Friday is for failure and indignity
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The Lockhorns, 10/24/25
Loretta has, presumably, been jogging for some time with her friend acquaintance who we are definitely never going to see again, and is only now passing by her husband, who has been sitting on that bench staring contemplatively into space for who knows how long. Because absolutely nothing the Lockhorns do is left to chance, especially when it comes to attempting to passive-aggressively destroy one another emotionally, we must assume that she carefully planned both her route and her conversational cadence so that this little bon mot would drop just as she was getting close enough for Leroy to hear it.
Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/24/25
I’m a normal person, so I do almost all my shopping either online or in a store, but some people do it over the phone, I guess? Maybe they’re all old and increasingly senile and the person on the other end has to say “Shopping…” every once in a while, just to remind them what they’re doing.
Pluggers, 10/24/25
Gah, pathetic, there’s no joke or wordplay or anything here, it’s literally just “Pluggers continue to engage in a traditional cultural/aesthetic practice, unlike most people, who have abandoned it or never knew about it in the first place.” They didn’t even put a plugger in the cartoon! I’d like to think they all refused to participate in such a half-assed non-gag.
Crankshaft, 10/24/25
I love how depressed this guy looks in the final panel. He doesn’t want to say this shit any more than you want to listen to it!
89 replies to “Friday is for failure and indignity”
Crankshaft:
“We’ll make a formal written demand for whatever documentation the district has about the dangers of glitter while we’re in the vestibule of the school. This is what is known under the law as a ‘FOYER‘ request!”
Lay off, Loretta. Leroy has finally found something he’s good at: Niksen, the Dutch art of ‘doing nothing.’
Lockhorns: Loretta and Leroy have the exact same shapes, so I’m not sure why she’s insulting him about his sedentary living. When your bodies are 90 percent bile, apparently exercise doesn’t make any difference.
Mother Goose and Grimm: This totally has the feel of a gag that the strip’s writer sprang in real life on some hapless overworked clerk when billed for something, and then decided it was too good not to share.
Crankshaft-Uh Marley and Scrooge were creditors not lawyers.
Lockhorns-“Yeah well I would have money if you didn’t spend all of mine,” Leroy yells.
MW-“Jeff, what did I say about your hand on my shoulder?”
RMMD-Thai good. You like shirt?
MW: Today’s stilted conversation make way more sense once you realize that Mary and Jeff are talking about the challenges of his having a small penis, ED, and Peyronies.
Lockhorns:
“I say this as we’re running by so that I can ‘jog’ Leroy’s memory about it!”
Mother Goose looks so affronted when asked what credit card she would like to use. “As a mythical creature of nursery rhymedom I should not be forced to participate in the modern economy! Isn’t it enough that I consented to contact you through this 1970s landline?”
MW: oh no…they’ve started a trite, stupid cliche off.
RMMD: Augie is looking decidedly creepy. He’s going to tell Summer the book will be published but it will need an investment for printing costs. Could she help?
Lhs: Ha, it’s funny because they’re out of money and living in the park! Am I getting that right?
MGG: Since the ascendency of internet phishing scams, I feel like phone scammers just aren’t putting in the effort anymore.
You’re a plugger if you put doilies on your chairbacks put continue to scratch the wall like a feral animal, like the walking contradiction that you are.
Cshaft: Look at Ed’s face in that last panel: I think that he’s finally realizing that this has all been one long sarcastic response, and that this lawyer probably took this meeting on a dare from his other parters.
Pluggers:
If Louis Armstrong were to sit in that chair, would he say ‘Hello, Doily!’ ?”
Pluggers: John Stettler misspelled antimacassar six times before settling on “doily” for his submission.
Looks like Dustin’s dad got relegated to performing bad punmanship with Crankshaft. Worst crossover in comics history.
MW:
This exposition of drawn-out banter is practically a Seinfeldian “show about nothing.”
Phantom: I’ve noticed that Stripeybutt is cramming all of these coldcocked guards into the same cell. What’s to keep them all from rushing him when he opens the cell door to put the new guy in?
Dustin: Ed Kudlick is a selfish fat pig # 2748.
@BigTed: This sent me on a quick archive check; while the willowy ladies Leroy lusts after are on an extreme, most of the Lockhorns bystanders are noticeably less squat than our heroes. Loretta’s power-walking partner is one of the most Lockhorniform one’s we’ve seen.
Did Loretta take up exercise because she wants to outlive Leroy and spend her final years no longer married to him? Or does she only want to rub on his face how healthier and fitter than him she is, but after he drops dead she will commit suicide, because this toxic relationship is her entire existence and she cannot live without him?
MW: Interesting, how few of these “extraordinary ” people Jeff actually meets. Mustn’t look behind the curtain!
PLUGGERS: No way! I’m a Plugger and the last home I saw antimacassars in was MY grandma’s.
FC: Careful, Billy. HTT Grandma is going to pull out some dirty dollar bills from where they were deposited after a night of lap dancing.
Ed thinks “Ooh, this guy’s good,” while filing that pun away for later use.
MG&G: To quote today’s Baldo: “Bad jokes… no charge.”
The point of doilies is practical: preventing hair products from staining the chair. But Pluggers are bald, so it’s another ritual long outliving its usefulness
PLUGGERS: You’re a Plugger if you know what Macassar oil is and why it necessitated the dreadful practice of placing doilies on the backs of chairs and sofas.
CS: The lawyer has already concluded that Crankshaft can’t afford his $10,000 retainer, and is now just fucking with him.
LH: There’s no way that Loretta has been jogging with a friend for all this time. She’s been hiding behind a tree, waiting for a jogger to come by, all so she could mock Leroy, who sits on the nearby bench, worrying about how he’s going to pay the mortgage.
P: Well, it finally happened. The combination of sedentary lifestyle, refusal to acknowledge modern medicine, and violent criminal behavior has caused the last of the Pluggers to go extinct. All that remains is their anachronistic cultural artifacts.
@Liam: The traditional gag name for a law firm would be Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, as established in the Three Stooges precedent.
MW: Dr. Jeff’s yacht grows larger with each appearance. I think it’s reached Navy destroyer status at this point.
Crankshaft: Breaking out the Scrooge puns on October 24th has me worried that this story arc is going to run for the next two months. Can we just fast forward to the bit where a sinister ghost shows Crank his death? (Wait, didn’t that already unironically happen?)
The Lockhorns: Loretta’s got no leg to stand on. The only cising she does is prancer-.
Pluggers – The plugger lifestyle poses a painful dilemma: They’ll have no truck with that newfangled online shopping. But they want to keep using macassar oil, and the only place you can buy it is online!
Don Abundio, translated:
“And now you’ve had the grand tour of my entire house”
“Wow! This place is like a giant maze!”
“Well, gotta run…”
“But I’m sure you can find your way out!”
Shlockhorns – I wonder how Loretta would look if she didn’t take such great care of herself….
MG&G – Please put it on my children’s account…you know, right under the national debt….
Pluggers – You’re a plugger if you use doilies to cover grease, piss and shit stains….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Mother Goose gets Grimm when the old bird discovers that she’s spent half an hour getting increasingly sarcastic and passive-aggressive with a robocall created by her dog.
Pluggers: Oh, come on! Everybody knows that Pluggers use Hoyer lift slings on the back of their recliners!
MW – Mary and Jeff have a side hustle writing fortune cookies and have found that they do their best work when they’re out at sea.
Crankshaft – President Merkin Muffley from Dr. Strangelove has had to take some truly awful gigs since Peter Sellers died.
When I saw the title “failure and indignity,” I was expecting Mary Worth. We’re at the stage in the wrapup where Jeff is verbally groveling and Mary still shoots down his hopes of getting near first base.
Plugger chairs don’t need doilies, they need Febreeze.
Crankshaft: Why? Just…why? Why aren’t the rules of the bus company sufficient to enforce a glitter ban? Why does Crankshaft, rather than the company, feel like he has to sue the school district? Why are they suing at all? Why is the lawyer misapplying a Medicaid entitlement on the reduction of hemorrhoids? These are all questions I’ll never have the answer to, because I don’t read Crankshaft. What a stroke of luck!
@Liam: Thank you re: Scrooge and Marley’s profession; different kind of avarice entirely (a good modern equivalent would be a paycheck advance loan company). Can’t Batiuk just use Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe like all outdated humorists?
@Schroduck: I’m not sure, but there was an It’s a Wonderful Life riff where, predictably, everyone was happy and successful in Crankshaft’s absence. I don’t recall what the denouement was; probably he decided to stay alive out of sheer spite.
C’shaft: You would think “Boy, glitter gets everywhere and that sure is annoying!” couldn’t be stretched to a week’s worth of strips, but Tom Batiuk is a black hole of humor and anything caught in his gravitational field gets spaghettified.
MG&G: “Shopping” isn’t saying what Ma Goose is doing; she’s talking to Bradley Shopping, her regular high-class male escort.
Incorrect, Mother Goose and Grimm. She’s a goose. The correct punchline is, “Put it on my bill.” You fail at humor.
MW I am actually kind of impressed by how they keep slightly varying the platitudes, never quite repeating, never increasing the information content of the conversation. It’s so deliberately bland you’d think they were a pair of spies having an extremely coded conversation, where each pause and slight change in the platutide-o-rama indicates something else about the nuclear future of the Middle East
JP “and after she said – in a far too emotionally complex manner for her age – that her grandparents were never straight with her – wait! Is she reverting to age-appropriate behaviour? Because I only agreed to take care of her when I thought I was dealing with a precocious kindergartner who would actually help me organize my life!”
FC hey! one of the Keane kids has actually absorbed the concept of monetary denominations
CS: Getting an “F” from your educator fandom. Jarndyce. Or the Vaudevillian version, but not what you thought was clever.
FC: “…And you got any pesos for Daddy? He says they don’t take dollars at the Donkey show.”
Dustin: I can’t tell if the co-worker looks surprised because she thought Dustdad would actually listen to his wife’s advice, or because she thought he might actually let her have one of the donuts instead of shoving both of them in his mouth so he can proudly proclaim his contempt for his spouse’s healthy eating habits while spraying crumbs everywhere. Either way, she’s clearly new at the office.
Luann: This is what happens when Luann tries to think.
MW: Olive is a lot of things, but absolutely nothing about her says “normal teenager.”
Pluggers – I know it’s just “shading”, but that chair looks nasty. You know it’s being held together with pet hair, snack crumbs and decades-old farts.
Did you know that antimacassars are called that because there used to be some greasy hair oil called “macassar,” which gunked up everyone’s upholstery? Do you suppose pluggers are still using it? There’s no plugger in the picture, so I can’t tell if it’s the dog-man or the bear-man or the rhino-man — the former two at least have fur — but fur oil, ick?
The Lockhorns: It pains me to admit it, but I think I’ve figured Leroy and Loretta out. Most of their public assaults on each other’s dignity are staged. Leroy’s clearing posing here, just sitting there while Loretta orbits him, insulting his sloth to friends, acquaintances, and random passers-by, probably.
“It’s their kink” is way too simple an explanation for what’s happening here. Sure, that’s how it started, but the Lockhorns haven’t been intimate with anyone in years or possibly decades. Now, it’s… how they live, how they pass the time. They’re immortal, unfeeling things, and they’re not into anything. It’s more like the law of gravity. They denigrate each other in public simply because it’s what they do, not to make anyone feel anything.
Crankshaft: In the first panel the guy behind the desk is already depressed. “Oh no,” he is thinking, “I have to use this idiotic firm name that both reverses Scrooge and Marley and adds some stupid extra name, clearly to try to dodge copyright infringement. I’m a lawyer, shouldn’t I know that A Christmas Carol has been in public domain for half a century? Curse you Tom Batiuk for making me sit here and spew this garbage.”
Huh. There are two words that might be the reason my comment went in the pending approval queue and I’m curious which one or both it is.
Crankshaft : Yeah, how dare those kids expose Crankshaft to contaminated air, and potentially compromise his breathing like that!?
…This strip is lucky that the “Crankshaft laughs as he covers all of Ohio in deadly smog because he can’t use a BBQ properly” ran two years ago (so everyone’s forgotten about it), rather than being this summer’s storyline…
@MKay:
@Hibbleton:
On this site I expect people to have words like antimacassar holstered up and ready to go with absolutely no forewarning, and you did not disappoint.
Crank: “There already is a school bus ban on Glitter… and within a five hundred foot radius around the school. Oh wait, that’s Gary Glitter. My bad.”
@ValdVin: The comments here are noted for their cromulent word use.
Slowly, imperceptivity, the Plugger changed. Arms and legs locked into set positions and began to grow into to each other. Their arms puffed up as their head retracted. Their dress, bright and floral with a cute white collar, spread to cover all their flesh. They were no longer animal, but had evolved into their perfect resting state. The chair was warm, moist at times, and shuddered and moaned when you sat down, but you had to admit it was comfortable, plump and well-stuffed. A chair fit for a Plugger; a Plugger fit as a chair.
@TheDiva: Unless, we are heading to full blown Christmas Carol – and Crankshaft will be visited by three ghosts tonight. Past ghost is his old baseball manager – from the last time he was truly unequivocally happy, Present ghost – all of the other people he works with are happy with their happy warm families, Future ghost – after he is gone, his bus driver locker is empty and then reassigned; his family moves on and the only picture of him they keep is crowded out more and more by pet pictures.
Dustin: is there a comics law declaring no character can change? For instance why could Dustin not get tired of his useless life and try to change–start getting to interviews on time, accept an entry level job and work on improving himself. Perhaps he could take a shot at being ashamed of how useless his life is. Give him a girlfriend. I think it might be possible to mine these changes for humor.
@Professor Well Actually:
Hey, Dustin (the comic strip) has changed; it completely dropped the “Dustin is a substitute teacher at the local school” part. Yeah, that was the initial justification for why he’s constantly hanging around an elementary schoolkid. Now, he just hangs around with a small child constantly with no explanation (outside, maybe, the intent being subtle insinuation that Dustin is less smart and mature that said small child).
I could have sworn that I once posted here that Dustin SHOULD just go “You know what, I’m never getting a straight office job, I’m just going to fully devote myself to being a substitute teacher” (ie “I want to be a part-timer forever if it means I get to keep that job”) or something“Mr Billings, this is the umpteenth time I have had to inform you that malapropisms have no legally binding effect in this or any other court of law. Neither the Freedom from Inflammation Act, nor the Statute of Imitations, nor the even-more-than-usually-misconceived Fat Riot Act have any legal force or indeed existence. Case – once again – dismissed.”
MG&G: Today’s Mother Goose & Grimm answers a question I’ve never asked: How does a bird use a phone? And the answer is “not well.”
LH: Loretta knows that Leroy is contemplating ending it all, and that it’s only her spite that gives him the will to live. If that’s not love, then what is?
Seeing the empty chair, I was expecting the caption to be “you’re a Plugger if you’re dead.”
Luann: A common mistake is being made. Which is more “real” – a chair or the idea of a chair. In fact, both are real – they exist, and have meaning and effect on life. One is tangible (the physical chair) while the other is intangible BUT just as real – some would say more important because the idea of a chair opens up possibilities of other sitting options.
Crankshaft: The schoolboard fires back that in fact glitter can be useful in many practical ways; namely, solving crimes. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a65662249/glitter-solves-murder-california-crime/ So, Crankshaft if that is really your name, who are covering up for?
MW: Just when you thought the writing had reached a nadir, the audience realizes that Saturday will be the usual surf & turf for doctor Jeff and fish for Mary; Sunday will be a recap of their boat ride and meal and another quote before a new adventure starts. The realization that the whole point of the Olive adventures in NY and in the air was this line in the final panel from Mary, about just making do.
GT: Again, art is good and a solid run of “good days”. What is the secret of the girls team? Is it like The Secret History? Did the team secretly kill the old groundskeeper?
RMMD: Comic historians will look back on this time, and note that the creators were increasingly bored. They really got into roots-country music and later trying to write a murder mystery – anything by that boring medical stuff dealing with life, death, health, and illness.
Sally 4th: Wow, the writers may have pulled off a very difficult trick. When a strip / show ages, and the once cute little kid enters adolescence, many have tried to introduce a new little kid. Usually this goes over as well as Pouchy or Cousin Oliver, but it looks this may actually work.
@Anonymous: I think you answered your own question there. Lots of people make a living as an always available substitute teacher, often getting a whole year gig to cover a maternity leave or the like. Something like that would destroy the “Dustin is a horrible loser that even his loathsome family is justified in mocking” narrative that the creators of this bilge love so much.
‘Shaft – “It’s a pity, you know. Glitter lung actually causes cancer. Were this another time, another place, I might make every interaction from now until doomsday about cancer. Do you know about cancer? Why, I was just reading this book, ‘Lisa’s Story,’ by Les Moore. Terrible book, but it did at least talk a lot about cancer. Where was I? Oh right, cancer….”
@Liam: Somehow I initially read your last comment as Jeff’s response to Mary …
Mary: Jeff, what did I say about your hand on my shoulder?
Jeff: Thai good. You like shirt?
I would assume that Peak Antimacassar was when men favored pomade for their hair a century ago. They could have made a minor comeback during the Jheri Curl era. You’re a neo-Plugger if you still use Soul Glo.
Insanity Streak: Sperm tricks.
FG: Aura attacked by the mob? According to the Schkrade Playbook, Wolfang should have taken her hostage.
Meanwhile, back up in the Royal Box, Barin has been torn to pieces like Orpheus with the Maenads.
(Ooooooo, post 69? Okay, Adrane rises from her sickbed, flies into the arena, and sexes everybody to death.)
9CL: Not as bad as it could be, but it’s still an adult inferring sexual relations in a discussion with a child.
@MKay: That’s similar to my confusion about “dad rock.” To my way of thinking, that term should apply to pre-Beatles rock ‘n’ roll at the latest instead of 1970s classic rock. And “grandparent music” would be Sinatra and Crosby.
Mary Worth Spanish to English.
MW – “If we recognized our strengths more consciously, we’d use our abilities more fully!”
“We do the best we can with what we have.”
The doc keeps trying to tell Mary that he still finds her kinda hot and she’d be a perfectly suitable sex partner, but Mary just responds that she’s too old for that shit, so how about a peck on the cheek?
Genuine Pluggers don’t just stand for displaying tasteful antimacassars on their furniture. No, they take to Facebook to dogpile Pro-Macassar groups, march in demonstrations with signs reading “SLEEK HAIR = SATANIC! SAY NO TO MACASSAR MANIACS!” and disinherit grandkids who show signs of Macassar-liking tendencies, such as hair gel use.
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
JP: “Wait… I can say, ‘No’, and eventually, after hours of screaming and throwing a tantrum, she’ll be tired and fall asleep. I just need to outlast her….”
FLASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!: Too late, Flash invokes “Ming be trolling and that’s bait”.
@Voshkod: Ok, I had to make sure that I wasn’t the only one who saw that chair and thought “That chair looks like a plugger.”
Pluggers: Seeing an empty chair, I just assumed the plugger who owned it was dead. And that doesn’t seem that dark for this strip.
Frazz: Guess what everbody, with Halloween coming soon, that means we should be getting strips on Caulfield’s “witty” costume! Are we all excited?
Note: I purposely refuse to make a guess on his costume.
@Tonio: #67: Men in the 1920s were all going for the Rudolph Vaselino look by piling lots of styling goop in their hair. Some of those goops also contained dye to hide gray hairs. It’s said that actor George Raft would use an entire jar of hair creme at a time.
@Rube: #64: A friend of mine, a retired teacher, actually makes good money subbing as a side hustle, often getting long term assignments of several months. In Texas you only need 60 credit hours of college to sub but you get paid more if you have a degree and even more if you’re certified.
Crankshaft found this firm from a TV commercial — “Marley, Scrooge and Billings! We give opposing counsel the DICKENS!”
JP: Is a pet squirrel really worse than a puppy? Either way you’ll have poop all over the house, gnawed electrical cords, and chewed-up shoes.
MW-If you’ve ever wondered (or noticed) that Mary & Jeff are never seen with another couple or anyone else for that matter, today’s bland dialogue explains why
Pluggers still rub macassar oil into their thinning hair? Haven’t the Bright Young Things among them switched over to Dapper Dan, or at least Fop?
@popamatic: One of the things I miss most about the Retail comic strip is the Halloween weeks. Stuart made a wonderful Great Gazoo, Cooper was so esoteric no one could tell what he was supposed to be, and Val always looked particularly hot, especially in the TOS Star Trek minidress and the Josie-and-the-Pussycats bodysuit.
@Vanya: “You’re a Plugger if you keep that old chair around because, out of the corner of your eye, you can still sometimes see your spouse who sat in it for 40 years, and that sudden rising hope and crashing fall is what’s keep you alive.”
MW: GAAAAAA!!!! OH MY GAWD MAKE IT STOP!!!!
Moy must have been binge-reading every mediocre to just-plain-terrible self-help book from the 70’s and 80’s 24/7 to come up with this appalling dialog.
Oh my head…
JP. A year later, Franwit has finally heard about the “Peanut the Squirrel” scandal and thinks he’s found himself a storyline. Of course, somehow this will involve, not local environmental cops, but the CIA conspiring with “the Mayor” and Abbey’s long lost evil twin to euthanize the thing, all off camera, of course.
Pluggers: Is this “vintage core” styling? I guess Pluggers would be the logical influencer. Yes, I own doilies, table scarves, and other vintage linens, though I don’t put them on the upholstered furniture. They go on the curio cabinet and the knickknack shelves.
@Vanya: Same. Whatever Plugger wore the butt-groove into that chair is an ex-Plugger. RIP to…I’m gonna guess the dog one.