What ever happened to comic strips? Strips, not books -- that's a whole other issue. A read through the Austin American-Statesman's Sunday comics pages this weekend netted me one or two chuckles and maybe one brief instance of thought provocation.

I realize now why I stopped reading the comics pages regularly years ago. Old standards and new strips alike are almost uniformly bad these days.

Where does a guy have to go to find a decent comic strip these days? Where is the mind-altering brilliance of a Little Nemo In Slumberland? Where the slightest hint of truly clever humor? Where any noticeable frame of reference to the world and times we are actually living in?

They're out there, of course. The answer is that, with rare exception, they're not in the pages of your daily newspaper. They're in the back pages of weekly "alternative" papers, and on websites like Salon.com that regularly run alternative comics. And an increasing number of them are either created or archived online, where you, gentle readers, can experience them.

In the coming days, I'll be profiling some of my favorite "strips for the thinking person", including: Peter Blegvad's Leviathan, Aaron McGruder's Boondocks, Tony Millionaire's Maakies, Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World, and more.

My focus will be on strips that are currently either syndicated in print on a weekly or daily basis, or updated that frequently online. There will however, be a few exceptions (e.g. Leviathan, which ceased publication in 1999). Meanwhile, I invite you to begin experiencing some of the best in modern comic strips from those that have websites linked above.

The latest incarnation of the U.S. dollar coin, the Sacagawea golden dollar, is a limited, highly qualified, modest success. Or, more accurately, a non-failure at best.

Chalk this up to the Treasury Department's policy of co-circulation, the same policy that killed all previous attempts at introducing a dollar coin (the "silver dollar" and Susan B. Anthony dollars, for example). We could take a lesson from our neighbors to the north in Canada, and make the wise move of phasing out the paper dollar, but I have a better idea -- a plan to increase circulation of the dollar coin and simultaneously reform the funding of elections...

Require all private funding of election campaigns, whether hard money or soft money, to be paid in Sacagawea dollars. No checks, no paper bills, no stock certificates or donations in kind. Elections are publicly funded, unless you want to go to the considerable effort of amassing and transporting 1 million coins to the candidate of your choice, who then has similar difficulties in spending them.

It's an idea whose time has come. Exercise your so-called "free speech" right to give money to politicians all you want -- the only requirement is that the lingua franca of that speech must be unwieldy dollar coins!

With a little luck, maybe some of the greedier corporate CEOs will meet interesting ends, crushed under the weight of their own influence-purchasing donations. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change in the headlines from all of these depressing Enron dispatches?

This delightful LA Times article (found by way of Prentiss Riddle's blog) chronicles a decade-long pun war between a Houston restaurateur and the neighboring Pappadeaux's seafood chain restaurant.

Every time Pappadeaux's changed their marquee, the neighboring Khyber North Indian Grill answered with a clever riposte. To "Hiring Today 3-5" they retorted "My, You Do Start Them Young".

"Come Try Our Stuffed Flounder" "On What Charge?"

"Your Secretary Will Love Our Blackened Tuna" "As They Say, Love Is Blind."

Perhaps most amusing, however, is the tale of proprietor Kapoor's citizenship interview, which I leave you to savor for yourself.