Seems like Dennis is cool with it, though.  I’ve been a Dennis before, long ago.  More Dennis in the top two panels than Dennis at the bottom, but in all fairness to the Gails I’ve known, my expectations were a lot lower than his seem to be.

I come away from this more than a little confused, though.  Am I supposed to feel sorry for Dennis because Gail is playing him?  Am I supposed to feel sorry for Gail because she feels like she has to live without much-needed underwire and copy off dudes’ papers to get ahead in the world?  I don’t feel sorry for either of them.  They look good, they get paid, they get laid.  If I have to pick a side, I pick Gail.  I doubt she’s playing Dennis the way she thinks she is.  Look at him.  He knows what’s up.  And listen to that fake hesitation: “Gail, I…I love you…”  Is there any way he’s not full of shit?  “I love you?”  She’s going to give it up for “I love you” and “I’ll pretend I don’t see you copying off my paper”?  Way to reach for the stars, Gail.

Maybe he doesn’t know you’re using him, Gail, but he doesn’t even suspect?  Come on, girl, think!  That’s why you have to copy off Dennis’ paper; you’re not using your head.  Maybe you really did forget your bra if that’s how clueless you are.  But all’s fair, right?  You’re using him to further your career, he’s using your career to get into your pants, everybody wins.  Except for he’s still got a better job, and he always will, because he’s a man.

Oh, Gail.  If that wasn’t such a fabulous vest in the second panel, I’d feel like you were heading for a life of disappointment.

This is why I don’t sit on the couch.  Now you know.

I love it.

Me:  I can’t imagine.

Jenny:  Family, friends, and fries.

Me:  Oh, so they all had to start with F?

Jenny:  Um, no…why?

So why do I say the market wants to go down?  Because bulls get tired, too.  They need to take some profits, they need to check their allocations, they need to throw the bears a bone, one with at least a little meat on it.  We need a pullback here, maybe not more than five percent, but we need something.  Maybe next week we’ll get it.

The Family Stock Index burst out of the gate on Monday behind another 12% gain in Reagan and finished the day with the first close above 13,000 in more than eight months (during which time we bottomed out at 9200).  Reagan gave back almost all of her Monday spurt during the week, but a broad group of stocks posted gains in the range of 2-5% and the losers didn’t lose so much that we ever fell into the red.  The FSX ended the week at 12,819, up 1.3% and in line with the major averages.  This four-month bull run seemed to culminate on Katie’s 34^th birthday on Monday; next week we will see if that was more than a short-term top.

Advancers

• Icarus (FLOW) +7.8%.  Brought down a deer.
• Wilson (WILC) +5.4%.  Ignored a deer (probably).
• Namilita (NL) +5.6%.  Cuter than a deer.
• Jodi Ann (JOY) +5.3%.  Oh, good.  Dogs and cats are nice and all, but the FSX, like Soylent Green, is people.  Do you know that I don’t know what Soylent Green is, apart from being people?  Is it a book, a movie, a ballet?  I have no idea.  I think JOY’s correction last week had something to do with Nicole B.’s stock car-like move to cut in front of Jodi Ann in the Race to Eure.  Then the market realized that Katie won that race already—last century—and all she got out of it is joint ownership of 95 thousand comic books, give or take.  And some babies.  And lots of stretch marks from the babies.
• Justin (WOLF) +4.5%.  Could Justin bring down a deer?  Hard to say.  Is there any chance that he won’t now try?
• Nicole (NI) +3.2%.  Could Nicole bring down a deer?  If they hadn’t already sent out the save-the-dates, the competition for Justin’s hand might very well have opened back up this week.

Decliners

• Brinkley (BCO) -1.4%.  Jenny wasn’t much older than Brinky is now when she first climbed out of her crib; not soon thereafter she was able to open her door as well.  I don’t expect either of those things from Brinky.  Having gleaned a sense of his personal style over these 14 months, I do expect him to tear off the front of his crib, climb carefully out, and then smash down the door.  The market, future-discounting mechanism that it is, knows that door is coming out of his future allowance.
• Winston (ED) -2.1%.  Poor Ed Winston, you think.  But in fact, almost all of Ed’s apparent decline is due to the stock going ex-dividend this week, and the dividend is substantial.  With that 4.2% yield, you can almost understand why Mario would want a terrier.  Almost.
• Ruby (RJET) -2.6%.  Reagan and I had a funny conversation this morning.  She and Jenny had piled up about a dozen stuffed animals to take to Hilton Head, and I asked Reagan if she thought that was maybe too much.  ‘Grandpa won’t care,’ she assured me.  ‘He’ll just think it’s funny and we’ll get to bring them all.’  ‘What about Boo-Boo?’ I asked.  ‘Oh, I forgot Boo-boo will be there this time,’ Reagan said.  It will surprise no one to learn that they put some of those stuffed animals back.
• Zero (ZIP) -8.3%.  Watching Zero lead the FSX higher was unnatural.  The market can always count on Zero to recognize when matters aren’t as they should be, and to do whatever he must to make it right.   In this case, he made it right by whiffing on profits and revenue and going promptly into the tank.

We start with Tiger-Man, because men come first.  It’s in the Bible, so if you don’t like it, you know where you can direct your complaints.

There’s a lot to like here.  I like the claws, I like the teeth, and the tiger print is nicely done.  The guy with the panther face on his chest is getting his ass kicked, which is as it should be.  I didn’t even mention Tiger-Man’s hair yet, mostly because I’m too jealous.  What’s the big negative?  He’s wearing a girls’ gymnastics leotard.  I just put two of them in the dryer, and I know one when I see one.  Also, where is the mystery?  He’s giving us his best interior action scenes right there on the cover, and not only that, but he’s ripping them to pieces!  If you don’t respect your own martial-arts efforts, Tiger-Man, how can you expect the rest of us to?  I didn’t even read this comic–if it’s not good enough for Tiger-Man, it’s not good enough for me.

Now, on to Tiger-Girl.

This cover is terrible.  Where is she?  Why did they use crayons to color the buildings?  Couldn’t they have at least sprung for the Crayola 64-pack?  But still…there’s something happening here.  I sense raw, female power.  I am compelled to find out more.

We start off with a beat-down of the Growler.

I’m not impressed.  Does anyone think Tiger-Man wouldn’t have eaten this guy’s face?  Just completely eaten it.  Tiger-Girl’s handling it, sure, but she’s having to go all jujitsu on Growler.  If this is Tiger-Man, Growler has no face right now.

With Growler out of the way, the shadowy bad guys have to send in Wolfhound.  Tiger-Girl needs to bring an actual tiger to this fight, because Wolfhound is going to bring…oh, do I have to say it?  Tiger-Girl takes her tiger, and there is a special moment of discovery.

Can you get this kind of animal-handler/stalker drama from Tiger-Man?  No, you can not.

The actual battle with Wolfhound isn’t the best.  Basically, the tiger beats the wolf.  But in the middle, this does happen:

Tiger-Girl doesn’t die.  Wolfhound doesn’t, either, and I’m pretty sure he’d have come back to menace Tiger-Girl again…if there had been a second issue of Tiger-Girl.

Why wasn’t there a second issue of Tiger-Girl?

Let me show you:

And we’re done.

So who wins?  The readers.  And the Bible.

The Family Stock Index reached a seven-month closing high of 12,848 on Wednesday before pulling back.  We underperformed the market for the first time this year as rally leaders Ruby and Jodi Ann struggled and only nine of our 25 stocks managed to close higher.  The FSX finished out the week down 1.3% to 12,652.  That’s nothing to worry about, not yet.  We need to see the rally resume next week, though, or it will start looking like we came too far too fast.

Advancers

• Charlotte (ICE) +10.2%.  Charlotte has lagged the market for a long time now.  I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d guess it’s been for about as long as she’s lived in Chicago.  Now she’s relocating sooner rather than later, and her destination decision could be the key driver of the FSX in the post-wedding-deluge period.  Jenny, Reagan, and the cardinal in my front yard are all pushing North Carolina.
• Reagan (REGN) +5.4%.  Jenny and Reagan both got their standardized test results this week, and while Reagan tested AG (academically gifted), Jenny tested HAG (highly academically gifted).  I told Reagan Ag means she’s silver, and hag means Jenny’s a witch.  I want to think I salvaged a little of the self-esteem meltdown with my punnery, but I know better.  The bottom line is that they’re both really smart, whereas Brinky eats birdseed, poops in his pants and can’t say any words except ‘cat’.  I also think test scores are only indicative at a very high level.  After all, the IQ tests my siblings and I took when we were in elementary school said I’m not the geniusest of us, and who really believes that?

Decliners

• Lee (MSTR) -2.9%.  I’ve had a cold for three weeks and it’s affecting my work.  When I write, I have a narrow, main narrative going, but I’m also aware of a pool of plot and character elements that I know I need to introduce at some point or another—things I need to have characters say, notice, realize, remember, and so on—as the main narrative permits.  When I’m at my best it can feel like there’s no barrier between the main narrative and the reserve pool at all; when I’m weak or distracted it can feel like the reserve pool doesn’t even exist.  This week, it doesn’t exist.
• Marcus (MCS) -6.4%.  The schedule for the Year of Three Weddings is set, and Marcus will be the last out of the gate (through the gate? into the gate? punched in the face by the gate?).  The market may be concerned that Katie and I will have spent all the money set aside for wedding presents on weddings #1 and #2 and there won’t be much left by August. If you were wondering, I was planning to get the happy couples comic books as wedding presents.  And by ‘happy couples’ I mean ‘Katie and me.’
• Mario the Younger (SUP) -4.7%.  I’m sure ‘Mario and Nicole’ will be very happy with the set of The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #1-45 I plan to buy for ‘them.’  Why would you want china when you could have this?

And by ‘Katie and me’ I mean just me.

• Ruby (RJET) -6.2%.  Back from a long stretch on the road and the stock tanks.  I don’t make up these numbers, folks.  Not that you would know if I did.
• Lisa (LNCE) -6.4%.  The groundhog saw his shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter and a selloff in shares of Lisa.
• Jodi Ann (JOY) -12.5%.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the market hates uncertainty.  In the case of JOY, what’s really rankling the market is the untenable three-syllable situation.  Look down the list of FSX names; no one gets three syllables.  In fact, everyone has a two-syllable handle except for me, and nobody calls me by my actual one-syllable name except my in-laws (otherwise I’m Daddy, Brother, or Toogie).  Let’s dig further, shall we?  There’s Icarus, you say.  Well, he’s a dog, for one thing.  Furthermore, I call him Icky and so do most of his allies (Katie calls him Icarus, of course).  And Justin seems to call him Butthole more often than not.  So Icky doesn’t count.  But what about those two Marios?  Mar-ee-oh, you say…or do you?  Don’t you, in fact, say something more like Mar-yo?  Isn’t the middle syllable barely audible?  And Katie cuts out the last two syllables altogether (leaving Mar, pronounced like the word for a mature female horse).  That leaves only Joh-dee-ann.  Three pesky syllables.  Except that half the time Marcus calls her Jodi.  Ann is her middle name, the market thinks; this isn’t a Tiffani-Amber situation.  Katie’s Aunt Dottie always calls her Katie Anne, and I think there are some other relatives that do that as well.  Clearly, though, the Anne is an optional accessory in Katie’s case.  For Jodi Ann, that seems not to be true.  Dropping the Ann is the more unusual event.  Some compromise must be reached.  If we can’t occasionally drop the Ann in the interest of equitable treatment and laziness, we need to add a syllable to Marcus.  He’ll have to be a full-time Marky Pot.  I expect the market will be able to reconcile itself to either outcome.  Do you think a Marky Pot is like a neti pot?  I do.

Does it shoot mascara brushes?

Nice Tiny Crossbow would be good name for a band, though.

There is no mating to be done this time of year, but his look is as tidy now as it will be in April and May.

I hope Marisa doesn’t eat him between now and then.

I was feeling a little ashamed that I don’t put myself together as well as the bird in my front yard, but then I saw Bill Murray on CNBC this morning and I felt much, much better.

Because I did brush my hair this week.

Not only is this an election year, it’s the Year of Three Weddings.  That means four separate out-of-town overnight trips for me in one year, the first such year since…hell if I know.  It hasn’t happened in this century.  Three weddings and a comic convention.  Sounds like a Hugh Grant movie.  The Family Stock Index continues to rally furiously on the nuptial news, up another 4.1% on the week to 12,816.  The FSX has rallied by 15.7% in 2012 alone and is a full forty percent above the lows of early October.  I’m starting to get spooked by the valuation stretch, wondering where the wedding growth is going to come from.  It’s a little bit like trying to value a Groupon or a Facebook, a company coming to market with the truly meteoric phase of its growth cycle having already taken place.  A three-wedding year is nice, but what does that leave in the wedding pipeline?  Bupkiss is what.  If Jenny gets married as early as her mother did—the earliest I can imagine not making an unholy stink about it—we’re looking at late 2022 to early 2023.  And I can’t imagine not making a stink about it even then.  Lucas is two years younger, yes, but there’s a long weddingless stretch ahead for the FSX however you slice it.  That’s a lot of pressure on those of us who haven’t managed a wedding in a decade or more—maybe we should take a page from the Seal-Heidi playbook and renew our vows annually.

On second thought, maybe not.

Advancers

• Ruby (RJET) +16.6%.  Reagan has posted a 75% gain for 2012, well ahead of the 66% 2011 return that put her in the #1 spot last year…and she’s still #2.  Ruby is sitting on 83% through five weeks.  How long can I keep Reagan from giving her grandmother the Reagan Stink-Eye?  However long I can keep her from finding out she’s not #1.
• Reagan (REGN) +13.2%.  When I created the FSX in April 2010, REGN was an inaugural member.  At that time, the stock traded at $26.  Today it closed just below $97.  Can you do that math?  If you can’t, I bet Reagan can.  What accounts for that stellar performance?  In a word—everything.  In a picture—what Reagan did to her lunch bag yesterday after Katie told her to write her name on it.

• Lee (MSTR +10.3%) and Katie (CATY +8.7%).  Will I have to travel way too much this year?  Yes.  Will Katie have to manage me carefully as I sprout bristles and fangs?  Yes.  But as of this week, we know the dates and many of the details, meaning that a concrete bristle-and-fang management strategy can be developed.  If the market hates anything more than it hates traveling, it’s uncertainty about traveling.
• Jenny (JNY) +8.1%.  The market has struggled to get a handle on Jenny in 2012.  She’s nearly 7% lower for the year, but she rallied hard on Friday, outpacing the FSX for the first time in a long time.  She’s having ‘the emotions’ (her words) more and more frequently, but she’s also showing academic aptitude and effort on a Reaganesque level.  She matched Nicholas (her school’s equivalent of me at age 10) in end-of-quarter test scores and made straight As on her report card.  We thought that moving into the accelerated classes this year might cause her grades to suffer, but the opposite has happened.  What is even more gratifying for me is that she’s determined to do even better—to get her 96s and 97s up to 100s.  I don’t know how long we can keep the emotions from taking her teenage train off the rails, but for the moment, she’s holding it all together magnificently.
• Mario the Younger (SUP) +7.2%.  I have a theory about the recent bull run in Mario (+19% in 2012) that might be controversial.  You see, I recall clearly that there was significant dragging of feet related to the proposal of marriage last year, much of it attributable to a laser-like focus on the Steelers’ Super Bowl run.  With no such playoff run to distract him this year, Mario is more focused on his impending wedding than he would otherwise be.  This is important, because delaying engagement preparations means only that the engagement is delayed.  Delaying wedding preparations means rocketing fountains of disaster.  Would it have been better if the Steelers had even just the second-worst secondary in the NFL, and thus had beaten the Tebows?  Certainly.  But this market is a glass-half-full market.

Decliners

• Zero (ZIP) -5.1%.  Jenny has determined that Charlotte and Zero are (1) definitely leaving Chicago in May and (2) definitely not moving to Long Island (Charlotte’s already made the transformation from New York, Jenny says).  In fact, my sources (Jenny) say Zero could be relocating to the Mount Airy Guitar Center in the near future.  My other sources (Katie) tell me that no such Guitar Center exists, so Zero has a lot of construction work to do.
• Brinkley (BCO) -13%.  BCO stock fell right off a cliff on Thursday (down 19%); with his current combination of speed, clumsiness, and enthusiasm, Brinky’s going to need extra attention from his parents and sisters to avoid falling off an actual cliff.  And by falling I mean leaping.  I shouldn’t have laughed, but there was a moment yesterday that could have gotten us on America’s Funniest Videos if I’d had a camera rolling (yes, AFV still comes on).  Zondro always acts crazy when he first comes in the house, and after I’d let him in in the afternoon he was running around the family room jumping on and off the couches.  Brinky thought this was hilarious, so I kept Zondy going for a few minutes, calling him off one couch and onto the other.  Then everything went slo-mo for about five seconds.  Too late, I saw that Brinky had walked in front of the couch I’d just whistled for Zondro to jump on, and there was no way to stop the dog or move the baby.  Zondro smacked into Brinky’s face and down he went, like a fat cartoon Koala bear.  It wasn’t funny until I could see he wasn’t injured, and then it was hilarious.