Has anyone explained to Tom and Toni that there is a difference between notoriety and fame?

The trouble with notoriety is that it doesn't last, no matter how terribly bad and deserving it is ("it" being whatever earned the notoriety in the first place).

This week I really didn't feel like clicking on, because I really didn't want to look at KOF *JUST* to see how bad it was. It was fun at first, but now it's boring. Even the inner ear canal thing was boring. Bad stuff just gets boring.

Good stuff, now, that draws you back again and again. That never gets tiresome, because good work, in whatever genre, isn't a one trick pony. See how that works?

But bad stuff, stuff that is enormously senseless just for the sake of being senseless, gets boring. It has no shelf life. We got a special treat this week in the letters section in terms of the youtube remix, but eventually even the letter writers are going to get sick and tired of it.

Oh, and ten years from now? Forget it. The only passing amusement of KOF is watching people's pained reactions as it is under construction. At any point in the future people's response will be a collective shurg.

So if you write something good, your work will last and be appreciated. If you write something crappy, it will end up in the trash heap no matter how funny you may think it is to just hit people with crappy stuff and then laugh up your sleeve at them. Get it now?

Well, but from what I've heard of Toni Schlesinger it seems she cares about her lasting relevance about as much as, oh, Ann Coulter does--that is, not at all. It's all about getting a rise out of people in the present moment.

I think you arre remembering Tom Bachtell's own work from the New Yorker. It's his well-known signature style.

...he didn't run off with the big shaggy lobster-chasing Danvers and have no puppies, that's for sure.

I don't remember the name of the poster, but she wrote every week asking "what happened to Alerto, the literate, multilingual shepherd, the only character I have come to care about?"

Now you know! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

I think the authors ARE reading the letters section, and this is deliberate nose-thumbing. Every week they are basically sitting there saying "Nyah! Nyah! Pbbbt! Neeni Neeni Neeni!"

That's all this strip is about.

When the joke is that private--not sustainable, I fear.

several letter writers, myself included, noted the expressionlessness of KOF and wrote about it during the first three weeks (check the letters archive). One poster even got a reply from Tom Bachtell about the subject, who defended the immobile face of KOF as an "artistic decision".

So no, they didn't really find it by themselves, nor have they really fixed it; I think last week was a one-off. We'll see, if anyone sticks around.

Buried in the larger context is this cutie: that Zanam argues that laws that oppress women aren't based on Islamic texts.

Gee, that would sort of be like arguing that laws that said a girl has to marry her rapist and women can't speak in church aren't Biblically based.

In other words, arguing from this standpoint, however well intentioned, is self-defeating, because the argument is just...wrong. The Bible clearly says both those things. We just don't live by a literal interpretation of the Bible any more. They do, and even arguments for women's rights have to be couched in arguments of Q'uranic validity. This will lead nowhere and always hand the advantage over to the religious conservatives.

The fundamentalists have the "facts", that is, the textual evidence, firmly on their side. This is the root of the whole problem. "Muslim Progressives" have no "Islamically correct" ground to stand on because of this. This is why they often feel shy about speaking up against hard-liners. The sooner they come to terms with this regrettable fact, the better.

That said I realize the writers of Zanam have no choice in the matter and are trying to ameliorate a bad situation with the tools they have.