Pleas for sanity (metaphorical and actual)
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Heathcliff, 1/29/26
Grandpa Nutmeg typically gets mad at Heathcliff for failing to deal with his house’s endemic mouse problem, but I actually think his anger is out of place here. The mice are already outside! I don’t think it’s fair to say that mice aren’t allowed to be on your property. The fact that they’re building a majestic snow sculpture that will come to be a widely admired tourist attraction and, eventually, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is neither here nor there. Let the mice be, Grandpa Nutmeg!
Gearhead Gertie, 1/29/26
Gertie, I don’t mean to step out of bounds here, but if you are unable to experience pleasure or joy knowing that your special interest is out of season, have you considered that you might benefit from therapy? Just like NASCAR heroes Cody Ware and William Byron have? Admitting you need help isn’t an expression of weakness — and you don’t want mental health issues “slowing you down,” if I may speak your language for a moment!
Mary Worth, 1/29/26
“Toby, a longtime resident of Southern California, is inspired to learn Spanish by her new parrot” is a truly amazing place for this storyline to land. We have, I believe, achieved a new level of Peak Toby, and we should all celebrate it.
56 replies to “Pleas for sanity (metaphorical and actual)”
Luann-That serial killer shack you live in is a guest house?
Gearhead Gertie-“My entire life revolves around just NASCAR and nothing else.”
9CL-“Well we can’t really say what they are doing so we have to insert another word.”
RMMD-“Uh no. By the symptoms she gave us we have already diagnosed him. It’s renal failure.”
MW-“Yo te quiero Taco Bell.”
FC-“We want to sleep outside like Mr. Thirsty down the street.”
Rosie proves the fundamental superiority of women by forcibg Sunny to learn Spanish instead of herself learning to speak English.
Or, at least, Sunny will do literally anything to get laid.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – The sight of Johnny being wheeled in reminds me of such an excursion into the emergency room decades ago when I was feeling a little out of it. Someone handed me a paper bag, and I asked if this was for me to barf in if I needed to. “You could,” said the person, “but your shoes are in there.”
I loved how polite they were, not giving orders, just relevant information so I could make my own decision. Meanwhile, I hope Johnny barfs on his shoes.
One can only imagine Mary’s internal seething at this story proceeding without her meddling, especially how Toby totally broke Pompous Axx without her input at all. Sad!
Yes, Luann, all three of you very much do.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Were you older than Heir (or Spare) there at the time?
MW: ‘”Yo te quiero”? What does that mean?’
‘It means “I love you”.’
‘No, I mean, what does “love” mean?’
‘It’s… you know, how you feel about your husband and vice versa.’
‘Ohhhhh… it means you feel mild, uncomprehending annoyance, gotcha.’
GG: Isn’t there some sort of winter NASCAR (NASCARO?) in South America she can follow?
HEATHCLIFF: So, people : snowmen :: mice : snow cheese? Learned something new today.
9CL: I think it’s dawning on at least one twin how perverted their upbringing has been.
DtM: Since the Mitchells seem to have two full living rooms, I really don’t see the problem.
RMMD: “Nurse! Take this boy back as soon as you’re done explaining that light switch!”
@Ukranazi Stepan: Yeah, assuming he’s younger than 20 (hard to tell with these kids).
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Doesn’t Les have a job? He’s a waiter at the Fuze?
*Does it not count, while Gunther being a student with no source of income is okay? (I’m guessing Mr Gray is afraid to antagonise the love of his life,Gunther-in-dragGunther’s mom)Like, I thought Les’ problem was less that he didn’t have a career, it was that he was aiming pretty low (“I bus tables by day, play video games with my cat by night. I got it MADE”).
*Is this another implication that Frank and Nancy aren’t paying their employees, and in fact might be CHARGING them to work there?*************
Crankshaft : “miss directing”? What about the church choir? Or does it not count if he’s not dressed as a fascist dictator and his victims aren’t teenagers?
*************
Gearhead Gertie : …how long is the gap between NASCAR “seasons”? Because I wanna know how long Gertie spends whining that life is not worth living because there’s no NASCAR (to properly be horrified at the seeming eternity of her being even more insufferable than she usually is).
*************
Heathcliff : Ice sculptures melt in the spring. Unless Heathcliff plots to freeze his hometown in eternal winter, which is something I’m not saying he WOULD NEVER do, but it just doesn’t seem like his “thing”, you know.
FC The “getting rid of the kids by hypothermia / collapsing snow fort” jokes write themselves.
MW I imagine bird intelligence researchers spluttering that’s not how it works! that’s not how ANY of it works! but I’m not sure if it’s more about the Sunny/Rosie language development, or Toby’s birdbrain finally growing enough to deal with bilingualism
“How do we make sure the readers know Sunny is not indulging in homosexuality because Rosie is a female parrot?”
“Long eyelashes”
“Parrots don’t have eyelashes!”
“Draw something around her eyes that looks like long eyelashes!”
“That’s terrible!”
“Listen, it’s either that or a bow on the head”
“Sigh, fake eyelashes it is!”
Heathcliff:
I can see why Grandpa’s hair is never combed — he’s missing his right hand.
Mary Worth:
“Could she possibly be any more vacuous?” muses nonplussed Ian.
GG: Can’t Gertie just go on NASCAR community sites on Facebook or any of the other places on the internet where people with mutual hyperfixations gather, rather than inflicting her obsession on random strangers? Or has she already been kicked out of those communities as a nuisance?
MW: Toby assumes learning a language is just parroting (pun not intended) random phrases with no understanding of knowledge or context, which…sounds like her, honestly.
Heathcliff: Elsewhere in the neighborhood, kids are building snow sculptures depicting ice cream bowls and hamburgers.
GG – “That’s impossible. I’m dead inside.”
Wasn’t until I read Josh’s commentary that I realized Heathcliff didn’t build the snow cheese himself to taunt the mice, pretending to gift them a gigantic amount of real cheese.
“Have a nice day!” “That’s impossible. We’re trapped in the world of Gearhead Gertie.”
Mary Worth: You say “Peak Toby,” I say “Peak Sexy Time in Mary Worth.” Let’s try it. You go first!
C’shaft: Discussion topic: who has the most annoying all-consuming obsession, Harry Dinkle or Gearhead Gertie?
DT: They’re calling in the Cicada Squad!
Dustin: It’s funny because Dustin’s so weak he needed a womanish girly female to help him move his new weights set! He must relinquish his man card and his penis forthwith!
FG: That’s nothing. I still remember the Burger King Halloween Whopper.
GT: Do you think Keri carries around a bunch of large interjection-shaped earrings and changes them to fit their current state of mind, or do they have one set that adjusts according to their feelings like some kind of extremely tacky mood ring?
HotC: Are you kidding, Dana? Do you know what the gender ratio is in your average school drama club? Pretty much anything a boy needs to do to get cast is show up.
JP: Charlotte breathes a sigh of relief. All that time hacking into the county judicial website and fast-tracking Ann’s parole paid off. Now she can spend more time with the horsies.
Luann: Well, Les is a) white, b) male, and c) closely related to someone with a lot of money, so he’s about halfway to achieving billionaire status already. All he needs now are crooked political connections.
Pluggers keep inventing new ways of being lazy.
RMMD: “That’s nice, but unless you have her insurance info you’re going to have to wait.”
@Bob Tice: Oh, no. Ian likes her that way.
DtM: Has Dennis, age 5, already internalized the destructive, solipsistic, self-regarding and self-justifying rhetoric of influencer “creative” culture ambient in our society, or was he born this way? In any case, fairly decent menace levels today.
MW: “Like, Santa Royale means ‘Royal Saint!’ Who knew?”
MW — It totally tracks that the parrot learned another language more quickly than Toby.
Wondering Heights — How in the world did the mice assemble a six-foot tall snow cube?
Gearhead Gertie: In that Gertie appears to be buying her groceries at the local cut-rate Best Buy, I’m going to suggest adding an adding an anti-dementia medication regime to talk therapy. Let’s start with a little light Rivastigmine and some PRN Lorazepam for agitation.
@Tonio: That was my idea also. I’m not sure we’re wrong. It would be more in character for Heathcliff to have built it. Wouldn’t the mice be on top of the structure if they’re building it?
@Ettorre: The Judge Parker team would have suggested giving the female parrot breasts.
Nancy: I’m trying to like the Underground Comix makeover, but the lettering is really off-putting.
MW: Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Ian regrets having given in to the impulse to bang his dumbest student ever.
Heathcliff: Isn’t Grandpa talking to Heathcliff here? What more does he want—the cat got the mice out of the house, and all it took was telling TJ to build a snow cheese.
@TheDiva: Luann raises a good point: why IS Les taking this class? Why is he going to junior college and hanging out with these losers at all? If he has a nosy rich uncle with guesthouses to let, shouldn’t he have been shipped off to New England College That Sounds Elite But Is Really Just An Expensive Social Club For The Mediocre Children Of Rich People?
MW: I’d say add “parrots” to the list of things Moy doesn’t understand, but that’s been clear from the first week of this arc.
Heathcliff: Listen, Grandpa, these mice are smart enough to make representative art many times their size. Who knows what damage they could do with that level of intellect? Heathcliff got them out of the house and probably saved your lives in the process! Show some gratitude.
Mary Worth: If they’re going to have Parrot B look like and exactly mimic Parrot A, they probably shouldn’t have drawn what looks like a mirror behind Parrot B. It’s starting to feel like “let’s just mess with people” is the beginning and end of the strip’s statement of purpose.
@Hibbleton: Would have to be SASCARO?
Heathcliff: Grandpa N, you live in a pink house in a world where polka dots dance across an electric blue sky. You’ve got bigger problems than Mitten Mice.
Congratulations to Gearhead Gertie for inventing the most insane way to hold a shopping bag.
MW: This relatively Meddling Mary-free arc has me thinking that if she gets turfed out of her own strip, Barney Google-style, in favor of the cross-cultural parrot couple, I for one wouldn’t mind over-much.
@MKay:
Which implies that building a snowman is an expression of your cannibalism.
Heathcliff: Grandpa is upset because he knows that after the mice have given the snow sculpture the shape of Swiss cheese, then they have to work on the color.
I was going to make a comment about Gearhead Gertie’s inconsistent leg length across different strips, but in researching this I discovered that if you type “gearhead” into Google, “Gertie” is not even one of the recommended next words in the list, and the realization of this comic’s apparent lack of relevance in the subculture which it desperately seeks to inhabit made it all feel so pointless. I don’t want to kick Gertie while she’s down. She’s doing enough of that on her own with those weird legs.
MW – Tune in next week when Rosie says “¡No olvides cambiar las pilas del detector de humo!”
Luann: Wouldn’t a credited college course Labelled “career counseling” be about learning how to career counsel? And not literal career counseling. Seems this Luann story is more lost in the weeds than usual.
“Hey, Karen. What’s the most convoluted way in the Luannverse to hook Les up with Tara?”
If there were intelligent mice in scarves building art in my yard, instead of complaining I’d be seeking fame and fortune and turning science on its head. But then, I’m not a crotchety old man who failed to exploit my intelligent cat for vast riches over the years.
***
Sunny’s getting more action than Dr. Jeff, which shouldn’t come as a shock in a world where Wilbur freakin’ Weston gets more action than Dr. Jeff.
@Tabby Lavalamp: Sadly even if so, they’ll probably pull a “One Froggy Evening.”
You get the news media, bring them back to your home, but the cheese sculpture is gone and the scarves-less mice are just running around squeaking.
The apocalypse is here! I never see unintentional typos in the syndicated funnies…they must still use editors(?), But not today! TWO screw-ups: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/one-big-happy/2026-01-29 and https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/judge-parker/2026-01-29
What’s next, copmuter-gerenated comics?
RMMD: Michael adds some encouragement: “If you throw up hard enough, you’ll go backwards!”
JP: In P1, it looks like Catherine just checked the Judge’s diaper and the results aren’t pretty.
Neddy: “Uh, gotta go.” Slams door [Tires screeching in the background].
It’s 13 days to the start of Daytona 500 qualifying. Gertie isn’t bored – she’s up to her neck studying team status & restrictor plate regulation changes.
Rosie and Sunny have inspired Toby to new levels of sobriety as well as her cultural expansion. Don’t leave that window open, Camerons. Those lovebirds are looking to fly the coop.
@matt w:
I was never good at branding.
Heathcliff – Oh – hilarious! Mice mock him by creating mock cheese out of snow. So poignant, topical, scintillating….
GG – Gotta leave the old bat alone; Ain’t no sunshine when NASCAR’s gone….
MW – Dos Cervezas Por Favor….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Heathcliff almost echoes Joe Welch’s famous tirade from the Army-McCarthy hearings, but comes up short, which is too bad given that the Army-McCarthy hearings are probably a cultural touchstone for the average Heathcliff reader.
MW: The next time they do it, Ian is going to discover that Toby, in addition to learning Spanish, now has a cloaca.
The only possible way I can make sense of this MW plot “story” is that Toby actually had a massive psychotic break and is hallucinating the whole thing; in reality, she’s sitting in a room in a locked ward of a long-term care facility. Ian visits occasionally. Mary, never.
New Nancy: This week’s tribute to Philadelphia continues. Tomorrow: a visit to the cream cheese foundry.
GT: What the hell? Is Isis treating Keri and Muslim Girl to their first encounter with Uzbekistan cuisine? “Uncle Leonid serves up the tastiest boiled octopus in all of Tashkent.” Keri: “I wore my enormous YUM! earrings special for this.” Muslim Girl: “It’s not halal, but neither are the Bucket burgers, so what the hell. Bring on the octopuses.”
Dustin: This strip is skating on thin ice with me as it is. If I’ve got to look at Dustin eat, it’s a dealbreaker.
S4th: Methinks Ces is tired of Ralph and, in looking to shake up the strip’s status quo without actually making his characters grow or mature, is going to pull a Sonny Bono.
JP: Okay, props to Neddy. I figured by this point she’d alread nope’d out of this family fiasco and peeled out of the driveway leaving the raspberry-haired brat standing on the doorstep.
RMMD: Ah yes, the white people! We’ll get you treated at once! Just ignore all these nonwhite people who’ve been waiting here for hours with fatal injuries and other debilitating diseases. We’ve called ICE to round them up. So SORRY you have to breathe the same air as them! Bellhop, take them to our best operating and recovery suite, chopchop!
@Banana Jr. 6000: Or rather, that cashier is trapped in the world of ‘Gearhead Gertie’.
@Banana Jr. 6000: No. One needs to be in a padded room for her own protection, one needs to be in jail for bringing weapons onto school property, and one needs to be in a psychiatrist’s office for treatment of their delusions of grandeur.