Josh has some second thoughts
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Family Circus, 11/11/25
One of my favorite unintentional running Family Circus bits is when panels drawn decades ago that depict the Keane Kids in a car have seatbelts added in extremely half-assed ways. Just look at that shoulder strap vaguely dangling across Billy’s torso; he doesn’t even appear to have a lap belt, and there really is no way to overemphasize the degree to which none of this setup would restrain him in an accident. Presumably Big Daddy Keane knows this, and is more and more tempted to slam on the brakes and hurl his son towards the windshield as his blather becomes increasingly irritating. If only it weren’t for this blasted traffic!
Hi and Lois, 11/11/25
I was an early advocate for Hi and Lois returning Thirsty to his roots as a comical alcoholic, but even I have to admit that “Eat food? Produced via agriculture? No thanks, I’d rather drink an intoxicating beverage” may be going too far.
Mary Worth, 11/11/25
Similarly, I’ve had no complaints as Mary Worth does more and more animal-themed storylines, but “Ian acquires an erotic rival in the form of a parrot” is probably the point where I would start to register some mild complaints.
Shoe, 11/11/25
“Do you understand how much my spirit yearns to be free of this corrupt matter? Take this knife. Sacrifice the man that clothes me. Do it now.”
70 replies to “Josh has some second thoughts”
FC:
“An’ why am I usin’ the adjectival ‘slow’ instead of the adverbial ‘slowly’ to modify ‘ drivin’ ‘”?
Mary Worth Mashups: If the parrot could think, would it think one of these missing final panels?
MW:
Does Toby really think that a 13-ounce Amazon parrot is going to consume a 4-8 ounce green salad?
Rhetorical question.
MW. So, when does another, female, bird show up and threaten to report Tobey to “bird management”?
Six Chix-“I came up with a joke. It’s too funny. I rewrite the joke. It’s less funny.”
FC-“If this is 2025 then why do the cars look like the Seventies?”
MW-Ian will report you to SCHOOL MANAGEMENT.
FC: And how’s Billy supposed to smoke without the obligatory ashtray that used to be in the back of bench seats in old timey cars? Talk about half-assed, sheesh.
H&L: Did Hi hop on the back of Thirsty’s skateboard in P2?
CS: what’s the word for a group of assholes? A rectum of assholes?
FC:
“If this is RUSH hour, why aren’t we listenin’ to ‘The Spirit of Radio,’ ‘Tom Sawyer,’ an’ ‘Subdivisions’ on the car radio?”
@2 Baja Gaijin:
In the third mashup, while dumbass” works, “nitwit” seems better to my mind.
Either way, Toby is quite the ignoramus.
FC:
“Why are all the cars around us purple? — did we drive to the Mary Worth strip or somethin’ ?”
MW: A colourful, moderately-intelligent creature that mostly just repeats the last thing it heard, kept for show by it’s rich owner, is eating lunch with a parrot.
Shoe: I’m always fascinated by the crystal ball Shoe strips. All of the characters are bitter cynics, so why do they keep going to crack wise at the local fortune teller? Is this what people resorted to in the days before social media let you mock WitchTok from the comfort of your own couch?
H&L: Thirsty yearns for the olden times that he’s never experienced but has heard about, when beer was considered “liquid bread,” a way to quickly, easily, and safely hydrate and obtain necessary calories at the same time. This is not comical, this is a tragic tale of a man born three hundred years too late.
Beetle Bailey : Celebrate Veterans’ Day by discovering that soldiers can just have giant shelves filled with over 20 000 records in the barracks, next to their bunk.
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Family Circus : “And why do you PARK in a DRIVEWAY and DRIVE in a PARKWAY?”
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Luann vs Mary Worth : a wife innocently joking about her husband would never eat a green salad with her
(I never thought about how much Ian Cameron has in common with Ed Kudlick…)is worthy of being singled out as an example of people being inappropriately amorous to animals. “IRRESISTIBLE BUTTSHOT!” of a DOG for an OnlyFans page, that doesn’t register. Sometimes I just don’t get you, Josh.Seriously, “IRRESISTIBLE BUTTSHOT” of a dog. This beats the “Luann makes up that she and Bernice first met when she was peeing in the bushes in front of her house” as being messed up.***********
On the Fastrack : “We’re here to talk about the irregularities in your accounting” “RIGHT, here’s your gigantic bribe.” …Nice one, not laugh-out-loud worthy, but I smiled.
The Family Circus: An alternate caption for this comic could be, “Why doesn’t this car have bathroom facilities? ‘Cause in just a few minutes I’m gonna need a bath!”
MW: When Ian returns home, he hears the parrot repeat, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this! What will IAN say? HAHA!” And then, just for fun, the bird adds, “Oh, Wilbur!”
MW: Too bad it’s a parrot. Brigman could have drawn a different talking bird and then Ian could have been cuckolded by a cockatiel.
MW: I guess in this updating of Leda and the Swan, Toby is Leda and the parrot is the swan but who is the parrot? Aldo?
Pierce had a good response in Zits today.
Purple Stripeypants: But what about taking up arms against an anarcho-syndicalist commune, whose members take in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of more…..?
FC I like the tired side-eye that BDK is giving as his son workshops traffic jokes in what is clearly a parking lot.
H&L Did you know that some paleoanthropologists belive that human alcohol production predates agriculture itself? Clearly Thirsty is getting in touch with his inner early man.
MW Damnit, there’s a joke in there somewhere about cheating with a bird? “Cluckholded?” No, that only works if it’s a chicken. I’ll keep working on it…
Shoe Maybe beside the point, but why on earth would the Perfesser be seeing a psychic? You know it’s not going to end pretty, do you really want to know the gritty details?
@9 Sequitur: Take another look at the mashups. I made a couple of updates.
H&L: “And then, of course, it’s drunk tank to rehab. Ah, the circle of life!”
Hi sighs deeply as the next few hours flash before his eyes: an overpriced hamburger steak, a sudden interest in a Canadian curling match, and a violent argument over whether or not singing along to the TouchTunes machine counts as karaoke.
@Bob Tice:Does Toby really think that a 13-ounce Amazon parrot is going to consume a 4-8 ounce green salad?
Much as I love animals, ‘Toby accidentally kills her bird friend’ would be the funniest way this story could go’
“Chirp! Haha! Seriously, give me the booze, that’s what I’m here for.”
@Charterstoned: That would be far too well thought out for Moy.
@Bob Tice: I’ve no idea what an ounce is so it’s not rhetorical for me.
Shoe: Very rude way to decline the latest offering from your drug dealer.
H&L: “Brewery to glass” is pretty classy for Thirsty. I would’ve expected something more like, “pop tab to gut.”
9CL: Uh oh, Lolly forgot to take her daily dose of potion brewed from the chins of spineless men.
SF: Is this actually done in the real world? Being an introvert, my limit for guests is one day, max, so I can’t judge. But does it ever actually happen?
RMMD: Yes, Summer, it should definitely be done in person. Augie should hear every “um,” “er,” “but,” “if,” and “I don’t know ” in person. However, we don’t deserve it.
MW: So, the parrot DOES parrot. But if when Ian returns, Sunny joins him in incessant bloviating, I’m outta here.
The Family Circus: Dad’s Taxi Driver 1976, directed by Martin Scorcese.
Someone I knew once made a comment to a woman about how he liked her hair-do and how, “I once went out with this really good-looking woman. And her brother had a haircut just like that.”
I think of that comment every time I see June.
Meanwhile, it’s simple. Summer tells Augie Doggie Style, “I can’t stop you from writing this, but I can tell you what you did is chickenshit, and I don’t want to see you again.”
Mary Worth: It’s all fun and games until someone gets chlamydia. From the bird poop, yes, of course, from the bird dropping feces on my shoulder, how else would an abandoned academic housewife get chlamydia?
@Schroduck: One episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, had the family go to a psychic, Will kept cracking jokes about everything so the fortune teller put a curse on him.
I turn I am disappointed by the lack of curses on characters who probably actually would deserve one.
Shoe: “I saw a bright light, and started heading toward it! But at the last minute, I ran into my shell. That’s when I woke up.”
RMMD: Suddenly an exasperated patient pops up at the window: “Tell the bastard you get a share of the money or you sue his sorry ass!”
Lockhorns: I want to find out if Loretta was canonically born on November 12th, or if it’s the fourth birthday gag they’ve given her this year.
Crankshaft: Yes, test the faith of your parishioners with a ukulele act. Throw in a bagpipe while you’re at it.
BG&SS: Lil’ Sparky is jealous of the wild animal who doesn’t need to be dressed in a snowstorm.
FC: Don’t worry, BDK. In this crowd of immobilized, idling ancient cars the leaded gas exhaust fumes will whisk away all of Billy’s troubles.
Zits: Did Jeremy just get meta-bullied by two bespectacled guys bragging about perfect grades in AP classes?
FC: Tomorrow: Billy wonders why we park on driveways and drive on parkways.
H&L: The joke works a little better if Joe’s is a brewpub with an extensive menu of local craft labels, but we all know Thirsty wouldn’t frequent such a place. No, most likely Joe’s Pub is a dive bar that has somehow withstood the gentrification of this downtown shopping district, a dark, bleak space where a surly man in a stained apron plunks down mugs of Miller and Coors and will pretend to listen to your problems as long as you keep buying rounds.
MW: Maybe the bird’s not that intelligent after all, if he’s laughing at Toby’s jokes.
Mary Worth: In a moment that parrot is going to realize Toby’s eating eggs and things are going take a very dark turn and I am absolutely looking forward to it.
@7 Professor Well Actually: “What’s the word for a group of assholes?” The cast of Crankshaft.
@15 Charterstoned: Take a look at the mashups in #2…
@27 Ukranazi Stepan: How’s this? Does Toby really think that a 360 gram Amazon parrot is going to consume a 110-220 gram green salad?
FC: Billy should be thankful it’s Rush Hour and not Bim Hour.
HnL: Hi is showing his reaction to his knowledge that he’ll be pouring a vomiting Thirsty into a cab later.
MW: I look forward to upcoming scenes showing the parrot’s whisper campaign against Ian.
Shoe: Thanks, Shoe, for continuing to support my will to live.
@Ukranazi Stepan:
Ah, but even if you don’t know what an ounce is, you know that a 4-8 ounce salad is 30% to 60% of the weight of a 13-ounce Amazon parrot, so Toby would have to be expecting that the bird would be consuming 30 to 60% of its body weight at a single sitting – you know, like Ian! :-)
@Baja Gaijin: I think he would eventually think all of those things.
@Ukranazi Stepan: Wouldn’t it be fun, though, if Moy and Brigman had guest writers and artists to sub every once in a while, just like Family Circus? What would YOU do, if given the opportunity?
C’shaft: “You obviously have had some musical background, which for some reason nobody knew or talked about until about a month or so ago.”
Dustin: Most people would have just settled for a “Finance for Dummies? Sounds like the right book for you, har-har!” crack, but not Meg. She takes pride in her crude, mean-spirited comments.
JP: “I always listen to you, too…Mommy told me knowledge is power, and I never know when someone will casually drop something that can be used as leverage against them.”
@taig: Indeed, after a few days in that apartment with Toby, the parrot might start battering itself against the window to get out. Ian certainly takes every chance he gets to go to “conferences.”
Dustin “Good point. Suppose that I start by pimping out your sarcastic ass. Gimme a minute to get my belt.”
@taig: Au contraire, I think a BIM Hour could really be what we need to liven things up on the comics strip page. Gil Thorp and his teams could do a dance break in the middle of their obscure sports tableaux, Mary Worth would offer advice on how to correctly perform the choreography, Eds Crankshaft and Kudlik would get heart attacks from the exertion and Rex Morgan would have to finish the mandatory dancing before he could get back to avoiding being involved in their treatment…
(The Apple is truly one of the greatest bad movies ever made, a must-see for every lover of the schlocky and bizarre. I can’t recommend it enough.)
H&L – “I prefer brewery to glass, meaning I’d rather drink the contents of an entire brewery than one glass of beer. Damn, I need help.”
@Rube: Please, not even Matt Gaetz or ex-Prince Andrew is enough of a sex pest to tolerate Meg’s attitude.
Family Circus: At seven years old, Billy legally needs to be in a booster seat, but an artist can only do so
muchlittle.Pearls Before Swine: “If you can believe it, the yelling was even worse on the way back from the liquour store.”
Luann: A lot of dogs are going to sniff that image and get really confused.
CS: You just know Dinkle would rather go deaf (again!) rather than hear a ukulele solo.
9CL: Brooke isn’t the most competent storyteller, but it seems an awful lot like he’s trying to tell a story where Alistair has switched twins.
@21 Baja Gaijin:
Thanks for the shout out!
Heh, I like where Toby is going all out Wilbur with the mayo.
@Ken: Yeah, that poor parrot will quickly realize he’s found the most vapid conversationalist.
@TheDiva: Oh, definitely! In those comic strips, BIM Hour would be a welcome change. In Family Circus, though, a lot of melonheads would explode from the anti-Christianity of it all.
I learned about The Apple through RiffTrax, and it’s one of the few movies they’ve riffed that I needed to see without the commentary.
The mystery of the Keanemobile is multi-layered. With a front bench seat, where is the column shifter? Maybe there is none, which is the real reason they’re going so slow. To where? Billy has books, but rides a bus to school.
And of course, why was Billy in the back seat? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
@MKay: H&L – I prefer hyphenation to inscrutable double-substitution. Spent way too long trying to figure out how ‘glass’ represents the farm-to-table restaurant before I parsed Thirsty’s brewery-to-glass supply chain preference correctly. It doesn’t help that half the alcohol-forward establishments in my none-too-urban area present themselves as direct-to-customer breweries, prompting me to assume Joe’s was also set up that way.
The parrot is going to begin repeating “We’ve go to stop meeting like this. What will Ian say? Haha.” over and over again. When Ian returns from his “Teacher’s Conference” (drinking binge/ orgy) he hears it, refuses to believe the truth ( because the truth is ridiculous). A series of events leads him to suspect Tobey is having an affair with Wilbur, and in jealous rage, he murders them both.
Fortunately for Ian, turns out human flesh is the secret ingredient in Mary’s salmon squares. Unfortunately for Ian, now that he knows the secret, Mary has to kill him.
MW: I cannot predict which one will shit on the floor first.
REX MORGAN M.D.: The real plagiarism scandal here is Terry Beatty just straight up stealing scripts from the Mary Worth office. I mean a ditzy and neurotic blond women paralyzed with hand-wringing indecision over the extremely obvious solution to her dumb little problem to the point that she can’t even properly articulate what the issue even is? People this is “Toby” plot with her name crossed out for “Simmer” and dipped in “Ameripolitan” sauce. (Beatty: “But I made it 30% duller. That makes it ‘different’ enough to avoid rip-off accusations right?”)
Zits: I am generally appreciate this comic strip, but today’s got a genuine laugh out of me.
Dustin: I like how every non-Dustin character talks like an angry Gen Xer/Boomer yelling at their child. It adds to this strip’s consistency.
Mary Worth: God, please let Sunny the parrot rob Toby while she’s sleeping.
MARY WORTH: Hey, Ian, just to point out Wilbur was also taking lots of (supposedly work-related) trips away, leaving the women in his life perpetually lonely and…er…”frustrated.” Just trying to warn my boy before he finds himself on the bushes peering at Toby and her new companion, thinking, “Is he a parrot? Or into ill-eagle activities?”
Crock Spanish to English.
MW – All I see is a Parrot’s beak within an inch of a hoop earring. If that earlobe isn’t gushing blood tomorrow we can add parrots to the list of things that Moy doesn’t know how they work.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
Slylock: Sea creatures mock humanity by playing with the sports detritus that fell to the bottom of the ocean when they fled the animapocalypse. Way to rub it in, Weber.
MW – Karen Moy finally found a way to get someone to laugh at a joke in Mary Worth.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Juan used to give out autographs for free, but not any more!”
“Now he charges for them?”
“Yeah. I helped him monetize and streamline the whole operation”
“And the rubber stamp is really almost as good!”
DUSTIN: Ugh, DustSis has such poor reading comprehension! Dustin was actually reading Fiances for Dummies! in an effort to find out which mail-order bride service has clients the most desperate to “settle.”
DUSTIN (2): Also, DustSis, I know that it’s in the bylaws (the Hateful Asshole Clause put in in 2010) that you have to meet your mean-spirited nag quota to be allowed in the this universe, but you might want to tone it down with the cruel-spirited discouragement a bit before your equally awful parents realize that you are also of legally-employable age and that dresses that end at your public bone (Hi Saturday’s strip!) don’t come cheap.
JP: Neddy to five-year old Charlotte: “I’m sorry about my going off about my ex-fiance before”
If this story is not about Neddy’s growing covert emotional incest syndrome, we have a problem.