My pal in the Queen Charlotte Islands sent me something cool the other day. We were roommates for 3 years or so, and we used to smoke a lot of weed and not work all that much. We became obsessed with the Family CirŠus, that so-tame-as-to-be-disguising-serious-sick-shit comic strip we all know and loathe.

Anyway my pal found these comics in some old box and sent them to me. They are hilarious. I honestly don't know if I can be that funny anymore, since I may no longer have the angst that produced them. The 22-year-old me was a dark, dark dude, lemme tell ya. It's a pretty weird experience to shock yourself with yourself ten years hence.

The paper would come, we would read the comic, and we would alter it and stick it on the fridge. This was back when the masses were still without the Internet, and before I had a computer or knew anything about digital graphics. So they're all fine-nib pigment pens and Wite-out. I would be much more careful (read: anal) with them these days...the old style using old tech is somehow more charming than the antiseptic style I'd use today. If 'charming' is an accurate adjective.

Some might think it's a strange compulsion to want to mess with something so...ahem...wholesome. But the thing is: it took almost no effort at all to alter these strips. I honestly don't know if it was my twisted sense of humour that invented see all the violence-, drug- and incest-related gags in the comic, or whether it was there already and just thinly veiled. But whether Bil Ke@ne's possessed of gentle, innocent Christian humour or has some savage dark side; the comic still presents all kinds of opportunities for lampoonery.

OK, now you're all going to be ravening for the strips. I promise I'll scan them and post one or two this evening when I get home. But do think about the Family CirŠus and Bil Ke@ne. Everyone who sees the strip loves it or hates it for their own reasons. It's so lame it's great. And even if you think it's just plain lame: of all the comic strips out there, I'd say few of them elicit feelings either way. Most daily comic strips are so incredibly beige...most offer a safe little chuckle at best. I don't know of any comtemporary Bloom Counties or Calvin and Hobbeses. Most of my favourite strips these days are web comics. Boondocks and Get Fuzzy aside, I don't think comic strips are what they once were.

Most people who know me know about my lifelong boner for comic stripping. Some of you who read this neglected blog might have guessed my sympathies align in a Breathed/Wattersonish sort of way. Maybe the Family CirŠus tickles the same part of my brain that gets fully terrified by the evil Sunbaby on TeleTubbies, but as far as comic amusement goes, I have to give props to Bil Ke@ne too.