Hagar [experiences] the Horrible [way to die]
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Gil Thorp, 5/6/24
Milford has its own Native American reservation and, we learn today, its own institution of higher learning. Soon, having accrued all the necessary components of a robust civic life, this high-school sports crazed town simply won’t need the rest of the United States. That’s when Phase 2 begins.
Hagar the Horrible, 5/6/24
“Let me explain! The castle’s main sewer drains into the moat. You probably already have cholera!”
Mary Worth, 5/6/24
Wow, it looks like Meagan didn’t just smooch that waiter to help purge all Wilbur-related thoughts from her mind; she actually wants to see if he’d be a good fit for a long-term relationship! I certainly hope that she, like everyone Wilbur has been even obliquely romantically involved with, invites him to her wedding to really rub his face in it.
Hi and Lois, 5/6/24
That’s … that’s what everybody likes about working form home, Hi. That’s one of the main reasons why people like to work from home!
191 replies to “Hagar [experiences] the Horrible [way to die]”
Ten feet, which is… small? [Google “ten feet to metres”] Okay, slightly more than three metres, very little. Sorry, but I refuse to internalise the Imperial system
Good for you Hi! But if you have some online meetings, you still need to shave, you cannot escape all obligations!
I was pretty sure it was going to be “not having to shave”.
H&L: Working from home also means that every hour is happy hour for Hi.
MW: Despite wondering where Meagan is (and conveniently not turning around), Wilbur has decided that the best thing to do is to just stay seated and probably order another sandwich. It would be just so rude to check in on Meagan and make sure she hasn’t cracked her head open after slipping on a puddle. Nope, better to just sit down and not turn around.
Gil Thorp: “Mr. Barnes here is talented enough for the big leagues, and yet somehow I’ve convinced him he should visit Milford University — as if there weren’t five better colleges in this state alone. I’ll take my kickback now!”
Hagar: “If I told you what was in the water, you would be repulsed! It’s my mermaid girlfriend — and, man, I’m telling you, she is filthy!”
Mary Worth: “Where did my date go?” asks Wilbur. There are about a hundred possible answers to that, up to and including that she climbed out of a high, small bathroom window just to get away from him. But none of them could be as hilariously humiliating to life’s favorite punching bag as the sight of her immediately sucking face with the waiter she just met, then getting some hot phone-on-phone action, while Wilbur anxiously eats through the entire bread basket, wondering what’s going on. Chef’s kiss / no notes on this one!
Hi and Lois: You know what Hi’s coworkers like best about him working at home? His Zoom meeting background is Lois in a bathrrobe! (Meanwhile, I’m guessing Thirsty is working on a laptop from the lawn chair in his backyard, with a table of snacks on one side and a rapidly emptying beer cooler on the other.)
Family Circus: Ha, Daddy doesn’t understand the Common Core Math Standards, which were instituted in 2010! He still does math the old way, like a dope! Stupid Daddy!
You know what else Hi likes about working from home? Not shaving. And also, making come-hither eyes at his wife and leading her on with a question phrased as though it’s going to lead somewhere romantic, and then walking away instead. Hi loves doing that shit.
Is the implication of this storyline that Wilbur would be much happier if he embraced a cuckoldry fetish?
GT: There are plenty of Gil Thorp storylines about Mudlarks trying out for college sports, but previously none implied the college was even nearby. Are the Mudlarks so terrible that only creepy Bible schools and diploma mills want them, or is Milford University so terrible that players would rather face a regular 19 hour drive to the Outer Rural Iowa College of Corn than stay local?
H&L: You know what else I like? It’s 8 AM and I’m already drunk!
And also leaving his breakfast plate on the table for Lois to clean up. Hi really gets off on that kind of Traditional Domestic Roleplay.
HtH: If your foe is so wimpy that he doesn’t want to get his feet wet, you could probably just chase him off by waving a chicken.
MW: It’s not Wilbur’s fault! He was matched up with an amoral, unscrupulous woman. Now she’s off to do a little shoplifting. Oh, and that credit card she used? Stolen.
Luann: The Evansii don’t know what ‘B.S.’ typically stands for nowadays, do they?
RMMD: The boys then proceed to eat the dog and call it candy since they haven’t been fed in days.
H&L: Tomorrow we’ll learn that another thing Hi likes about working at home is having to share his workplace bathroom with only a few people.
LUANN: Oh, give up, Evansii. You’ve already shown your deep pride at having created an eternally-blank slate with a blank brain, and having Tara mildly joke about it won’t help.
FG: Wither thou, wintery wayward Wendigo?
@The Quiet Man: Luann—the problem is that they DO know what it means. This week will be nothing but juvenile gags about “BS,” which will have the TruFans tittering and titillated.
GT: Rodney’s intuitions would prove to be correct, as he was abducted by one of the notorious campus tour crime gangs and never seen again. Next Thursday’s comic will be about Gil checking his mailbox and smiling when he finds the expected thick envelope from “Coach Wilcox.”
MW: “When you’re meeting nothing but duds in the dating circuit, just go sexually assault someone you find desirable and everything will work out just fine.” – Mary Worth, the life and love advice comic
DT: Raffle, auction; same exact thing, right? Also, worth noting that at no point has it been established why B.O. Plenty went to a comic convention in the middle of downtown Chicago when he’s so ignorant about pop culture that he doesn’t even know what Batman is. Hell, how did he even get there? He didn’t even drive there, apparently, seeing as he piloted the dubiously street-legal “Hatmobile” home.
JP: Looks like this strip is back to being leftover Sally Forth material again, with a healthy dollop of mediocre Juggs Parker fanservice as well. How much longer until the next criminal conspiracy plot?
Luann: Yes, this branding story is still going, and yes, Karen Evans still thinks alliteration is the funniest fucking thing.
H&L: Be thankful for small favors. He could’ve said, “I don’t have to wear pants.”
I was having lunch at Antonio’s the other day–maybe it was lunch, or early dinner, I just remember it was real bright outside–and this woman goes over to the waiter. I thought she had a problem with the bill, or was going to ask where the bathroom was or something. But she wraps her arms around his neck and starts tongue kissing him! Now, it was clear from the way he jumped back a little that he was totally surprised by her touching him. I don’t think they’d ever met before. So, I’m looking around to see if anyone else sees what’s happening right in the middle of the floor, maybe some maitre d’ or something, but everyone is just going on about their business.
So, eventually they stop, and I think finally I can get some freakin’ parmesan, but no: they take out their phones and start exchanging numbers! Not giggling, even: they were very serious, almost professional, about it.
And the food isn’t even that good. Whatever they served me was just a bowl of indistinguishable brown lumps.
Antonio’s has sure gone downhill. Frankly, I wouldn’t be too surprised to read someday the place was raided for being a front for a brothel.
9CL – Daddy just reminded Mummy that the offspring are now mature enough to devour whole, causing Mummy to expose her devourin’ teeth.
“Don’t worry, little bites, you will come to understand the great circle of devourment if you get any older. WHEN! When you get older. And riper…..”
H & L – PLus, you don’t have to shave (unless you have a cameras-on Zoom meeting) and you can get up and go get coffee whenever you want! You also don’t have to wear pants, but luckily, Hi isn’t demonstrating that particular work-from-home benefit.
H&L: Whether working in the office or from home, Hi precisely calculates the distance of separation from his family.
MW: World: “Wilbur is a horrible person.” Moy: “But, look….!” Now in its third iteration.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: Dear Penthouse Letters: I never thought this would happen to me, but…
@jroggs, JP: As long as they spread out the Bachelorette Lingerie Stayover Party.
MW: This will all be worth it if the credit card charge is denied, not-Kristy has left, and Wilbur is required to wash dishes to pay his bill.
MW – This isn’t actually so far-fetched. When I was in my early twenties, I was once set up on a date with the sister of a young woman I worked with. Near the end of our dinner, she went to the ladies’ room and ran into an old flame sitting at the bar. My date completely abandoned me at our table to sit at the bar canoodling with her ex for over half an hour. There was kissing involved. Deciding to be magnanimous and to keep as much of my dignity as possible, I paid for the entire meal plus the interloper’s bar bill (!), then approached them and made up a story about having a stomach ache and calling it an early night, and quietly left.
Lot of good it did me. She told her sister and a lot of other people that I had thrown a jealous fit and stormed out of the restaurant, slamming the door. Every word a baldfaced lie (for one thing, it was summer and the restaurant had the door propped open leaving only had a flimsy screen door that you couldn’t slam if you tried.) No fit. No storming. No slamming. I very deliberately did none of those things.
I learned that night that good guys don’t always win.
Mary Worth: Why do all the women around Wilbur walk, run or fly away from him? Why does anyone leave another person, isolating and estranging them from the human connection they need to flourish? Oh, right. It’s the lack of deodorant.
@jroggs: Did you say “mediocre fanservice”?! Oh, boy! (Apparently, I’m in a mood this morning.)
Edit to add:: Okay, yeah, mediocre.
GT – “If you were just about to give me a tour, why did you tell me to sit?”
“I need to find out how well trained you are. Now, let’s see you heel.”
Comics Kingdom has posted a new Don Abundio strip for the first time since March 16! They’ve jumped to the 1970s version of the strip, which has a different art style. (This is also the style of strip they have permanently displayed on the landing page.)
Anyway, here’s my translation:
“Whatcha making, Pierre?”
“Chop Suey?”
“No… chocolate chips”
“It’s actually carne picada, but I could tell him it’s Hungarian Goulash and he wouldn’t know the difference”
Hi and Lois: It’s all fun and games until some Congressman starts fulminating about why federal contractors have not yet returned to office four years after the pandemic.
9CL: I particularly like how the ghastly little girls have been trained to dress identically and march in lockstep six paces behind Mumsy and the thrall. Edda is either a fan of Bemelmans’s Madeline books or the Wehrmacht.
MW: I see you, Meagan. Just know this: No matter what you do for the rest of your life, you’ll never be Kristy.
GT: I hope Milford U’s classes are more challenging than Mooney U’s classes.
HtH: “Look at all those dead fish!”
MW: “Ha ha! This is his profile pic. It looks nothing like him!” “Here’s a kitten trying to jump onto a ceiling fan.”
HnL: Hi isn’t wearing the traditional work-from-home attire.
It’s no surprise that the man who assumed he was on a deserted island and immediately started to panic that he would starve to death until he climbed a tree to get a coconut that he had no idea how to open and saw civilization a short walk away would start to wonder where his date went without thinking to crane his neck a few degrees in the direction she left in to take a look.
***
Hagar the Horrible Case of Pink Eye.
@taig: HnL: Hi isn’t wearing the traditional work-from-home attire.
Pajamas?
Frazz: “Yeah, I’m too old for the thirsty/have to pee trick.”
Luann: Today, Karen invites us to make the joke that Luann is full of BS. I’m 70% sure that was intentional. It does invite the question as to why Luann needed to make a shirt that has the thing and an acronym for the thing on the shirt. That seems dumb…oh, wait, on-brand for Luann.
CS: I just lost my breakfast.
@Lord Flatulence: That would have been a good choice.
Just like an owl, Wilbur is incapable of looking off to the side and is often mistaken as being smarter than he actually is because he wears glasses and the owl was originally thought to be wise due to being a favored bird of Athena. But unlike an owl, he cannot turn his head to see just what is going on behind him. Now I’m not implying that Wilbur is dumber than an owl but anyone can see what’s going on even without being able to turn their head 270 degrees.
9CL: It can’t have been something about sex, because they really love to regale their children with their sexcapades (or force them to watch). Anyway, you can put a red raincoat on one of the monsters in panel three, and she could go to Venice and murder Donald Sutherland.
Crankshart: Eww.
H&L – “You know what I like most about working from home? Banging the secretary! Because the ones at the office won’t let me do it anymore, since I turned 50! Whoops, did it say that out loud?”
FC: “Also, you can only help if you trick her to say her name backwards.”
Zits: Oh no. The voice of Jeremy’s conscience is his mother! We’re reading about the formative years of a serial killer, aren’t we?
MW:
“I really like your mussels, Garcon!”
“Why, thank you, Miss — I work out all the time!”
Dustin: Dustin simply sighs and says in a sarcastic tone “Love you too, Dad.”
Mary Worth – Would be nice if Wilbur ended
up as some guys punk for a few days at the county lockup.
RMMD-And where are Rex’s pipe and slippers you two?
@jroggs:
JP: My money is on when the priest says ‘Be there any person present who know a reason why these two should not be wed…’ Blythe Danner, all singed and with torn-up clothes, bursts in and screams ‘Stop the Wedding! This man is one of Pavel’s spies!’ and then proceeds to brutally gun down everyone in the building, then blows the builidng up for good measure (while walking away thinking to herself ‘why am I no one’s hero?’).
April of course, won’t be there. She’ll be back at her house, having missed the wedding because she was arguing with Randy about being sad and unfulfilled, AGAIN!!
MW:
“I can always tell a Chippendale dancer by his trademark bowtie, you hunky Adonis!”
G. $#$#%^$! Thorp – Now that we know that Milford has a university, I think it could be a prime topic for a former feature on a local site: Why Your Town Sucks. I know some on this forum are familiar with it. A man called shartman (after now dead crotchety reporter Sid Hartman) did this every week with a Minnesota town. It was clever stuff, and people looked forward to having their town lampooned. Here is an example.
Why Your Town Sucks: Bemidji
I’m not sure if you need a password to get to this. If you can’t get to it, here are the highlights about the Bemidji schools:
Your High School: Bemidji High School, home of the Lumberjacks! Chop Chop, bitches! The only things kids dream about here is owning their first Polaris that they will inevitably destroy in an alcohol-fueled 2am ride. They CERTAINLY aren’t dreaming of getting out of this ass pimple of a town. No, they’ll barely graduate and never leave, willingly relegating themselves to a life of having a BMI of over 40, pissing away their meager income on a truck/boat/trailer combination worth three times what their home is, having Fox News running non-stop in their double-wide and festooning themselves in RealTree for the rest of their lives. There are also some random private schools here for some reason. Hey, neat.
Your College: First on the list is Bemidji State University, an institution packed with zaftig, pasty, blotchy-skinned students with untrimmed pubic hair that aspire to be DNR officers and park rangers wearing tan polyester uniforms that are one size too small for them. “Spring break” here entails students escaping to warmer climes such as Edmonton, Canada or Vladivostok, Russia. We also have Northwest Technical College. Oh boy – a loser factory AND located in the taint of Minnesota? SIGN ME UP! Finally, we are #blessed with the presence of Oak Hills Christian College. Jesus Fucking Christ. A bible-banger school located in the back woods of Bemidji. Just THINK ABOUT the type of people attending this school. I will guarantee you 90% of these students were home-schooled and terrified of actual in-person interaction with other scary, scary people, and own several Michael W. Smith cassette tapes.
Fortunately, shartman was kinder to the featured Bemidji native:
“Famous” People from Bemidji: Jane Russell.
I mean, if you can have an entire career essentially defined by your big, firm tits I’m not going to throw shade on that AT ALL. Measurements: 34D-24-36. Height: 5’7”. FUCK AND YES. Clark Gable might have lasted 23 seconds with her in a costume room on the back lot at MGM, and that’s about 6 seconds longer than I would have lasted. The “other side” of Miss Russell was that she was a religious nutjob who actually tried to “convert” Marilyn Monroe on a movie set; you do something like that and the Kennedy brothers would have been making a call to Chicago to have you taken care of, usually. Luckily, she was a DAME and therefore off-limits. She was a drunk, thrice-divorced, smoked a pack of Chesterfields a day for 40 years, right-wing lunatic. Sounds like a Bemidji alumni, alright!
So does anyone think you could do a good parody on the Milford Mudlarks (quack, chirp) or the Milford University MILFS (add your own sound effect)? And would Marty Moon be the most famous native?
GT – You’re in good hands with skunk stripe….
HtH – Hey…doesn’t anybody have a beam? We could use it to cross this moat….
H&L – Jacking off all day to cyberporn is only the second best part….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Gil Thorp—Many students from around the world attend Milford University. Typically they land at Milford International Airport, which has signage in Milfordese and six other world languages (including English). From there they either take a taxi or ride the Milford Metro, a modern transit network that can get you from the airport to the university in twenty minutes. It can also get you to the Milford Metropolitan Opera House, the Milford Trade Center, and the grounds outside Milford Palace, where all royal and state business is transacted. Visitors typically prefer the Milford Botanical Gardens, which cover four and a half square kilometers surrounding the palace and can be entered for a reasonable price. Make sure to convert your currency to Milfordian Crowns before you arrive, so you can get the best exchange rate.
H&L – If you’re commute is only ten feet, then you’ve got time to take your breakfast plate to the kitchen sink, rinse it off, and put it in the dishwasher. But no, you’re going to leave it for Lois, who’s standing there like a good little Stepford wife, ready to refill your coffee cup when needed. She’ll be dressed as a sexy secretary, of course, because that’s the kind of fantasy world you’ve built for yourself since you started working from home, not because Lois enjoys it. Yeah, go to your little home office, Hi. But shut the door behind you. You make me sick.
<b[Mary Worth: Wilbur; I thought my date was going to pay, but she never came back from the bathroom. My wallet is in my other pants. Is there any way I could. . . ?
Matre d’ Frank Nelson: Pucker up, big boy!
Gil Thorp : considering how many of Gil’s students move out when they hit college age, to disperse across the many universities of the nation, despite Milford High being a mediocre middle-of-the-rankings team, I’m going to assume Milford University is not a very prestigious place. Heck, I’ll assume that in the bottom 50 universities, it comes at 48, just above Mooney University (#49) and Pittsville Community College (#50).
*************
Hi & Lois : Hi was actually going to say “It’s easier to spend all day looking at porn on my home computer than trying to sober up and clean away the hickeys I get spending all day at a titty bar”, but then remembered he was talking to his wife, the one person he was actually trying to fool.
…Too far?…Hi & Lois: “You know what I like best about working from home? Every day is ‘Aerate Your Junk Day!’ Hey, move over, Trixie – I got something that could use some of that Sunbeam!”
@BigTed: OK, I am filled with shame that I know this, but Hi & Lois is not at all shy about depicting Lois’s cleavage when called for (it’s a little black line), and they went modest today. So Hi’s coworkers are not getting an eyeful.
@Chance: Lois loves it too! Look how she’s trying to conceal her dismay when she thinks Hi wants sex, and her smile of relief as he heads to the home office!
Hi and Lois – Well, Hi certainly doesn’t miss his co-workers. His only co-worker with a name lives next door!
“So, the moat . . . .”
“Yes, sire?”
“I was envisioning more of a defensive position? Deep water that would either convince the enemy to leave or force them into some sort of water-crossing action we could easily repel.”
“Of course, sire.”
“Well . . . uh . . . why is it only three feet deep? Why does it run up to the very walls of the castle? I mean, I know you’re the engineer and all that, but I just don’t see how this piddling puddle is going to stop ravening Northmen!”
“Piddling puddle . . . that’s quite good, sire. Well, sire, we’ve cleverly filled the moat with all sorts of horrid diseases! The ravening Northmen – again, quite good, sire – will be dead within days!”
“Yes, yes, but . . . we’ll be dead within minutes, no? Once they wade through the filth and breach the walls.”
“It’s a short-coming of the plan, I’ll admit.”
“Fine. Will the alligators deal with them?”
“I’m afraid not. Too cold and they’re New World reptiles. We haven’t actually discovered them yet.”
“Oh, bother.”
MW: “Make a date”? Is that what they call what she was doing yesterday?
Luann-Luann is definitely full of something but I wouldn’t say it’s potential.
Luann-Luann, since you are so empty you would make a great candidate for a suicide cult.
Today’s Hagar just makes me think of BETTER comics that dealt with this scenario.
Such as one Far Side, where Vikings are storming a castle, one viking looks at the moat “Oooooh, look! Goldish!!”
I love the impression that Gil Thorpe gives that it was like 5 seconds from the point where the university dude said “have a seat!” to “let’s go take a tour!”
GT: Milford’s basically Springfield, with much less interesting characters.
H&L: Going by Hi’s bedroom eyes, he clearly expects regular nooners as another perk of telecommuting. Lois seems rather ambivalent about the prospect.
MW: Remember, this is the same guy who only a couple weeks ago shoved a man into oncoming traffic and caused a serious car crash less than twenty feet behind him without ever noticing. Megan could not only make a date with the cute waiter, she could jump up on a table and loudly deliver a litany of Wilbur’s faults and he’d still sit there twiddling his thumbs waiting for her to come back from the bathroom, or at least for another round of all-you-can-eat breadsticks.
MW: Despite the fact that Wilbur seems to have almost no peripheral vision and very faint hearing (see also: the “deserted” island situation), the way that the storyline has been going seems to indicate that he will either realize his date left him or see his date and Handsome Waiter making out when he leaves the table. If my prediction that the bizarre Wilbur-shoving-people-to-save-them-from-cars story was really about him developing superpowers, this date may become more interesting yet.
GT: I guess Milford built the university the same time they built that climate-co
GT: Damn cellphone. Let’s try again.
I guess Milford built that university we never heard of before the same time they built that climate-controlled domed stadium at the juvie center we never heard of before.
@27 I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Plenty of creamy cheeses smell terrible yet people love ’em. I’m looking at you, brie. Not Wilbur. I don’t want to look at him. Welll, OK. I’ll look at him getting massively and publicly humiliated. I admit, I’m a schadenfreude junkie.
@37 taig: on Crankshaft: I don’t usually read this strip and now I’m outputting yesterthread’s Late Thread Cuisine. And I didn’t even input it! What a repulsive strip.
C’shaft: Ha-ha, remember “#MeToo,” a movement which called attention to the prevalent yet unacknowledged culture of sexual harassment and assault women of every demographic were exposed to on a disturbingly regular basis? Wouldn’t that make a great punchline for a comic where Lillian mistakenly thinks Harry is hitting on her? (Seriously, though, Harry has 100% made inappropriate comments to at least one member of this choir. My money’s on the dark-haired girl in the hoodie.)
DT: Look, I get that B.O. calling the silly thing a “Hatmobile” is the joke (for certain values of the term) but why does Croptop insist on following suit? Is she afraid of getting sued by DC Comics?
Dustin: “Don’t worry dear, soon you will resent the very existence of our offspring as I do.”
Luann: So “Blank Slate” is the new “Inner Beauty”?
GT: Looks like Milford is as much a shape-shifter as Cavelton. It’s as big or small as it needs to be to suit the current plot. One week it’s a charming small town and another it’s a sizeable metropolis with high-rise buildings and big city amenities.
CS: Will this Harry Dinkle worship please stop. I’d almost welcome the return of Les Moore.
CS: Thank you, Tom Batiuk, for planting in my brain the image of Loathsome Lil and Dinkle getting it on in the church choir stall.
9CL: Please, you’re telling me Edda wouldn’t describe in graphic detail the prurient comments Amos was whispering in her ear? That’s hardly her parenting style
MT: Excuse me, you’re the one trawling YouTube (or the Lost Forest equivalent) for science fair inspiration, I don’t think you should be throwing stones.
Phantom: “And no wonder, look at this neck tension! Have you ever considered dry needling?”
Pluggers don’t need chiropractors because…they do the sort of things that tend to result in people seeking out chiropractors?
SH: Wait, how did the frog get in there?
Luann: I’m pretty sure the “BS” on Luann’s shirt is short for “Biggest Stupidhead.”
@Baja Gaijin: I should print today’s strip, so I can have it handy as a powerful ipecac.
And, yeah, that late night cuisine looks pretty gross.
Pluggers – It rhymes, but it’ll never replace “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
Gil Thorp: “I’ll gladly let Mr. Barnes attend our prestigious school if you two help he get rid of this skunk that’s attached itself to my skull.”
Hagar The Horrible: Hagar is so busy glaring at Eddie for his accidental offense that he doesn’t notice the rare fish swimming up his urethra.
Mary Worth: Wilbur being too stupid and lazy to just look behind himself and see his date ditching him is so on-brand. “If only I could turn my neck in any direction but forward!”
Hi And Lois: *Note to artist from writer: Hi is a supposed to be happy in this strip, so please don’t draw him looking like he is suffering from manic-depression. Thank you.*
MW-Typical ‘Mary Worth’ story. We’ve got our strawman villain who will either be converted to Mary Worth’s way or be killed by Mary Worth’s hands.
@Ettorre:
Sorry, but I refuse to internalise the Imperial system.
And we refuse to learn the metric system. Also,we use a z (or, zed) in some places where you use an s.
Kooky world we live in!
@74 Peanut Gallery: I thought the saying was, “Pluggers don’t make passes at girls with big asses” which gives Sir Mix-A-Lot solace.
@Anonymous: Uh, Hi.
Too Much Tucker Carlson Info.
FC: “Tell your teacher ‘01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101’!”
Now, son, I know you’ve got a head full of dreams about big leagues and big paydays, but we have a proud tradition in these United States where you agree to be exploited and underpaid for a corporate entity and old, rich alumni and gamble your future and future earnings for their intangible “glory” in the hopes that you won’t be permanently maimed playing the game and cast you to the curb faster than one of their mistresses when she turns 20.
@TheDiva: I don’t usually read Safe Havens but you tricked me into it, hoping for a takeoff on The Fly.
To answer your question, she squoze it in. She did say it was a dead frog, not how it got dead.
@astroboy:
MW: good grief! That’s almost exactly what happened to me in high school. I finally got up the nerve to ask this pretty blonde for a date and we went to a crowded nightclub in Georgetown DC. We seemed to be having a good time when she got up and left for the ladies room and came back and said she had run into an old boyfriend who was seriously intoxicated and she had to help take him home. I passed her at a table with friends on the way out. That’s the last I saw of her. Oh, and while I was there the waiter dumped a tray of beer on my back. Wonder where the bitch is today?
HI AND LOIS: Hi: If the bedroom eyes Hi is flashing his wife are any indication, what Hi hates about working from home is that it’s way too easily to “Toobin” yourself by forgetting if the camera is still on.
Hi and Lois-But, Hi, where is your secretary for your afternoon “encouragement”?
H&L: @Chance: Hey, give Hi a break! Maybe that’s Lois’ plate on the table. She’s smiling because when she read that newspaper, she saw she’s the only realtor still listing homes in it. The kitchen phone with a long stretchy cord will be ringing off the hook any moment now.
CS/MW: @TheDiva: For an example of the appropriate was to incorporate #MeToo into a storyline, readers should look at Mary Worth, where Meagan-not-Kristy has just sexually assaulted a waiter at Antonio’s. In today’s episode, the waiter is calling 911, and Meagan is calling her lawyer.
@Liam: “Luann is definitely full of something but I wouldn’t say it’s potential.”
Young, dumb, and full of come-ly images of boys she’ll never meet.
FC – We can date this from when New Math arrived in classrooms. 1970s?
Crankshaft – Loathsome Lillian assumes that Dinkle wants to boink her? There isn’t enough brain bleach in the world. Fortunately, Dinkle’s smug smirk in the last panel will induce vomiting.
Careful, Dinkle – she ruined her sister’s life; she can ruin yours.
Rex Morgan – Those boys look like they’re thinking about eating those crayons. At forty years old they should know better.
Pluggers – Either that riding mower badly needs a tune up, or he’s mowing a gravel driveway.
MARY WORTH: By Wednesday, Meagan will be banging that waiter right there on the middle of the dining room floor, while Wilbur wistfully looks out the window thinking “Wow, my baby is really into me. Almost as much as that one customer really loves her silverware. She keeps yelling ‘Fork, fork, oh yes!’ Boy, I can wait until Meagan comes back….”
@The Quiet Man:
#1 LUANN. I think the writers do know what BS stands for, especially if it’s over a pile of dark matter. It’s called “the joke.”
@InvasionOfTheZIM:
#65. MW:. My guess is that Wilbur will cause a scene when he sees her escaping. Antonio’s calls police on Wilbur. All are shocked when instead they arrest the waiter who is a serial killer. Wilbur has again saved his victim.
The CharterStoned Players production of “The Wilber, the Magen, and Her Waiter” got only 1 salmon square out of five by Phyllis Fox, the local theatre critic at the Santa Royal Pennysaver. (what none of them know, is that Phyllis Fox is Ian Cameron’s pen name.)
@TheDiva: More like “mentally retarded.”
MW- There’s a movie that used to play on cable all the time called GOOD LUCK CHUCK. The plot was that whenever Chuck slept with a woman, the next man she went out with would be her true love, so he started getting a lot of sex and learned a lesson or something.
The current Mary Worth storyline is Wilbur as Chuck, but without the sex. Thank God.
DT: Seriously, does nobody in Neo-Chicago know what this car actually is? Or do the creative team think that if they draw the thing in loving detail, but never actually name it correctly, DC’s lawyers can’t touch them?
FG: Look, I’m not saying a potential connection between the Screaming Storm and the pirate mines isn’t worth looking into, I’m just saying “If nobody usually sees this creature because it mostly appears in desolate and abandoned areas, isn’t it weird that the two times someone did see it, it was in an unabandoned area?” isn’t quite as solid as you seem to think.
@Old School Allie Cat:
Sorry, but I refuse to internalise the Imperial system.
And we refuse to learn the metric system. Also,we use a z (or, zed) in some places where you use an s.
Kooky world we live in!
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Sid’s dad used to handle Mr Zed, the talking horse, ask him to tell you the matzo ball story sometime.
@ectojazzmage:
Manic depression? I only see bedroom eyes here.
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective:”Forget the Hatmobile, there’s a new criminal in Tracyville…Dogboy!”
@Charterstoned: See, what I’m wondering is why Meagan is even bothering to offer to pay the bill. Just “go to the bathroom,” suck face with the waiter on your way out the door, and leave Wilbur to deal with the consequences of being a schlemiel.
Howdy, y’all.
We had big storms late Saturday and early Sunday which took out the tower from where we get out internet. It was out all day yesterday and came back off an on this morning. I think it’s finally back. Anyway…
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
@InvasionOfTheZIM:
There was this movie called “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” where a guy is dating a Superheroine who is clingy and possessive, so he breaks up with her, which only makes things worse as his (i.e. superpowered) ex-girlfriend starts stalking him.
I can completely see the gender-flipped version of this with Wilbur as the superpowered one. And it’s utterly terrifying to imagine.
DT: One Archie comic arc, had Jughead dreaming that the was a superhero called Hatman and driving around in the Hatmobile fighting crime.
It was a lot more plausible than this DT arc, that’s for sure.
H&L: 10 feet, eh? The Flagstons have embraced the Tiny Homes trend I keep reading so much about.
@bbofun: I call it “Good Luck Schmuck” which is a good follow up to “Girlfriends of Wilbur’s Past”
@The Rambling Otter: “My Schlubby Ex-Boyfriend.”
MW: All this good stuff is happening to people around Wilbur without him noticing. We’re not setting up an “It’s A Wonderful Life” storyline here, are we? Please no.
9CL: He said, “tonight I’m going to last for TEN seconds.”
@Zemto: “It’s a Wilburful Life” caused critics and audiences to experience the twisted combination of rage and nausea.
@Chance:
Honestly, from her look of apprehension in the first panel and her smile of relief in panel 2, I don’t think she finds his 3-day stubble, morning breath from unbrushed teeth, and rumpled clothes he wore yesterday and slept in, all that attractive.
Zits Spanish to English.
@Needless Exposition:
“It’s a Wilburful Life” is one of John Candy’s better movies. Of course casting Bea Arthur as Mary Worth was brilliant.
Hi’s opening line really seems like it could have been something about how much he likes having Lois there. But I guess she’s happy it’s not, so…good for them, maybe, coming to a mutual understanding about how much they actually like each other? I dunno.
Gil Thorp-“I don’t if this is a good idea, Coach.” It’s alright. Luann is a blank slate. She’s open to any idea.
MW: In order to thoroughly enjoy this scene, I’ve decided that in a missing panel yesterday, Meagan murmured to the waiter something like “You are smokin’ hot, would it be all right if I kissed you?” and the waiter murmured something like “You bet!”
Hey, I never claimed I could write good dialogue. I just enjoy snarking when other people can’t do it either.
@The Rambling Otter: That was not a good movie, but the scene where the super ex-girlfriend throws a great white shark through the window of the apartment where the dude has been schlupping his new girlfriend made me laugh.
It’s very rare that I have nightmares.
But in this dream I had, Wilbur was living with my family as a roommate in this large house.
I at one point go to a room, which was closed by a glass paned door. I look through the glass and Wilbur’s face is nearly pressed up against it. As he’s floating in the air possessed.
I’m sure others have already said this, but I very much hope the events of Today’s Mary Worth are just after Wilbur’s Date’s trip to the restroom, wink wink nudge nudge.
@Mr Beardo: This genre of joke is a bit dated.
@The Rambling Otter: It’s very rare that I have nightmares.
We never have nightmares.
Although one time last week we dreamed that we did.
MW: Waiter Dude is getting some tonight!
Just in case y’all couldn’t figure it out. Moy is subtle with the subtext.
@The Rambling Otter: Sympathies, sounds awful. I would prefer to think that even demons would look at Wilbur and think “Ugh, not going in there, fuhgeddaboudit.”
@mw: Honestly the cast was too good for the material that they were given.
GA: I’m hoping that Walt will maintain his current appearance when he gets home. He’s looking better than usual, so perhaps local civic engagement is good for him. Most smallish towns provide opportunities for a variety of activities ranging from volunteer work to lobbying for better sidewalks. Since we’ve long passed the point where Walt dying would have been expected if not required, I’d be willing to accept him as an immortal if his life became more interesting, especially if the alternatives were stories about Slim or talking bears.
@120 Sonny Liston’s Parole Officer: He’s also getting some in the next 60 seconds, too.
PHANTOM:. think twice before beating this guy up, you two. As he said, it’s the big guys in Europe or wherever who call all the shots, make all the money while grunts like him do all the labor and take all the danger.
Reek revenge on the colonizer, not the colonized.
Oh,semi-political note. See recent airing of Throughline, by NPR, summarizing the corruption and exploitation of the people of the Congo by Belgium. Think it’s called “The fight for Congo’s cobalt.” (I personally avoid electric vehicles though I’m an environmentalist.)
@Anonymous:
I though the “joke” that was a “bit dated” was Wilbur. (The good news is that thanks to Meagan’s blatant cuckolding, Wilbur’s not “dated” anymore.)
MW: I dunno, Josh. To me, those facial expressions do not say “long-term relationship.” Still, I hope Wilbur did get a good look at the waiter earlier, just in case Wilbur is invited to another wedding, this one joining Meagan and Waiter in connubial bliss. “And here’s to Wilbur, without whom we would never have found each other!”
Late Thread Cuisine: To console The Rambling Otter for his recent nightmare…
@128 Baja Gaijin:
Do those flags represent all the countries that contributed to the ingredients of that calorie laden dessert?
I’d say it might be fun to eat except someone stabbed it and it’s bleeding out.
@129 Sequitur: THAT’S STRAWBERRY SAUCE!
@Sequitur: @Baja Gaijin: I thought at first it was pimento.
@Baja Gaijin: Why is it so gloopy?!?
How many people think Hi looks drunk?
@130 Baja Gaijin:
Shh. Keep your voice down. They’ll think you did it.
@Sequitur: Baja has been in a stabby mood lately.
@Baja Gaijin:
Thank you! Looks scrumptious!
I mean, assuming that’s chocolate ice-cream and strawberry sauce ^w^
@135 taig:
He must have seen a clown.
@Baja Gaijin: I thought it was barbecue sauce on pulled pork. Here at the Houston rodeo, they have an abomination called the pulled pork sundae.
Foofram be damned.
I was only 2 short of a 3some last night. Getting closer…
@140 Unrelated but on purpose:
Try some new math. Maybe you’ll do better.
@138 Lord Flatulence:
And the pulled pork is not taking about pig meat.
@131 Arabella: Pimento? Oh boy.
@132 taig: Because it’s strawberry SAUCE, not strawberries or strawberry jam.
@136 The Rambling Otter: Yes, they’re exactly what you think, along with vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate ice creams, chocolate topping, strawberry sauce, a couple of bananas, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry on top.
@138 Lord Flatulence: Sounds delicious as long as they didn’t misrepresent it as a dessert.
@Baja Gaijin: #128
What did the poor banana do to deserve such an awful fate? :-(
@Baja Gaijin: What about the crushed pineapple?
You can’t call it a real motherfucking banana split without the MOTHERFUCKING CRUSHED PINEAPPLE.
@Baja Gaijin: I’ll take one! Hold the ketchup.
Ordering at Antonio’s: I’ll have the LumpLump ala Sauce Brune, and NOTHING ELSE!
@Ukulele Ike: Indeed, there are many variations, but the original banana split invented in Latrobe PA had one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice creams, and each scoop was topped with a different sauce: chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple. But I have been unsuccessful at finding out which sauce is supposed to go on which flavor of ice cream. Based on an unscientific personal sampling at various ice cream shops, I think the most common pattern is:
strawberry – strawberry
vanilla – pineapple
chocolate – chocolate
But I hope someone with the necessary qualifications can put together a grant proposal to study this further.
@astroboy: I think most people your date told that story to would have told her, “You’re lucky. I would have knocked the ? out of ya!”
@Sequitur: Thanks
@Baja Gaijin: Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I am allergic to dairy products but I think it would be satisfying if not for the bad lighting and photography. It’s like a model with aesthetic appeal becoming a butter face.
PBS: Ok, who are you and what have you done with Goat?
@Peanut Gallery: HAH! I KNEW crushed pineapple figured into it somehow.
(I would never order such a thing myself. The banana split is a symbol of the wretched excess we associate with the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the 1950s big-fin Cadillac era. I’ll have one scoop of a good French vanilla* in a simple sugar cone, please. If I’m feeling crazy and I’m in New England, black raspberry or maple walnut)
* vanilla ice cream made with egg yolks, aka “frozen custard”
@Peanut Gallery: As a certified Doctor of Ice Cream, my opinion is….there is no possible combination of those ingredients that would make anything but a sugary mess slowly melting together as you spoon it in.
Obviously, the chocolate sauce goes on the vanilla, the was god commanded. And that leaves you with strawberry on chocolate (no) and pineapple on strawberry (yecccchhhh).
We cannot have strawberry on strawberry, so let us examine alternatives. We rend the chocolate from vanilla’s warm breast and pour it over the strawberry (maybe). Strawberry on chocolate, pineapple on vanilla! REALLY not seeing it.
If anyone else wants to have at this fox/duck/bag of corn brain puzzler, please do, but I cannot work it into a delightful confection.
@145 Daisy: It’s actually 2 bananas.
@147 Peanut Gallery: THAT’S STRAWBERRY SAUCE!
@149 Peanut Gallery: Cathy (of “AAACK!” fame) should know. She scarfed gallons of ice cream over the duration of her strip.
@Ukulele Ike: #154: Your opinion of banana splits reminds of a Hogan’s Heroes episode where Sgt. Carter (the nerdy demolitions expert) is explaining to Cpl. LeBeau (the resident gastronome) on how to make a banana split. At first LeBeau seems interested until Carter starts describing all the disparate ingredients needed which soon produces a look of revulsion on LeBeau’s part. When you think about it a banana split is kind of a disgusting exercise in wretched excess.
@152 Needless Exposition: Oh, too bad about the dairy thing. Means you’ll get a Jell-O dessert with stuff suspended inside in the Late Thread Cuisine.
@155 Ukulele Ike: You’ve totally lost the plot on banana splits. The whole point of this dessert is being a sugary mess slowly melting together as you spoon it in. The messier the better.
@157 Guillermo el chiclero: And this disgusting exercise in wretched excess contains two bananas! Not two halves of one banana, two entire fruits.
I’m no doctor of ice cream, but the way I see it the pineapple goes on the vanilla, the strawberry on the chocolate and vice versa. Everything nicely contrasted for the presentation, and I find chocolate-covered strawberries delicious, so that tracks too.
As for the excess suggestion, I’d probably never get one to eat all by myself, but if I had someone with me then it would live up to its name.
@156 Baja Gaijin:
They say if you repeat a lie enough times people will start believing it.
@Baja Gaijin: He’s also getting some in the next 60 seconds, too.
They’re gonna send each other revealing photos by phone, before slipping into the men’s room to do the nasty?
@Unrelated but on purpose: I was only 2 short of a 3some last night. Getting closer…
“Lefty, please meet my friend Righty.”
@Lord Flatulence: Lordy, please don’t tell the Iowa State Fair about that. The Fair food stands sell more than enough pork abominations already.
@Baja Gaijin:
Banana Splak, more like, amirite.
@161 Sonny Liston’s Parole Officer: No revealing photos, just straight to the men’s room for boinkfest. Even better, Wilbur walks in to “wash his hands” and catches them together. Not gonna happen but it’d great if it did.
H&L: The Lockhorns’ take on this setup would have been very different.
MW: Gil Thorp’s take on this setup would have been very different.
@The Quiet Man: Chocolate + strawberry TWICE! You monster.
HtH: Bizarro’s take on this setup would have been very different.
GT: Gil Thorp’s take on this setup would have been very different, under James Allen.
@Ukulele Ike:
Stop interrupting. My processor can operate only so fast.
There, I’m done.
@Sequitur: They say if you repeat a lie enough times people will start believing it.
Good advice. We’re pretty sure we’ve seen it said elsewhere on the internet, in multiple situations.
@Poteet: They still do the classic pork tenderloin sandwich, don’t they?
I’ve had these in western Illinois, but they seem to be prevalent through hawg country — Indiana through Iowa and Nebraska and down to Missouri.
Classic pork tenderloin sandwich
@Needless Exposition: H&L: Working from home also means that every hour is happy hour for Hi.
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Ironically,except when Thursty comes over. Then, it’s pure h-e-double toothpicks.
@Ukulele Ike:
@Poteet: They still do the classic pork tenderloin sandwich, don’t they?
____________
Willburp still does them. Yes, sexually.
I had nothing to do with that thing!
@The Quiet Man:
As for the excess suggestion, I’d probably never get one to eat all by myself, but if I had someone with me then it would live up to its name.
___________________
“Single scooper, single scooper,this man here’s a party pooper!” John Ritter as an ice cream store waiter to Dr Bob Hartley, who ordered a single scoop instead of the Whale everyone else at the table ordered, “The Bob Newhart Show”
@STRAWBERRY SAUCE:
Nothing is real. Nothing to get hung about.
@Ukulele Ike: Oh yes indeed. There’s an annual state contest here that gives an award to the Iowa restaurant that serves the best pork tenderloin. I had lunch at one year’s winning restaurant with a visiting Colorado friend, and she was impressed, partly by how large the pork tenderloin sandwich was. Even Wilbur would have found it sufficient.
@178 Strawberry Fields:
Just what we need. Well-hung strawberries. I bet they’ll make the bananas split.
Narration box: …as Wilbur continues to daydream.
“Ok, Megan, we’ll have sex one more time, but this time -I- get to be Kristy.”
@Last Time Listener, First Time Caller:
“Lefty, please meet my friend Righty.”
___________________________
Eleanor Righty picks up the rice in the church were a wedding has been.
@The Rambling Otter:
I mean, assuming that’s chocolate ice-cream and strawberry sauce ^w^
__________
No fair trying to trick people to go to Two-Bajas-One-Midnight-Food-Thread.com, Rambling!
@Garrison Skunk: Steady on, I said I wouldn’t order a banana split, I would never say I was a single scooper. Two scoops minimum for me, with some flavor of sauce and maybe a topping if I’m out somewhere.
@Ukulele Ike: Hey, if putting chocolate on strawberries is wrong I don’t wanna be right.
I’ll eat pineapple on pizza too! [maniacal laughter]
I’ve been up too late studying….
H&L: Yeah, well you know what *I* like best about working from home? The fact that I can just stay home! That’s the best part!
H&L: “My commute is only 10 feet. Also, I can have a quickie with my wife during a coffee break.”
LUANN: This would be a terrible, terrible thing to do to Italy.
Lois looks so concerned in panel one. He’s talking to her about his favourite thing about working from home, while making bedroom eyes at her. No more, she thinks. We already have four kids, one of whom has been in diapers for sixty years and thinks the sun is her best friend. No matter how many inky black boxes of chocolates Hi buys her, Lois will never let him near her again.
Which is why she’s far too amused that Hi was just making a stupid comment about morning commutes
@176 STRAWBERRY SAUCE: YES YOU DID!!!!
@187 Poteet: What, have a cappuccino after twelve noon?
I can’t wait to see how Wilbur has inadvertantly saved the life of his date or the waiter. Did she have a heart condition that would have turned catastrophic if she hadn’t been kept in a state of abject boredom?
Is the waiter going to shield her from sort of pre-existing danger from a passing car, like a mob hit against her?
Was the waiter uh, …I’ve run out of obvious car peril here to be honest… Maybe he cancels a plane trip to snog the date and the plane was a Boeing?
Hi and Lois: His wife is right there. The best part should be seeing his wife. With the other notes (leaving his dirty plate on the table, conspicuous five-o’clock shadow as he clocks in presumably around 0900) this is a portrait of a guy giving it up and daring those around him to say anything about it.