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.
161 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.
Luann: Your guest house? You were kitty-whipped into building it specifically for the boys in the first place. Wonder if precious Gunther is getting the same lecture, I’ll wager not.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Clearly Mr. Gray, smart mafia boss that he is, recognizes that sending Les off to school would be as big a waste of money as Frank sending Luann to Julliard would have been. Sure, it’s annoying with him living in a shack in his backyard, but at least that was a one-time investment and once Les is (ahem!) ‘taken care of’ the building can be put to a more useful purpose.
As for Les getting ‘hooked up’ with Tara, I’ll believe it when I see it. That would cramp Tara’s ‘I’m an unpredictable free spirit!’ shtick. We’ll get 1-2 (heaven forbid they drag this out to 3) weeks of smarmy innuendos that would make the writers of ‘Dustin’ cringe and then we’ll finally, blessedly, move on to whatever group of characters who aren’t Luann are doing.
FC: Go ahead, Big Daddy Bil. Build them the igloo, then douse it with cold water while they’re in it, freezing it solid and trapping them inside.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Probably not, because at least Gunther can eventually be palmed off on Bets’ family. I still don’t believe they’ve actually consummated their little cosplay relationship, but it’s still more than Les has been shown to accomplish.
Les is basically the male Tiffany in this strip, acting like they are such a player and have been around the block several times because they’re so irresistable, when they have never actually been shown to be anything of the sort.
@Tonio: As with all great art, the Heathcliff ice sculpture can be interpreted in many ways. I am still pondering whether the mice think it’s food, housing, or a god.
@The Quiet Man: Now that I think about it, I think the closest Les ever got to seeing another woman was when he tried to walk in on Tiffany in the girls’ room and got punched in the face for it.*
*Yes, he may have had a legitimate need to ‘go’, but as soon as he learned Tiffany was in there he immediately went into smarm mode saying, in essence, ‘hey, maybe I’ll get a bit of a show in there, score!’
@The Quiet Man:
I’m thinking Tara and Les being Luann’s classmates in this “Career Paths”
*is less about them hooking up, and more about how they’re the two (existing, of course, why create new?) characters that fit the best the “Luann’s classmates are stupid, lazy and sandbag the assignments in bad faith, but Luann is the one who’s constantly singled out for humiliation by the teacher” dynamic that worked so well with Prof Zebo (citation needed).*No, seriously, what is that class? They’re making it sound like it’s going to be a little old lady showing up and going “Now, kids, what do you want to be when you grow up. A policeman? A doctor? A firefighter? A train conductor?” or something.Gertie the Gasshole – The saving grace of today’s strip is that there’s no celery in that grocery bag. That means that those Alfred Dunner slacks are staying firmly UP.
The works of Art Fram are one of the many cultural studies I’ve been given courtesy of Comics Curmudgeon. Honestly – I laugh, I learn. Every now and then, the comics are pretty good, too.
Ian is trying to look down the front of Toby’s top. He’s wishing she wore more V-necks, or at least cowl necks like Mary.
@Anonymous: Good grief, you just figured it out. Little ol’ Miss Horner is going to hobble out and everyone’s going to gasp ‘I thought she finally retired when she almost died in the middle of a presentation!’
Luann: No sweat, Les. Gunther gets a skate because he can pull the my job is that I’m a full-time student card. So just enroll in a bunch of useless easy A classes at the juco like Luann and take them over and over again. That should do you until you’re thirty.
MW – A successful heteronormative pairing has been achieved for the parrots. MW Mission Accomplished.
RMMD- ” Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!”
FG – Who knew there was a Jollibee on Mongo? if Dale doesn’t like the Ube buns, she’s gonna HATE the banana ketchup.
@John Walter:
I see what you mean. That’s 2 typos in less than a week for Judge Parker! But on Comics Kingdom, the typo isn’t there. They must have their own editors.
Mary Worth: Is this Moy’s attempt to show that, actually, she’s totally cool with multiculturism and diveristy rather than being an hyper-conservative puritan who doesn’t like acknowledging the existence of minorities of any sort? If so, it’d probably be a lot more convincing if she had Toby learn Spanish because of her fellow human beings and not just because her birds speak it.
MT- “Awright Robby, Let’s you just drop them pants!” Ain’t that scout leader got a Purdy mouth?
GT- Well, the clock sure struck midnight on this one. Back to all the female characters looking like Squidward’s house. Oh well, good while it lasted.
We are carefully eliding the fact that these parrots are going to fuck right out in the open in Toby and Ian’s living room, got it.
MW – That’s another female parrot. Bi-lingual is not what Sunny is.
MW- Know what? Johnny no es el unico con ganas de vomitar! Fun fact: A flock of parrots is sometimes called a “Pandemonium.”
@TheDiva:
JP: Yes, that would actually make sense – Charlotte sends some real looking but FAKE parole or home leave papers to get Anne out knowing it would trigger a alcoholic moment for JP that even the normally dense Neddy would pick up.
RMMD: “Do you have a document stating you can bring these kids here? No, then I’m afraid you have to wait there. Insurance card? No, okay, wheel them here and wait.”
I can’t tell if I like today’s BG&SS less than just about any Gearhead Gertie. Based on the body of work, Gertie gets the nod.
FC: “Don’t tempt me, kids.”
Zits: “Great vigor and alacrity“? One third each of nutrition, nagging, and vocab lesson.
RMMD: Tomorrow, Johnny barks Don’t you know who my dad is?
Seeing how many crashes that happen in Nascar, I’m surprised that most racers don’t have PTSD and that therapy isn’t second nature for the sport.
@ValdVin: Tomorrow Johnny barks… because he caught some rare lycanthropic disease that is turning him into a dog.
MT: Rusty has no idea what a very sad little version of a scout troop he belongs to. What other small achievement earns a badge in the Woods Scouts? Microwaving a burrito for a Cooking Badge? Picking up ten pieces of litter for a Community Service Badge? Two days of always wiping before pulling one’s pants back up for a Human Health Badge? Some of us former Girl Scouts laugh heartily at this patheticness.
Cody Ware might benefit from some talent too…
@Hibbleton: Luann: Indeed, if the goal was to get Les and Tara together, they could have just had Luann take Tara for lunch at the restaurant that her family owns, where Les works.
@Tom T.:
And then Tara would be all like “Hey, isn’t this the place where I hid for a couple of weeks because my non-Piro cousin was out of jail?”
Luann: In Les’s defense, he actually has a job that he likes and has grown into a reasonably semi-tolerable human being. Why is he a “deadbeat”?
Apparently the parrots are big Clash fans.
Heathcliff: So mice are sentient enough to make art, and wear cute little mittens and scarves?
Makes me wonder if Mice are some sort of second-class citizens in the Heathcliff-verse.
I mean, thinking back, to “The Muppet Christmas Carol” Rizzo the Rat says that he has 1000 brothers and sisters.
Which in turn, makes sort of sense, that Scrooge employs rats as bookkeepers.
There are so many of them, that they’re cheap labor.
MW: There they sit, on their bed, fully clothed, talking about parrots and language skills and whatnot. Is this what passes for foreplay in their household? Maybe they think “bilingual” is dirty talk suggesting 69? Ugh.
@Maude R. Fawker: A kink to Toby and Ian is a tiny scratch in the kitchen sink. “Gotta get all the kinks out of it!”
No wait, that would be with Pluggers.
Pluggers realize that if you simply decide to stop grooming yourself, you don’t have to groom yourself!
@Poteet: Yeah, I was just thinking about how to make First Class Scout, we had to be able to identify 10 plants/trees. My scoutmaster was a botanist and felt that it would be just too easy for us to just memorize 10 plants of our choosing—no, he insisted that he be the one to point at 10 random plants in the woods for us to identify. Anyway, here’s to Mark punching out that moron scoutmaster, and his asshole kid too, beard or no beard.
Mary Worth – Those parrots are definitely the most intelligent characters in this strip. If they had opposable thumbs they’d be in total charge.
I can’t figure out if Ian had a lobotomy or is merely heavily drugged.
FC – That takes care of two of them. Now get Dolly to stick a fork in the electrical outlet, and put PJ in the bathtub and leave him alone.
Rex Morgan – The doctor’s kid is seen and treated immediately. I’m sure that man in the waiting room with severe chest pains and the guy bleeding all over the floor are fine with this.
One of Mr. Jive’s cousins had appendicitis. She was in considerable pain but had to wait so long in the waiting room that when she finally had surgery her appendix had burst.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: #97: Plus, he also scams half of Tiffany’s tip money, or was that deal memory holed?
@TheDiva: Re Crankshaft – More annoying obsession? I’d go with Harry Dinkle. Gertie just looks stupid, while Harry has that smug, punchable face.
@The Rambling Otter: “One Froggy Evening” is my all time favorite cartoon. I love Warner Bros cartoons, but that’s my favorite. I have a reproduction drawing of Michigan J. Frog in my living room.
Ziggy-This might be the only time Ziggy gets any laughs.
@The Rambling Otter: We had the TV on this morning, and coincidentally, the Barney Miller episode with Mr. Kopeckne, who thought he was a werewolf, was on. I don’t know if you have ever watched Barney Miller, but this episode is great. Kenneth Tigar is outstanding.
@The Rambling Otter: Oh, if only this could suddenly turn into the Goosebumps book ‘My Hairiest Adventure’, it would explain SO much!
@The Quiet Man:
That’s the one where the plot twist is “It turns out the kids who are suddenly transforming into dogs, were in fact scientifically uplifted dogs reverting back to their original state”?(spoiler for a thirty year old children’s book (assuming I’m correct), sorry)
Crank: Wait. he’s actually stopped being the band director? I guess Lefty finally got that restraining order.
GG: “That’s impossible, I’m not watching NASCAR right now. Even once I’ve gone home and put on one of my many VHS tapes of past races, I’ll still be haunted by the fact I had to go to this store and spend over an hour not watching NASCAR!”
JP: Ann yesterday: “Randy and April are missing?!”
Ann today “Both Randy and April are missing?!”
No, Ann, Randy and April are missing, but only ever one of them at a time. Sheesh, this family doesn’t need to drink heavily in order to impair their thought processes, do they?
RMMD: The look on the receptionist’s face says “And if I had a dollar for every panicky mom whose brat has possible appendicitis…” With that kind of empathy for the patients, I’m surprised he hasn’t been poached by the Morgan Clinic!
@Anonymous: LUANN: I’d prefer we not be reminded of the storyarc that featured Tara winning over Bernice by doing some shadow-boxing in the direction of a burglar.
@Anonymous: Yup, that’s the one. Wouldn’t it be incredible if all the characters* are scientifically uplifted dogs, the result of experiments by the senile arms merchant?
*ALL of them. Rex, June, Blondie and Augie DoggyDingDongDaddy, the Bucks, the Horrible Hankses, and the whole wacky Diner Crew.
CS:
“Then I go, now what?”
What you always do, Harry. Barge into Stumpy’s band room whenever you feel like it and take over her class.
FC: The trouble with using really, really old retreads like this one is that the old art style makes it look like Billy and Jeffy just stepped out of 1942. It’s like the start of a weird Twilight Zone episode where two long lost and presumed dead kids from the past come home to the present day.
“Hey, Mom. Got any Maypo?”
@I speak Jive: #96: I’d go with Dinkle too. Gertie’s obsession only effects her long-suffering but patient husband. Dinkle has ruined the lives of several decades of high schoolers and their families, all to feed his ego and his desire to be the center of attention.
@Pozzo:
Like, Santa Royale means ‘Royal Saint!’ Who knew?”
Actually, I think it means “reindeer burger” in Amsterdam.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
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?
You can just say Dartmouth. . .
@The Rambling Otter: No wait, that would be with Pluggers.
Ian can’t be a Plugger. Today’s Pluggers states with firm confidence that most of them grow their beards to minimize what they have to shave. A chinbeard flies in the face of that logic.
Don Abundio, translated:
[Sign: BAIT]
“100 pesos? That’s pretty expensive bait!”
“But it makes you irresistible to fish”
“So it lures them in?”
“Yeah!”
“Especially during spawning season!”
FC – The sunset coloring in the background is a nice touch. “Sure, kids, I’ll build you an igloo big enough to sleep in, in the 15 minutes we have left until it’s pitch dark out here.”
When I was a kid, my brothers and I once started to make an igloo with snow bricks we molded in some kind of rectangular box. When it became clear that this procedure would take until approximately spring, we resorted to less fussy methods.
@But What Do I Know?: “You can just say Dartmouth. . .”
I was thinking Bennington — Alma Mater of novel-writing mediocrities Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Lethem, and Donna Tartt.
@Hibbleton:
If they made some kind of Lucha Racing, with characters, storylines, and scripted results, I might actually like auto racing.
@Ukulele Ike: So glad to know someone else shares my opinion about those authors.
LUANN: Les and Tara, a pair I’d never considered. The only things they have in common is lack of comprehending work for money, anti-social behavior, and a willingness to exploit “friends”. Is that enough for a relationship?
CS: why we need to plan ahead, to retire TO something rather than retire FROM work.
BF: at age 45, the excitement of little Kim at Christmas returns.
BETTY: Thirty years ago, even my grandmother canceled when grasping “Readers Digest” was just ads.
DOONESBURY: And 22 years later, see where those values brought us.
GT: and the kids are all right…
JP: but the adults are not…
JS: and so Kenny is scarred for life.
S4TH: Tara and Les (Luann) all grown up.
@Activist:
On Luann – so long as neither of them gets a sudden bout of conscience and shoots the other in the woods under murky circumstances, I’d say they were a match made in soap-opera heaven!
@Tonio: That was my interpretation also.
Sex Organ V.D.: Where’s Gage and Desoto?
Dick Tracy:
RREEEEERREEEEERREEEEE
RREEEEERREEEEERREEEEE
WEEEEEEOOOOOOO
WEEEEEEOOOOOOO
Best dialog of the week.
@Lord Flatulence: Goes great with all the Dutch angles.
Filmmaking 101: “Go easy on the fucking Dutch angles.”
@Schroduck: ‘No, I mean, what does “love” mean?’
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The Beatles insisted its all you need, I guess its some kind of British thing.
MW: I haven’t been following this storyline much because I find it especially loathsome for some reason. Just imagine me saying “that’s not how parrots work” every day for the past month or so.
The Familliar Mucus: in which we find out if oval heads can fit in a house made of cubes.
Heathcliff – The mice have tastefully chosen to render Swiss cheese, which can be understood with white snow, and not a American or Colby that would require a Marvin-like “Yellowing” of the snow.
Gearhead Gertie – Most of Gertie’s days are spent moping at home while Cake’s “The Distance” plays on repeat, to her husband’s dismay.
Mary Worth – Mary Worth‘s birds and bilingualism is verging too close into horniess, which will get a cease and desist in several languages from Duolingo for trademark infringement.
Is Toby auditioning for her own spinoff strip, “Parrot head Polly”?
H-Cliff: Shame doesn’t enter into it. These mice obviously hold freakish strength in their tiny frames. Heathcliff is just plain outmatched.
MW: It’s a shame that Toby is taking Spanish lessons online. I’d love to be in a continuing ed classroom when she stands up and says that she wants to learn Español so that she can better talk to her parrot.
@Philip: Funny, I never had heard of the band Cake until just last week, when I was watching an old 90’s Judge Judy rerun, which involved a family dispute, over the daughter buying their CD in which the music terrified a Christian fundamentalist neighbour. Causing a huge landslide argument.
@Ukulele Ike:
Dammit, Uke, you can’t be this funny when I just lit a cigarette!
9CL: Brooke-via-Edda restates the strip’s revised, post-Bösendorfer to see if there’s anyone outside his skull who doesn’t find it creepy AF. Nope.
C-Shaft: True. Harry can’t very well retake that field without an army, can he?
DT: Czar’s bodyguards let goofball Mr. Mirror assassinate him. Now no one in the underworld will hire them. Except Mr. Mirror.
GT: Good thing the food smells good or else Keri would look dumb with their YUM earrings. I mean, moreso.
JP: Randy still missing. Alan a husk destroyed by excessive drinking. My Judge Charlotte/kiddy court proposal just keeps looking better.
MG&G: Mother Goose de-ages herself to a giant egg. Two of her domestic pets stand by and watch helplessly, their only hope being that she imprints on them when she hatches. How many times has this scenario unfolded before?
Phantom: They’ve been knocked unconscious and now they’re facing down some guy’s pet wolf? Their belief in their own immunity has probably started to crack already.
@Activist: Les was depicted as a jerk when he was first introduced, but now he’s just a homebody who loves his cat and somehow hasn’t killed roommate Gunther yet.
Late Thread Cuisine: After looking at the photo, you probably won’t need to look at the bottom of the card to know who created it.
@Activist: LUANN: Are you forgetting that they’re also both thieves?
@Baja Gaijin:
Absolutely a no go. I feel the same about peas as you do about spinach and clowns. Hmmm, a clown made of spinach.
@Baja Gaijin: How and why are there peas that big?
MW:
I remember when I adopted a cicada and learned to imitate its sounds. The wife and the neighbors weren’t happy.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: #130:
“hasn’t killed roommate Gunther yet”
That’s the one thing I hold against him.
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – I bet that the texture of those patties would be terrible. The ketchup glopped over it wouldn’t help.
Judging by the fluorescent green place mat, I’d guess that’s from the early 1970s.
@133 Deadly Goon Bugs: Great. Now I’ll have nightmares for decades about EVILSCARYSPINACHCLOWNS!!!
@134 Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: That’s six ounces of cooked split peas and a quarter cup of milk. And some miscellaneous spices.
@137 I speak Jive: The texture is probably odd: take the cooked split peas and whirl ’em around in a blend for 3 minutes. Or until smooth. Cook it at 400 degrees. I’m guessing an almost crabcake texture. That’s not ketchup glop: it’s barbecue sauce glop made with “brown sugar replacement.” The fluorescent green placemat is from 1974.
Personally, I’m looking forward to Ian becoming a bird-themed supervillain.
@Bryan:
She stole the TV for no apparent reason (kleptomania?), he created a false charity to buy extravagant gifts for a lesbian who didn’t care. They are not the same.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Optimists are often disappointed.
Sorry, Toby, but the Greg Bovino was sent back to California specifically to go after those birds. The hope is that because of his size he won’t spook them.
@GarrisonSkunk: That would only be if Toby was a Jimmy Buffet (RIP) fan.
Six Chex And A Cat Named Parkay! In Search Of A Punchline: How does the stick of butter drink its coffee?
@Ukulele Ike: *Unless you’re making porno films in the Netherlands.
@A Grave Mind: Dammit, Uke, you can’t be this funny when I just lit a cigarette!
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The Josh Fruhlinger has suggested that the humor of Ukulele Ike may be hazardous to your health. Please don’t smoke the comics!
@Baja Gaijin: The ketchup in these pictures always makes me think of A Clockwork Orange. “With the red red krovvy flowing down all horrorshow.”
@Craig!: Personally, I’m looking forward to Ian becoming a bird-themed supervillain.
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Parrotman! Parrotman! Does whatever a parrot can
@Baja Gaijin: Yeah, I can see how this could help someone lose weight: Take one look at it and toss the whole thing out the window.
@GarrisonSkunk:
Can he swing from a perch?
Take a look, buy some merch
Wealth and friends he’s ignored
Crackers are his reward
Hey there
Who’s a good Parrot-Man?
@Baja Gaijin: You’ll be happy to know, I was going to mention a TMNT crossover that involves something clown related. (And I apologized for saying it, mind)
But, I forgot that the filter rejects comments about a specific superhero, so it never sent.
@147 Peanut Gallery: It’s not ketchup. It’s bizarre barbecue sauce that sounds terrible atop baked split peas.
@149 Dr. Pill: You’ll lose weight by tossing this meal out the window, then by tossing your cookies.
@151 The Rambling Otter: Thank goodness for the filter. Thank goodness it doesn’t filter out your tasty-looking sweets.
Purple Burger™ went out of business once Flash disappeared from Earth.
@Baja Gaijin: Awwww thanks :3
I was actually going to make rainbow sprinkle sugar cookies tonight, but the dough came out too crumbly.
I looked up solutions.
They didn’t work.
I’m going to let the dough chill overnight and see what I can do in the morning.
@Baja Gaijin: It’s bizarre barbecue sauce
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Flash hears a voice from the next table,”On Bizzaro, pour Bizzaro Barbecue sauce on plate first,then put steak on top of it. Chef make Bizzaro Baja Gaijin happy!”
@The Rambling Otter:
#154. Sgar Cookies: add sour cream, like Sauls god daughter and my great aunt would.
@Activist:
#155. And if you add sour cream, also add a little baking soda to make the tart dough rise.
Judge Parker Brothers: Watch out! Mr Mirror is disguised as a hall mirror in the Parker house!
@Activist: Sgar Cookies:
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Don’t forget equal portions of spinach, Olive Oyl, and Segar ash for genuine Segar Cookies! I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a batch today.
@Activist: #155. And if you add sour cream, also add a little baking soda to make the tart dough rise.
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Just a spoonful of baking soda makes the tart dough rise up/the tart dough rise up/the tart dough rise up
Just a spoonful of baking soda makes the tart dough rise up/the tart dough rise up/the tart dough rise up in the most deliteful way.
@Peanut Gallery: I agree with Rambling, this site needs a thumbs up notification,and I give one to Peanut Gallery for completing the Parrotman theme song.:)
@GarrisonSkunk: Thank you!