Warning: This comic contains a pun, or play on words. If you are in any way offended by puns (perhaps a family member was killed by a loaded pun, or perhaps you’re a member of an anti-pun religious sect, or perhaps you’re just weird), then I suggest you refrain from reading this comic. If you already read this comic and are offended by it, please send any and all hate mail to Eileen at. She had nothing to do with today’s strip, but she has a lot of experience with hate mail and knows exactly what to do with it.

Have any of you ever had a gnome infestation? They’re the worst. They carve these little niches in your body and just start living there as if it were some fleshy motel. Gnomes aren’t known for their cleanliness, either, so after a week or two of living inside your body, the toilet’s backed up, the sheets are stained, and the floor is covered with fast food wrappers, newspaper clippings, and vintage porno mags. Keep in mind this is all happening inside your body.

My wife is a NICU nurse, meaning that even without witnessing the births of my children, I would be elbows-deep in neonatal vocabulary. Case in point: from where I’m sitting RIGHT THIS SECOND, a bookshelf filled with medical textbooks threatens to collapse on me.

It has become an unofficial Friday the 13th tradition to mangle Winslow in some way. This started last year when we had THREE Friday the 13ths running wild and unsupervised through our calendar, and coincided with the creation of Dr. Spiderqueen. This year we just have the one, giving Winslow plenty of recovery time until his next brush with death.

Aspara Gus, the walking, talking, disturbingly human-looking and distinctly male salad, was never meant to live more than a week. This is probably for the best. Without constant watering and/or refrigeration, Gus was doomed to wither and die like the vegetables my wife accidentally stores in that one drawer in the refrigerator that doesn’t quite work like the vegetable crisper it was advertised to be. So I suppose this fate is better. More humane. Or whatever. Not really.