Sad, unsettling Monday
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Pluggers, 9/23/24
An oft-noted source of malaise in American life is a rise of loneliness, as “third spaces” — places where people socialize that aren’t home or work — decline, and more and more people spend all their time with immediate family, coworkers — or, as they age, themselves. My new crackpot theory is that this explains why individual Plugger entries have gotten increasingly weird and idiosyncratic over the years that I’ve read the strip. They used to be the sort of corny and relatable content that emerged from consensus as you and your buddies griped or joked about life’s little foibles at the bar or on the job site. But now? Now that you took your pension and your wife has died and the VFW hall has closed, now that mostly you just sit on the couch with the TV turned on way too loud, so you can hear it and also can’t really think, which is maybe the whole point? Well, now who knows what your old pals who you exchange occasional texts with do. Do they mute the TV before they reply to your text? Probably, right? You do it, so it stands to reason that they do too. Maybe that’s why they haven’t replied to your text yet. Maybe they’re just waiting for their show to end so they can focus some attention on it. That’s probably it.
Gasoline Alley, 9/23/24
In addition to being obviously annoying, Rufus and Joel are also uncanny, in the sense that they alone among the cast stay the same age even as everyone ages around them. Are they truly human at all, or are they strange visitors from the fae realms? Well, today’s strip at least establishes that Rufus was in fact pushed down a human birth canal, which may be more information than any of us ever wanted, but now we have it.
Shoe, 9/23/24
I love the fact that the Perfesser’s eyes are closed here. He’s not just daydreaming about these culinary delights: he appears to be deep in the act of prayer, as if he’s trying to manifest them. This probably hurts Roz’s feelings, as she runs the restaurant where he’s currently sitting and from which he could presumably simply order them.
159 replies to “Sad, unsettling Monday”
Family Circus: AAAAHHH!!! DOLLY POPPING OUT OF A CAKE!!! And I’m all out of the main ingredient for a brain bleach colada!!! Thank goodness she’s fully clothed.
Luann: Wait a minute. Why are the sleazy ho with the sex doll mouth and the sleazy man-ho not in the bizarre fuck tent in the living room? What’s the point of having a bizarre fuck tent in the living room if no one’s going to use it?
Mary Worth Mashups
News Flash: Community life in The Plains, Ohio is disrupted when thousands of Pluggers move there because it sounds so bland.
Shoe: Maybe The Perfesser wouldn’t be daydreaming about food if Roz got her ass behind the counter to take his order instead of yakking it up with the other customer.
MW:
“I’ll bet Mrs. Fitz tempted him with that poodle skirt of hers!”
MW: Looks like Estelle is blinded by her tears and is very likely headed for a very serious car crash. I wonder if the docs at Santa Royale’s HUMAN HOSPITAL subscribe to the same medical practices as Dr. Ed.
“This patient needs to be put down, STAT!”
Does Rufus have a last name? Does Gasoline Alley want us to think about this? Does Gasoline Alley want us to think at all OR IS IT LULLING US INTO eh I don’t know what its sinister plan would even be. Cat plushies?
SHOE: Obviously, the Perfesser has been (very) temporarily scared straight by his doctor. He’s crouching at the counter so that when his will breaks, he’ll be within pouncing distance of the deadly goodies.
MW: Blinded by her petulant tears, Estelle careens off a cliff. She might have made it, but the surgeon who was putting her back together suddenly realized that he was due at a VERY important dinner party. RIP
RMMD: Go ahead, Truck. Give June some of that cranky old man lip. She’ll put your finger somewhere it’s never been.
BB: Don’t army bases have motor pools? Don’t motor pools take care of vehicle maintenance? Isn’t everyone at Camp Swampy always wandering around with nothing to do? Just asking.
H&L: Hi makes a grocery list. Will the yuks never stop.
Pluggers: It’s funny, I feel like it wasn’t thst long ago that texting was something that them younguns’ did, while pluggers still used a rotary phone or whatever. Anyhow, looking forward to this strip in 2030, when we hear complaints about breaking a hip while doing that new tiktok dance.
GA “Yep, my head was no wider than a walnut! Still as long as it is now though. I’m a human freakshow!”
Shoe: There’s a lot of ways you could interpret that last panel, but I personally believe thst the Perfesser is trying to figure out a way to combine his favourite foods. “Let’s see, Chips in the pie and then ice cream on top..? No…A sundae pie with potato chip crust? No…forget it. Roz, do you have a blender? “
The new kitty focus is the final nail in the coffin for Gasoline Alley‘s vaunted real-timeyness, as if the cats only live a normal life span I will… certainly not notice unless Josh covers it for some reason. But target audience would get mad!
HTH: Hagar uses the distraction to produce a sword on his unarmed foe. Unnamed arms dealer remarks; “If you had just shelled out one more doubloon, you wouldn’t be dead right now. Heh, heh.”
Rufus was breach, but luckily that nose of his streamlined him.
GA: Usually when your mother’s doctor tells her that your childbirth was as smooth and uncomplicated as a middle-aged man moving a box of cats, it isn’t a compliment.
MW: Unsurprisingly, Estelle’s idiot brain fails to recall the contents of the upsetting but very clearly worded text message she just read a few minutes ago. Heck, she’s lucky she even remembers who the supposed cause of her distress even is. I’m just annoyed Karen Moy vaulted ahead as she does whenever the story reaches a potentially interesting confrontation and we didn’t get to see how Estelle finally explained to Pam’s (and her own?) family why Ed never turned up after pointlessly lying about him for the entire evening.
JP: Finally, a new week starts and… Neddy and Ronnie are still Sally Forthing in the parking lot of the superlatively fluffy flapjacks diner. This is already starting to compete with the Harwoods’ roadside attraction adventure for the most insufferable roadtrip ever.
CS: Ed’s deli number is called for his turn to bloviate aimlessly about books and cruelty. He’s by far the least qualified person to weigh in on this subject in many ways, but someone’s gotta fill the scientifically-dubious smoky air until Les arrives and smugly takes over.
DT: Did Mike Curtis have ten consecutive strokes while writing this? Every aspect of this is gibberish.
Luann: Judging by the size of Bets’ overlap-censored speech balloon, it seems that boy really knows how to map. Nothing wrong about that, I think most people experiment with cartography in college, though I learned it wasn’t for me after an unexpected finger too far north up my compass rose.
MW: I just have one question about this idiocy. How did Dr. Ed even get roped into this emergency puppy delivery? We established that the dinner was scheduled for a Sunday. If I call my vet on Sunday, I get an answering machine that gives me the contact information of the nearest emergency vet. Is Ed giving out his cell phone number to his clientele? His clinic can’t be open seven days a week because we’d have definitely heard Estelle complain about it already if it were.
And why is even the narration box referring to her as Stell at this point? Have newspapers hit such tough times that printing two extra Es would blow their comic budget? And why is she described as driving angrily when she’s gone from a rabid “SCHOOL MANAGEMENT” rage state yesterday to weeping softly today? And how are we supposed to believe that Estelle, who put up with Wilbur drunkenly humiliating her in public with nary an angry red panel and only broke up with him (the first time) because he threatened her pet, is suddenly completely unmoved by dead puppies?
And how did Ed go from having time to shop for an engagement ring and learn new songs for serenading to being too busy thinking about his job to listen to Estelle even when they were sitting at the same table? And wasn’t Ed miserable being overworked in the last plot and Estelle’s intervention was treated as a godsend? But now we’re back to square one and Estelle is (presumably) the villain? And why would Pam wonder if Estelle would remarry if they’ve been estranged for decades? And how is Karen Moy still employed?
Okay, that was more than one question.
Luann: Are we sure that Stef isn’t a refugee from the Brookeverse?
Curtis: Oh, joy. Wall-to-wall bullying.
yMW: Can’t you have a bit of compassion, Stell? Poor woman just had a double mastectomy.
CS: Now Ed’s gonna make this all about him.
MW: I hope Dr. Harding and Ms. Fitz’ dog have a long and happy life together.
Frazz: She’s not turning on her Christmas lights every night, is she? No, she’s not. So it is different. Nice try, jerkface and jerkface-in-training.
B. Bailey: Even the gods hate these soldiers. “Stay away from Mt. Olympus, Capisce?”
Most people hearing the expression “[whatever] is my middle name,” don’t assume the speaker is being literal, but I guess they needed to set up the gag (if you can call it that).
Pluggers: This is more harrowing that Rhinoman hocking his TV.
GA: Honestly, there’s no evidence here that Momma is a human.
Pluggers – It’s hard to concentrate with the looming threat of monkey pox….
GA – Now the Shit-Fer-Brains cognomen – that’s self-explanatory….
Shoe – Where are the fucking sugar plums – that’s what I wanna know….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
SFx: While Slylock is congratulating himself for his intelligence and snickering over the Count’s stupidity, he is mortally wounded by the shark.
GT: Sexual congress in Gil Thorp? Shocking! But Whigham’s always wanted to draw it, and with just a week to go in his tenure, Why the hell not?
Real Pluggers know that it doesn’t matter if you mute the television, your roommate’s will still be on, as they will across the entire facility, the better to cover the screams of the damned, or the memory care unit, whichever comes first.
Oh, come on, Shoe Brain Trust. After yesterday’s entry on Himalayan duck, you won’t have Cosmo fantasizing about a chicken leg? Don’t keep tempting us – go all out and turn Treetops as a dystopian cannibalistic hellscape.
Gasoline Alley : Rufus’ birth was so smooth and easy, he just slid right out of his mom… and then smacked his head HARD on the floor, which explains why he is the way he is.
**************
Pluggers : don’t understand how someone can listen to a show and type at the same time, meaning they don’t understand how their children can listen to a podcast while surfing the web.
*************
Rex Morgan M.D. : for a second there, I thought “nurse practicioner Morgan” meant that Rex had finally been demoted to a title more fitting of his medical “competence” and “knowledge”, then I realised “oh, wait, they probably mean JUNE”.
Gasoline Alley: “Well, Ma’am, y’see, way back in high school during the French-kissing competition…” [Gertie douses herself with gasoline and reaches for the matches]
Phantom: Eight hundred pounds of prime ground horsemeat, comin’ up!
Rex Morgan, M.D.: C’mon, Truck is probably in his 60s, and goes to his honey’s old-fashioned diner every day, and his blood pressure is okay?! Talk about unrealistic!
Frazz: Now that she’s called out Mrs. Olsen’s hypocrisy, she’s free to mock Mrs. Olsen with Frazz later.
Luann: When I first saw this, I thought the “oh! oooh!” was the typical canned sitcom response when someone says something sassy. I thought it was kind of dumb, but it was way better than Tiffany timing whatever is going on in the next room.
CS: We are going to get fistfuls of ham this week. Yum.
9CL: “Why I remember when I was in the NICU, and I did some plies for the nurses. I think you two were there too.”
MW: Luckily, since Estelle has a squirrel’s brain, she’ll have forgotten she’s upset with Ed by the time she gets home.
Zits: I’ve “had the radish.” It’s…unpleasant.
FC: Jeffy starts playing Dolly off with farts.
@Baja Gaijin: I like option 3 the best.
Hold on there, Josh. All this strip has established is that Rufus is a mammal, or that his species is mammalian-like in part of its reproductive process. And that Gertie is disturbingly literal, so she might be a Vulcan or something.
***
I call BS. There’s no way a plugger is going to mute the TV while Tom Selleck is telling them about reverse mortgages.
JP: Three hours in traffic after eating a full stack of pancakes? I hope Mrs Declan has a plunger handy.
“Hi, I’m Neddy. Where’s the toilet?”
@taig:
I checked next sunday’s Mary Worth, and Estelle is threatening to end her engagement with Ed Harding
MW – What is there to not understand, “Stell?” Dr. Ed clearly explained the situation to you.
You know what, I’ve been wrong all this time. Estelle and Wilbur actually did deserve each other.
GA – The really shocking revelation in today’s strip is that at some point, someone in this household bought a whole CASE of Scancarelli.
Josh, you know this plugger’s old pal at the other end of the text has been dead on the kitchen floor for three days. The cat has already eaten the eyeballs and is eyeing the other soft parts.
I hope he was wearing pants when the coronary hit.
Shoe – Thoughtful? Well, they don’t call him “The Perfesser” for nothing. They call him that because he wears glasses.
GT – Gil and Beth put on their clothes to get in bed? Are they into dry humping?
Pluggers – Charlie don’t surf and pluggers don’t text.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, you say you value me as a person and not just for my looks”
“So why don’t you ask me more questions about myself?”
“Good idea!”
“Do you ever consider going back to being a blonde?”
GT – “Correction, I have two things to tell you. YOU NEED A HEARING AID and I LOVE YOU!”
@Lauralot:
You hit on something I’ve thought about re: Estelle becoming “Stell” because it fits better in the narration boxes. Almost all of the strip’s main characters have three or four letter names: Mary, Jeff, Toby, Iris, Saul, Dawn, Zak, Eve, Ian.
Maybe that’s why we see so little of Tommy, Brandi or Mr. Allora. Wilbur gets a pass because he’s Wilbur, and Stell because the two lower-case l’s take up the space of one letter.
CS: Not that story again. And how does a story about Ed’s stupidity fit into a story about book banning?
Luann: Why is Bets wearing what looks like a winter coat in SoCal this time of year?
Damn, I haven’t been paying attention to Mary Worth lately. I just caught up and truly Karen Moy’s willingness to buck traditional narrative always keeps you guessing. Not the actual story, which is proceeding along incredibly predictably, but I appreciate the big deal made about Her Estranged Cousin Pam earlier amounting to absolutely nothing. For the utter lack of complication and conflict she ended up bringing to the narrative, she might as well have been Her Very Close Cousin Pam.
Family Circlejerk – If she’s five, why is Dolly wearing a button that says 75? Did she take it off HTT Grandma’s corpse?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
Family Circlejerk – If she’s five, why is Dolly wearing a button that says 75? Did she take it off HTT Grandma’s corpse?
I wondered about that myself. Is it the 75th “birthday” of the strip? I’m not checking.
Shoe – Does the blonde bird-lady really dress that way or is she trying out her beatnik Halloween costume?
@Guillermo el chiclero:
CS: Not that story again. And how does a story about Ed’s stupidity fit into a story about book banning?
“See, that bully who exploited Crankshaft’s inability to read to rob him of his career as a pro baseball player is exactly the same as the person who’s trying to burn books to prevent people from reading them!”
My personnal “NO IT ISN’T” objection to THAT is : WE HAVE NO IDEA WHO SET THE FIRE AND WHYRMMD: Sarah Morgan is able to pass herself off as a Nurse Practitioner right up until Truck says he might as well get a prostate exam while he’s there. “(GULP!)”
Rufus is Macduff, not born of woman, and Birnam Wood shall soon come to bring ruin to Gasoline Alley but, given all the heavy metals, petroleum products, and other pollutants in the soil, the trees will quickly wither and die, leaving Walt (our aging Macbeth) alive and in charge for the foreseeable future.
GA: “Easy is my middle name! Because I’m a whore! Well, I’d be if anyone wanted me!”
Is Cosmo a thoughtful person? No, damn it! He’s a bird, not a person!
@Peanut Gallery: I assumed they called him “the Perfesser” because he played piano in a whorehouse.
The lady asked a simple question and Roz answered with a “define the thing you are talking about”. Someone has been reading about Socrates! Though I would have guessed that everyone favourite Aristophanes play would be “The Birds”, not “The Clouds”. Anyway, let’s hope someone will be drinking hemlock
GA: I doubt a skull shaped like that came out easy.
Pluggers need to turn down Judge Jeanine before texting about whatever overinflated outrage she’s inspired in them to the children who don’t talk to them much anymore for some reason.
@taig, CS: More like Boar’s Head.
Pluggers: Sadly, he is texting 911 about his heart attack.
RMMD-Rex made it a hospital day so he could avoid seeing Truck.
Crankshaft-And cue the flashback. *starts to play slowly play the violin*
MW: Meanwhile, Wilbur is biding his time, waiting to bust out his speedo and dance the cha-cha with a plastic rose between his teeth.
MW: The text dialogue box on Sunday was probably one of the clearest pieces of communication that this strip has ever set forth, but hey, let’s not let that stop us from going into an emotional spiral.
DT: Terrans always say that, do they?
CS: Ah, what a smooth transition. Almost as smooth as 30-grit sandpaper.
There was a lot of interesting discussion yesterday about Ed and vets in general, so I thought I’d throw in my contrarian two cents and say I would personally would not use Ed as my vet. Part of being a professional is knowing and accepting your limitations, and Ed does neither. He spreads himself thin, and when people do that they miss things and make mistakes, which confirmation-biasingly seems to have occurred here with poor Mitzi’s puppies. Caring is sweet, but results determine the health and safety of your pet. Also, I think people were a little unfair to Sheila, who seems to be a fine vet (even trusted by Ed himself) who is able to draw a better line about when and where to step back, both for her own happiness and the wellbeing of her patients. You don’t have to be a martyr to be good at your job; indeed, in the long run I’d say it’s far better if you aren’t.
C’shaft: *Les throws the door open* “Did I hear someone trying to make this entirely about themselves! That’s MY job! Now let me tell you about how important reading was to my beloved dead wife Lisa!”
Dustin: “Thanks, Dave. Next caller, we have Dave’s wife, asking if anyone knows a good divorce attorney…”
GT: Yeah, the kids these days love their Cervantes.
JP: Uh-oh, Ronnie, now that you’ve admitted to having relationship problems Neddy’s going to start trying to fix your life next
Luann: Jealous much, Bets? We all know that the only thing that lasts eighty-eight minutes with Gunther is watching My Neighbor Totoro, including credits and making the popcorn.
MW: “How could an emergency turn out to take longer than he expected?”
Bizarro – Nope – canned dog food is the one that is gag inducing.
Rex Morgan – Ye gods, we’re going to see every second of this office visit, no matter how banal, boring, and/or irrelevant it is. If this were a police procedural, the detective would spend a week talking about putting on his rubber gloves before moving on to a week of talking about opening the container of whatever they use to dust for fingerprints.
Far Side – The one with the parakeets in the bar is one of my favorites.
Breaking Cat News – Sunday’s strip did not appear on GoComics, and I gleaned from the comments that GoComics didn’t run it because it involved some conversation that the editors didn’t approve of. Georgia Dunn posted it to her Facebook page, but I don’t do social media. I don’t know what was so questionable about it.
It’s amazing that a strip about talking cats was apparently censored, but a few other strips run absolute dreck *cough 9CL cough* with no oversight. And does Tom Batiuk know about this? I bet he’s jealous that his heavy handed “controversial” story arcs aren’t censored so that he can gripe about it. Has he ever done a censorship story as his yearly Pulitzer bait? I honestly don’t remember.
And yes, I know that GoComics can run or not run any of their strips.
Crankshaft – Not this shit again.
Frazz – Many people leave their Christmas lights up all year so they don’t have to go through the pain of dealing with them every year. They don’t turn on the lights all year, so who cares? It’s not like leaving spider webs and six foot chicken skeletons up all year, although I’ve seen skeletons all year.
In any case, how is it Frazz’s and the judgmental kid’s business to judge? Don’t they have a marathon to run?
MW: I would love to see what happened when Estelle told Pam that Ed wasn’t coming to the dinner.
Estelle: *trying to hold in her anger* Ed’s not coming.
Pam: What’s wrong? Is everything okay?
Estelle: Ms. Fitz’s poodle went into premature labor and the puppies didn’t make it.
Pam: Oh no…
Estelle: Ed has to perform emergency surgery to save the mother’s life so he can’t make it.
Pam: I’m so sorry. We can always get lunch another time.
Estelle: I can’t believe he would do this to me! He promised he would come here after taking care of this!
Pam: Estelle…
Estelle: This is the last straw! I can’t believe he would do this to me!
Pam: It was an emergency; I don’t think he meant to hurt you.
Estelle: How can he be so selfish? Doesn’t he care about me? Why did that stupid dog have to go into labor tonight and ruin everything for me?
Pam: …You self centered bitch.
@Baja Gaijin: Mashups – The flaming skeleton always gets my vote, although I approve of the third one, too.
In comment #1 you got there first about Dolly jumping out of the cake.
@Baja Gaijin: Nice work on the mashups. All good.
Luann:
Is Stef with somebody, or is she alone?
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Oh, okay.
Difficult births are primarily caused (except for complications) with humans’ unusually large head sizes. So it’s understandable why Rufus was an easy slide out. Like pouring dog food out of a can.
LUANN: Looks like Stef has also spent her evening “jiggling the handle”….
Pluggers: Please, we all know that pluggers watch TV with the closed captions on. And they turn down the volume so the gunshot scenes aren’t too loud when they’re watching “Blue Bloods.”
Mary Worth: Stell is so upset by Ed’s no-show, she’s participating in a high-speed night-time drag race with another commuter sedan. She’s doing well so far, but is about to pull an exciting yet dangerous Tokyo Drift into a freeway entrance. Don’t do it, Stell! No, wait, do it! (It would be horrible, but think of the irony if she hit a stray dog.)
9CL – The Twins don’t recognize a picture of their own mother.
It’s not as if she’s aged a day in the last few decades.
Crankshaft-“This reminds me of the time my teammates tied me to a pole and set me on fire.”
Gasoline Alley-This guy put out a LOT in high school.
Pluggers: Thanks a heap for the depressing explanation of how Pluggers cope these days. Oddly, as I sit here alone in my senior apartment killing time till I expire alone and forgotten, I just this morning turned down the sound on my big screen tv so I could compose a text to my daughter.
Let’s be real here: if Ed did show up to the dinner, he would be miserable after his failure to save the puppies. He would just sit down staring blankly while Estelle, obliviously happy as a clam, would parade him around like a trophy wife at a high school reunion. And then afterwards she would bitch about Ed “ruining the mood” because he didn’t answer a question in time.
@Baja Gaijin: Definitely number 3, because I think the writers are headed in that direction. My somewhat-out-on-a-limb prediction: Estelle is paralyzed by the car accident, but Dr. Ed still loves her and marries her — then gets a cute capuchin monkey to take care of her when he’s at the clinic.
I guess we’ve established that Roz and Cosmo are not friends, since a pal would either talk him up to the glamorous lady bird, or just completely shank him by saying something like, “no, he’s definitely thinking about stuffing his dumb fat bird face,” whichever would be funnier. Sorry Cosmo! One of the three major relationships of your adult life is wholly transactional, and honestly you might not want to examine your relationship with Shoe too hard either.
@Ken: A helper monkey in charge of an animal clinic sounds like a failed Michael Crichton novel. I would still read it.
Pluggers – There have been plenty of jokes about turning down the radio when trying to parallel park or if you’re lost and need to navigate an unfamiliar place, so this isn’t as strange as it might seem. Pluggers are not being digital natives, and while they have suffered some of the attention loss most of us face, they never mastered the two-screen experience someone like Jeremy in Zits has.
Gasoline Alley – Rufus could still be a fae or another mythical creature that simply implanted its young into a human host, with embryonic Rufus eating the original fetus for nutrition. Never underestimate the potential horror hiding underneath this strip that has lived longer than nature or culture should allow.
Shoe – If you have to ask if the local journalist currently holding a newspaper and nicknamed “The Perfesser” is thoughtful, you already have your answer.
CS: I wish I still got the newspaper, so I could at least burn this drivel to keep warm.
MW: @MKay: “Blinded by her petulant tears, Estelle careens off a cliff …. RIP”
Oh no! Did her puppies survive??
@Hibbleton: I wondered about that myself. Is it the 75th “birthday” of the strip? I’m not checking.
I’m not checking either, but I’m also not wondering.
Breaking Cat News: @I speak Jive: On Facebook Georgia jokes about it being controversial, but she says it was probably just a technical glitch. She made a slideshow of the strip’s panels, and they’re in very high resolution. They really show off her detailed watercoloring. I put the panels together here. Be warned though: it involves BEASTIALITY!! I’m grabbing my gas can as we speak…
@Flipper: Thank you! I like the drawing of the cowboy centaur.
Her coloring work is almost always lovely.
I honestly did not think the strip was questionable.
@BigTed:
I’m convinced that pluggers watch Blue Bloods (see also NCIS, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote) because it shows young people paying respect to old people. Plugger porn, right there.
@Uncle Lumpy: MAAAAAATLOOOOOOCK!!!
The Family Circus Spanish to English,
@Lauralot: #14
“And how is Karen Moy still employed?”
I am scratching my head at that one. A corollary question for me is, why oh why am I still reading this nonsense?
FC: @Scratchy Scrotum LXIX et al.: Today’s strip originally ran in 1997, around Bil Keane’s 75th birthday. Jeff Keane doesn’t create new strips. He just slightly updates his dad’s old ones and adds his name.
@Hibbleton, @Maude R. Fawker:
Family Circus started on February 29, 1960, so it’s 16, not 75.
@CsRoberto2854: #33
…I knew it…I *KNEW* it. What a twit.
@Flipper: @I speak Jive: GoComics just needs a little education in the Reality of Centaur Penises.*
* link to a vintage Oglaf, so kinda NSFW
Pluggers waste their precious TV time, not texting, but writing snarky comments on a blog about some dying art form, like, I don’t know, stamp collecting or crocheting.
@jroggs: One of the many problems with the Dr. Ed character is that Moy can’t decide-or doesn’t care- if he’s a small time general practitioner with a 9-5 practice or a veterinary surgeon working at a 24 hour emergency clinic. If it’s the latter, getting called in at odd hours unexpectedly might make sense. But too often that’s not how he’s portrayed.
@Little Guy: Luann: Are we sure that Stef isn’t a refugee from the Brookeverse?
I don’t read Luann but now I feel compelled to check it out as I can only your comment means Stef is humping someone on a piano bench in public.
Perfessers imagined chip bag is really speaking to me for some reason. it’s a charming bit of product design. something about Shoe has always lived in a sort of perpetual 70s for me, or at least a kid born in 1988’s conception of the 70’s. and I feel like those doubly pretend chips really epitomize that.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Maybe if Fahrenheit 451 hadn’t been banned in Batiuk’s fantasy universe, Cranky would have read it and magically become literate.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Either that, or this is a really terrible reboot of The Prisoner.
@Ukulele Ike: Lol! I bet you’re pleased you got to finally whip out that link. In public.
@Ukulele Ike: Either that, or he was the only player on the baseball team who was ever seen reading a book.
Pluggers: I seem to recall Pluggers sitting at McDonald’s as their “third space,” drinking coffee from styrofoam cups and jeering at the eeleetists at fancypants coffee shops with those big city ceramic cups and saucers.
@Her Father, John Darling.: Moy overall doesn’t seem to care about anyone actually doing their jobs but apparently they still have them despite Jeff taking all those overseas trips and Ian barely making appearances because he’s too busy proving his virility. Only Wilbur had his job threatened (and rightfully so considering how much he outsourced his work to Mary) because his column was only useful in lining bird cages.
It’s like that scene in Friends where they’re in the coffee shop and complaining that their bosses don’t like them. Joey (an actor with a lot of downtime in between roles) pointed out that maybe the reason why their bosses don’t like them is because they’re in a coffee shop at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday.
RMMD: naming Nurse Practioner June Morgan smacks of her father John Darling.
Just wait until you see the jizz towel.
@Needless Exposition: Little MW Moron: How are Dr. Ed and Dr. Jeff the same? They both get off on youth in Asia!
@Ukulele Ike: Top tier punnery, my good sir.
@Flipper: My fave Oglaf quote — which I try to work into the conversation whenever I can — “Remember….it’s not necrophilia if the guy was alive when the fucking started.”
@Peanut Gallery: I vaguely recognize that. Bull Durham? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Damn Yankees? Major League?
…….The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings?
OTF: Engineering! It’s, like, one subject, and everything you learn in a modern class is directly applicable to being a Rennaissance-era genius, and it’s mostly about making model cities! This is actually starting to annoy me more than the magic genetics stuff. If Holbrook hates all STEM subjects so much he refuses to research them even slightly, why does he keep writing about them?
Phantom: Speaking of writers who don’t understand how techie stuff works, this is rapidly becoming dumber than the X-Files remake episode about AI. You know, the one where The Algorithm begins attacking people to force them to give its shopping apps a good rating, because it’s been programmed with that as its success condition? That made no sense, but it still made more sense than this!
@Charterstoned: As I recall, the human hospital is mostly staffed by Dr Jeff, his son Dr Drew, Dr I’m Kind Of Divorced But Don’t Tell My Wife, the creepy Star Wars fan orderly, and Mary the volunteer busybody. Honestly, I’m surprised more humans aren’t taking their chances with the vets.
Six Chex and A Cat Named Garrison Skunk:”I used AI to write a funny comic strip.” Garrison (reading) “No you didn’t.” “Technically its funny, is just funny in another dimension.” (Vixen Park reference).
@jroggs: Luann: … an unexpected finger too far north up my compass rose.
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Vivid imagery.
MW: You know, I don’t think Estelle’s being unreasonable here. Doesn’t this man get ANY off duty time? Not even for an engagement dinner? He’s not the only veteranarian in SoCal, and a pregnant dog isn’t some unique problem only he can deal with. It sounds like he’s avoiding the whole marriage thing.
@Needless Exposition:
@Uncle Lumpy: MAAAAAATLOOOOOOCK!!!
“TAGS-II: THE WRATH OF OTIS”
@Schroduck: Rufus was breach, but luckily that nose of his streamlined him
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Then Principal Skinner steamhammed him.
@Needless Exposition: @Ukulele Ike: Top tier punnery, my good sir.
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Agreed! My nomination for Pun Of The Week, aka the Cerfing The Web Award!
@Banana Jr. 6000:
They’re both being unreasonable. It’s the 2nd marriage for both and they’re canonically around 60. Just have a small, simple wedding and have an awesome honeymoon, then live happily ever after. Estelle going Bridezilla is on her, Ed’s workaholism is on him .
Maybe I haven’t read Pluggers for long enough but do those reoccurring funky senior creatures like the old dog, bear and rhino have any names? Or do they live in an animal universe where there are only dogs, bears, rhinos and maybe a random chicken here and there?
@Ukulele Ike: “Remember….it’s not necrophilia if the guy was alive when the fucking started.”
@Peanut Gallery: I vaguely recognize that. Bull Durham? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Damn Yankees? Major League?
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It was “Head II: Damn Monkees” and inspired the Oscar™ award winning Peter Tork/Barbra Streisand ballad, “When The F-ing Started”
The
@Uncle Lumpy: The new “Matlock” (which just aired last night) is all about “old people rule, young people drool.” (Maybe not phrased that way.)
@Goodgurlcomix: Or do they live in an animal universe where there are only dogs, bears, rhinos and maybe a random chicken here and there?
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A chick chick here and A chick chick there, All the Pluggers had a farm E I E I OY VEY- traditional children’s song.
All seriousness aside to answer your question…. there’s Shiela Roo, the kangarabbit, Earl Houndstooth the dog, Henrietta Beak, his chicken wife, Andy Bear, the kangarabbit’s bear husband who all live in the Broken Arms Apartments, having off panel Bob&Carol&Ted&Alice style shanagans when they aren’t being meddled by Mary Minabird.
@GarrisonSkunk:
Claude Manx, the cat—a solitary sort.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Hopefully, they won’t find that painting of Edda in the attic.
@GarrisonSkunk:
Ohhhh ok I get it now, thank you for the explanation. I’m not sure why but the dog and bear guys kind of registered as several different characters to me even tho they are just a few reoccurring guys
@Ukulele Ike: I can’t quite remember, but I think it was one of Ring Lardner’s baseball stories.
@Flipper: @Ukulele Ike: Lol! I bet you’re pleased you got to finally whip out that link. In public
“Where the Ukulele Women At?”
@TheDiva:
Rufus’ mom probably lied to him about his birth
To make him feel less insecure about oblong head
GT: “Beth, I have something else to tell you. You’d be a lot more comfortable if you took off all that heavy jewelry before bedtime.”
9 Chickweed Hell: Geez. Just shut up. Edda looks exactly the same. These girls were dropped on their heads at some point.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I dislike both of them. Estelle is nuts but I think Ed could find ways to work less. Hiring an assistant or any kind of staff would be a start.
@Uncle Lumpy: The new “Matlock” (which just aired last night) is basically all “old people rule, young people drool.” (Maybe not phrased that way.
@Needless Exposition: Actually I meant Ed would leave Estelle alone with the helper monkey while he went to work, possibly with results similar to Stephen King’s Misery. But Estelle still working at the clinic, with the helper monkey by her side, offers more potential for comic hijinks.
@GarrisonSkunk: They’re Right here.
This one has better visuals. Lady vocalist, Vaughn De Leath. Big star, but not as good as Frank Crumit.
Then there’s this Retro version, Peter Sellers backed by the Temperance Seven. George (The Beatles) Martin produced this one in 1960.
@Ukulele Ike: NSFW? That’s not safe for the entire planet.
Maybe GoComics is aware of it and thought of it when they saw the centaur cowboy. I know I’ll never think of him the way I did originally.
@Her Father, John Darling.: I don’t understand why Dr. Ed didn’t arrange to have another vet on call the evening of the party. There are enough veterinarians in Santa Royale to have a convention – surely there’s another one who wouldn’t get pissy about working past 4:59 just once.
I also don’t understand why Estelle didn’t simply say that Ed had an emergency and might not be able to come. That’s certainly more mature than first lying about it, then throwing a hissy fit like Estelle did.
@Goodgurlcomix: @GarrisonSkunk: @Uncle Lumpy: How could you forget Carl Rhinowski, who pawned his TV set?
@made of wince: Brooke will use any excuse to draw Edda with those meticulously detailed and shaded legs.
@made of wince: Me an’ the boys have been playin’ – an’ we jus’ can’t get it right….
7-11 Japan sells Scratchy Scrotum’s favorite treat.
@astroboy: They’re not doing the reasonable solution because they’re pawns of a God (Karen Moy) who goes out of her way to avoid reason and logic for her meat puppets because she needs them to be so stupid that they’ll listen to Mary Worth who is essentially both Jesus and Lucifer. No human in Santa Royale is allowed to have an IQ above a stick of butter; they need to be helpless idiots who can’t wipe their own ass without consulting Mary Worth.
Need something to distract you from Estelle’s bridezilling? I gotcha covered.
@Needless Exposition: Lesus or Jucifer?
MW: One computer game I played years back, during the ending credits roll, said (pretty much) “Well, the game is over, here’s all of the things you can do now, such as go outside, read a book, go pole vaulting, have a barking contest with the neighbour’s dog…” and it just got more and more ridiculous from there.
Then I think, all of the things I could be doing and here I am reading MARY WORTH…
@Baja Gaijin: Merciful God in Heaven! Some things are not meant to be put between bread!
@Ken: If Estelle had a helper monkey, I hope she gets the evil one like that episode of Malcolm in the Middle. Then it can move on to Wilbur.
@Lord Flatulence: Jucifer sounds like both a baby name and a cocktail drink from a satanic themed bar.
@142 Lord Flatulence: Some things are not meant to be put between bread...like, say, flatus?
Shoe: The most interesting thing here is that Roz looks exhausted to the point where she would welcome death, even before the question is asked. It makes me wonder led up to it. “All right, maybe you’re not the best choice to discuss Camus’s philosophy on the absurdity of life. Would you say Cosmo is a thoughtful person?”
@I speak Jive: Have you seen the sort of things Trudy n’ Doug have been putting into Oglaf over the past few months? A little naked lady and a little centaur dick (human dick, really, even if he does keep the horse forelegs) are nuthin’.
@139 Baja Gaijin:
Great leaping parasites.
Straight off the jitz towel.
@Ukulele Ike: I have seen that strip only a few times. I don’t follow it, but I’ve looked at it a few times when someone here (usually you, I think) links it.
A few days ago I was reminded of Bouletcorp, which I used to read occasionally but haven’t seen for some time. I Googled it (I will probably get a ton of ads for western boots), and it’s still around. However, there doesn’t seem to be an option to read it in English.
@Lord Flatulence: Am I the only one who thinks those would make dandy names for automobile brands….
GA: I wonder if the humans in GA are aware that mother cats often shift their kittens from place to place as the kittens grow up. And sometimes those are big moves, like the barn kittens down the road that were carried by their mom to my shed. Which was fine, because they ended up with good new lives, and if Mee-Meow is smart, she might already be scouting for a better home, one where the humans take their felines to veterinarians.
FG: It’s a Powerman’s best friend, along with this roll of duct tape.
FG: Is the Powerman’s Union backing Trump or Harris, or are they sitting this one out like the Teamsters?
@151 Poteet:
Expect a visit from Mee-Meow.
By the way, she likes tuna.
Oh, and yes. Gasoline Alley is down the road from you. Believe It Or Not.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Ergon’s little brother is trans. Who do you THINK they’re voting for?
@I speak Jive: Oh, Oglaf is genius stuff. The creators are TERRIBLE at erotica (often sliding into the gross) but they are GREAT at humor. Nice art, too. I recommend an archive-binge.
Thanks for the Bouletcorp link; I will check it out. My favorite language-struggle with a comic goes back to Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec, which Jacques Tardi started in 1976. Exotic and fascinating in French, but much more dull when read in English translation. Wiki link Here.
@Baja Gaijin: Some things are not meant to be put between bread…like, say, flatus?
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Hey, who doesn’t like a nice fart sandwich?
@155 Lord Flatulence:
You bite into it and get that unfortunate taste of shit.
@Sequitur: 156. And, if hemmoroids are present, a coporoghohic vampire’s delight. See, this is why not many ‘mudgeons stay up for the late night thread.
@Avoiding the Madding Crowd: And also why those of us who sometimes do stay up sometimes wish we hadn’t.
@Poteet: Haha!