I look ruefully at my cabinet of hoarded alcohol wipes
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Crankshaft, 2/8/21
My earlier suggestion that what we’re seeing in Crankshaft was written a year ago and reflects the very early days of the coronavirus pandemic was meant mostly in jest, but after two weeks of Crankshaft defiantly going through his daily life in a hazmat suit, I’ve become more and more convinced I was right. Today’s gag, which name-checks hand sanitizer, everyone’s early-to-mid-pandemic obsession, just confirms it for me. I guess the strip’s putting it in terms of “flu” because the thought was that jokes about COVID-19 would be completely out of date by February of 2021? Ha ha! [laugh becomes increasingly manic and desperate] HA HA HA HA
Gil Thorp, 2/8/21
Wait, so Tessi is “short” for Tessa, a word the same number of letters and syllables? I refuse to accept this, but the alternate reading is that her full name is actually “Contessa,” which I refuse to accept even harder.
Crock, 2/8/21
Ha ha, it’s funny because … the birds shit in their food, which they then ate, not realizing it was full of bird shit? Wow, between this and Dennis the Menace yesterday, everyone’s just kind of going for it, huh.
177 replies to “I look ruefully at my cabinet of hoarded alcohol wipes”
Uh oh. Shoe made me laugh.
Now that you mention it, Crock has been pretty “salty” for some time now.
Crock: If there were thousands of geese flying over it’s not just the food that would be full of shit.
However, “full of shit” kind of defines Crock.
MW: Did Saul and Eve change pants? And dogs? Or did Moy mix up the word balloons?
Macanudo: Ladies and gentlemen, Beethoven’s Ode To Joy!
Crankshaft: When Ed says “I marinate myself in hand sanitizer,” I think he means he pours pure grain alcohol into his morning coffee until his liver is pickled.
Gil Thorp: She shortened The Contessa to “Tessi,” because she really doesn’t want to hear crowds of students yelling “Cont!” whenever she scores.
Crock: If that’s vulture poop, then it’s probably just the same carrion that the stew was made from in the first place.
Pluggers: There has been some controversy in recent years about whether whole milk is good for you. I submit today’s Pluggers cartoon as definitive evidence that it is not.
Slylock Fox: Slylock will light a match first, dummy! Then he’ll burn the cabin down. Then it’ll be warm, then very warm, and then cold again.
Mary Worth:
–“Mary, I’m going to cook dinner for Saul tonight. Do you have a good recipe you could lend me?”
–“Well, which are you serving, baked salmon or muffins?”
–” ‘Baked salmon or…’? I don’t know, I was thinking of something kind of fancy and romantic.”
–“Right, but is it baked salmon or muffins?”
–“Well, if those are the only choices, I guess I’ll serve baked salmon.”
–“Good, good. Just cut the salmon into squares and bake until dark brown. And welcome to Charterstone — I think you’re going to fit in fine around here!”
Hi and Lois: Suddenly, Hi and Lois turn to each other and grin as they both realize this “mute” thing could be permanent.
Bold of them to (re-)run a “Yep, it’s that time of year when the geese fly south!” strip in Feburary, nearly six months after bird migration season and almost at that time of year when the geese fly north. Although it’s also bold of them to (re-)run any Crock strip on any day.
@Sequitur: I agree. Skyler needs more face time. He’s the only good character it has ever had.
GT: I don’t know why people say female athletes are stuck under a glass ceiling, Tessi is clearly standing on top of it.
Crock: Never mind life-threatening bacterial infections. If there’s one thing everyone hates about goose shit, it’s how salty it is.
JP: Oh… oh no, Marciuliano’s obnoxious dialogue speech… speech tic is bleeding over from… from Sally Forth.
Crankshaft: Just because Batiuk writes it a year in advance, doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to edit it later–does it?
GT: They referred to her as “the contessa.” I think she must be an actual countess.
Crock: Is bird shit salty? Is shit in general salty? I did not know this.
(repeat from end of yesterday:)
MW: If I got to take over the strip starting tomorrow, here’s what tomorrow’s would be:
Panel 1: Eve serves Saul spaghetti while their dogs look on.
Eve: “More spaghetti, Saul?”
Saul: “Sure, Eve.”
Panel 2: Eve spills spaghetti onto Saul’s jacket. Saul rises.
Eve: “Whoops!”
Saul: “It’s all right, it’s only a little stain.”
Panel 3: Eve helps Saul out of his jacket. In the foreground, the dogs look at each other.
Eve: “I keep some of my late husband’s suits in the closet, Saul. Why don’t you change into one of those?”
MT: I guess this means next Sunday’s featured animal will be…bugs?
Jules used to brag that she was now Mark Trail’s “daddy,” and this makes the second day in a row that she’s used a dad joke.
MW: Do people really feed their pets whatever they themselves are eating? I mean, table scraps I can understand, but are they going to do the whole “Lady and the Tramp” thing?
FW: Oh what lovely memories of a more innocent time. Middle panel by guest artist Lynn Johnston.
Slylock Fox: I thought this was going to be about whether Billy Bass was guilty or innocent (guilty being the only possible outcome).
In regard to Dennis the Menace and now Crock, it’s called the Marvin effect. The strip Marvin is like a big black hole of bodily fluid and waste humor that eventually gets all other strips under its gravitational influence and into its effluvial orbit. Ultimately they swirl around the gaping Marvin black hole only to cross a non event horizon and flush down into a voiding cosmic comic singularity of poop jokes. What can I say? The universe is cruel.
love is... copping a feel.
Crock, 2/8/21: um who knew that goose shit was salty AND HOW?!
@Sequitur: Albeit in the wrong key.
CS: It’s funny how COVID has really changed our perspective on public health. Today the joke is “ha ha, some people do go a bit overboard” whereas a year ago it would have been “ha ha Ed is having a psychotic break!”
GT: At first glace at the last panel I honestly did not get that Tessi had just shot a three-pointer, I thought it was her patented celebratory “Contessa Pose”.
Crock: After looking at that first panel again I’m not sure if the joke here is ‘some goose poop got in the stew’ or ‘whoops, I accidentally swapped out the stew for this giant bucket of goose poop, I really should label them”
@William: given that bird poop is actually a mix of feces and urine, I think you could make an educated guess that its salty without actually sampling.
I feel as though the cloaca and its functions is something that comes up frequently here…
As a Russian speaker, I would feel it remiss on my part to fail to point out that Russian “diminutives”, like Vanya for Ivan or Katyusha for Katya, are routinely longer than the original name they’re the “short form” of.
And “Tessi” probably takes a few milliseconds less to pronounce than “Tessa”.
Of course her name is Contessa. You don’t get arms like that by not coming from a noble family that has kept marriage between cousins for generations.
@5 Sequitur: Does anyone else here remember the single-panel comic strip Mr. Tweedy? It ran in the paper of the small town where I grew up, and I suspect it was probably given away as filler to small newspapers who weren’t willing to pay for real comic strips that were, you know, actually amusing. Mr. Tweedy made Fred Basset look like a laugh riot by comparison, is what I’m saying. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that one time the strip did succeed in making an actual joke. The birds perched on a stretch of power lines made the musical notation for the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
I remember that cartoon now, over 50 years later, not because it was especially clever but because it was the only time that Mr. Tweedy ever came even remotely close to actually being funny. It was like what Dr. Johnson said in 1763 about a female preacher, “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
BB: Ouch. Not funny. Not funny at all.
GT: Well, I suppose that would be slightly better than just coming out and naming your female offspring “Princess,” but not by much. If she weren’t 6’3,” Contessa would be subjected to constant beatings by the smokers in the girls’ rest rooms.
I know it’s important to stay safe, but where I live we’ve had one case of community transmission and that was someone working security at a quarantine hotel so here are my tales of an overcautious co-worker.
This guy:
– Would drive to work wearing two masks and gloves. He was the only person in his car.
– Splashed hand sanitiser on his face like aftershave.
– Slept in a mask, even in full lockdown
– Got tested because someone had been to his supermarket and then tested positive, even though they were there two hours after he’d finished shopping.
– Tested a total of 6 times, even when he had no symptoms common to COVID.
Blondie: I am reminded of Luis Bunuel’s 1967 film Belle de Jour, where the title character received her nickname because she only worked the whorehouse during the daytime hours, when her husband was at the office.
@pugfuggly: That reminds me of this runner-up from the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:
“As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows.” — David Pepper, Hermosa Beach, CA
JP feminine couture update: Okay, Ronnie is still wearing the sleeveless blouse/shorts ensemble from Sunday, but Kat is back in her ponytail and running/workout outfit from Saturday. So I guess Kat ran back to the closet for another quick-change while Ronnie was on the phone with the pizzeria.
Tomorrow: Will Ronnie nip back and put her weekday dress back on, or come sauntering out to greet the pizza boy in her full Mardi Gras regalia?
Spider-Man : I was wondering what the “official adjective” for Newspaper Spider-Man was (you know, “Amazing”, “Spectacular”, etc.)… “Semi-Conscious”? Yeah, that tracks.
******
Crankshaft : I was thinking this arc was going to drag all the way into early march, and end with Crankshaft realising “I was such a hypochondriac to take this many precautions! It’s just the flu!”… But now, I’m starting to hope this ends with Crankshaft catching the ‘rona (because he stops taking his precautions… or DESPITE him continuing to take them) and spreading it around the cast, and it is revealed that everyone looks so much older in Funky Winkerbean not because of the time jump, but because the ‘rona messed up so bad it turned them into the seemingly aged husks they appear as in that other strip.
******
Gil Thorp : So, “The Contessa” ‘s plan is to have her own personal announcer heap praise upon praise for her Volleyball game while ignoring her teammates, even though (as has been previously, repeatedly, established) it’s her teammates who do all the work while she completely sucks at volleyball? What long build-up for such a silly conflict!
******
Hi & Lois : We know Dot’s only got eyes for boy bands, so I’m assuming BOTH the Iron Man and My Little Pony’s posters are Ditto’s.
******
On the Fast Track : Dethany, how did YOUR work experience change to be more stressful, since your arrangement doesn’t have you sanitising everything and taking tons of precautions, it’s relaxed work from home. Granted, it’s being forced to live at your BOSS’ home (so she can continue screaming in your face
all the timeat the slightest provocation)…MW-“Not fish. Phish. P-H-I-S-H. The music group. I used to travel around the country following them.”
JP-This conversation would go better if it was better written.
FC-Thel is disappointed that Bil came back with him.
Spiderman-Once again the day will be saved by the guest star.
Luann – Most days, i find I’ve forgotten what happened in Luann within five minutes of reading it, so maybe I missed something. This is Bernice’s brother, right? The one she was hiding from behind the trash bin? And the reason she is living at the DeGroot house is because she wants to avoid him? So, why is she now hanging out all friendly and telling him everything that is going on in her life?
GT: so VD has proclaimed Tessi to be The Contessa. Corinna Karena will kick his ass.
CS: Batiuk is dragging this ridiculous bit on even longer than usual.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Yeah, if there was a strip where Bernice and Ben started to hang out, it slid past me, too.
My 4 year old is going around telling jokes. He only has two, and he’s forgotten key components of one of the jokes, but the one he knows is actually kind of funny and definitely better constructed than Crock’s nonsensical swerve into pewp jokes.
“I cooked it the same as always. With extra salt, because we live in a desert and people need extra salt to counter what they lose to perspiration. Huh, those guys are looking at geese. Strange to see them so far south, and not near any water source.” – Thrilling True Life Tales of Crock will continue!
C’shaft: By my estimate we’re in week three of “lol, Crankshaft wears a hazmat suit!”, and yet somehow the gag has been going on longer than the actual pandemic.
DT: I’m fascinated by Tessi the Contessa’s form. It looks like she learned to play basketball from Bob Fosse.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: @Rube:
Okay, so Bernice was all “I don’t want to see my brother because it makes me feel like I’m a failure; he’s a Iraqistan War hero veteran army officer, whereas I got fired from my R.A. job, he’s married whereas I am single, and he has kids older than the age gap between us, so he became a responsible adult parent before I did by every metric. Also, I hate kids because they’re all misbehaved hyperactive hellions I don’t want to see them.”
Luann went : “Go see your brother anyway, maybe your preconceptions are wrong.”
And Bernice went to see her brother, found out he had become a weirdo smelly hippie nomad with no real job, that his wife was away somewhere for reasons and that his kids were well-behaved and reverential towards her. So she’s cool with seeing her brother now.
Tl;dr : Bernice was afraid to see her brother because she felt inferior to him, she’s cool with him now that she can feel superior to him.
@24 seismic-2:
I remembered there being a Mr. Tweedy but I couldn’t remember what it was like so I looked it up.
Now I remember why I didn’t remember it.
JP: Yes, of course the main focus is when Ronnie and Kat are going to get into a tickle fight.
Meanwhile, I can’t even remember who Ronnie is. How did she enter the Parkisphere?
Crankshaft is right to be extra-careful: the world wants him extra-dead. But the world is also right to try harder: Crankshaft will not give humanity the satisfaction of dying
C: “Anyway, always be ready. Remember, I’m a veteran of the Pacific theatre”
“So you have experience in endurance and organisation?”
“No, I have experience covering in plastic important body parts in order not to catch any illness”
@seismic-2:
Mr. Tweedy ran in the Milwaukee Journal Green Sheet, and it was one of my favorites (along with Priscilla’s Pop, Bushmiller’s Nancy, and Dodd’s Mark Trail). Bone dry, never laugh-out-loud, but consistently funny.
Gil Thorp: “It’s short for ‘the Contessa,'” she says blandly, a cold fire blazing in her blue eyes as she stares at an indeterminate point above and several yards beyond his head. “Yes, ‘the Contessa.'” say her legion of clones behind her. “‘The Contessa.'”
(In announcer voice:) Tessi sees her opening and GOES FOR IT, pretending to care about Vic so he’ll give her a cool nickname and elevate her to stardom! Vic feints AND BLOCKS, saddling her with “The Contessa” instead! This strip knows how the game is played! … Wait, I’m getting a message from our producer. Quick clarification, fans: That game is psychological one-upmanship, to be clear, and NOT basketball, about which Gil Thorp remains largely uninterested. We regret any confusion.
@Zla’od: That sounds like it could have been written by Brooke M.
GT: Okay, Vic’s self-knowing admission about his spontaneous wit is good.
Any other way Batiuk’s strips will age badly because of the one-year lag?
“I’m voting for Bernie, he’s a cranky man like me!”
“These are tough times, but luckily we can count on racial harmony”
“This election campaign was tough, but at least on election night we will know the winner. Sure, maybe one candidate will wait for most votes to be counted before accepting, but it will take another day at worst. And even if there is some controversy, what’s the worst they could do?”
“We will not get the vaccine for at least ten years. There’s no point enduring all this, so I have added poison to the coffee and pizza. Goodbye world!”
Crock: Orville had better watch out; he’s working Cookie’s (from Beetle Bailey) side of the street.
CS: marinating in hand sanitizer would sting a bit, perhaps make a man irritable, and might pickle his pickle.
RMMD: ffs get on with, faint, puke, whatever, just get on with it.
9CL: Brooke believes fourteen-year-old girls are at the peak of physical maturity, which is a perfectly normal mindset and not at all a “Les Miserables Act One Finale”-sized red flag.
Luann: Is this the hilarity that’s supposed to be ensuing, or are we still waiting for that?
MW: *tries to parse who’s saying what in panel two, shakes head, gives up*
Pibgorn: Well, Brooke seems to be back on track. Of course, for him “back on track” means meandering walls of text and thin excuses to draw sexyladygams, so it’s a lateral move at best.
Pluggers are disgusting and have no consideration for the people they live with.
@ValdVin:
GT: Okay, Vic’s self-knowing admission about his spontaneous wit is good.
* * *
I’ve done humor workshops and have covered the topic of spontaneous wit. Ad-lib humor makes one look like a true wit, someone who can come up with funny stuff on the spot. Often it’s not the spontaneous creation of humor, it’s the spontaneous recall of humor. One can already have a funny punchline in mind and deliver it when the opportunity arises, making it look like the person is a quick wit.
However, for it to work one keeps it to himself and does not tell someone he is working on his spontaneous wit. That doesn’t work.
So, next January, Ed Crankshaft will be storming the Capitol?
@Uncle Lumpy: The Green Sheet! Sigh…
Judge Parker: “All right, I’ll admit it! Sometimes I think you’re more interested in the woman you’ve known longer, and who everyone says could be my identical twin!”
“Okay, I know you’re hangry, but…”
GT: Great. Give a self-absorbed prima donna more attention with a flattering title. And surprisingly, this isn’t directed to either Coaches Thorp.
GeoGregFebruary 8th, 2021 at 7:06 am Reply
So, next January, Ed Crankshaft will be storming the Capitol?
* * *
Since Ed is so into gardening, I assume he will first stop at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, especially after seeing them featured in a Super Bowl commercial.
@GeoGreg< Crankshaft: Yeah, but it’ll be the local Waffle House.
Crankshaft: We all should have worn those hazmat suits by now.
GT: Barefoot Contessa jokes,everybody.
Ziggy: When he sees them in the mail, those bills should tell Ziggy to…”PUT ON SOME PANTS AND SHOES!”
Crock: Why would the writer be so confident that bird shit tastes salty? Has he eaten some?
MT: For at least the second time, Jules manages to sneak in a reference to The Room, and I am here for it. OHAI MARK!
Luann: Although Bernice admits here that she’s sex-averse, she’s also a scold—and doesn’t want anyone else having any fun either.
Do vultures always follow Crankshaft, or is today the first time we see that? Are they waiting for him to die, or do they know he leaves a trail of roadkill behind as he drives? Is this the Crankshaft-Shoe crossover episode no one was asking for? So many questions.
@Anonymous:LUANN – Ah, of course! I semi remember that he turned out to be a washout. But, if they get along now, can’t she go home again? Or would that ruin the ongoing “thinks Luann and Jack are exchanging long protein strands” plot?
And how does this fit with the other plot where Tara is afraid to live at home because her cousin is there and has violated parole and is acting weird? Maybe they can all move in together? Or Bern can live at Tara’s and Tara can move in with Bern’s brother? Or maybe she prefers sleeping on the concrete floor of the storage wing of Das Fusee?
Crank – Why not a black latex cat suit?
GT – I dig his lower left arm in panel one….
(Appropriately named) – The strip, like the stew is extra shitty today….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Jihadi Colin: It’s not implausible in English, either. Example: “Johnny” is a nickname for “John” despite having more syllables. But I don’t think most people would say that “Johnny” is short for “John.”
@TheDivaPIB – We’ve spent months on this sequence, and her skirt is already wet, at one point we saw Naked Teen Monk try to surface out of the water and get his head stuck under her skirt, with sexy complications. And she’s been in the pond for almost a year already. So, shockingly, this is just a gratuitous leg tease. And we’re still at the exact same point in the plot as we were three months ago.
@Voshkod: Look again, Vosh. Those are clearly pterodactyls. Batiuk really does have a hell of a lead time.
@Sequitur: love is… copping a feel.
Indifference is… tuning her out and the TV in.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I blame Brigman, but yeah, that’s what happened. Brigman should really stay out of Vic’s alley.
GT: Uber-nerd basketball announcer Vic Doucette will get carried away by his lonely-guy fantasies about popular-girl Tessi while he’s announcing the girls’ games. “The visitors from Central are putting up a really aggressive defense! Whoa, Central’s small forward Bonnie “the Boney” Jones just threw a hard and sharp elbow to Tessi Milton’s chest that sent her sprawled out across the hardwood on her oh-so-amazing ass. With that tumble, she’s Tess of the Roller-Derbyvilles now! And what an incredible chest it is, that took that elbow! You need a whole fourth dimension just to properly describe Tessi’s rack!”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: So, next January, Ed Crankshaft will be storming the Capitol?
So he’s not looting and burning down the local restaurant? He’s masked like Antifa. Or do they not exist? What’s CNN saying this week?
@Zla’od: OK, today we learn that the Crock creative team is made up of coprophagic Chihuahuas (yes, I realize that’s redundant), because only they would have the firsthand experience to make this joke in the first place.
FOOB: Meanwhile, we’re missing the comic possibilities of Gordon getting whupped by his dad and not telling anyone.
Tales of Suburban Despair:
@Sequitur: It crawled into his hand! Honest!
DtM: And by “takes his fun,” Martha means, “gets blackout drunk in the middle of the day and collapses into an insensate heap on the back porch.”
MW: Awfully nice of Eve to get down on her knees to receive Saul’s flowers.Why, this way she’s only 2-3 inches taller than Saul!
Gil Thorp – I actually know of a girl that age named Contessa. I was a co-worker of her grandmother’s and she kept referring to her granddaughter, Contessa – I assumed it was a nickname and asked what Contessa’s real name was… yeah, it’s Contessa.
I’d just go by Tessa, but then, I am a fan of the old, old school Degrassi, and I’ll never forget that Tessa was pregnant with Joey Jeremiah’s baby, and Joey was telling Caitlin he wanted their first times to be together, then Caitlin found out at a lake party, and Wheels drove off in a drunken rage, causing an accident that partially blinded Lucy, aspiring film-maker.
See, kids, in the late 1980s, early 1990s, Degrassi Jr/Sr High was a Canadian show that ran on US public television and was admired/reviled for its frank discussions about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll – Canadian style – so it was frank but oh-so-polite. Spike got pregnant, Shane suffered severe brain damage in a drug related accident, Heather (or was it her twin Erica?) got pregnant and terminated it, and then got hazed by Spike’s cousin, who had a female proto-mullet. And Snake’s brother was gay, and he found Claude dead of suicide in the school’s bathroom, which left Caitlin devastated, even though he was a jerk to her and left her to get arrested at a no-nukes rally. She eventually ran back to Joey and his fedora. Joey was held back a grade and diagnosed with a learning disability. And then there was Kathleen, who dated Craig, who was abusive – but Melanie found out and helped her – and then… OK – you know what? I was heavily invested in Degrassi. It was like Funky Winkerbean, but good. Really, really good.
is it common knowledge that bird shit is salty? i guess i missed that day in home economics.
I spent too long trying to research the theatres of operation of the French Foreign Legion. I was trying to establish if it was at all conceivable that migratory birds might pass over them heading south for the winter. far too long before I realized it was February.
Pigporn: She worries about getting the hem of her skirt damp; then she sticks her face underwater and soaks her bodice. Meanwhile we learn the tonsure is replicated. Many checkboxes are being marked, today.
9CL: Oh, dear me. Looks like it’s gonna be A Week.
CCB @65: …she’s been in the pond for almost a year already…
”Girl missing! Giant pink raisin found in pond!” — rephrased Hobbes (the tiger, not the author of Leviathan)
@Anonymous:
“Bird shit” includes a lot of urine, so yeah, salty. Bird kidneys are really efficient, so they don’t have to drink/carry a lot of heavy water. They’re also stretched out longitudinally for balance.
@Pervy McKinkerson: PIB – “we learn that the tonsure is replicated”
If you can cover it completely with a single leaf, maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be in the first place?
9CL: Given that middle school Edda is shown to be the same height as Juliette in 9CL Classics, there’s no reason why her old school uniform skirt should be so short, other than to have a week of strips that involve Catholic schoolgirl fetishism.
@Ukulele Ike: ”Girl missing! Giant pink raisin found in pond!” — rephrased Hobbes (the tiger, not the author of Leviathan)
Meanwhile the monk is ashamed to show her his tiny pink raisin.
But anytime Brooke is ready to illustrate her by now raisin-ized toes in actual detail, I’ll take a look.
Pluggers – It’s an improvement over drinking out of the toilet.
FC – Thel must be too sloshed t
Oops!
FC – Thel must be too sloshed again to cook.
EPBHST @83: Unfortunately, today’s Classic 9CL (which runs right above 9CL on my GoComics page) does not include a visual of young Edda in her school uniform, which does in fact include an ankle-length skirt.
However, it is Funny.
GT – “Tessi” is short for “tesseract.” The hands in Gil Thorp look the way they do because they reach through the fourth dimension.
@Ukulele Ike: Or . . . Manley just list the thread or whether Ronnie’s interlocutor was Kat of Neddy.
Or . . . Kat did a quick wardrobe change to see if Ronnie would know it was still her, because if she didn’t, well that would Not. Be. O.K.
‘shaft: Lena is being awfully judgy, considering that her own blouse appears to be made from a repurposed hazmat suit.
GT: So Vic’s idea of “spontaneous wit” is coming up with mildly clever nicknames for the players? Let us hope he never discovers the “Richmeister” sketches from SNL.
Crock: I never thought I’d say this, but the artist for Crock has actually drawn too much. Specifically that fly hovering over the stew in panel one. Look, dude, you already have your characters eating bird shit. The fly at that point is gratuitous.
@Bill’s Tummy Brain: OK, Bill, if you want to go that direction, why don’t you tell me who has been charged with burning down the Minneapolis police third precinct last spring and who has been charged with inciting the riots in my hometown.
@GeoGreg: Nope, driving a bus full of Proud Boys, and actually being nice and stopping the bus for all the mothers chasing it down because “Johnny forgot his AR-15.”
@Little Guy: Brooke’s writing this one.
@Old School Allie Cat: Wow, another Degrassi fan. I really enjoyed Degrassi Junior High but I think I quit watching when they got to high school. I remember a lot of what you covered although I don’t remember Tessa.
And your comment “It was like Funky Winkerbean, but good. Really, really good.” is really true.
And Claude was a douchebag. I’m sorry he caused so many problems for Caitlin.
GIL TWERP: Vic is “still working on [his] spontaneous wit”? Sounds like he’s already half-way there!
DICK TRUCULENT: “How was I acquainted with him? I was one of his customers. “DOLLAR BILL” always met me in the park. We had a good supplier-client relationship; he gave out these little punch cards where each time you bought drugs he’d punch out a hole and after ten punches, your eleventh one was free. He also did “two-for” Tuesdays, and often put coupons in the local free shopper paper. And if you were a regular customer, you could always count on a Christmas card from him.”
GIL TWERP: I haven’t read through the other Mudges’ comments yet, so I have yet to learn which one of us will be the first to make a joke about Contessa being some sort of freak is she has a “three pointer,” and”anyway her uniform top isn’t tight enough to even display the usual two.”
(Probably Scratchy.)
@Shrug: (Probably Scratchy.)
Pretty sure it will be Shrug.
I’m guessing that Tessi isn’t short for anything at all, but “It’s just Tessi” just doesn’t give him the whole vibe he’s going for here. Her image is his to mold now, and he can’t deal with anything that mundane.
@N.L. Urker, the Phillips screwdriver of the gods: #33
“GT: so VD has proclaimed Tessi to be The Contessa. Corinna Karena will kick his ass.”
What nickname will VD bestow on Corinna? “The Coronary” sort of works, or “The Coroner.” Probably not “The Corgi.”
MARY WORTH: AKA “Leftovers from Mary Worth’s previous meddle”.
(Does that describe the baked salmon…or Saul himself? You decide, audience!)
@Shrug: @Creepy Condescending Wonka: Dang, I’m jealous that it was Shrug and not me.
@Joshua K.: #64
“My name is John, but I go by ‘John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith’ for short. Except in Germany, where my nickname is ‘Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitzweimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönendanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.”
The New York Times newsletter contains the following today:
My first thought? “Or, you could just, I dunno, run Slylock Fox?”
@Ukulele Ike: I had forgotten that Edda’s uniform skirt was ankle length, which only makes today’s scenario even more absurd. It’s like Brooke is purposely forgetting all the established continuity just to construct absurdly “sexy” situations.
@jroggs: Oh my god, that fucking repeat word shit drives me insane.
Zits: Over a hundred comments and no one has mentioned Connie curled up on the couch next to Zits while fondling her pussy and then offering it to him?
@richardf8: TENT SKATE
@richardf8: I dunno how Ken’s Tatet is really going to help me on a camping trip.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Or Jeff Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandy Scheuer.
A&J: Arlo role-playing Tom Brady. https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2021/02/08
I imagine Gil Thorp’s writer wanted to include a caveat: “NOTE: Puns will not always get you girls. They are not a guaranteed way to a girl’s heart, no matter how funny and brilliant those puns are, no matter how much happier she’d be with you instead of her stupid boyfriend, who couldn’t come up with a good pun to save his life. Once again, puns won’t necessarily get a girl to like you, but they will make her SO jealous when she sees another girl delighting in the wit of your puns.”
Crock: To distract myself from the actual “joke”, I’ve been thinking about the geese themselves. Obviously neither the Canada or brent has a migration path that would have gone anywhere near French-occupied Algeria, but a flock of greylags is, I think, plausible. But “flying south” is still an odd formation; “flying back here” would seem more natural. (Also, as others have pointed out, it’s February.)
HtH: “Sometimes I regret that my house is regularly invaded by a huge mythological beast, known in folklore for having a taste for human flesh! Not enough to move, though! That seems like a huge hassle, and it hasn’t actually eaten me yet!”
JP: We all know that the reveal here is going to be that Kat feels she’s Ronnie’s second choice because she looks like Neddy. The question is, what happens then? Is Ronnie going to try to claim that she likes Kat for her personality? Is Kat un-self-aware enough to buy that?
I look forward to the day when Eve and Saul stop saying they’re looking forward to things. But, alas, it’s Mary Worth, and the only real forward motion I’ve seen is Eve’s freeze-frame falling.
It’s always a shock to me that Dot & Ditto still share a bedroom, especially now that we’ve seen evidence of Dot’s emerging interest in…clip art.
It might be time for Chip to move into the basement, attic, or over the garage so the twins can have their own individual space for development.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Exactly! You want that with you if you’ve got one of those four person multi room tents with the vestibules and such. Lets you roll it along behind you on the trail!
Trash-talking an opponent after making a three-pointer is one thing, standing there and voguing is another.
@matt w: #116
“It started as a basketball game, and then a game of Statues broke out.”
@richardf8:
TESTE TANK?
I haven’t been camping in awhile.
GT: I have no doubt Rod Whigham uses athletic action photographs as the basis for his illustrations because if you look at such photographs and strip away the context, color, and perspective, you’ll find that the human body looks really weird when it’s just doing stuff.
@Old School Allie Cat: 118
Teste tank? Is that what the kids today call a scrotum on a one-balled man? Maybe we need input from our resident expert, Scratchy Scrotum LXIX.
@richardf8: Can’t be. We haven’t even seen so much as a bare ankle, and there’s no dry humping going on in the booths in the Bucket, although Tessi’s three-point follow through could be construed as Hand Sex.
@UncleJeff:
I can’t help wondering what was Janis’s side of that bet.
@Edda’s Piano Bench Has Seen Things: Good to hear that Brooke is doubling down on his core competencies.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd:
@Old School Allie Cat: 118
Teste tank? Is that what the kids today call a scrotum on a one-balled man? Maybe we need input from our resident expert, Scratchy Scrotum LXIX.
* * *
Wow, I’m glad to be a resident expert on something. I thought Hitler was the expert on the subject of having only one ball.
I’ve done Vic Doucette’s gig for more than 40 years. I also do official scoring in various sports. Last Saturday at a college game, the p.a. announcer told me of someone he knew who checked the mike with “Testes . . . 1. . . 2”
I can’t believe I never thought to do that. And my next shot on the mike – maybe next month – I will.
Meanwhile, what does our good friend Left Nut have to say about this.
(Old School’s Kent State letter swapping was much better than my feeble effort.)
@matt w:
Trash-talking an opponent after making a three-pointer is one thing, standing there and voguing is another.
* * *
Hey, she one-upped Antoine Winfield from last night.
@103 richardf8:
Oh, yeah. TENT STAKE
In case your tent turns out to be a vampire.
“Hey, man, your tent really sucks!”
“Good thing I’ve got my tent stake.”
Crankshaft’s gonna die and be buried in that hazmat suit and 10,000 years from now now, archaeologists will dig him up and be stunned by what they learn about us. Otzi ain’t got nothin’ on ol’ Cranky.
@Dr. Pill:
His cache of Bean’s End catalogs will lead to a whole theory of our civilization based on gardening.
@127 Dr. Pill:
“Wow, Professor OG69. What do you make of this?”
“Hmmm. It seems this subject died of such a contagious disease that the 21st century doctors put him in this special suit so he would not contaminate others.”
Hi and Lois-“Let’s smother them.”
@Liam: That’s Thel and Bil’s line.
@Effluvius Erratus: like pictures of a pitcher throwing a baseball and it looks like their forearms are bent like a banana.
@Uncle Lumpy: it probably had something to do with cleaning up the squirrel droppings under the bird feeder.
@richardf8: Swap two letters in KENT STATE
While simple swapping limits the fun, you could consider a cryptic crossword clue:
Twistedly, seek TNT at site of massacre
or
Test taken badly at Ohio University
or
Jennings, Eliot, head of teachers ate midwest diploma mill
@Sequitur: “They even had him on a diet of pancakes and flounder.”
“Pancakes and flounder? What was that supposed to cure.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a cure; it was all they could slide under the door!”
@GeoGreg: Other periodicals will shed light on our courtship rituals, and future archeologists will learn about our geopolitics from Marvel Comics.
@richardf8: Hmm…”Kene Stats.” Does that mean anything? Wikipedia gives the name of several athletes named Kene. (I tried to make it spell “Kunt Stank,” but alas.)
@Shrug: Since it’s VD, we could have Corona.
9CL – This is absurd for a number of reasons, but mostly because it’s just horrible storytelling. Who is entertaining even a droplet of suspense as to how Amos will react to seeing her in a fetish costume? Do you think he will tell her to wear something less revealing? Or insist that he does not want to be reminded of 13 year old girls when he is contemplating having sex with his wife? Or tell her that her ass is getting saggy and that she needs to cut back on the deviled eggs?
Or maybe he will be overwhelmed and collapse into a heap with an arm sticking out while Edda pursues her fascination with rubbing one out over an unconscious, supine male thrall?
@richardf8: Fun Fact – My father was a B-52 pilot with SAC, who was sent to Vietnam as part of Operation Arc Light, and ended up being the pilot for the first “secret” bombing raids in Cambodia that the Kent Staters were protesting. And he also was self aware enough to own the Doonesbury compilation book with the “what secret bombs, I commented on them at the time, I said ‘here come the bombs’” storyline. Our politicians wasted a lot of lives and a lot of courage trying to fight a war that they knew in their hearts could not be won.
I still have that copy of the Doonesbury compilation, Trudeau was at his peak back then and had, unfortunately, great material to work with. “Hey, I used to go to school here! Here’s a piece of my old desk!!!”
@Joe Blevins: (on Crock) The flies are a clue to what the punch-line actually means.
@Old School Allie Cat: And here I thought Degrassi was that black guy who replaced Carl Sagan.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: I like the “exchanging long protein strands” phrase, but if you think about it, the travel would be in one direction. To exchange them you’d need TJ.
There’s an advertisement for manscaping tools on top of the page. Which comic strip hero is most likely to manscape? I’d say new Mark Trail.
@UncleJeff:
Well there goes that entertaining little fantasy!
@Ettorre: Maybe a joke about the frozen conflict in Ngorno-Karabakh, or how much Ethiopia has progressed?
@N. L. Urker: I’d say Kelly Welly.
@N. L. Urker: Amos has been manscaping since he was 12 because he thought body hair looked “icky”.
9CL – Amos is still waiting for that magic day when the first little hair pokes out of his pee pee place.
GT: Tessi batted her eyes at Vic and smiled flirtatiously as she told him what her full name is, hoping that he would come up with a really catchy nickname for her that would make her starring performance in the game be even more memorable to the home-town crowd. Vic contemplated the sobriquet “Theresa, the Cock Tease-ah!”, but he decided to save it for when she inevitably starts treating him like a total non-person, which will be about 15 seconds after the final buzzer of the last game of the season.
@Unca $crooge: Amos has been manscaping since he was 12 because he thought body hair looked “icky”.
His probably does.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: The strip I remember most from that compilation is when Mark is still obsessing about Kent State, and Mike tells him it’s time to move on to ”fresher, more recent tragedies.” Good advice!
@Edda’s Piano Bench Has Seen Things: 9CL The thing is that most women are almost fully grown by the time they are 14-15. Maybe another inch or two is possible but that skirt is a good 20 inches higher than what Edda wore when she was 14. And, honestly, what mother keeps their clothes after they no longer wear them?
GT: Nitpick, but how does The Contessa’s hair come only to shoulder-length when loose in panel 2, but when tied in a ponytail for the game in panel 3 it seems to reach the lower portion of her scapula?
@Unca $crooge: And why does Brooke empathize “cedar chest” rather than “chest:? I’m sure there’s some hidden meaning that tickles his rather strange fancy.
9CL/PiB – “ They don’t make stationery like this where I’m from
So fragile, so refined
So I sniff and I lick your envelope
And fall to little pieces every time
I wonder what clothes you wear to school
I wonder how you decorate your room
I wonder how you touch yourself
And curse myself for being across the sea
Why are you so far away from me?
I need help
And I think it would be wrong
At 10, I shaved my head
And tried to be a monk
I thought the older women would like me if I did
You see, ma
I’m a good little boy (good little boy)
It’s all your fault, momma
It’s all your fault!”
– Weezer, Beyond the Sea
Vintage 9 Chickweed Lane: Someone just told Gran to “bite me”.
Whatever you do, don’t look at this.
@N. L. Urker: I’m pretty sure Jules has already “clear-cut” everything down there already. It’s syndicate just won’t show us the results.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Your rage over 9CL rivals my rage over FBFW back in the day. And understandably so!
@Uncle Lumpy: I am the saltpeter of CC.
Crabkshaft: Which is why I urinate myself in hand sanitizer …
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I really don’t like politics coming up here—I think it’s a rule—but goddamn if Bill doesn’t break that rule on the regular.
But this is simply reality. “Antifa” had nothing to do with the January 6 insurrection. Even mainstream Republicans like Liz Cheney acknowledge that.
@brendancalling: Man, i remember hating FBOFW with a passion back in 2007. “Anthony is a good provider and the accountant for Gordon’s car dealership, you’re lucky to have a catch like him!”
“So …. I guess you could say we’re engaged?”
“I suppose”
“Woo hoo!?”
My favorite was the helicopter pilot flapping his arms and running in circles around Lizardbreath’s lawn in ecstatic joy because she gave him a mild complement.
@UncleJeff: Ooo-ooo – can I be the friendly milquetoast?
@Unca $crooge: My mom has kept a lot of my childhood clothing, so I don’t think it’s that weird. It’s probably just a reminder of how small the child in question was. However, we’re talking about the 9CL universe, so this possibly mangled in the wash uniform was probably kept for future fetish purposes.
@Dennis Jimenez: You have my blessings, my son
@Dennis Jimenez: Ooo-ooo – can I be the friendly milquetoast?
The friendliest milquetoast you know.
Crock:
“This stew is really salty, Orville.”
“I cooked it the same as always. Really salty.”
EPBHST @104: Really? Ya think?
@richardf8:
Tent Skate!
@Liam: Teen Skatt?
(Is it two changes per word, or two overall? I think this should be allowed on a technicality)
@UncleJeff: Jules herself? She’s probably died it purple and added glitter.
(dyed, dammit. And here I was, a spelling major at Bible college)
MT: Oh, that’s not Kelly Welly. That’s Amy Lee, Mark’s editor on Teen Girl Sparkle.
MW: Well that answers my question from yesterday–I think. Eve cooked special food for the dogs (is “chow” dog food?), and served it to them in ordinary dog bowls, which the dogs politely eat from without nosing into one another’s dishes.
FW: This must be like…gay porn for old nerds?
So… bird shit is SALTY?
@Zla’od:But that was sanskrit, English morphology is different.
Luann: Jack’s “plumbing exploded” when he was with Luann. Isn’t that the most romantic thing you will ever hear today? After all, what is love, if not exploding plumbing?
@richardf8: Sadhu. sadhu! Just don’t forget to cross your i’s and dot your t’s. (<– Sanskrit diacritics humor)
@Chawlers Plepgeat: With a hint of vinegar. Get with the program!
Tessa: *is the person Contessa* Me: “I disagree with that statement.”
CROCK: If I wanted jokes like this I’d read Marvin.