Benny & Sid Presents The Truant Officer, Chapter 1

You're just a click away from the serialized graphic novel "The Truant Officer", by Glen Bledsoe.

(Your City, USA) -The nightstand next to your bed spills over with dog-eared paperbacks by authors like Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Donald Westlake.

You selected the latest addition to your wardrobe from here [http://poeticlicenseprinting.com/artists/hardcasecrime.html], and every time you toss it into the laundry you pull it back out and wear it just one more time because it's so incredibly truck-stop.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #62

Salem's only original online cartoon strip!

(Salem) -Some people work hard all their lives. They do the right thing. They go to school. They never stop learning whether they're in a classroom or not. They're interested in just about everything. They're kind and generous. They always have a kind word to say about everyone they know. They make good choices.

Then there are the people who are always looking for a get-rich-quick scheme...

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #61

Enjoy my take on Jane Austin's classic--all sixteen panels of it. Ride and Prejudice. Remember, you saw it here first.

(Salem) -My wife is a wonderfully complex woman. She is interested in so many things--some bizarrely juxtaposed. She likes samurai movies and Jane Austin.

We've watched and enjoyed Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai, The Samurai Trilogy and others repeatedly. But I can't tell you how many movie adaptations of Pride and Prejudice we've watched together.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #60

I fantasize about a small army of activists who by assorted means turn off television (at least) in public places.

(Salem) -I'm sitting in the Phoenix Inn Suite continental breakfast area in Bend this past Sunday, but it could have been anywhere. Plates clatter. Silverware clinks. Toasters pop. The light buzz of conversations fill the air.

To one side hangs a wide screen television. Why is it there and why is it on?

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #59

Politics can change life in the wrong ways.

(Salem) -Those of us who are old enough remember a far more rational time. A time when the crazies of the right wing would have been impossible.

They would never have been given news coverage. Barry Goldwater was as right as it got and Goldwater was really a reasonable man even if you disagreed with him.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #58

Men who think they're God's gift to women.

(Salem) -I really should have done a strip about the health care debate -- if you can call shouting down speakers at health care meetings a debate.

It reminds me of the people who complain about their doctors or lawyers or whichever occupation at the moment seems fair game for complaint. One moment they stomp their feet and act indignant.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #57

The right wing may not be extinct, but its days as a controlling power are surely over.

(Salem) -I have a relative who hates Obama. She's not very articulate as to why she hates him ("He's another Al Capone" -- which makes no sense whatever), but at a not-so-deep level it boils down to racism.

She like many conservative whites is afraid that blacks are going to treat whites as the whites historically treated blacks.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #56

Salem's original cartoon found exclusively at Salem-News.com

(Salem, Ore.) -Well, as near as I can figure this should mark three years of my doing comics for Salem-News.com.

That's a lot of time and a fair number of comics. When I thought about doing an online comic I knew I wanted it to be paced differently than print comics. Print media is limited in the space it can take up.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #55

A large billboard on I-65 near Indianapolis made it clear to all drivers that Darwinian evolution was wrong.

(Oregon/Indiana) -I went back to Indiana to visit relatives and old friends this past week. Have you ever noticed how many Hoosiers (what people from Indiana are called) there are in Oregon?

Not nearly as many as former Californians, but more than might otherwise be expected.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #54

(Salem) -Well, I suppose it never hurt anyone to believe in the Easter bunny, and if you want to believe that Criss Angel can walk on the surface of a swimming pool, then knock yourself out (but don't watch the Masked Magician). There are times when we willingly suspend our belief system for entertainment. There are times, for example, when it's fun to speculate about the possibility of ghosts. (I've experienced phenomena for which no one has yet provided a reasonable explanation.)

But the science which puts airplanes in the sky (not the Bernoulli effect, by the way) or sends digital images to your high def television has a pretty good track record in getting results. Science really doesn't ask anyone to believe anything. It only has explanations which best fit the evidence. When the evidence changes the theory may have to change as well or be discarded. That's what I like about science. No idea is so sacred that it can't be dropped if it proves to be wrong.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #53

The autumn has a beauty of its own, but for me the dream of summer persists through the other seasons.

(Salem) -Life is good in the summer. The sense of summer freedom is intoxicating to me.

Every color that the sun picks out in the flowers, every bird-song sung, every shimmy of trees in the wind reminds me that this is the best of all seasons. Summers should last forever. We should be kids forever walking around, skipping rocks across ponds, reading books that we want to read--not books that someone else has picked for us and are so boring that it dulls the imagination.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #52

The point is that we give our attentions to the wrong things.

(Salem) -I just read about an anti-paparazzi device [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/celebrity-shielding-flashgun-handbag-defeats-paparazzi/] which flashes an intense LED light into the offending camera's direction when the device's light meter senses a camera flash.

It doesn't appear to be the least bit practical, but it demonstrates the level of frustration endured by celebrities. I don't think anyone really cares if Celebrity A has cellulite and shouldn't be at the beach wearing a blue Speedo, yet it's a common photo-topic in the scandal rags even though it's about as appetizing as a picture of a sore toe.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #51

I hate to say it, but I remember the Jackson 5 before Michael joined them.

(Salem) -Michael Jackson is gone. Another pop icon now left us. None of us is immortal.

I saw Michael Jackson once in a parade in Gary, Indiana when he was just a bouncy little kid with a fro and a fringe jacket. He stood on an Oscar Meyer weiner float and threw candy to the bystanders on Broadway. Those were Jackson 5 Days and Michael was just one of the team then.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #50

Do we live in a culture of abuse?

(Salem and at-large) -In high school I knew a fellow student who never (well, hardly ever) said the right the thing to the right person.

He bought, for example, a faux lettermen's jacket with sleeves only a slightly different hue from our school colors. Within 48 hours a couple of jocks caught him behind the school, ripped his jacket, gave him a matching set of fat lips, and generally proved themselves to be stereotypical dolts.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #49

The forty-ninth installment of Reverend Benny & Mister Sid's At Your Service, Salem's original cartoon series.

(SALEM, Ore.) -Summer is here. That's great news. I love the look of lush trees, the feel of the heat of the sun, that sense of freedom that summer brings to school children.

I'm old enough that the sights, sounds and smells of summer trigger memories of when I was a kid with a tantalizing clarity. Sometimes during the transition between spring and summer I feel as if I can just peek under the thin veneer of reality and see what the world really is.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #48

We've got to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. Buy American, folks. Support the American Worker.

(Salem) -I've got 150,000 miles on my car. I drive more than I'd like to because of my job. but I get 38 miles to the gallon unless I've got the air on.

Not bad. But I'd give it all up in a second if I had a decent electric bicycle. Maybe I'm just one of those guys who is attracted to quirky ideas and designs.

I've got to drive too far each day for that to be a practical option, but still it strikes me as ideal.

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Reverend Benny & Mister Sid`s At Your Service #47

There's the age old problem of the Artist being misunderstood.

(Salem) -When Devo first hit the scene in 1970's their outrageous elevator shoes were meant to be a satire of rock.

Devo's first lesson in the reality of pop culture was their over-the-top presentation was taken as the latest trend and (briefly) elevator shoes became the fashion. Devo's later choice of flower pots for signature head gear, however, was never mistaken for anything other than anti-hip. They were through being cool.

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