When a comic strip debuts in a paper, it starts on a Monday. Imagine what new readers of "Sally Forth" may have thought when this new strip appeared:

So it's about a lonely office worker without friends, eh. Well, maybe tomorrow will be Funny.

Tuesday:

Is this some "24 Days Later" scenario about an office worker who's the sole survivor of some planet-scouring plague, and is going through the motions of her pre-crisis life, wandering around the empty halls?

Today's strip introduces another human, with whom Sally wants to chat; she is rebuffed. So Sally is intended to be pathetic, and worthy of our pity, I guess. Well, no reason Ziggy should be the only Loveable Loser on the comics page! Don't worry, new readers. Soon you'll meet her infantile husband and get one of those patented Sally side-smirks.

TRAVEL What are you supposed to get when your flight is cancelled? Or, as this Outslde mag article puts it: I've been the traveler stuck at the gate for 10 hours. What can I do to make sure I don't get screwed over by modern air travel? A: Don't fly Frontier. But that's one man's opinion, me being that particular man. I spent ten hours at the airport the other week. Washington National, as it happens. Frontier was useless. Sun Country came through. Anyway, the article lays out your options; bookmark for next month when you're bumped from a flight and looks like you'll miss Christmas.

YES YES YES This piece on how "Star Wars" broke cinema addresses two things that stuck in my craw, and both were craw-related: the enormous worm living in a cave in the asteroid, and the Sarlac pit-monster in the desert. Neither made any sense. How did they survive? As the author notes, you're not supposed to think about it. You're just supposed to think: cool.

I got into a bitter argument with someone on the killjoy point re: Zion in the Matrix movies. Who built it? How? Why? You weren't supposed to care about that. What mattered was that it was there. Sorry.