I think coffee tastes great, that’s why I put so much cream and sugar in it
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Shoe, 11/10/25
“48 years” is relevant here because that’s how long Shoe has been syndicated. Shoe, dimly aware of the contours of his universe, knows that his seemingly eternal and unaging existence is somehow intimately tied up with the time he spends at Roz’s. But going beyond the simple correlation he lays out here would require perception that’s beyond his abilities.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/25
Oh, so you think it’s funny that Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky ate the nose right off that snowman’s face? Well, what if we drop the “snow”? What if Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky bit off some guy’s nose, and that guy was running around screaming while blood geysered everywhere, and the accursèd horse, his huge teeth masticating flesh and cartilage, said “Are you kidding? I love men !!” Wouldn’t be so funny then, would it?
Curtis, 11/10/25
Greg looks truly stricken in that final panel. He knows coffee is unhealthy, and Curtis with his innocent child’s wisdom has reaffirmed that it doesn’t taste very good either. He’s left with the knowledge that he only drinks it because he relies on its stimulant properties, and what does that say about him and his life?
Pickles, 11/10/25
Hey, we haven’t checked in with the lovable old couple in Pickles lately, let’s see what they’re up to! [checks in with the old couple in Pickles in today’s strip] I, uh. I think they’re maybe going to get a divorce, guys.
51 replies to “I think coffee tastes great, that’s why I put so much cream and sugar in it”
MW: “You, Sir, look like an AMAZON PARROT!”
So, Jeff Bezos has bought Mary Worth…?
Having been unmasked as an Amazon parrot, Sunny drops the English “chirp” and reverts to his native Brazilian Portuguese “squawk.”
Next he’ll channel Pele and kick Toby’s head into the washing machine. Gooooooalll!
BG&SS:
Li’l Sparky is sort of a backwoods “Mr. Ed,” glib, resourceful and full of delicious irony and double entendres.
PICKLES: Oh, for crying out loud, eat in front of the TV.
MW: Bad news; Belle Battsfrey has escaped from her brother and is lurking nearby. “Wilbie! I made you a yummy Cornish game hen!”
9CL: It must be the vibration from the piano that gets them all revved up. Like sitting on a washer during the spin cycle.
I just want everyone to know today’s Heathcliff comic is about “Butt-Scented Candles”
Luann:
Dash went white with fear at the idea of being on Snapgram or Instachat or whateverthehell.
________________________
Questionablecontent:
May considers putting Iris out of her misery by decapitating her with one whack of her sword. Do it!
BG&SS:
Okay, so the snowman doesn’t inhale through his nose, so why does he care?
Curtis:
Overly caffeinated from absorbing a big chug of coffee into his tiny body, Curtis sets off to destroy the social compact.
DtM: Please! Enough with the shit talking. You’re upsetting Monty.
Pickies:
The old couple here reminds me of the next door neighbor warring couple of my youth. “If I die first, Stella, you’ll win,” he would grumble. “If you die first, I win!”
Aptly, he died first, and she spent many happy years thereafter traveling the world, occasionally sending my folks postcards to tell them where she was and what a great time she was having.
DT: That is some windy city if it can blow a leather brief case out of person’s grip.
MW: Did Toby use some AI assistance to rapidly ID the species of this parrot?
GT: Ok – so we are back with the jowly GT. We will always remember and cherish those moments of the guest artist where the characters looked human (and not afflicted with a severe case of parotiditis).
JP: Wow, that was fast. Did she put out bids or do any comparative shopping or just called “Stables R Us”?
Slylock Fox: It is good that Slylock knows the various grifts and scams using plants and shills. But these take practice, skill and a type of dedication one just can’t find in today’s hench people. A modern villain probably just uses a small hidden microphone and overhears the number.
Shoe “And I’ve tried, belive you me! But i still wake up the next day in the same bed with this cigar in my mouth. It’s a living hell…”
Curtis Hate to nitpick but boots aren’t exactly known for their straining properties, are they? Probably why they traditionally say ‘old sock’. Maybe if you were better caffeinated you’d have thought of that!
Shoe: “You talk as though your still being alive was a good thing.”
Curtis-Advice from a man who spends all his family’s extra money on cigarettes.
Curtis-“And you should stop smoking.”
MW-“It also says that you pair well with a red wine.”
Blondie-“Then I’ll cut one of my ears off.”
@MKay:
MW: Bad news; Belle Battsfrey has escaped from her brother and is lurking nearby. “Wilbie! I made you a yummy Cornish game hen!”
I expect to find out that this parrot is communicating telepathically with Olive, or actually is Olive. So I’m all for it!
A disappointed Curtis gets a Starbucks gift card in his Christmas stocking. “Chug on that, kid.”
Bd??36-Metazon, the last human alive, stumbled and fell. His neural implant flared up, looking for any sort of signal. One came:
BARNEY GOOGLE AND SNUFFY SMITH present… Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky, featuring Quack the Duck and his tiny Quackers, with Salty Squid!
Bd??36-Metazon wasn’t interested.
A (very) belated thanks to Scratchy and Baja for the COTW mentions, and congrats to Chance and all the floaters!
(The special characters you get by holding down the option key and button-mashing showed up on preview, dangit.)
Pickles: Divorce? They relish living in misery together.
After reading today’s Curtis, I made myself a coffee.
It tastes off today.
Like it was strained through an old boot…
(Thanks Curtis…)
Shoe: One might think Shoe, who has lived more than twice as long as the oldest purple martin in captivity and nearly seven times the outer bounds of the average martin in the wild, would be begging for death by now. Ah, how one misunderstands the utter depravity of comic strip writers.
@matt w: Are you kidding? I love reading about the adventures of Bd??36-Metazon.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith present…Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky: If Li’l Sparky were saying “Are you kidding? I love men !!” we’d be having a debate about cross-species homosexuality. On the other hand, if this were Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and Marvin present…Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky: we’d all be talking about why you shouldn’t eat the yellow snow. Thank God for small favors, and sorry about your nose, dude, I guess?
@Bob Tice: Still better than the old couple I once heard about. He’d go out on their second-floor porch and sunbathe in the nude. “Freddy, you get back in this house right now!” she’d yell. To which he would reply, incisively, “Della, suck my a** with a straw!!”
Curtis: Ha! It’s funny because Greg has completely destroyed his taste buds with Newports! (Not that I would know anything about that as a former smoker…)
9CL – Alistair goes backstage and turns into one of those wavy wind socks they set up outside the auto dealerships.
The comic potential for “the performers become so horny during their concert that they have to run backstage and make out as soon as they are finished” has been fully exploited at this point.
GT Maybe this whole Peanuts-level little-kids-trying-to-catch-a-fly-ball approach to football *is* realistic for the first game of a bunch of young women who didn’t grow up playing pick-up football, despite a bunch of practice that ought to have prepped them to catch and intercept. But it sure doesn’t line up with the announced storyline of fabulous team whose record was better than the boys, unjustly disbanded by the school
JP As unrealistic as the timeline for expensive estimate-getting and stable-building is shaping up to be, it’s still better than the “showered with gifts” storyline era, where a convenient band of itinerant Amish would have showed up on their doorstep and asked if, as a favour, they could pretty please build the ranch a barn to keep their skills up.
Zits: Too soon. My dad is still growling. He is a werewolf and it was a full moon last night. Hence the curfew.
Shoe should have replied “Clothing is optional.”
@Ukranazi Stepan: I don’t think there’s an “a” in “gooooooooooool!”
Pickles wasn’t always like this, and I liked it better before they steered it toward Lockhorns territory.
JP: Good to see Neddy introducing Charlotte to the idea that you can take full credit someone else’s labors by being the one who made them labor. Charlotte won’t become come a spoiled, listless child of privilege all on her own, you know!
Phantom Last we saw, one of the Patrol was running to go wake up the colonel and Phantom was on the line with the other night guard. Now there’s no sign of the running guy and the colonel is in his bedroom on the line with Phantom. Maybe the runner’s off to the side after telling the colonel to call in to the number for a group call, but it sure seemed like he was running out because the colonel had no phone.
Luann I guess you can have your own insta for the foster pup but it’s the *rescue* that needs to handle the adopting, people who are looking for a dog will go to the rescue’s page, it will be found on search engines, etc. So be sure to send the good pics to whoever at the rescue manages *their* adoption profile for the dog, folks
DT: Must be donuts inside that thing.
JP: The stable’s second story won’t be much use, since horses can’t go down stairs. I hope Abbey doesn’t realize that until after she herds them all up to show them the view.
Snuffy Smith: There’s plenty that doesn’t work for me here. Horses only live around 30 years, and the original Sparkplug debuted in 1919, so how is this foal his grandson? While we’re on the topic, does this kid even have parents? And why does he have a duck? Are horses just issued waterfowl at birth in this universe? I don’t like it!
All that said, panel 3 is great. The dimple that used to house the snowman’s nose makes him look surprised! He didn’t think anyone was going to eat his face!
Pickles: Don’t worry, if Grampa Pickles keeps chugging salt at that rate, a divorce will be kind of moot.
Curtis – I had believed until last week that Greg was the guy at the DMV who told you that you were missing a piece of documentation after you stood in line for an hour and that you had to go get it and stand in the line again. But then we learned he’s the guy who tells teenagers they can’t have their licenses because they bumped the curb parking. Why does he even NEED coffee for a day filled with such joy?
Pickles: She knows full well that Earl can’t remember how his own day went. He can’t even tell that he salted his dinner three times already.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Pickles went from “a light-hearted take on the aging mind and body” to “a harrowing portrait of dementia”, but it’s been that way for at least a few years.
Pickles: It was this morning that Opal’s last regret for filling Earl’s salt shaker with saltpeter left her.
Pickles – Salt will kill him over time, but there are fast ways.
BG&SS: “I never thought horses would eat MY face!” sobs snowman who voted for the Horses Eating Snowpeople’s Faces Party.
Pickles – (The police have arrived at the scene) “Not much to go on here, guys. Just a dead guy with a fork plunged into the back of his throat. I guess we should try to find his wife.”
One of the most frustrating experiences you can have is when you spend years honing and practicing a craft, only to see someone do it effortlessly and better than you could ever hope to.
I imagine that’s the experience whoever does the Lockhorns had when they woke up and read today’s Pickles, and realized that they were mere amateurs at depicting a soul-crushingly bitter marriage.
Do you wanna munch a snowman?
Come on, let’s go and eat!
I only take in frozen food
The crunch is good
It’s weird they don’t have feet.
Alice–sMary Worth: Are we looking at one of those “crossover events” here? Perhaps six to eight weeks of Alice trying to get her parrot back from in uncomprehending Toby in increasingly inscrutable and bizarre ways? In any case, I would love to see what Alice would look like in Brigman’s art style, or better yet, Toby Alice-ified.
Coffee (up to 5 cups a day) is extremely healthy, associated with less cancer, less heart disease, less Parkinsons, less diabetes …
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drinking-coffee-linked-to-healthier-hearts-and-longer-lives
Pickles: “I think they’re maybe going to get a divorce, guys.”
Nah, they’re just auditioning for “The Lockhorns!”
BG&SS: Jack Frost’s buddy, Krampus, carrying Little Tater in a sack, stops Li’l Sparky further down the road. “Now, about that carrot…” He says.
Disney goes dark with its latest Christmas special as it tries to appeal to a streaming audience.
Shoe: “I’ve eaten here for 48 years and I’m still alive — but that’s probably because they hardly ever serve any actual food!”
Snuffy Smith: Just wait till someone puts a magic hat on that snowman — Frosty is gonna be pissed! (He’ll also have a very nasal voice when he sings “Put One Foot in Front of the Other.”)
Curtis: By “old boot,” he means the trunk of a 2014 Ford Fiesta. Curtis is so sleepy, he’s resorted to Britishisms!
Pickles: Of course Earl is grumpy — he’s dealing with both retirement-related boredom and sodium-related high blood pressure.
Shoe: Some birds have long lifespans, especially the type of bird that Shoe is, whatever that might be.
BGSS: That snowman is definitely screaming in pain.
Curtis: How does Curtis know what something strained through an old boot tastes like?
Pickles: This is what Marvin’s parents have to look forward to when they get older.