Ah Ziggy. Will you ever win?

On occasions where I find myself aimlessly wondering around the internet (which in law school is almost every waking moment) I sometimes end up checking out the daily comics. I'm not sure what went wrong but I remember comics being a lot funnier when I was younger. I suspect I must have changed because comics certainly haven't seemed to. "Garfield" still hates Mondays and loves lasagna, "Dilbert" still works in a early 90s office, and "B.C." is still in B.C. It's like whatever time a comic started it is forever stuck in that era. Sure every once in a while "Beetle Bailey" will mention the internet or the son in "Momma" will joke about high gas prices in a misguided attempt that appearing current, but for the most part they're like mini windows into the past. While it doesn't bode well for humor (at least intentional humor) most of the time, I guess good or bad there's something to be said about maintaining that level of constancy, day in and day out.

One comic that has maintained a paramount level of consistency, in lack of humor, is everybody's favorite bald, pantless, depressive: "Ziggy". I don't understand what the appeal is. Every daily panel is a different terribly depressing scene from his appalling life. He's hideously deformed, friendless, and everywhere he goes; whether it's the therapists office, a police station, or a restaurant, people are basically shitting on him. Maybe the whole point of it is that we're suppose to get some sense of schadenfreude out of it? I guess its easier to laugh at this funny looking muppet-like thing then a said eyed human-like figure.

However, the one Ziggy I came across a few days ago is just about the saddest thing I've ever seen.

I mean there's poor Ziggy, as lonely as ever, sadly drinking wine by himself at some restaurant trying to get soused enough to forget his miserable life ever so briefly; and like with every other event in Ziggy's life no one else seems to care. The man cannot control himself enough to stop crying at the restaurant and the waiter is completely oblivious to that which further compounds Ziggy's misery. I mean this is just down right tragic.

I'd say that eventually the writers will reach the point where they'll one day flat out give Ziggy terminal bone cancer and chronicle all the misfortunes that befall him as he begins an agonizing stretch of ineffective chemotherapy; but they probably won't because that would be a perversely better fate than living another 40 years of being Ziggy.