Welcome to December 2012, travelers!

I’ll jump right into this editorial biz: I love it when a submission stick with me.

After the initial read, the hold request, the dozens of other submissions that come and go… it’s nice to reach the end of the reading period and vividly remember the stuff I held onto. Take, for example, Addison Clift’s “The Passenger.” That was one of the first stories we added to the pending pile, way back in early September. But when the reading period closed, I knew I wanted it in this issue. I remembered it. More than that–every time I stepped into a subway car, I though about it, as if any moment a fellow commuter would shed his skin and devour the other passengers. (This was especially true when a crazy guy boarded the train and started talking about how he was President Obama’s brother and how Dr. King “never took shit from no one,” and then had a long discourse with an invisible friend that involved the Kennedy assassination and several unkind comments about women. “Phara Koltana I am your vessel!” wasn’t far off.)

I’m contractually obligated to give Ben at least one punchline every year, and the easiest way to do that is by taking Winslow out of the picture entirely and letting Ben soak up the spotlight.

Just in time for The Hobbit… here’s a comic strip that mentions a character from that novel. HA!

We’re getting close to the end of the year (and maybe the end of the world), and what better way to wrap thing up than with a wedding that’s never going to happen!

Remember the time (read: the 80s) when phones (the kinds with cords) were made to look like things? Like, you could buy a phone shaped like a shoe or a football, and everyone would marvel at how quirky or eccentric or whimsical you were. Our cell phones haven’t quite reached that phase yet. We can get fancy covers for them, but I don’t think anyone’s designing mass-market cell phones that look like things other than phones. I want a cell phone shaped like a frog or a slice of pizza or… well, a rock.

The dialogue in today’s strip is absolutely real. I heard it at a local Burger King several months ago (which just goes to show how long I’ve waited before uploading this).

Basically, the manager of this particular Burger King is a fast-food stereotype: short, overweight, balding, pasty, and greasier than the hamburgers. The poor guy was probably in his mid-thirties but looked like he was ten years older. His staff consisted entirely of teenagers, and it was easy to see that they didn’t take this guy seriously.