take much more set up. "My kid's best friend stopped by to ask blah blah blah."

Like nearly all his characters, though, Juliette exists in a void populated only by immediate family and people she's fucking. Elliot is easy option as someone for her to talk to because he's it. He's an established character who talks to her. And they're in bed instead of sitting on the couch or eating lunch together or something... for reasons?

It's really lazy writing.

Her hair looks cute, though.

I wish we could see more of her face in the last panel, and that it had more of an "are you fucking kidding me" flat look. That would really sell the punchline. Her face needs to be flat or it needs to be laughing.

1-4-2022

"The process of pregnancy and giving birth" is a weird phrase. It's a process? Really?

Amos is once again... six? Twelve? His height is fluctuating. He is SITTING DOWN and his height is fluctuating. He's not walking past different things where his body/head/etc need to be drawn in relation to different places and objects. He's sitting. Stationary. On a couch with a distinctive design. And one of his height changes HAS to be there so we can see his face because McEldowney rotates the camera so we see them from behind which ALSO necessitates their speech bubbles crossing. If you MUST show them from behind then surely the last panel, which mentions a secret, is the one to do so?

I don't know what she could possibly whisper that takes only one panel but I bet it's something goopy like "love." Tomorrow adult Amos will reveal this somehow... he'll tell Edda unprovoked, or because she's announced her pregnancy, or because he's thinking about the children or possibly... amazingly... because he's interacting with them. And then Friday will be a talking cat or two people fucking wildly on a piano in front of 500 people who put on shoes and spent $30 each on tickets so they could sit in narrow seats and listen to whichever of the same 5 composers the musicians in this strip exclusively play.

I'm not sure how I'd react if I took the time to put on a bra and pants with a zipper and forked over $30 to spend an evening listening to Brahms on piano and cello while sitting in a seat with thick immovable arms only to have to watch the musicians humping each other or announcing their pregnancy or whatever the fuck else these people do on stage. Unless I knew to expect that. Like if I'm told it's performance art. The pianist announces the composer she's about to play, and her underwear choice, and why she chose it. She humps the piano bench while playing it, her page turner staring down her dress at her cleavage. His eyeglasses fall between her tits. She finishes the piece, stands up, announces the next composer. Her zipper slides open and her dress falls down. Her page tuner pratfalls on top of her and they hump on the floor. He then mounts a unicycle and plays cello while she writhes on the piano.

Like burlesque, but less playful.

"The process of pregnancy and giving birth."

Just such a weird phrase for an adult to use when giving a sex ed talk (??) to the neighbor kid.

12-18-2022

This is the last Sunday before Christmas, with all the room for a large Sunday strip full of detail and extra story. This Sunday strip could feature the two small children of indeterminate age and their preparation for Santa's visit. Maybe they're decorating the tree with their parents, or making gingerbread houses, or making snow men, or visiting their grandmother or great grandmother. Maybe they're wrapping gifts in a hilariously inept way, or learning Christmas carols.

Oh wait, never mind, instead of the actual children who exist in the strip we get a flashback of Young Edda and Young Amos Who Looks Like A Turtle asking Edda's mom what "having a baby" is like.

Now, bear in mind that Juliette had a baby in an attempt to spackle her marriage back together. It delayed the inevitable but ultimately failed, at least in relation to her marriage. She was the ultimate winner in that she got Edda, though. It's a gambit that paid off in the long run. Given her history, her motivation, she no doubt has a lot to say about choosing to have a baby. She could go into detail here, but... no. It's a string of generalities that might work in a stand up routine but it's not quite appropriate for kids, nor does it answer the question.

She fires off a list of potential experiences, which exist of:
Logistics
Decision making
Making the decision
Having sex
Having sex
Having a lot of sex
Getting a positive pregnancy test
Morning sickness
More morning sickness
Looking good
Having sex
Getting large
Experiencing all of this alone while your partner has sex and then falls asleep
Giving birth
Holding your baby

Edda, of course, wants to know about the "rapture" (having sex) park, which Juliette mentions multiple times but then refuses to discuss.

Amos wants to know about the size thing, harkening back to his childhood drawing of a pregnant Edda where she looks like she's carrying a litter.

He has an entire set of subfolders on his computer about inflationism.

Once again, McEldowney would rather dwell on hypothetical babies than the actual children that he's already created, that exist in his comic. He'd rather depict his adult children as small children endlessly discussing having children than depict the small children he's written for his strip.

This is VERY MUCH a pro-forced-birth point of view. Obsession over babies that don't exist, while ignoring children that already exist and need caring for.

9 Chickweed Lane for 12-01-2022

Sometimes McEldowney will abandon a story line mid-week but it appears this is going to keep going because who DOESN'T like watching minors talk about their future fucking and baby-having plans?

Part of what's so disturbing is the way everyone's phrasing this. It's not "if we have kids" it's "if we conceive a child." The focus isn't on the actual child, it's on the act of creating the child by which I mean sperm and egg uniting. Notice that there's also no mention of what they'll DO with the hypothetical baby/kid. They aren't looking forward to having a kid, they're focused solely on sperm meeting egg and creating a pregnancy.

Instead of asking "After marriage, right?" or "But you're getting married first, right?" or something similar Juliette busts out with "Having sworn the bonds of holy matrimony?"

The big reveal is that she has a hand around the back of Amos' neck. She isn't actually strangling him, she only has one hand and it's not against his throat.

But let's talk about these bonds of holy matrimony! Amos and Edda got married in early August of 2017 and that particular story line is abruptly interrupted by a few weeks of rerun strips about how sexy Edda is, including a bunch of pin-ups. This may have been around the time he was hospitalized with a stroke.

Amos and Edda got married in a church after being told that they weren't allowed to elope.

The start the ceremony, and begin making out before they begin reciting vows.

When they do start with the vows Edda abruptly runs off, into the cemetery. She and Amos have a talk about how sexy she finds Amos and it turns out she finds him very sexy. How sexy?



So sexy they fuck in the grass leaving her with grass stains all over her butt and back, a glaring message to every single person in the church that they ran out of said church to fuck.



Did they have hot makeouts involving Edda scaling Amos' body right there in the church, on the predella in front of the altar?



Haha, of course they did! They just went to hump town right then and there. They did it for so long that EVERYBODY LEFT.



They either lingered in the church, which has a window with curtains, or else went to a private room? Anyway, there's usually a gap between ceremony and reception so why are they worried about people wandering off? Are they that desperate for another quick fuck before going out to greet everyone?

Anyway, Edda's got his dick out before he can figure out what they should do with this brief moment of solitude.



Their official wedding photos are post-coital. Also, did you want to know that Amos spunked inside Edda in front of the church altar on their wedding day? Because now you know that.



And it's possible they snuck off to a private room or a hotel room instead of just fucking on the church floor but wherever they were there was a dog because why not.

What I'm trying to say is that their official religious church wedding, thrown together at the absolute last second because her mommy and her room mate wanted to dress her up like a doll and live vicariously through her, was a two-person orgy.

I guess that's the bonds of holy matrimony, the religious sacrament, that Juliette is referring to.

You know.

When you fuck outside the church then inside the church then purchase photos documenting how fucked up and greasy you got while fucking.

As one does.

If I were a real glutton for punishment I'd go spelunking for the strips chronicling the ceremony for Juliette's second marriage, to Elliot. They may or may not be legally married, their ceremony may have been a bizarre farce, but they live together. And they have sex.

Thanks to rhyming slang "Polly" is a nickname derived from "Molly," a nickname for Mary or Margaret. "Molly" is extremely Irish- at one point "Molly" and "Brigid" were the names that non-Irish people called any random Irish woman regardless of her actual given name.

It's possible that Edda wanted to honor her grandfather (the man who married her grandmother and raised both of Edie's children even though one was not biologically his and was, in fact, the offspring of a Nazi officer) Bill O'Malley with an Irish name for her daughter. And just... look. "William O'Malley" is a man who dutifully attends Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, eats fish on Friday, has not discussed an emotion with anyone in his entire life except possibly anger, and has a mother who prays the rosary every night. Whoever Edda's dad is, he was Catholic or pretended to be or converted. Edie wasn't Catholic in her youth but boy she is now. William O'Malley's primary weapon in life is guilt and the fact that he's extremely disappointed in you.

Given what a massively terrible husband and father he apparently was, however, it's also possible that it's just a coincidence and Edda named her child "Polly" because she has terrible taste in names, doesn't realize that it's a nickname, and rejected "Pearl, "Mabel," "Ruby," "Edna," "Mildred," and "Gladys" because none of them have a rhyming name to accompany them.

So what about "Lolly" as a name? It's possible that it's a nickname for Laura or Lauren or another name starting with "L" but lets face it: most of us hear "Lolly" and immediately think "Lolita." It doesn't matter what age the person named "Lolly" is, adult or child, the association is "Lolita." And "Lolita" itself is a nickname for "Lola"! So we've possibly got here two kids whose names are nicknames based on nicknames. Recursive names!

It would also make sense for Lolly to be named after her biological grandfather, the Austrian Nazi officer and retired opera singer. Lorena, Lotte, Louise, something like that.

Amos is apparently Dutch and Lolly could have a Dutch name but Amos... is more a side kick than a protagonist in this strip. His past and parentage has never really been explored other than a week long gag of his mother making him PBBP (peanut butter and bell pepper) sandwiches for school lunch and Juliet having to threaten his parents (?? mother, at least) to come to one of his recitals. He'd never had family at his recitals.

Mary Margaret and Lotte, Polly and Lolly, would be cute names with an interesting story line.

Edda and Amos discussing their names and why they picked those names (Edda is the one who picked them) would be an interesting story. Instead she burst into the panel, announced their names, and they were never really discussed again.

And that's part of the frustration with this strip. There's all these hooks an interesting story could be hung on and instead we get humping on a table in a diner. Frequently. For weeks on end.