A few weeks ago in the funny pages, as Beetle Bailey cavorted on his military base, Blondie and Dagwood discussed household chores, Cathy mulled the state of her checkbook and Snoopy slept off another day on top of the doghouse, something especially peculiar was occurring down in "The Dinette Set." | Read more Flick | Flick Video: B-N loves to eat out

The characters were sitting at what looked like a city council meeting table.

They were discussing wind farms.

One was expressing worry that residents were getting sick to their stomachs by staring at the new windmills too long.

Julie Larson

It was satire, of course, and a poke at the folk who claim such.

There's another punch-line, too:

If you looked closely at "Dinette Set" strip that day, in tiny print, were the words "City of Bloomington," along with the city logo, and right below were the words, "Mayor Stephen Stockton."

Yup, in a tiny-print-way, we are now famous for our windmill neurosis as well.

How, you ask, did all of this occur in a nationally distributed comic?

Simply! "Dinette Set" comes out of, of all world hot spots, Lincoln, Ill., the mind-extract of Julie Larson, who grew up in Lincoln (maiden name: Julie Harris), got a college degree, married, moved to California and then on to Chicago's suburbs where she started a family and amid all the "bleakness and emptiness" of suburbia, also launched her strip, syndicated now nationwide.

"I'm the speaker for the decline of middle-class intelligence," Julie proclaims.

Five years ago, mentally hogtied to suburbia and the aspect of "empty vessels living like sheep," she pulled the plug on life there and, three daughters in tow, proved you can go back home again, in this case to Lincoln, where she quietly resides today.

"My ideas don't need a geographic inspiration. I could sit in a cave and write about (her strip's) characters," she says.

Having access to today's oft-wacky news world helps, of course … like, say, that strip on Bloomington's wind-farm nausea "controversy" …

"That was a no-brainer," says Julie. "It was inspired by the 'negative' reaction by so many people (in the B-N area) who were afraid they'd get sick from watching those windmills spin … ."

She adds, "There's always someone who has to ruin it for everyone else …"

And thank goodness, make fun of it, too.

And then he probably really got po'ed: When ya gotta go, ya gotta go, but a 25-year-old Bloomington man discovered the other morning at 3 a.m. that public urination is not only an ordinance violation but occasionally fully enforced as well.

Bond was set at $1,000.

Next time, it might be cheaper just to find a restroom.

Today's deep thought

As mulled by Gail Hutchcraft, of Gibson City:

"All of these Cub "W" flags hanging out everywhere - all is not lost! Next year they can stand for, `WHOOPS!' "

It's Peoria, Butt-head!: When next in Peoria, if someone suddenly hands you a human backside, don't be offended.

It's an ashtray! Peoria, it seems, is getting angry on butts.

With smokers doing it exclusively outdoors since January, the sidewalks have been filling up with butts so the city has been handing out outdoor ashtrays for bars and personal ashtrays shaped like the other kind of butt.

Don't burn this until after the movie: If you've yet to see the latest Coen Brothers comedy, "Burn After Reading," it is worth your $8, along with a warning that it is very funny but in a Coen-esque, dark-comedy way.

A side note:

Late in the movie, the character played by actor John Malkovich murders the character played by actor Richard Jenkins on a Washington, D.C., street.

Jenkins? He is a 1969 Illinois Wesleyan University graduate.

He lived in Dolan Hall.

Just three blocks north, in an ISU dorm, lived an underclassman named, yup, John Malkovich.

Contact Bill Flick at flick@pantagraph.com. The Flick Blog: www.pantagraph.com/blogs.