Sexy beasts
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Beetle Bailey, 10/2/24
Hello, faithful readers! You might recall that last week I opined that Beetle Bailey had abandoned the spirit, though not the letter, of Miss Buxley Wednesday by producing technically Buxley-inclusive content that nobody could possibly be aroused by. Well, it seems that the bigwigs at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC have listened to my reasoned critique and delivered two panels of Miss Buxley in all her miniskirted glory. Sure, she’s as crudely drawn as ever, but she’s waving her arms around frantically and yelling right next to a laser printer that’s going crazy and spewing out paper, and I’m reasonably sure that a sizable minority of you could talk yourselves into getting off to that, if you really put in the work.
Pluggers, 10/2/24
I had always assumed that actual short-order cooks are plugger short-order cooks? I mean, I guess I haven’t been keeping tabs on the hierarchies, but do you mean to tell me that this underpaid, manually demanding profession is coastal elitist-coded now? That real pluggers are at home seething with class resentment at short-order cooks because they use fancy stoves to cook? By god, pluggers just eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they like it! They don’t even toast the bread! Do you toast the bread, like some kind of communist? I’d blame Hulu’s hit show The Bear for this change in attitude, as it shows short-order cooks having aspirations beyond their station, but (a) no plugger subscribes to a “streaming service” and (b) if they did, as horrible man-animal chimeras, their primary reaction to the show would be confusion that nobody on it is actually a bear.
153 replies to “Sexy beasts”
Beetle Bailey: I keep pressing the “humor” button but nothing happens!
I could have a long rant about how the idea that women are incompetent with technology indicates that “Beetle Bailey” continues to perpetuate sexist Boomer stereotypes… but the fact that printers suck and never work is a staple of Millennial humour, so I cannot complain. Well played
BB: If you gave a printer a handjob to completion, would it ejaculate ink or paper? Today’s Beetle Bailey answers that question at least.
Pluggers: A Plugger’s “Watching The Bear on streaming” is obsessively searching for porn of hairy gay men, telling yourself it’s just to prove to yourself you’re definitely straight.
BB – Try rocking the boat with the little man in it….
Plugger – Fine dining – Plugger style….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
I checked on Wikipedia and “Indiana, Pennsylvania” is a real place and not the product of a Russian hacker trying to pass as an American. I am glad that “Pluggers” has escaped becoming a tool of polarisation and division by foreign powers. The strip will always drive reactionary resentment and dehumanisation of the other half of the country ON ITS OWN terms!!!
When I want to print something on my printer, I press the print button that is right there on the printer. That is how printing works.
@Ettorre:Of course, Millennial humour would make the printer look like a little desktop HP model or something, not the kind of rattling electromechanical beast last used by Bell AT&T to print phone bills circa 1973.
BB I really like Beetle Bailey‘s conception of a copy machine,which seems to be a couple of stacked cardboard boxes with a gaping hole in one side. Presumably Gizmo is sitting inside the larger one, frantically writing out copies by hand with a pen light in his mouth.
Pluggers I’m not sure why, but i find those extra m’s on ‘yum’ really off-putting. Ita a sandwich, man,get a grip.
MW: I wonder, if Mary and Estelle get high on muffins and murder Ed, will Jeff be willing to donate his boat again for the disposal?
GT: When a comic strip’s theme is medicine, a finger cramp spawns an epic. When the theme is sports: Cardiac event? Walk it off!
@Schroduck: Did you someone The Bear with peanut butter and jelly? (This, plus that picture of the main character who’s name I don’t know sitting with a cigarette, is the sum total of my knowledge of The Bear. Which means I know more about it than the Beetle Bailey writers know about laser printers.)
Hagar the Horrible : has traveled backwards in time, met his past self, and gave himself a transparently fake name to protect the timeline and his identity.
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Phoebe and Unicorn : this isn’t a big mystery in a setting where
a) time travel is real (“My sister must have just decided to go back in time to visit you on that day… Though, looking at her in that picture more closely, it is ‘WILL decide’…”)
b) the “Shield of Boringness” exists (“Phoebe, You, my sister and I all live in the same small area, and there was a magic spell that prevented you from noticing unicorns existed, while we unicorns ignored humans because you are not as awesome as us. It is not THAT unlikely we ‘bumped into’ each other several times before we ‘first met’.”)
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Pluggers : is this a “Pluggers are lazy” or a “Pluggers are stupid” thing?
…It’s a “Pluggers are fat” thing, isn’t it?@Ettorre: Indiana, Pennsylvania is the birthplace of Jimmy Stewart. Stewart’s father ran the local hardware store and thought his son’s “Anatomy of a Murder” was a dirty movie. So, yeah, their “Plugger” cred is well-earned.
@Schroduck: Admittedly I’m an Xer, but the printer at my (academic) job looks kind of like that with several more protrusions, because it’s also a scanner and copier and stapler and probably it makes toast but it it does it burns it. And “You send the print job several times but the printer is paused so when you reset it you get way too much” is something that happens. But you send print jobs from a separate computer. Team Beetle was unable to figure out how to visually convey that there were two devices involved so they gave up.
And as pugfuggly points out Spc. Chip Gizmo is the character who is supposed to do technology things, they introduced him with a lot of fanfare and a contest to name him and everything. And in panel one Beetle is holding his mop under his shoulder like a swagger stick. And even if this were done right it would be mildly relatable rather than funny. Even for a legacy strip this is offensively slipshod.
B. Bailey: Having no need for a cord or power outlet sounds good on paper but the six lead-acid car batteries in the base negates the whole idea of portable printer.
@Pozzo: Lee Remick sans foundation garments! Hubba-hubba….
No true plugger would call a sandwich a “short order” meal, Jones, you dilettante. You don’t bake your own bread?
CS: Oh no, is Lillian going to have a Scout Finch moment and shame this riled up mob, or is she going to read from the book and somehow win them over? It would be so hacky.
MW: “I’ve…I’ve been eating too many pints of ice cream, Mary. I think…I think I’m an addict…oh and I blew up my engagement because my fiancé should have just let a dog die instead of showing up to my dinner.
GT: “Yes, just like the Take On Me video, except…no, wait, a couple of drivers did try to murder me for beating them in a race in a comic-book world.”
@Ettorre: Yes, confusingly, there is a University of Indiana, Pennsylvania.
A Plugger stays true to his radical 60’s roots by not cutting his sandwich in half. “Up yours!, Emily Post.”
Beetle Bailey: 10/2/2024: the day Josh encourages his readers to jerk it to a malfunctioning copier. What that’s you say? Josh actually was suggesting people could get off to Ms. Buxley? Well, I suppose, it’s all about the same level of sexy.
BB: That printer is just chugging along.
Pluggers: Like male Pluggers know how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Pluggers: The worst thing about plugger short-order cooks isn’t their limited repertoire of dishes but rather that they appparently tend to eat the food themselves.
Blondie: “Please like our Scrappy Doo.”
CS: This is the closest we’ve gotten to hearing the opposing side of the issue, and the best Tom Batiuk could come up with for his strawmen is that they dislike banned books because they’re banned. Unintentionally, they have a fairly reasonable albeit tautological point: things banned by the school should not be at – or distributed by representatives of – the school. So then why are these people not protesting the school? And Les specifically? And, frankly, Les generally?
MW: Coloring blueberries brown does not make them cinnamon apples.
RMMD: Oh wow, who out of all the one other guitar-playing characters could it be?
Also Beetle Bailey: [Stares in mute 9 Chickweed Lane horror]
JP: Give this strip credit for originality and creativity. “What angle are you . . . playing at?” is phraseology that no one has ever uttered before. Well done.
MW: Estelle thought balloon: “Oh Christ, just what I need. Mary Frickin’ Worth.”
CS: Uh-oh, you protestors are in for it now. Lillian’s about to give you a stern talking-to! Meanwhile, Crankshaft is there to . . . uh, he’s there to . . . um, try to appear relevant?
Pluggers:
…And continuing with the foodstuff theme, you know you’re a plugger when you think that ‘plugola’ is a granola that pluggers eat for breakfast.
I’m sure the reason that printer looks like that is that it is military-spec and therefore has a chassis built out of 8ga welded titanium alloy with bulletproof metal panels, three redundant power supplies and a print head that is shielded against sand in the desert.
Whereas normal printers cost $149 at Costco, these were sourced from a specialized contractor built out of Bulgaria with a 35,000 page manual sealed in Cosmolene. The thing came in smelling like the inside of a Harbor Freight and has a complex and Byzantine user-hostile user interface that only makes sense to the kind of person who touches themselves furiously when reading government policy and procedures rules. And when they’re in a hurry go straight to the tax code.
@Schroduck: They writing might be up-to-date (twenty years old) but the iconography is at least fifty years old
Frazz: Later, Mrs. Olsen will ask the class to write an essay on things that bother them, and this girl will flail her arms and complain about it.
Luann: I have to give the Evanses credit for their effortless ability to write hateable characters.
CS: I hope someone in this crowd gets the bright idea to throw stuff at Lillian.
9CL: But I thought Amos was Edda’s one and true eternal love forever!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I guess this is like one of those trick questions with which they caught German spies in WWII
“Pluggers eat sandwiches”
I would say slow day for pluggers, but really every day is a slow day for pluggers.
@jroggs:
On Crankshaft, and how this whole situation is actually Les’ fault : It’s wild; Batiuk somehow managed to write a Crankshaft storyline where the audience would actually prefer if Les was given more focus than the actual Crankshaft characters! (because everything is actually his fault, and he should be made to directly face the consequences of his actions)
Again; Batiuk actually wrote a storyline where we WANT to see more Les Moore! (so he gets his comeuppance)
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Speaking of comic strip Les, Leslie Knox from Luann is having a cameo in today’s Baldo.
“Pluggers” is trying to break out of the confines of the strip! Sorry “Pluggers”, but sandwich-eating is “Blondie”‘s turf!
DT: Mike Curtis just loves these hardcore criminals who collapse immediately and completely under police questioning and never ask for lawyers. They make quick closure in storytelling so easy. Meanwhile, I’m not doing a deepdive into researching posse comitatus regulations but I’m pretty sure it requires at least some level of necessity, whereas Dick appears to have deputized Mysta entirely for pointless funsies. I also think a claim of “attempted bribery of an officer of the law” probably requires the perpetrator’s foreknowledge that the individual is an officer of the law, so maybe Dick and Mysta will soon get to find themselves behind bars right next to Ro-Zan for a variety of false crime reporting and abuse of authority charges.
JP: The nefarious
AidanAidenHayreddin finally appears with a glorious barbarossa and an inability to remember details from previous comic panels. Is Adeyn a simpleton? Is Aydin merely mesmerized by the way Neddy’s sunglasses keep dematerializing and rematerializing, often at different locations on her head? Or maybe Eydun’s just already mentally switched off out of boredom thanks to Marciuliano’s endless footdragging.DT: Pretty chintzy, Ro-Zan. In a situation like this you should have offered her a continent, at least. And one of the good ones.
MW: Meddlegasm!
Zits: To be honest, this is not where I expected this “Jeremy and Pierce procreate” story to go.
FC: Time to dump Jeffy off into a forest.
Edge City repeats on CK, not the repeats on GC: “Taxidermied Banjo-Playing Woodchuck” carries a strong odor of “bread products” and “china hutch.”
FG: Dale does not understand all your hostility towards her.
Jp: Neddy is truly the dumbest character in newspaper today… that includes people from the real world
GT: Yikes, the change in artist has not been kind to Beth. Ugh, just look at that mug.
Blondie: Having a difficult time digesting the layout of the Bumsteads’ living room. Is there a hall of mirrors in there or something? Or did M.C. Escher design it?
I would have preferred if it was Andy Bear eating a peanut-butter and honey sandwich, because he’s a bear after all…
But the Pluggers’ team still would never acknowledge that he is actually a bear.
Then I think, associating bears with honey and porridge, is that generalizing? I’d better be careful once the animal uprising starts….
“Slylock arrives at the bar, where a human was beaten to a pulp by Bruno Bear. Bruno had ordered a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey Whiskey and the human said ‘Oh, because you’re a bear?’ what clears Bruno Bear of all charges?”
Answer: Bruno is innocent because the human is clearly racist and deserved to be beaten up, once his bones heal he’ll be arrested and trialed for his crimes.
MW: “You sound terrible.” Usually thought balloons are in the third person. Is Stell one of Mary’s multiple personalities? Makes sense if you believe Charterstone is an asylum and all the characters are patients.
Doctor to nurse; “Patient 2143’s goldfish died. Up his Thorazine.”
Luann: ‘Bosslady’? ‘BOSSLADY’??? For crying out loud, Karen Evans, just put Dez in a kerchief and have her start singing ‘Shortnin’ Bread’ already! Do you also imagine Bets sounding like Butterfly McQueen when she talks?
JP: Yeah, Neddy’s been a dunce throughout this, and double yeah, DRAMA! and all, but I feel genuinely uncomfortable that this is the first time we’ve seen this character and it looks like he’s about to start whaling on these two stupid, but still innocent, women while mama Diane Keaton looks on approvingly.
MW: ‘Y-yes… I-I’m trapped in the walk-in freezer, l-like in that one episode of ‘I Love Lucy’! C-can you come l-let me out, pl-please?’
Sometimes you have to appreciate how some comics are just a job that you have to churn out by a deadline when the artist has blank pages being spit out by the, sure, we’ll accept that’s a printer. A few lines on the papers to indicate something is actually being printed? That’s precious golf time!
Buxley’s giant-pearl necklace reminds me of Wilma Flintstone.
Ah, there it is.
RMMD-We all know it’s going to be Mud Mountain.
MW-“You sound terrible,” Mary says trying hard to hide her obvious delight.
FC-Jeffy wants to watch the world burn.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I believe it’s termed Indiana University of Pennsylvania, known to the locals as IUP. Curiously enough, there is also a California, Pennsylvania which used to house a California University of Pennsylvania until recently, when it was restyled Pennsylvania Western University–a move which was roundly denounced by the American Obfuscation Society
BB — I was unaware that Beetle was now a member of the Camp Swampy IT department
RMMD: Isn’t Mud busy with his seminars? Or his cartoon? Or whatever else he’s gotten involved in during Beatty’s desperate attempts not to feature medical plots in a medical comic?
JP: These characters go from zero to one hundred in a millisecond. It’s like reading a Chick tract.
BB – “Oh my god! It’s turned into a train engine!”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Pennsylvania also has a “California University” located in California, PA.
@and address: Go away troll.
love is... not having a clue what a love seat is.
CS: Would somebody please light Les Moore on fire already?
Two comments on today’s Plugger cosplay. First, the bear does not have the body type to pull of cosplaying the Jay Garrick-era Flash, and that peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn’t helping. Second, the Jay Garrick-era Flash has wings on his helmet, not glued to the side of his forehead. C for effort, F for overall effect.
Beetle Bailey – With Dilbert booted from every proper newspaper due to Scott Adams’ racist rants, Beetle Bailey is hoping to divert the “old libertarian IT guy” attention from old white guy political grievances toward imagined heroism of saving a tech illiterate blonde. Sadly, it will probably work, and HR can’t technically write you up again for posting “IT humor” no matter the sexual undertones.
Pluggers – Pluggers may not be with pop-culture, but they are aware of it, including The Bear being about chefs. Pluggers themselves don’t like food that requires for than three ingredients to make. Granted, they also consider canned pasta or microwave meals one ingredients, since ingredient is just a proxy for the amount of effort involved.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
GT: “NOK NOK”?! So that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?
MW: Sadly, if those muffins were even slightly brown, they’d have to leave Charterstone.
Crankshaft-Join us tomorrow as Lillian and Ed are at the bottom of the stairs.
BB: I’m trying to make this funny by imagining “Yakety Sax” played over the second panel, but some things even “Yakety Sax” can’t help.
Pluggers eat like five year olds.
Pluggers: Reading this is the worst possible time for me to be eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
@Liam: Seriously, this overlong story could have been written better by actual high schoolers than Batiuk being self-congratulatory about how he’s opposed to censorship using the most obvious book about it. God help us is anyone gives him the CliffsNotes to The Crucible and he realizes the use of metaphor
BB/Pluggers: Mashup: Closeup of Miss Buxley in Panel 2 of BB, followed by Plugger.
JP/DT: Can we get Mike Curtis to wrap this up, with Declan in jail for scamming, and move on into Halloween?
Is that Plugger supposed to be Tim Walz? because that would explain a lot.
Pluggers use aspic.
RMMD: Do you suppose Rene Belluso is trying to pass himself off as a guitarist these days?
JP: “No, I’m not harassing your Mom. Well, no more than I go around harassing everyone else. OK, I’m harassing your Mom.”
Pluggers – He makes a sandwich when he wants a formal meal. Usually he just eats the peanut butter and jelly right out of the jars. Sometimes he uses a spoon.
Mary Worth – Did Mary’s meddlesense tell her to call Estelle? Of course, there are only a few people she foists the muffins on. Iris lives elsewhere; Saul and Eva are walking their good dogs, and Keith isn’t around either. Wilbur is on a temporary Do Not Feed list because Mary saw him putting mayonnaise on the last muffins she gave him.
6Chix – There’s a classic cartoon that answers that question.
Rex Morgan – I’m starting to hate Wanda’s beehive hairdo even more than I hate June’s hairdo. The white thing above her bangs is what makes it so awful. Unless she plans to join the B-52s, she should ditch the beehive.
Andertoons – Great job, Sid! Aardvarks must be difficult to cast, and you (or your intern) found them a sophisticated restaurant scene.
I like how the female is identified by eyelashes and a necklace.
@allangary:
There’s a Jersey Shore, PA as well.
@Lord Flatulence: It looks like someone corrected the error. I wonder if the criticisms have merit.
@Fathom Haunt: Re Crankshaft – I hope that Lillian copies Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles and holds a gun to her own head. “Go away or the loathsome hag gets it!”
“Won’t someone help that poor woman?”
C’shaft: There’s a certain propositional fallacy at work here (ie. banned books must be objectionable because if they weren’t objectionable they wouldn’t be banned) that in a better writer might have worked as satire, rather than standing as evidence that they don’t understand their antagonists even on the most superficial strawman level.
DT: “Besides, you think I want this crummy town? Next time try offering something like Singapore, or Dubai.”
Dustin: I would not have thought the current state of Dustin is an improvement over its early installments, and yet here the evidence is before my eyes.
GT: Geez, even Rex Morgan would have given a more detailed cardiac rehab plan than “maybe go easy on the coaching for a while, huh?”
HotC: Oh please, Heart, 1.) I know boys in choir tend to be in short supply, but it can’t be so bad that the kid who’s just there for the easy A has any chance of landing a solo, 2.) you’re in middle school, ten to one the duet is just another rendition of “Summer Nights.”
Luann: Sorry, Karen, you don’t get to slut shame your current strawman cheerleader for a week and expect a little “yay girlbosses!” to make it okay.
MW: Mary’s words express concern but her expression says “Cha-CHING! I’ve hit the meddling jackpot!”
Phantom: This, on the other hand, is vastly improved with the addition of “Yackety Sax.”
RMMD: Yes, if there’s one thing this world is short on its unemployed/underemployed musicians who don’t have the time for a two week understudy guitar gig.
The Peanut Butter is a trick to get the dog Plugger to swallow pills. The only other time he gets to have Peanut Butter or Jelly is when he licks it off the Yarbles of another Plugger.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
@But What Do I Know?:
@allangary:
California, Pa. happens to be my dad’s hometown so I’m familiar with the fact of a California University being there. It was originally California State Teacher’s College then as it grew it became California State University. Now it’s, as pointed out earlier, Pennsylvania Western University of California. BTW: Their sportsball teams are the Vulcans, named for the Roman god and not the fictional alien race, though I wonder how many Trekkies show up to their games thinking they are.
Beetle Bailey: For years, we’ve wondered why Miss Buxley, who could date anyone in or around this Army base, is interested in Beetle, a private who is neither tall, fit, handsome, or ambitious. Now we notice that when she sees him during the day, it’s because he’s assigned to mop her office. Man, if this dude doesn’t have a military-grade rocket in his pants, I don’t know what we’re doing here.
@TheDiva:
“Pluggers eat like five year olds.”
I wanted to give this Plugger reader a fair chance, since there are a lot of food deserts where people don’t have access to food outside of what Dollar General has to offer. But I checked Google Maps and Indiana, Pennsylvania has a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Giant Eagle, several other well-stocked supermarkets, and even a farmer’s market.
Nope, some people have better access to a variety of foods than 99% of humans in the history of the species and take pride and base their identity on laziness and lack of culinary ambition. Honestly, if you live in an area that still has a daily newspaper that publishes Pluggers, you can eat far better than the comic’s reader submissions makes it seem.
@Liam: FC – FC always kind’a had Village of the Damned vibe….
@Ettorre: I checked on Wikipedia and “Indiana, Pennsylvania” is a real place
As a native Hoosier, I was always annoyed that my state didn’t take retaliatory action by naming one of its burgs Pennsylvania, Indiana. Shots fired, shots fired back, you know.
What’s with the Right-wing strawman posts about Pluggers (and Family Circus for that matter)? It’s not funny. It’s just weird.
@jroggs:
#34. JP:. Have sympathy, jroggs! Poor Aiden, with all his disorders, has been waiting alone in the barren green room for 15 MINUTES with nothing to entertain him but a small dish of Necco candies from last Halloween. Man, is he unhappy!
Either that, or Sid got Rex a gig he can findlly sink his teeth into.
Pluggers – A plugger short-order cook is not a short-order cook who’s a plugger; it’s a short-order cook who cooks for pluggers. They sigh a lot.
RMMD: “So, who then?” ~~~~~
Wanda attempted to maintain her composure as she felt her heartbeat quicken, tried to breath normally as she waited for Truck’s answer. She’d been thinking a lot about Fergus lately, ever since Truck had that childish temper tantrum over his damned “trigger finger.” LIke it was the end of his “career” Haha.
Fergus wouldn’t have reacted like that – he would have acted like a MAN and done something about it pronto. Not go sit and whine on a park bench, for God’s sake. And now Truck’s gonna ask him to play guitar while he “sings” at those pity-gigs Buck has set up for him… Tuesday night at the VFW hall, and after the mid-month potluck at the Lutheran Church. Fergus will probably be too busy for such small-time jobs. But maybe… he seems to genuinely want to befriend Truck..,, and maybe… does that have anything to do with me?
Wanda remembered when he and Truck were working together on a song at the diner – how his firm, flexible fingers lovingly caressed the strings, making his guitar sing with joy and passion as he gave her that glance, and then built to a frenzied crescendo as the sound made the whole building seem to….
~~~~ “You ok, Wanda? You look a little flushed. Are you havin’ one of them hot flash things?”
MW: “To the Meddlemobile, Robin!”
@pugfuggly:
And the word PRINT written on it crayon. (Not shown.)
Don Abundio, translated:
“Ready to play, Don Abundio?”
“Not yet!”
“I’m waiting for my new caddy”
“Maybe you won’t cheat quite so much with your mom here to keep an eye on you!”
Pluggers – I’m betting Dolly likes this guy too.
@Philip:
Honestly, if you live in an area that still has a daily newspaper that publishes Pluggers, you can eat far better than the comic’s reader submissions makes it seem.
OK, but if we’re getting into socioeconomic factors, we have to talk about the benjamins. I have to assume there are a number of Pluggers living at or below the poverty level. For them, a PBJ is staple food. Filling, cheap, and reasonably shelf-stable. I mean, you can go to the Hostess outlet next to the Dollar General for a loaf of day old bread for maybe a dollar? If you get a box from the local food pantry, there’s almost sure to be a jar of peanut butter in there. So we’re not just making fun of old fatties. We’re also ribbing the poor!
(I have no problem with any of those folks, and I also love a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But I think Dollar General is kind of a plague.)
@Anonymous: What’s with the Right-wing strawman posts about Pluggers ….? It’s not funny. It’s just weird.
@Hibbleton: A Plugger stays true to his radical 60’s roots by not cutting his sandwich in half. “Up yours!, Emily Post.”
@Jeff: Is that Plugger supposed to be Tim Walz? because that would explain a lot.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the bear looks like Walz. But, yeah, if Walz’s existence on this earth proves anything that should have been obvious years to anyone whose ever been to MN or VT, it’s that Pluggers are just as likely to be on the left as on the right.
With than in mind, maybe it’s time for Josh to stop working out his issues having a Western New York, culturally midwestern, family. His Plugger commentary always comes off as more angry and shrill than funny.
Beetle Bailey-How many pictures of her “Volvo” is Ms. Buxley printing out?
BB: This comic bolsters the message of Sunday’s Six Chix, in which copier repair technicians are classified as heroes.
Why is everyone calling the manimal in Pluggers a bear? That’s a dog. The bear has beadier eyes and round ears under his everpresent gimme cap.
Beetle Bailey-Beetle knows how that machine feels. Ms. Buxley pushes his button and he doesn’t stop either.
@Baja Gaijin: I had to look it up to be sure, but that’s not Earl Houndstooth, the dog that’s married to the chicken. The ears are different. I didn’t realize that there is more than one dog male plugger.
@I speak Jive: Make that male dog plugger.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Isn’t that in de Annapolis?
Beetle Bailey – The drawing of Ms Buxley is terrible. I wouldn’t expect Brooke McEldowney levels of loving detail, but it should be better than that half assed attempt is.
MW: Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help wondering if Mary ever washed her hands before she put them all over those muffins.
@Just John: #77: There’s also a Wyoming, Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre.
@Don’t worry about it: Don’t forget Moon and Mars are just outside of Pittsburgh.
@I speak Jive: She’s knock-kneed. It’s not a sexy look.
Baldo: Not sure why the bully is targeting Cruz, who has about a hundred pounds on him. You cross Cruz, Cruz will SIT on you.
JP: Red hair and beard; is Manley basing Aiden on Josh? We need better perspective to see how tall he really is, but he may be standing in the conversation pit.
Neddy’s eyes are leaking. Hay fever season has arrived in Cucamonga.
@But What Do I Know?: I’ve always considered it a great loss to the world that the University of Maryland University College [sic] was renamed University of Maryland Global Campus.
@Baja Gaijin: @I speak Jive: re Pluggers: Yes, that’s a dog who appears occasionally when they need a senior Plugger. I’m not sure he has a name. I usually think of him as Plugger Gramps.
@Arabella: There’s also an older female dog Plugger. I have gotten the idea sometimes that she may be Earl’s mom. Which raises the question about her relationship with her daughter-in-law. Does she think that Earl “married down” by wedding a chicken? And does Henrietta think her mother-in-law is a bitch? Not that I think too much about these things.
@Arabella: No, he would have married down if he married a duck.
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: Groan!
@Little Guy: “Can we get Mike Curtis to wrap this up….and move on into Halloween?”
I could certainly stand a month of Ronnie and Neddy costumed as a Sexy Whatever and a Sexy Whatever. I think Manley owes us at least that much.
Pluggers-Is this supposed to be some sort of critique on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
Hi and Lois-Lois is secretly hoping that a limb breaks and crushes Trixie.
@Ettorre: BB: Printers have always sucked, and never work right, so this is more a universal truth than generational.
@Liam: Long live the PB&J!
@John Plugger Mellencamp: “Western New York, culturally midwestern family?” I always assumed Josh’s background was of the landed gentry, if not the titled nobility. He has that air of noblesse oblige associated with high rank or birth.
CS: will this never end?
@Anonymous: I see what you did there
MW: “Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational meddle!”
@Arabella: Mother-in-law thinks that Earl is henpecked.
MW – The Meddler is once again all smiles and tickled pink at someone else’s pain and suffering. Mary is Satan.
FC: Jeffy! Quit wishing people into the cornfield!
MW: It had been a few days since Karen and June had discussed the trajectory of the story. June sat at the kitchen counter, sipping her coffee-and-whiskey, as a joint smouldered within easy reach. She glanced over the comics page as Karen shuffled in, and sat up straight as she spied the day’s published Mary Worth strip.
“Wait! What artwork is THIS?” she asked, her voice rising in alarm. “This isn’t what I gave you! Did you go out and get a new artist to replace ME?”
“No, of course not,” Karen replied, smiling. “I used some of your old stuff so I could try out your idea of having Carlos discover Mary on her kitchen floor, suffering from a broken hip.”
“But this shows Estelle at the karaoke bar…!”
“I know! I thought it would add to the tension if it takes time for Carlos to discover Mary crumpled on the floor.”
“But—do the readers even KNOW that Mary broke her hip?”
“Not yet. All they see now is everyone acting normally. Nobody at Charterstone knows that Mary has broken her hip and has been lying helplessly on her kitchen floor all this time.”
“But what happens to the story?”
“June, this IS the story, now, only nobody knows it yet.”
June considered the blunt in the ashtray, but left it where it was. “Karen, what happened?”
“June, this is absolute genius. NOTHING happened, that readers know about, yet. Life goes on as normal. We can have anything happen! Then, when we decide, we show today’s artwork showing Mary’s hand holding the muffin—a close-up of the same art—only we turn it sideways so it looks like Mary is on the floor, still holding the muffin!”
“But…”
“No, no, hear me out! Instead of square borders, everything goes to scallops, and it’s a flash-back!”
June looked at the hand holding the muffin, her frown slowly clearing as she began to smile.
“Well, gosh! we could keep this going for…I don’t know, at LEAST until the holidays!”
“Yes, and in the meantime, we check out that cruise you’ve been wanting us to take!”
@Arabella: #101: There’s also another senior plugger man-dog with a bushy, white mustache. We refer to him as the Wilford Brimley plugger.
@jroggs:
Without having read today’s Blondie yet, as soon as I saw your comment I thought, “It must be the pastry chef.”
MW: What’s this? We finally hear Stell speak without her using “sob” as punctuation?
Phantom: Wait, is the Beast Wars Transformer running back to the rover because DePaul thinks the “mind” of Avarice can only be in one place at a time, and it’s got to plug in to transfer it back? Because that wouldn’t be the absolute stupidest thing to happen in this story, but not for want of trying.
(Also, with Stripey referring to it as “the rover”, I’ve just realised that Avarice’s stupid name is probably meant to be in imitation of NASA naming Mars rovers after more positive emotions that inspire space exploration, and I think that actually makes it worse.)
RMMD: The suspense is killing me. Is Truck going to say it’s Fergus tomorrow, or is Beatty going to string this out even longer before Truck says it’s Fergus?
S4th: The positioning of hyphens suggests that Ted is not going to store these books in the back of the hall closet, but in the closet at the back of the hall. How many closets does the Forths’ hall have?
SH: I’ve a sinking feeling this is a metaphor, and it’s going to be one of those situations where I agree with what the writer is trying to say, but think he’s completely screwed up actually saying it.
If you make a PB&J with two frosted Pop-Tarts™ instead of bread….then you might be a Plugger.
@MKay: @TheDiva: Cardiac event? We haven’t actually been told what’s wrong with Gil, but based on the last strip we saw before his near-death experience (last Thursday), I’m guessing he was diagnosed with a severe case of “inexplicably trampled by his own players”. (Well, I say “inexplicably”. Maybe the only inexplicable bit is that they seemed to be aiming for Assistant Coach Emmett, rather than Gil himself.)
@Arabella: There’s also an older female bear Plugger who is definitely meant to be Andy’s mom, and who has sometimes been presented as disapproving of Shelia, who is, after all, guilty of such un-Pluggerlike behaviour as having an office job and wanting to go to a nice restaurant once in a while.
Beat up Bailey:”Beat up! The printer got aroused when I Xeroxed™ my upper frontals for you! Please see to it that each of your platoon mates get a copy, won’t you?”
Beetle Bailey-“Lucky printer,” Beetle thinks to himself, “I was pushing her button last night and nothing happened.”
Hope Sid can put that deal together for Stale and Tommie’s deer to co-star as The Sob and Bleat Sisters.
Clearly a metaphor for Beetle and Buxley’s relationship. She doesn’t like it when he’s unresponsive and also doesn’t like it when he’s turned on and “chugging.” She wants it once a week, at her command, and that’s it.
Gil Huh?: “I like it, but A-Ha really should’ve smoked more in that video. It was the 80s. Everybody smoked. Where was the Marlboro dangling from the lead singer’s mouth? Why has he never come to my office with cancer symptoms? Show me a smoker video, dammit!”
Why is this strip so confusing? Who’s that girl with the mole? Why does Keri suddenly have an eating disorder? Is that ever coming up again, like Keri’s lunch? And I suppose Gil isn’t from the MTV generation. Is he over sixty years old? Inquiring minds want to know.
And then I learned how quickly I could make my father lose it when he turned around and screamed that my distractions were threatening to turn me into Mariska Hargitay if I asked, “Are we at the Henry Ford yet?” one more time.
AAGGGHHHH: Strolling through the 9 Chickweed Lane park.
WuMo Spanish to English.
BB: look, I’m a plugged but i I could diagnose the problem and correct it and I’m not particularly computer literate.
@GarrisonSkunk: If you make a PB&J with two frosted Pop-Tarts™ instead of bread….then you might be a Plugger.
___________________________________________________________
Now that’s a cause I can get behind!
@Lord Flatulence: It is always better to have Lord Flatulence behind you, than to be behind Lord Flatulence.
@134 Peanut Gallery:
But only if the wind is not blowing to your back.
Beetle Bailey: Is the ‘joke’ really that Miss Buxley made the copier ejaculate?
While she waves her arms in the air in horror?
I mean, I guess the writers know their audience, and all, but that’s a very specific fetish.
(The alternative is that the copier is vomiting paper – and that’s an even more specific fetish, that I really don’t even want to think about.)
BB: The tiny copier looks like a dais when you first look at it, making me wonder at first what Miss Buxley was running for.
C-Shaft: What these fools don’t know is that being persecuted by strawmen is Lillian’s kink. (Sincere apologies for putting “Lillian” and “kink” in the same sentence.)
Curtis: Someone’s in training for the Frivolous Lawsuit Olympics, I guess. It’s a competitive field.
DT: “…but they weren’t so tough under questioning.” Now all the police brutality has to happen off-panel. It’s called “plausible deniability.”
Dustin: Dustdad does have extensive knowledge of what a wedgie is, and I can’t say I’m surprised.
GT: If the doctors are letting Gil go the next day that would seem to indicate that he didn’t have a full on heart attack. Jury’s still out on what he did have. Hypertension? Panic attack? Overwhelming nostalgia for Norwegian synthpop?
JP: Chris Evans here is coming off a little paranoid, but considering that Neddy is about to explain that she’s Declan’s fiancé despite the apparent lack of an engagement ring, and considering…everything else about Neddy, maybe he’s just exhibiting foresight.
Luann: Just shuddered at the thought that they might do an animated Luann with an AI Rue McLanahan providing Stef’s voice.
MW: Seems like Mary had enough blueberry muffins on hand so she decided to make a few batches of…olive? It also looks like she’s preparing to choke the life out of one, but that won’t solve the problem.
@Peanut Gallery: Sound advice.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: Olive muffins…..could work.
Cut way back on the sugar, add an interesting herb like dill or rosemary, maybe smoked Spanish paprika instead, serve with room temperature Taleggio — or Gorgonzola? — and a coup of chilled Manzanilla.
I’ll get back to you.
@TheDiva: “BB: I’m trying to make this funny by imagining “Yakety Sax” played over the second panel, but some things even “Yakety Sax” can’t help.”
It helps a little. (Be sure to unmute the player!)
@GarrisonSkunk:
#122. PLUGGER S Dang Garrison, that sounds tasty,! Thanks, I’ll pick up some Pop Tarts in morning.
@Ukulele Ike:Maybe use them to make a sandwich with Spanish ham…
@141 Flipper:
That is pure class!
@GarrisonSkunk: s/Plugger/Geniuis
@Pozzo: I was about to jump in and point that out but then I remembered ctrl+F exists and found out someone already had.
@Ukulele Ike: Sounds like it would work better as a scone, but I wish you luck.
@Guillermo el chiclero: There’s also a Wyoming, Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre.
According to a map I remember from a 1970s National Lampoon, there is an Indianapolis, Missouri, but I never researched this and now I have my doubts.
GT: Note that Gil has a firm grip on the bartendress’ hand tightly pressed over his groin. Way to play through the pain, Gil!
@Ukulele Ike: #140: My HEB grocery store bakery used to have black olive bread and bagels so yeah, olive muffins could definitely work.
@Guillermo el chiclero: My Italian deli has the olive bread right next to the prosciutto bread (aka “lard bread”).
@Artist formerly known as Ben: My coffee shops/patisseries sell savory scones — cheddar/dill, cheddar/chive — how exactly is a muffin different than a scone? And don’t even start on crumpets.
GA: I see that no Mudge has yet wasted precious and irreplaceable moments of a limited human lifetime by pointing out that ideally, very young kittens are supposed to be cared for solely by their mum and not handled by humans until they are two weeks old, and that the exceptions to that general rule should definitely not include handling by three little weirdos who think they are the Magi. So unless two weeks have flown by since we last saw the kittens, Gertie implying that the kittens can be handled as soon as the nursing is over is just plain wrong. But what’s far more wrong is that Mee-Meow appears to be on some insanely-strong stimulant, possibly meth. It might be time to call Kitten Protection Services.
Pluggers actually do subscribe to a streaming service, but it’s just sitting beside the river hoping to catch trout.
Frazz: the proles disgust Frazz. Why can’t they act right?
Beetle Bailey: Speaking of “crudely drawn,” how about that printer? If Miss Buxley hadn’t mentioned pressing the “print button” (which isn’t a feature on any printer that I’ve encountered) and it wasn’t spitting out paper, I might have to conclude that it was some sort of trash receptacle.
Pluggers: A Google search for “gourmet peanut butter and jelly” shows that even the supposedly humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn’t immune from elitist modification, so Pluggers needs to try harder to find a food recipe for the everyman.