“Conditions” could also refer to access to alcohol
Post Content
Beetle Bailey, 6/30/24
Once again, the throwaway panels across the top of this Sunday strip deepen the narrative considerably. Without them, we just have a story about the General giving up on the pretense of fulfilling his job duties once and for all; with them, we see that, having been denied in his own home, he is chasing his obsessive need to practice putting no matter the professional cost. The throwaway panels also really raise the question of why, given that it’s the middle of summer, he doesn’t simply play golf outside, like a normal person, and so we are left speculate that we’re looking at the world in the wake of some environmental catastrophe that rendered outdoor games like golf unplayable.
Mary Worth, 6/30/24
Loving Dr. Jeff’s face at this big reveal in the bottom left-hand panel. “Wait, so this whole thing is about his ex-girlfriend? The one who dumped him once and for all after he let her think he was dead for a week? That’s … that’s worse than just being bereft over a fish! I can’t put my finger on why but it’s definitely worse!”
Marvin, 6/30/24
Ah, what a nice change of pace, a Marvin without a poop joke! Nope, it’s just about Marvin and a bunch of cats getting into a sandbox-related dispute over who has or has not “put down a deposit” and … oh. Oh, I see. God damn it.
214 replies to ““Conditions” could also refer to access to alcohol”
MW:
“Go ahead and jump (jump)!”
— Van Halen
Mary Worth Mashups: I wonder if this boat ride could have gone differently? Actually I don’t wonder, I made a trio of variations. Which way is your favorite?
RMMD:
In the last panel, a young Tracey Ullman, immediately to the right of Mr. Watson in frame, listens intently to his questions.
Marvin: This is probably the most tolerable poop joke in all of Marvin. Cats really do make things better!
MW: So Wilbur’s attachment to the goldfish isn’t out of sentimentality or because he’s a mentally deficient child. It’s because he’s an obnoxious, entitled creep who doesn’t understand that his ex doesn’t want to be with him anymore even after she moved on with a new relationship. Which means that it was indeed only a fucking fish the entire time and Wilbur was doing all of this for attention and validation.
RMMD:
“Now you kids run along and go to class! — there’s nothing to see here.”
“No way! We’re all in ‘Stand Around and Do Nothing’ Independent Study Class for three credit hours!”
MW:
“E.B. — phone home!”
— Drew Barrymore as Gertie Taylor
@Baja Gaijin: Silly Baja, you know that the end of the second one would never happen but the first one is the one we all want.
@Anonymous: Ack, that one was me.
MW:
” ‘Every day is like Sunday‘ in this strip.”
— Morrissey
“Um, Mr. Morrissey, don’t you mean that ‘Sunday is like every day’ in this strip?”
“Ah, sod off!”
JP: From the way Sophie is hiding behind the word balloon in the final panel, she better be whipping off her bikini top…
RMMD: Uh yeah, this wasn’t a ‘fight’ Buck Beanpole Jr. ‘First punch’ or not, this was an assault (and true to this strips current mission statement a pretty dang weak one) and fleeing the scene.
Luann: Our cast of mature professionals and parents in waiting, everyone!
Dr. Jeff has completely zoned out and is now back in his happy place: either his “missionary” work in Southeast Asia or reliving his happiest memories with his “good friend” whose son married his very boring daughter.
Marvin’s recent shift to speaking instead of just thought-bubbling was weird, but developmentally made sense. But narratively this means everyone has to talk now, including the animals, and I don’t really like the implications of this. It takes things from “Magical realist whimsy about the inner lives of children and animals” to “Cats are intelligent and have declared economic war on mankind with their only weapon: shitting.”
MW-You think that the setting sun means that this story is over but nope it shall continue to linger on for several more weeks.
MW-It’s a GOLDFISH!
FC-“Joins three men in a tub.” Goodnight, everybody!
Marvin:
“We’ll need you to draw some cats.”
“Any type of cat, specifically?”
“Uh, make ’em look like stuffy British bankers.”
Marvin-“I’m going to talk to my agent. The poop jokes are my shtick.”
@Liam: Wait, the sun is setting…that stupid wake was around early mid-morning and Mary and Wilbur went to the docks to meet Jeff. Then they sailed off and now it’s sunset.
There’s a lot of lost time here…
MW: I’m having this dream that I can’t wake up from. See, I’m at this funeral for a goldfish with Mary Worth, you know, from the funnies. Then, I wake up, but I’m STILL at a funeral for a goldfish with Mary Worth…
RMMD: I hope Parker’s parents are of a litigious and vengeful bent.
BB: Can’t the General just go to the golf course whenever he feels like it? Can’t generals pretty much do what they want, short of single-handedly starting World War lll? And Halftrack’s WAY too lazy to do that.
MW: So Wilbur never felt empathy for the dead animal just sorrow for his dead relationship. He’s gone from pitiful to despicable.
BB: So, the joke is that the General has given up the last pretense of actually doing any work in the office. I assume that the brandy hose is just out of frame.
MW: /meanwhile, back at Charterstone/ “I…I really thought we would be invited on the boat. We all got dressed up to humour him in this ridiculous little ceremony, I assumed we’d at least get a little cruise out of the deal. So…do we go home now, or what?”
Marvin: “We’re putting down our deposits right now! Hold on, I gotta bury it a little…”
MW: Alternate first-panel quote:
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head. – William Shakespeare”
MW: “Look, Mary! It’s the rainbow bridge!”
Jeff answers; “Nah, it’s just an oil slick.”
@Hibbleton: It was always about how Wilbur never thought his relationship was over even when Estelle rightfully moved on to a much healthier and more compatible relationship with Dr. Ed. Even when he daydreamed about stealing Iris from Zak, it was always about Estelle ending the relationship when he didn’t want it to end. Wilbur is a staunch believer and enforcer of the “no is just another word for yes” approach.
Some extremely early-vintage Garfields in that sandbox, from before Jim Davis had the model completely down.
B. Bailey: Doddering Amos hasn’t been allowed to play golf outside since the minefield incident.
MW: So it’s come to this, folks! The dramatic denouement you’ve been waiting for… I hope you have your tissues ready. You’ve had plenty of time, so no excuse. Today Stellan becomes MORE than a “f***ing Goldfish!” He becomes a golden symbol of the treasured bonds of friendship, the heartbreak of lost love, the transient nature of life itself! A reminder that we’re all just dots on the timeline of history! (snif) Excuse me, I need a moment…
That’s a lot to ask of a Goldfish, and today Stellan meets the challenge of his career as he performs his final corpse scene of this saga. Yes, that’s the REAL Stellan floating into great beyond with the setting sun reflecting off his glimmering scales! But don’t worry, we had a Coast Guard lifeboat as well as an air-sea rescue helicopter just off panel ready to swoop him out as soon as the director yelled “cut”! He’s now back home at his condo, safe and wet. And folks, that’s a (Fish)wrap!
MW: Moy/Brigman Entertainment Simulation Extrusion Enterprises cut off the last panel of today’s strip, where a viking cosplayer shoots a flaming arrow into the floating box to complete Stellan’s Norse funeral.
Marvin: Is “putting down a deposit first” some sort of code for “Marking your territory”?
“”We pissed and pooped in this sandbox before you did so we own it!”
Marvin: “You cats got it made. I tried to get my playmates into communal outdoor shitting but they were too shy. Cowards!”
@Baja Gaijin:
#1 contains just the right elements of terrificness!
MW — I believe that quote is from Charlotte’s Web, in which the eponymous heroine is attempting to console Wilbur about her own impending demise. If so, this may set the Mary Worth record for a Quotation Used In the Precise Opposite of Its Original Context. . .
@But What Do I Know?: Wilbur is Some Pig, all right.
MW: So that’s it? Stellan’s just going to float on the water like a piece of plastic until he washes up on some shore and rots in the kelp? Yeah, real touching ceremony, Wilbur.
RMMD: It’s a clear case of he said, they said.
MW – In the next-to-last panel, Wilbur drops the fish from the bow. The boat does not appear to be underway. In the last panel, the fish is floating on the wake with no evidence of having been run over by the boat. Splain pleeze?
MW: Prepare for a week of strips as Mary and Wilbur rehash the “lessons learned” portion of this storyline during the return boat-ride, as Mary speaks in redundant and meaningless “meaningful” affirmations and Wilbur goes on about what a shut-in hermit he’d become but he’s learned to not be one, and so on and so forth.
JP: From the reactions of the students from the past few strips, I expected to see a hole punched clean through Parker, or his nose pushed in all the way.
MW – Wilbur: “He was a goldfish who saw me through the best of times and the worst of times! Through the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness. Through the epoch of belief and the epoch of incredulity.”
Dr. Jeff: “Incredulity is right!”
@pugfuggly: Re MW: Either that, or the other guests are all passed out below deck. They’ve been drinking steadily since this little shindig began, about 8 hours ago.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Thanks for inviting me to dinner”
“No problem. After all, you give a steakhouse authentic Western atmosphere”
“Especially when you rope and hogtie the waiters!”
Not for the first time (and surely not for the last), I am left wondering what the Mary Worth writers are thinking. Do they believe that they’re portraying a person reaching emotional catharsis and a new understanding of himself? Or are they laughing to themselves at the absolute nonsense that their readers (and more importantly, their publishers) will accept?
MW: Can we take a moment to discuss Jeff’s shapeshifting yacht? It seems smaller today than when it was tied to the dock. The portholes keep moving around. The prow is short, then it’s long. And whatever that structure is on the side of the boat seems to have no function except to evoke Dagwood Bumstead’s hairstyle. Who’s piloting this thing, anyway?
FPV drones are brutal.
MW: Wilbur thinking that two mutant, eye-lidded sibling goldfish somehow symbolized his romantic, “deceased” relationship with Estelle raises a lot of disturbing questions, chief among them being, “WTF??!!”
BB: Gen. Halftrack is definitely talking about the drinks ladies at the office golf course.
MW: Stellan pulls out a little set of oars and makes it for the nearest body of fresh water.
Marvin: They don’t have to be all catty about it.
@Charterstoned: Wilbur, as a living singularity, warps physics.
@taig: So, the laws of physics cease to operate on his stove…?
Did Marvin’s body get turned around so that his head is in back? Why else would he have butt cleavage in the front? He doesn’t have two butts, does he? That would at least explain all the shit he produces. Oh, the horror.
I thought just the biodegradable fish (degraded in this story actually, but whatever) was going into the water. No, got to pollute the waters too, to perfectly cap off the self-aggrandizing nonsense Wilbum inflicts on all who enter his presence. I feel sorry for the other fish that still has to listen to Wilbum, but with no companion to riff off of & laugh with. (Yes, suspending disbelief that a fish has any understanding in a fictional story).
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
That’s supposed to be his bellybutton, not the tip of his a strange, front-facing buttcrack.
Though now that you’ve mentioned it, I can’t unsee it! You jerk!Frazz: At least they got to make fun of Mrs. Olsen behind her back while talking about the wonders of Monsanto.
Luann: I’m surprised Luann has the mental capacity for Monopoly.
CS: The ghost of Albert Einstein shows up to barf ectoplasm on all of them.
If they’ve been sailing since morning and it’s now sunset in the middle of summer, they’ve definitely reached international waters, right? Jeff, you could push Wilbur off and end this. Nobody on or off this boat will care.
9CL: Damn. I have to admit that by comparison, the Monopoly theme in Luann is much more wholesome. Anyway, the Overlook Twins know they don’t have to wait for Amos’s turn when “mummy is messing up his hair” (bleh).
MW – So they didn’t even bury the fish, just let it float away in a little box? That’s not how a burial at sea works. Which means this story is going to keep going, possibly with Wilbur being retraumatized when a rotting Stellan washes up at his feet on the beach, still in its little box, before Old Man Wynter’s dog grabs it and runs off.
Zits: Don’t call attention to the sexual tension between Jeremy and his mom!
FC: “…and one of my pillows is missing.”
@Baja Gaijin: They’re all great, because Wilbur (who is in my dead pool) dies in each of them. My favorite is #3, since it ends Wilbur’s chance to blather on.
MARY WORTH: Mary, meanwhile, pays her respects by mournfully grabbing Jeff’s ass. Considering that she hooked up with one of her many suitors at his mother’s passing, it’s clear that funerals really get the ol’ gal going. No wonder she was so eager to arrange all this dead fish silliness: If she can spice up her stagnant love life with the deathly pallor of eroticism, shell happy put up with Wilbur’s blathering about “closure” or whatever.
BB – Halftrack for President!
MW – Not to worry, Wilbur. I hear the sea will give up the dead and each will be judged. So…fun times ahead….
Marvin – Hey, try slipping the maitre’d a turd….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Charterstoned: Exactly. It fits my theory.
@pugfuggly @Peanut Gallery: Nope, they didn’t even get to go on a boat ride for attending. They just got dry muffins.
Beetle Bailey: Beginning to think newspaper comic writers have some kind of addiction to golf as a concept and might need an intervention.
Mary Worth: It’s like Moy was worried Wilbur was getting just a tad too sympathetic and understandable with his grieving his pet, so she made sure to through in a creepy reveal about how this is actually just Wilbur still being a butthurt incel about Estelle rather than any genuine care for the fish. Can’t have Wilbur acting like a normal human being!
Marvin: Haha, the hilarity of parents letting their toddler wander about outside without supervision and hang around packs of wild cats.
MW: “Hi Mary, how are things at Chatterston?”
“Well Dawn, you father’s goldfish died, so he entered into a self-destructive spiral of depression, but then we had an elaborate funeral for the fish with burial at sea”
“Coolcoolcoolcoolcool”
“Maybe you should spend more time with your father”
“From what you say, I should actually spend less“
REX MORGAN M.D.: Did…Terry Beatty look at the ludicrous “calling an ambulance to school” scene from Luann and say,”Hold my beer”?
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): “Good of you for giving the bully a five-hour head start before doing the basic responsibility of asking about this, by the way.”
HtH – We need the finest ingredients for my cook to turn into an inedible slurry!
SlyF – Koppy Kat is on a museum date with Rachel Rabbit?!?! Wait. That fits.
Candorville – OK. This couple keeps showing up in Dr. Noodle’s office. Is it just me, or does the guy look like Brooke McEldowney? Is Darrin Bell saying “get help, Brooke?”
Mary Worth: I’m in love with the image of Stellan’s body plummeting 30 feet into the Pacific, followed by the awkward jump cut to his cardboard raft floating into the sunset. In my headcanon, this is where they roll the credits at the end of Mary Worth: The Motion Picture.
MW: Sure, an endangered sea turtle mistakes Stellan’s coffin for a jellyfish, eats it and dies, but Wilbur’s fragile ego has been coddled and that’s what matters most.
I want this to be the end, but I know Mary Worth and we can expect at least another week of (literal) postmortem. Hunker down, everyone.
MW: So in the end it wasn’t about the fish at all – it was all about Wilbur’s hurt feelings.
As the meme goes “how to say you’re a mentally ill self absorbed creep without saying you’re a mentally ill self absorbed creep” – Wilbur hasn’t let go of anything in his life, I’d be willing to bet he holds grudges from elementary school.
Seriously this whole bury the fish arc has been a masterpiece of awful writing and the author insisting we feel bad for a character who inspires nothing but contempt – it uncomfortably reminds one of the unlamented Les Moore’s ‘feel sorry for me my wife died” self pity wallows.
You’d think given how much newspaper cartoonists love golf at least one of them would put in the effort to work out what hands look like when holding a golf club.
Mary Worth: A beautiful capstone to all of this that the burial at sea of this dead goldfish isn’t even an actual burial; the damn fish coffin is just floating on the surface waiting to be snatched up by the first passing seagul.
@But What Do I Know?: It is, and I cannot describe the fury seeing it for the Sunday quote induced in me. Charlotte’s Web was the first book to move me to tears and tops my personal Greatest Children’s Books of All Time list; seeing it employed here is a sacrilege on the level of Laszlo Toth taking a hammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta. If Charlotte’s Wilbur had been anything like this one, she would have been writing pork chop recipes in her web.
Karen Moy has been covering for Wilbur by not showing us how he is an asshole so obsessed with insisting that gender is a binary that he once spent a week learning how to differentiate male and female goldfish. Willa knows they’d better keep their mouth shut or they’d be floating in the ocean alongside… DAMN IT, WILBUR! You’re supposed to weigh the body down for a burial at sea!
@Professor Fate: Hurt feelings over a relationship where he was the abusive partner by threatening to kill a beloved pet because she took attention away from him, forcing Estelle to take in a dog that didn’t give him enough attention, and stalking and harassing Estelle so that she’ll give him attention. There’s a pattern here…
CS: The Dale Evans restaurant may be based on Bob Evans restaurants, but don’t try the “miso infested salmon” joke if you find yourself in one. The seafood choices are fried cod and fried shrimp, ya hippy.
JP: “You know, Sophie, a marriages of convenience aren’t just for immigrants and closeted queer people anymore…”
Luann: The game was literally created to demonstrate the inequalities of a cutthroat capitalist system where wealth is inevitably funneled towards the top, and you’re wondering when it got combative?
MT: And what is a “safe distance,” Mark? Because given how fast those buggers can run, the answer is “a lot farther than most people think.”
@ectojazzmage: Sherman’s Lagoon is doing pickleball today, not golf. Jim Toomey may be under eighty years old.
@richardf8: re: Candorville: The husband today is better known as Susanna’s Asshole Boss. He had one good punchline about 20 years ago, after he set up a meeting between her and OJ Simpson and she expressed concern about getting murdered. “Don’t worry, you’re not that hot.”
I always skip the Sunday strips because they invariably include the psychiatrist, and psychiatrist cartoons stopped being funny approximately 1936.
LUANN: Frank, Nancy, the answer is: “When a avaricious company decided to appropriate a woman’s anti-monoplistic game and turn it into a glorification of unfettered capitalism.”
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – I love all three, but the third one is my favorite because Mary gets taken out, too.
@TheDiva: Re Charlotte’s Web – My fifth grade teacher loved that book and read it to her class every year. That was my introduction to it. When the local small town newspaper publisher’s daughter was in fifth grade, he obtained permission to serialize the book in his newspaper.
Lockhorns – I wouldn’t know any record albums from the past fifty years, but I recognize Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel.
Mary Worth – I’m starting to suspect that Moy is trolling us. If that’s the case, she managed to write the worst MW story of all time. Everything about this story is abominable, but the worst thing is that spouting a few platitudes and throwing a funeral for a fucking goldfish are presented as a cure for severe depression. This is horrible.
And it’s not over yet. There has to be a couple of weeks of praise and thanks for Mary.
9CL – Get help, Brooke.
MW – Had this been Charlotte’s Wilbur, she would have stopped at “Crispy” and called it good enough.
@TheDiva:
Charterstone’s Web:
“Where’s Ian going with that ax?” asked Toby
“Some new tenants moved into the building last night.” Mary Worth put a tray of muffins on the table.
“But why does he need an ax?”
“One of them is a guy named Wilbur. He’s kind of an annoying self-centered a**hole, and your husband-father has decided to do away with him.”
“OK, cool,” said Toby. “It will save us trouble later on.”
The End
So this entire time, Wilbur wasn’t upset about his fish dying and having genuine feelings for a beloved pet, but because the fish was named after his ex and he was still unable to let her go. What a selfish goddamn prick. Speaking of which…
Dustin: I don’t think there is a more despicably unlikable character in the history of comic strips that Ed Kudlick. Every panel he appears in shows he’s a greedy, selfish, gluttonous, lazy, hypocritical asshole. That smile he makes in today’s last panel when gleefully telling his son he’ll be bald too one day because of his bad genes infuriates me to no end. I say with no exaggeration that every strip would be vastly improved by ending with Ed receiving a swift punch to the face.
Too Much Coffee Man-It has a clown in it but Baja would like what will happen to the clown.
Wilbur would be the perfect victim of this scam:
https://slate.com/life/2024/06/get-ex-back-how-girlfriend-coaching.html
Mary Worth: “I’d like to say a few words… about my goldfish Stellan… IT WAS JUST A FUCKING FISH… I can see that now… IT WAS JUST A FUCKING FISH…thank you all for coming.”
Several of you have already expressed words to this effect this morning at this website. The rest of you? Fight me.
BB: There are a lot of extremely nasty and unhealthy relationships in the comics, some of which are even noticed by the cartoonists who make them. The Halftracks’ marriage has always been in the mix, but this vaults them from the low-boiling comfortable contempt of the Lockhorns up to just south of the outright substance abuse and domestic violence of the Thurstons and Capps. Sure, Mrs. Halftrack hasn’t taken to “humorously” beating her husband yet, but she has reached the point of abject hatred where every single thing her husband does infuriates her and prompts her to aggressively impose her will over him. Grim stuff. Almost as grim as a cartoon that thinks a drawing of a putting green makes for a serviceable comedic punchline.
MW: At long last, the stupid fish is in the water. Now this story can finally wind down and we won’t have to see Wilbur again for a year. But we know Karen Moy doesn’t do epilogues that take less than six weeks, so here’s the question: did the epilogue start a few weeks ago when Mary cured all of Wilbur’s problems by convincing him to do a fish funeral, or was this the climactic action of the story and the epilogue doesn’t start until tomorrow?
DT: “Like a cat on hot bricks, she took a long route back to her office.” This is a real sentence that appears in today’s Dick Tracy. Amazing. In other news, the investigation is still centered on Sarah Phym for absolutely no established reason despite their supposed big break being entirely about Cherry Bimm and the boss of the organization being Gabriel. At least Dick is still chillaxin’ to the max.
JP: Yeah, that Glen was a real jerk to Lucas, what with him politely greeting his guests and cheerfully mentioning how Lucas has spoken positively about them in conversation. What an unbelievable prick.
Luann: Always on the cutting edge of observational comedy, Luann remarks on the social dynamics of Monopoly, only beaten to the punch by several billion other people over the past century.
MW: You know how annoying it can be when the phonograph needle gets stuck in a groove (for those who remember) and it keeps repeating over and over? Time to change the record or just unplug the damned thing.
MW: A Coast Guard commander pulls up in his cutter. “Hey, you!” He shouts through his bullhorn. “No littering!”
Mary shouts back; “We’re having a funeral for a goldfish.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.” He looks back and tells the Bosun; “Assemble everyone above board.”
Shouts to Mary; “Bring the little guy on deck and we’ll give his buddy a real sendoff.”
Dr Jeff buries his face in his hands while moaning; “Oh, my god.”
MT – Someone check on Jules please, she missed a chance to call out white settler colonialism is the cause of the Bison’s demise.
@jroggs: re: DT: As soon as I saw “Costello,” I knew we were in the hands of a clown.
Eric’s still congratulating himself over all those clever angel names he created. Tomorrow we’ll meet “Professor Aziraphale.”
BB: What if there was a war and nobody came because they were busy playing golf?
Mary Worth: So where are the rest of those weirdos during this solemn event?
@jroggs: Re MW – I fear that the epilogue hasn’t started yet. In Wednesday’s strip Wilbur thanked Mary in an offhand way, and he later mentioned that he appreciated her arranging the funeral for the fucking goldfish, but that’s not what Mary is due. There has to be at least three weeks of everyone (not just Wilbur) thanking Mary and praising her for what she did. She earned that victory lap, and she’s going to take it.
Buckle up.
Dustin: All his attempts at disciplining, cajoling, and shaming his slug of a son having failed, DustDad finally says “screw it” and will from now on will just gleefully ridicule him.
JP: Meanwhile back at the house, Lucas and his brother are giddily going through the girls’ belongings.
H&L: Whatever happened to this once-heart-warming, whimsical family comic? I can’t remember the last time Hi Flagston didn’t look like the most miserable man on earth.
MW: Mary and Jeff look like they’re doing their damnedest to suppress an outbreak of the giggles.
@Cleveland Mocks: On H&L That family only existed in your childhood memories. Hi has always been a tool.
@Hibbleton: A Navy destroyer captain, cruising several miles away, hears the radio chatter from the Coast Guard cutter and signals that his ship is heading at full speed to assist.
“Attention! All hands on deck! All personnel will assemble on starboard in full dress uniform immediately. Gunners, prepare for a 21-gun salute to commence at 0838 hours. Bugler to the deck for “Taps”—and have the OD lower the standard to half-staff!”
That is all.
@I speak Jive: Based on the strip from 7/7, I have a faint glimmer of hope we’re moving on to a different, awful story.
Dustin: Dustdad is grinning because Dustgramps re-affirmed Dustin’s fears.
What a miserable excuse for a human being.
@Baja Gaijin: All well done! Bravo!
@Cleveland Mocks: RMMD: It’s a clear case of he said, they said.
Good one!
BB: Amos Halftrack is not a very good general!
MW: Wilbur Weston is not a very stable individual!
Marvin: Cats use sandboxes too, but in a very different way!
@Baja Gaijin: All three are wonderful. I am choosing #2 because it shows Doctor Jeff, my pick in the dead pool, being actually truly alive for a change. Go, Jeff, go!
Pluggers: I call foul. Having owned two pickup trucks I know the gas mileage those beasts get. Instead of “topping it off” he’d be filling it from empty. No way that oil-burning junker of his will go 250 miles on a tank of gas. Back in school a buddy of mine had a VW bug with a broken gas gauge. He’d top off every 100 miles or so to be on the safe side.
“Stellan is gone
I’ve heard
he’s drifting off to sea
He alway liked
to swim away…”
Pluggers: I call foul again. Your average plugger is too cheap to pay for a full tank of gas. Instead of filling up and driving all week he’ll stop for gas every day and put in one or two gallons at a time, thinking he’s saving money.
MW: So the final lesson here is that it’s fine to toss plastic into the ocean, thereby polluting the water and risking ingestion by marine animals, as long as the plastic is in the shape of dubious pastel flowers. Wilbur, to use an Irish saying I learned just yesterday, Mallacht mo chait ort! Or in English, my cat’s curse upon you.
Pluggers: A typical plugger will burn a several dollars worth of gas cruising around town looking for a station where gas is a nickel a gallon cheaper.
Wonder why it took a a dead fish to tell him that the relationship was over. It couldn’t be:
– Getting mad at her cat for meowing during singing his solo?
– Her chastising him for proposing on day one of their cruise?
– Her being pissed off for not telling her he was alive for 7 days?
– the angry Karaoke battle?
– her telling him to stop obsessing over her?
Our Wilbur is a bit of a dumb bulb. Wonder if he writes his column in crayon
Luann: So competitive? Where have you been, Frank? Back in the late 70s the Carol Burnett Show did one of their Family sketches where Mama, Eunice, and Ed were involved in a very heated Monopoly game. It was one of their funniest sketches and a hundred times funnier than anything the Evansii could ever contrive.
@Maltmash3r: Remember that Wilbur thought that he dumped Iris by “trading up” for the con artist Fabiana and then assumed that Iris would be pining for him and begging him to take her back instead of moving on. In Wilbur’s mind, no one is allowed to do anything if he doesn’t want them to.
MW:
Out flew the box and floated wide;
The Wilbur crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Goldfish of Shalott.
@ectojazzmage: #58: re-BB: Several decades ago the Foxtrot strip even did a joke where the youngest sibling Peter griped about why newspaper cartoonists are so obsessed with golf jokes.
@I speak Jive:
Eve: “Oh thank God everyone forgot about my backstory arc. What a relief, right Max?”
Max: “Woof!”
Keith: “I hear you, hon. I’m grateful everyone forgot about my character intro too. Selective rememberance: Isn’t it lovely? Ha ha ha.”
@Flipper: #70: The last time I was in Ohio I ate at a Bob Evans so I can verify your correctness on the choice of seafood. I had a breakfast entree that would do a plugger proud, a buttermilk biscuit the size of a toilet seat piled high with ground pork sausage, scrambled eggs, cheese, fried potatoes, and slathered in country gravy, a heart attack on a plate.
JP: Does Reena think that when she spent ages telling Sophie how sketchy this was, then immediately rotated 180 as soon as she heard the word “Hamptons”, her motives and underlying doubts were in any way subtle? I realise Soph isn’t the creepy genius kid she used to be (and didn’t even need to get hit by a bus!) but she’s not that clueless.
MW: Wait, is Wilbur saying he named his fish in the belief they symbolised the eternal love betwen him and a woman who’d dumped him twice and was with someone else? I mean, I knew that, but I never expected him to say it!
RMMD: You’d think the teacher might also ask if anyone saw who the kid who hit Parker was (some schools have more than one bully! Unbelievable, I know!), but I guess it’d be hard to answer that question without giving him a name. Anyway, good to clarify that yes, all these kids really were just standing around watching the whole thing happen.
OTF: I assume the metaphor here is meant to be that Dethany delivered a powerful and incisive argument that left the troll unable to respond, because that’s a thing that happens. How can Bill Holbrook have had a webcomic since the 1990s, but have no idea how the internet works?
S4th: I’d almost forgotten about the summer school thing (as indeed had Ralph). Calling it now: that kid who takes Ralph’s course every year and never graduates will, inexplicably, be here too.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Sorry, but it wad SORRY! (Wow, with cheesy puns like that, I could break into the “legacy comic” business!)
Dear Tom Armstrong, PLEASE don’t tell your readers that they can assert ownership of things by pooping on them. This is not the message the world needs to hear from droll talking cats. Also, confidential to Jeff and Jenny, life with Marvin is about to get even more disgusting.
@Flipper: I always figured the Dale Evans Restaurant was also partly based on the Roy Rogers, even if that lacks the Ohio connection, but I’ve just looked it up and I don’t think they have any seafood dishes at all.
MW: Wilbur just wasted a pretty difficult dropped-bread-butter-side-up on this goldfish.
@2+2=7: I just had an image of Keith Hillend wearing Saul’s outfit and carrying Greta with Eve oblivious to the change because “Dachshund + Bow Tie = Saul” in her mind.
Pearls Before Swine Spanish to English.
@Guillermo el chiclero: In one of the Calvin and Hobbes collections, Bill Watterson mentioned that although he enjoys cycling, he tried not to mention it too much in the strip, because he didn’t want to be like one of the cartoonists who was always going on about golf.
@Rube: Or, ironically, Frazz.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Pluggers: I call foul.
Shoe: We call fowl. Or at least raptor.
AGE!!!
LUANN:. Sixty years ago, our family “played” Monopoly with the same combativeness.
PEANUTS:. Funniest strip today.
CRANKSHAFT:. Gotta agree. It hurts to say Crankshaft is right
PLUGGERS:. As is this strip. On a road trip in a rental car, I top off the tank about every two hours not because I need gas but because I want coffee and a restroom (yes, the two are closely related).
And yes, today’s my birthday. Lots of email good wishes from old employers, former churches, and beloved marketers with special deals!
@Horace Broon: The Bob Evans chain is sit-down, full-service family restaurants which feed you enormous Plugger-size portions, as G el C comments at 112. The Roy Rogers chain is fast food, specializing in roast beef sandwiches and hamburgers, and seems to be primarily in Maryland and south Pennsylvania these days.
@Horace Broon: Reena is still hoping to meet Famous Movie Stars at tomorrow’s party, which will be attended entirely by wealthy boring Connecticut-based attorneys and investment bankers. Meanwhile, late tonight, Lucas will sneak into their bedroom like Uncle Monty in Withnail and I.
@58 ectojazzmage: on Marvin: Which is worse? Parents letting their toddler wander about outside without supervision and hang around packs of wild cats or having their baby sit in a completely unstimulating empty room, staring at the sun every day?
@69 Needless Exposition: To be fair, Libby won her pissing match with Wilbur.
@79 JamesBont: on Dustin: I agree with your premise except for one minor point: Ed should be cockpunched instead of facepunched.
@101 Guillermo el chiclero: Did you forget one of the underlying tropes of Pluggers is “Pluggers are stupid beyond belief”?
@112 Guillermo el chiclero: “[A] buttermilk biscuit the size of a toilet seat piled high with…” just really inspired the “Yuuuuuum YUM!” reflex. NOT!
@123 Activist 1234: Happy Birthday! May you not have any dead fish floating through your personal waterways.
@Activist 1234: Happy Birthday! You share a birthday with my aunt, my cousin, and Sailor Moon (and her daughter).
@Baja Gaijin: Libby cemented herself as the best character in that scene for not only treating Wilbur the way he deserves to be treated but also getting away with it.
@Activist 1234: Happy B-Day!
6 CHX:. And congrats to Did for getting such positive roles for his clients in the past two days of the strip. Long live animal-human relations.
MW:. Like life in general, Mary Worth is so easier to believe in when we ignore nature, science, and the facts. Like the cardboard coffin would have stayed upright with Stellan after that toss. Like life, fairy tale requires a suspension of realty.
MW: We still don’t know how Stellan died. My theory: Stellan was killed by Estelle, who sneaked into Wilbur’s apartment in the middle of the night. She calculated that this action would trigger a series of events that would eventually cure Wilbur of his obsession with her.
@Lord Flatulence: apparently Ian Toby and Saul went to the goldfish wake but not the goldfish funeral.
@123 Activist 1234: (Your post number is almost your name)
Happy Birthday! Have a slice of Wilbur.
Thank you, Baja and NE!
@Activist 1234: Happy Birthday! You share it with Lena Horne, so cool.
And Taig!
And thank you Seq and Poteet and any others who may or may not post in the future. Life DOES get better as we get older. With ice cream.
@Activist 1234: Happy Birthday! Sun in Gemini, the brainy sign. It shows.
@Ukulele Ike: Cancer, actually. Still a fantastic sign for creativity.
@2+2=7: #114: Yes, they did have a sketch where they were playing SORRY! but there was also one where they played Monopoly. Eunice managed to land on and purchase both Park Place and the Boardwalk for the first time in her life. But she recklessly spent every dollar of her Monopoly money on houses and hotels for the properties and was bankrupted when she landed on an opponents property and had no money to pay rent.
@Activist 1234:
Happy birthday! I truly enjoy your posts here, but miss them at CK, where I still hang out as well.
Marvin: I’m with you, Josh…saw that coming right out of the box…oh Lord have mercy…
@Horace Broon: #116: Actually, Roy Rogers does have an Ohio connection. The so-called “King of the Cowboys” was born in Cincinnati. The site of his birthplace (long demolished) is now part of the infield of the Reds ballpark.
@Baja Gaijin: #2
Oh my head…give us #2! Please!
@Schroduck: #12
Purring and kneading their human’s tummies are effective if subtle weapons too…my cat gets me every time with those. And I end up spending more on treats and toys for her. She knows what she’s doing!
Goofy question of the day.
@Hibbleton: #18
I can see Wilbur saying to Jeff and Mary after they offer their sympathy – “What – it’s just a stupid fish! I just wanted to take a cruise on a really fancy yacht!”
MT: Yes, when they hold their tails up, they’re preparing to charge, or take a dump. You can guess which happens more often.
@Peanut Gallery:@Needless Exposition:
I had to go on Comics Kingdom to see if they actually addressed this, and yeah, it seems like they had some kind of pet remembrance at Mary’s and then just just left them all behind to jump on a boat that could probably comfortably fit 20 people?? Personally, I would be pissed.
@pugfuggly: Though would it be more of a torture to be on a boat with Wilbur and Mary without any alcohol to numb the pain?
Beetle Bailey – Time for the media to brush off their 2010s favorite genre of lazy story and declare
MillennialsGEN-Z IS KILLING GOLF!Mary Worth – If Wilbur actually read books instead of just watching TV all the time, he might be able to draw the conclusion that the Gods specifically chose to kill Stellan because of his hubris, and he is solely responsible for this tragedy. Sadly, they are casting pearls before swine, and the rest of Olympus should just let Poseidon throw a huge wave the the ship and send Wilbur to the watery grave he’s dodged too many times before.
Marvin – Privatizing previously free-to-access things, a sure sign of late-stage cat-italism.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Back in school a buddy of mine had a VW bug with a broken gas gauge.
(The Topper): Back in school a buddy of mine had a VW bug that was so old, so old, I tells ya, that it had no gas gauge. It had a two-gallon reserve tank. When the main tank ran dry, he pulled a valve that switched to the reserve tank. Then he had that much fuel to get to a gas station. He learned to sense the first signs of fuel starvation and yank the handle before the engine really stopped. His parents had bought it in Germany and imported it. I don’t think that model was ever sold in the US.
@Activist 1234: Yeah, as I get into into my retirement, I am enjoying things so much more than during my “golden years”.
Late Thread Cuisine: In honor of today’s Mary Worth. Spoiler Alert: No seafood, no aspic, no green or yellow gelatin, nor even olive slice eyes.
@Baja Gaijin: The only appropriate response…
@Baja Gaijin: My eyes! Did you make this?
@Baja Gaijin: #153. MW. Yes, please have a piece of my birthday…treat. Please note underneath is a base not of cake but white bread with crust cut off. Frosted in salmon colored icing.
@153 Baja Gaijin:
Well, I know where you got that.
Happy tomorrow.
@Needless Exposition: Whoops! Misread the calendar. We’re past the Solstice already.
@154 Needless Exposition: Seconded!
@155 Lord Flatulence: I don’t know where it came from; ask Sequitur.
@156 Activist 1234: Thankfully it’s salmon colored icing and not salmon flavored.
@157 Sequitur: I think I can do something with that.
@Sequitur: Gotta have one last pity party in.
@White Rabbit: #151: Most motorcycles don’t have fuel gauges so they have a reserve tank you can switch on to get you to the nearest filling station. I guess the European carmakers thought Euro drivers were smarter and more in tune with their machines than us Americans, lazy, entitled capitalists that we are, who expect our cars to tell us when they need fuel.
@Sequitur @Baja Gaijin: That’s got to be Photoshopped. There’s no way someone deliberately baked and frosted it.
@Ukulele Ike: I’m a bit of an astrology nerd so I have the general dates for each zodiac sign memorized as well as their elements, the corresponding body parts, and some key features. For example, Cancer is a Water sign that corresponds with the chest, breasts, and stomach. They’re nurturing, creative, and very intuitive but can also be overly sensitive, prone to mood swings, and don’t handle change well.
*Simpsons Fireworks Factory voice*
When is Wilbur going to fall into the water already!?!
@Sequitur: Is this when Mary tells Wilbur about the rabbits?
@163 taig:
Actually, it’s suppose to be Danny DeVito.
@166 Dr. Larry Erhardt:
Sure, why not.
@Activist 1234: Happy birthday!
@Baja Gaijin: Late thread cuisine – Ye gods – that is horrific.
It looks like the decorator used real teeth!
@Activist 1234: #123
I just looked at “Peanuts.” You are right. It was adorable!
@Sequitur: Danny DeVito would make the perfect live action Wilbur Weston with his track record of portraying terrible human beings. Bonus points in that he’s one of the nicest people in Hollywood.
@Sequitur: Oof. Fail.
@Baja Gaijin: #126
I envisioned a toilet *bowl* instead, as bowls are designed to hold a large quantity of…I think I’d best just quit now…
@Sequitur: #133
That will haunt my dreams for quite a while…
MW: Wilbur, this will be my last comment on today’s, you should pardon the word, action. It’s a little advice for you. If you want other people to at least somewhat understand your sorrow at losing a beloved pet, it helps to give them at least a small idea of what made your pet special. “He listened to me because he was in an aquarium and had no choice, and also he was a symbol of and named after my failed pathetic attempted romantic relationship, and I’m not going to bother mentioning anything else about what he was like because his life and death were entirely about me, me, ME!” Nope, that does not work well.
Also, I briefly thought about whether there are any real-life women whom I hate so much that I would want them to date you if you were real, and the answer is no. I suggest you try the dating app “Plenty Of Stinky Fish.”
@Activist 1234: Happy birthday! Another trip around the sun for you! :-)
@Sequitur: You have shown us over the years that you have a genuine gift for finding these very special images. It’s a scary gift, however.
@163 taig: Someone with extremely good Photoshop skills and extremely bad imagination.
@164 Needless Exposition: “Cancer is a Water sign that corresponds with the chest, breasts, and stomach…but can also be overly sensitive, prone to mood swings, and don’t handle change well.” Sounds like Wilbur Weston’s a Cancer and not just on society.
@173 Daisy: Yes, good choice, quitting that is.
@177 Poteet: The gift that keeps on giving, whether we want it to or not.
@pugfuggly: I’m hoping the guests raided Mary’s liquor cabinet and are now systematically combing her condo for potential blackmail material. Alas, Mary keeps THAT stuff in a hidden safe behind a large bedroom portrait of herself that no one wants to look at, let alone touch.. She’s no fool.
@Bob Tice:
Bob #141. After Disqus closed down, I couldn’t figure out how to get back on CK. That’s why I was SO thankful to find Josh’s site and the Mudges. Is there a backdoor to current CK discussions?
@Guillermo el chiclero: Hey, the memory mists have cleared and I remember that episode now! Thank you! And remembering it reminds me that I read somewhere that THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW got a LOT of mail, back in the day, from viewers who said their families were exactly like The Family. Today, those folks could start an online support group.
@Activist 1234:
Happy birthday
@Sequitur: Oh Lord! Is that snot around his nose, mouth, and chin?
@185 Lord Flatulence: It gets worse and worse the more you look at it…STOP LOOKING AT IT!
@Needless Exposition: My mom, wife, and daughter are Cancers. Gahhhhhhh, I know.
@Baja Gaijin: I heard that if you look at it too long, it will crawl out of your TV/monitor in a week’s time and kill you.
@185 Lord Flatulence:
Actually, it’s probably pus.
@taig: Baja’s gonna make his old granddad look at it, like in the Japanese original.
Marvin: One underdiscussed aspect of Marvin—just go with me on this—is that the title character has absolutely no neck. One might even suspect that his mom cheated with a Mr. Men character.
MW: Mary somehow arm-twisted into lending his yacht and his presences to this inanity, but it will be a step too far if she ever asks him to publicly acknowledge knowing Wilbur.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: MW: Bad for doctor business. “If you know Wilbur Weston, can’t you FIX HIM?”
@Ukulele Ike: #187: My wife, mom, and sister are all Capricorns, stubborn, bull-headed, I’m always right, my way or the highway.
@191 Artist formerly known as Ben: She cheated with Mr Poo.
9CL: Waving your snatch in your husband’s face to distract him because he’s giving attention to the two kids you have together would be pathetic even if said husband weren’t Amos.
C-Shaft: My theory of relativity is that silence would have been hilarious relative to Keesterman’s punchline.
DT: Dick makes his Uncanny Valley approximation of a Cheshire Cat grin and the Crimestopper’s Textbook kids look like they’re about to fuck, so if you like objecting to stuff today is a real feast.
Dustin: I was going to make fun of this by pointing out that baldness in men is passed down from the mother’s side, but apparently that’s a myth. So this is scientifically valid, just not funny. Hey, you can’t have everything.
Garfield: Okay, we have a winner for “filthiest out-of-context final panel” for the day, if not the week.
RMMD: As you can see, Corey was about to sing-speak the lyrics of “Tommy Can You Hear Me.” If Parker let him get past “Can you feel me near you” it would be a clear case of neurological damage. Sadly—or not—Corey lost his place.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Tradeja. And I’ll throw in a case of beer and a Ghoulardi tee shirt.
MARVIN: Here we have an example of the difference between the carefree childhoods of many of us Boomers, whose parents were confident (or at least optimistic) that we would survive the outdoors, and the more restricted childhoods of many of today’s children, whose parents are burdened with more concern about outdoor risks. Google “are sandboxes dangerous” and it becomes clear that cat poop is only one item on the Beware List. That Marvin’s parents appear not to give a shit, so to speak, is interesting.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: DT: Costello has been reading the 9CL “Pond in New Hampshire” strips with unfathomable interest.
re: Dustin: Mom and her family and most of my sisters had thin hair (girls) and bald heads (boys). Dad had a full head until he passed at eighty. Thank god I got his genes.
(One of my co-workers called me “old man” a few years back, and I responded “Which one of us has HAIR?” To his credit, he responded with a shrug and “I had hair when I needed it.”)
@Horace Broon:
I mean, it still would have been nice.
@Ukulele Ike: Mine’s receded, but not to the extent that my maternal grandfather’s had all the time I knew him. It’s still basically the original color, too.
In the Middle Ages, people would have looked at Marvin: an unaging child, lacking nipples, sometimes displaying the mind of an adult, and performing magic such as speaking to animals, and concluded he was a changeling left by the fae, and that the real Marvin had been stolen by the Fair Folk in an act of capricious malice. But that’s clearly wrong. Stealing the real Marvin away from his horrible family would have been an act of mercy. The real Marvin has a better life in the Unseelie Court, and this abomination is the punishment his family deserves.
@Rembrandt36: That’s so Gross!
@Dennis Jimenez: lol
@Dennis Jimenez: But Henry, what will the neighbors think?
Anyone awake?
I couldn’t help myself. I just gotta let you see next Tuesday’s Six Chix.
It’s sandwich fuckin’ time.
Re: Male baldness – Bob Dole to a man making fun of his (Dole’s) baldness – “Nature gives men a certain amount of hormones, if you want to use yours raising hair, well, that’s up to you.”
So the cats and Marvin are just communicating in English? What is happening in the Marvinverse?
Monday Mary: I thought that I had run out of “For Fuck’s Sake” with this story but I was wrong. Ludicrosity pushed to 11.
@207 JustSomeGuy:
It is now Monday so the sandbox cats have moved to Rhymes With Orange.
They are, indeed, speaking English. The cats I’ve known all spoke French.
Mais c’est la voie du chat.
LUANN: I’m glad I read Monday’s strip tonight because it will take the rest of the night to flap the horrible stink of the multidimensional massive stupidity out of my mind. Eewwwwwww.
@210 Poteet:
If you want something to contemplate, check out @205 Sequitur:
@205 Sequitur: That’s all kinds of fucked up. Even Dagwood “The Glutton Extraordinaire” Bumstead hasn’t been portrayed being topped by a giant sandwich.
@Activist 1234:
I don’t think so. I plunked down some coin to be on the site; and, with intermittent technical issues on and off since then, I’ve basically been able to be on the site.
@Bob Tice:
#213. Thanks for the confirmation, BT.