An updated thought on a comic that ran on June 18th.

And a blog entry that ran on the 19th.

This is the comic and blog entry I'm thinking about - I was looking for another one, and my tendency to not name the entries in anyway relating to the comic I'm talking about made me just guess and I found what I was looking for.


But I also reread what I wrote about the society page of the Penny Saver couple of the year, and a new explanation hit me.

Since no gender is mentioned, we don't know if this idea came predominantly from men, from women, from young people, from married people, from people that aren't married to each other, or just from random cranks. (I'm going with the last one for 99% of the comics analyzed by your humble comic analyst.)

We have established that Pluggers are cheap, whether they are broke or not. Both pop culture Scrooges are major cheapskates - I love Scrooge McDuck's cheapness, because most of my comics about him are from about 10 years before I was born, if that. And comics don't lie.

Back to one that is not lying, because some people lead sadder lives than mine. (I don't mean health issues, I just mean monotony and ruts and boredom and exciting eggs.)

The idea I had initially was that they were broke teenagers, and I said if they're so broke, why does she have glasses that look almost contemporary?

However, they could be dating and not in a committed relationship at the time. (Moving in, getting married, buying a pizza together.)

So she could have her own money, or her parent's could have money, and in Pluggerville, the guy always pays, no matter which way his money is flowing. That's part of buying a pet in Pluggerville - pay for a nice date, then zap! with a shrinking ray and zip! with the petometer.

So if they're not eating their children (not Law & Order: SVU), they're turning them into pets. (Law & Order: CI maybe.)

So the date could be a broke chauvinist who believes that the man is the provider and the door-opener.

Or they could be married, with too many kids that they've dumped on a relative or a babysitter so they can get the monthly shopping done. The babysitter isn't cheap, even if it is family, and they need a lot of supplies, so they don't have money for the food sold at the restaurant at the store. (The Costco in Vancouver, Washington has sublime hot dogs.)

If it's sent in by women and girls, it's sent in about the disastrous date she had with a cheapskate that promised her dinner and a movie and took her to Costco and searched for samples before settling down in the electronics department to see the latest movie out on DVD.

One more scenario - have you seen the Visa Check Card commercials? Everything's going great, following a precise order, all the gears turn just so until some schmuck pays with cash.

So these two don't carry enough cash for dinner, not even a hot dog. However, they have check cards.

Why not use them? They are married.

But not to each other!

And I imagine check cards leave a paper trail, as would using the card to get money out of ATM for a real meal. Though this would be bad if they're suspects in a crime - no paper trail, no alibi!

One other idea - this had to be sent in by young people or about young people, because if the average contributor is as old as the comics tell us, they couldn't have done this when they were young, I don't think they were as widespread, but I don't honestly know. Or hey, the Social Security check is late and your stomach is growling, so you take your Assisted Living sweetie to Costco for a night on the warehouse. You wasted all your money on botox and plastic surgery, why look old when others don't? Because you age as you get older... oh forget it.