Soapy corrections
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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/1/26
Ah, it looks like our runaway ex-Hollywood starlet, now desperate to eschew fame, is about to run into our own Mud Mountain Murphy, who has something of a complicated relationship with fame himself! You might recall that Mud was so intent on getting a headlining spot at a roots country show that he pretended to shit himself on stage to move his set later in the order; subsequently, however, thanks to the phoney-baloney Mirakle Method, he became a better person. Still, the Method also helped him find fame as “Li’l Fergus”, and he seems very twitchy about how his headshot should be on the wall of this crappy motel lobby, so it might take the love (?) of a good (???) woman to set him straight once and for all.
Mary Worth, 3/1/26
Oh, interesting, it looks like this Mary Worth plot isn’t going to be about sinister AI, but actually about the very grim reality of most so-called pig butchering scams. It turns out that if you got tricked out of tens of thousands of dollars in bitcoin by a fake online romantic partner, the conversations you were having are less likely to be with a cackling Danny DeVito lookalike and more likely to be with one of tens of thousands of people who have been recruited under false pretenses and enslaved in compounds along the Thai-Cambodian border. And sure, AI will end up making lots of white-collar jobs obsolete, but it will probably soon be able to do scam convos well enough that the criminal syndicates that profit off these cons will soon find that kidnapping people is no longer cost effective, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad.
139 replies to “Soapy corrections”
FC-“Those people at Grandma’s home tell such interesting stories.”
MW-Here we go folks. Another Luddite screed against technology.
Slylock Fox-“Why I’ve sold roller coasters to Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and by golly it put them on the map.”
Slylock Fox-Only one with an extensive knowledge of roller coasters can solve this puzzle.
Slylock – Not to worry. The G-forces will kill those people when they go from the first big drop to an incline right away.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – Lorna Starr will have her picture on the wall before they “fix” the frame and glass on Mud’s photo.
Wrecks Moregone:
“People with children refused to check in because your photo kept scaring the kiddies. Oops, did I say that out loud?”
_____________________________
Wary Morth:
Tommy’s been hitting the white powder hard, man.
That *is* Tommy, right?
RMMD: “It fell off the wall. Termites, you know. The place is infested with ’em. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone stays here.”
MW: This would be a lot less predictable if that were Sharon in the final panel.
RMMD: Where is Glenwood, you ask? Glenwood is where men are men and are named Truck, Buck and Mud, little missy.
DtM: I feel for Dennis on this one. Margaret IS kind of a stalker.
RMMD: So, the hotel was made famous by a song describing how boring it is? And now we get to read about someone staying there? Looks like we’ve got a thrilling couple of weeks to look forward to…
MW: I’d like to think that that last panel is completely unrelated to the main plot. No, it’s just a reminder that while this inane conversation is going on, there is real suffering out there in the world. Really puts it all in perspective.
Rex Morgan: “It was the strangest thing — we had some actually good music playing on the radio, and your photo fell off the wall and smashed on the ground. Must be some sound-wave vibration thing. Anyway, have you heard this Jelly Roll guy? He’s fantastic!”
Mary Worth: Okay, this story just took an extremely dark turn. I hope Mary finds a way to make it all about her even more quickly than usual, because I’m really not enjoying the actual plot.
Pluggers: “Pluggers who do their own landscaping don’t need to go to the gym.” I’m sorry, are they looking at the same image I am? Judging from bear-man’s midsection, he’s been cutting that grass and clipping those leaves just so he can eat them.
RMMD: “Too bad, Mud, but at least your picture had a smash hit.”
Talking of butchering pigs…
Hey, Sid, Agent To The Animal Stars!
It was a great experience working with Pablo Escoboar, the single best animal thespian I’ve ever come across. Please put him at the top of any list of pig actors. Thanks.
Now, I need you to find a pair of pigeons for me. Non speaking role, just a short appearance on one episode, so that they can go back to their other gigs right after. Let me know what you can do.
On the plus side, we’ve totally backed away from Mary’s half-hearted commitment on getting a cat.
@MKay:
Truck and Buck, who do not fuck. Mud, on the other hand, loves muck.
RMMD: Yeah, sure, desk guy. We all know Truck got drunk and punched that picture of Mud in a blind fury.
MW: Your mom’s basement doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?
MW: Mary Worth is officially cyberpunk now. The sky above Santa Royale was the color of television, tuned to a FAST channel that plays endless I Love Lucy reruns.
RMMD:
” ,,,but what about mine?”
” Well, it morphed into a skinny guy with talent, who’s ‘regular.’ Kinda a reverse ‘Picture of Dorian Grey’ sorta thing. So I got rid of it, since it wasn’t a likeness anymore.”
Dustin : Huh, usually when the strip treats someone talking to DustinDad like this, they’re depicted as the usual “fat idiot with overbite” design, not “top-heavy musclebound idiot with buttchin”.
Also, DustinDad thinks showing discipline and self-restraint is for losers. Because of course he does.
*************
Luann : is not being sarcastic or playing dumb. She’s genuinely forgotten she was the last person to use the shower, despite it only happening minutes ago.
I’d say that’s a record in stupidity from her, but it STILL doesn’t top “spin around in a circle a couple of times, collapse unconscious from dizzyness”.
*************
Mary Worth : “And if I can’t escape, at least maybe I can get myself transferred to that unit that’s blowing up a prison in Neo-Chicago….”
rmmd – the motel is gonna need some cinderblocks for the bed if truck and lorna hook up
CS: Jeff was a hipster?!? Before it was cool (I guess)?!?
Luann: Yeah, Luann is up to her usual
pre-teencollege-age shenanigans again. The thing I want to know is why Nancy has a cardboard cutout of herself from which it utters a prerecorded message. Maybe that question answers itself.9CL: Today’s strip is kind of nonsensical (it seems like the leash should have been in frame at least once before the revelation), but it isn’t horrifying.
@Liam: SF: The explanation is garbled, though — it is possible for a coaster to have a hill higher than the previous, since it’ll be trading off potential and kinetic energy the whole time. However they do all have to be lower than the first hill, and the model breaks that rule.
MW:
“Needless to say I haven’t read or seen any of the 1,258 news pieces warning that this sort of thing just might be a scam. Nor has the fact that there’s a 50-year age difference between us raised any kind of red flags whatsoever. So I’m going to need you to extricate myself from my folly, Mary!”
@MKay: MW: I thought it was Sharon at first, since the previous panel had Mary thinking about Sharon. There’s probably a technical term for that story-telling convention.
(Reminds me of a review of one of Doris Wishman’s movies, which said “There is an entire language of film-making conventions, and you aren’t even aware they exist until you see how badly Wishman breaks them.”)
FC: That’s so HTTG! She knew it was lunchtime, so she sabotaged Thel’s plans to make lunch. And Bil can’t just say no to that.
Zits: The Duncans show the dark side prevalent in so many suburban families. They know Jeremy won’t tell anyone about this, too.
Dustin: Leave the mockery of Jef Mallett to Pastis. He’s a lot better at it.
Luann:
Inner Beauty is a slob with the mind of a 6 year old, part 1234567890.
@Liam: Slylock Fox: it is more of a Shelbyville idea!
@Ukranazi Stepan: For real that’s what I thought? Anyway the reality of pig butchering scams could be a much more interesting place for this storyline to go than the “whatsisface is being catfished by some jerk” which the strip already did. I said it could be, not that it will.
Oh also improbable confirmation on the quote, I thought it was going to turn out to be something said by the character Phaedrus in Plato’s dialogue The Phaedrus, and that’s what the Superfriends wiki says, but it turns out to be from the fables of Gaius Julius Phaedrus (book IV, the Weasel and the Mice).
DT: I guess this guy really didn’t like Nitrate’s interpretation of Hamlet at the last prison drama club meeting.
JP: Randy better watch out April is now in her full final form – super hero with plot hole armor. Snowmobiles to prison undetected. No planned way out, just going to wing it. Blew prison apart. Took care of the many guards except the one guy attack Bogdan, and now they are in a Kamaz truck whose keys were just there gassed up. Be careful Randolph, with a flick of her wrist you’ll be gone!
MW: So how is Mary going to save the day and bust this scam farm based far from SoCal?
RMMD: Mudman is back! Since many plots lately have been telegraphed (see MW) will Starr meet Mud and will wedding bells sound? Maybe they can double up with Autumn and Augie.
MW: In today’s strip, the role of Mary Worth will be played by Edna May Oliver.
MW – I gotta admit that I was disappointed to see the final panel. I thought Moy was going to go full plot twist on us and make this relationship totally legit. Sure, that would be less interesting, yet more interesting than three months of parrot drama.
Mary Worth: Spoiler Alert
Somehow Mary will get a vague idea of what’s going on. On a complete whim calls the police to intercept this facility and free everyone.
As the Swat Team goes in, they manage to rescue everyone. But one cop manages to go down in the line of fire… but that’s okay, because MARY gets a parade for saving everyone on her own with no help whatsoever.
Both Rex Morgan, M.D. and Mary Worth: [deep guttural groaning] There. You’ve filled the guy who plays Cthulhu on TV with dread, nausea and despair. Are you happy now?
Slylock: “You Idiots!! That’s a mobius strip. You’ll be stuck on that ride forever!”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Considering that the guy who created Cthulhu was nauseated by everything that wasn’t within an extremely specific set of parameters, up to and including the Dutch, I’m not sure if that’s necessarily a high bar to clear.
@treetown: So how is Mary going to save the day and bust this scam farm based far from SoCal?
As Josh reminded us, many of the farms are located on the Thai-Cambodia border. And didn’t Dr. Jeff once work at a hospital in Vietnam? Which is near the farms, for “I can cover the whole area on a map with my thumb” values of near. Maybe it’s time for Dr. Jeff to return to that work, with Mary and, for some inexplicable reason, Toby, Mr. H, and Wilbur as aides. There, all neatly plotted, and even makes more sense than the telepathic dogs story.
@Ken: I think it’s starting on the left and all the other hills *are* shorter. That also ignores the obvious – they can observe whether or not the scale model works before investing
Blondie: today’s strip actually made me smile.
Bizarro: I’ll admit this idea had never occurred to me, but it makes sense when you think about it.
@Professor Well Actually: It is nice, but every car maintenance/ repair job I’ve ever signed off on had a “will contact for authorization” clause for anything found that would go beyond the initial estimate.
It does remind me of a family road trip where we were at a small indoor pool complex for a break on April 01 and the check-in guy quoted something like 10x the ticket price – my dad, utterly jaded at this point, was pulling out his credit card when my sister noticed the price list and that the clerk was trying not to laugh
If Rex Morgan MD gets a new writer before the total collapse of the newspaper comic strip industry, I hope their first storyline is about Rex finding a cure for the brain virus that makes everyone they meet get really into bluegrass.
@Midtown: It could be far more bizarre, given the eye-covered-ring, multi-headed, many-winged biblical descriptions of angels(:
@Ken: But that would require Mary to travel to a place full of (gasp, shudder) non white people.
Also, most of the captives forced to work for these scams are Asians, primarily ethnic Chinese. But everyone in the last panel looks white to me.
Does Brigman even know how to draw non white people?
@matt w:
I thought it was Phaedrus from the execrable Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and was determined to not touch that book again to find out.
RMMD: “I dunno, Mud, it’s like the wall itself rejected your picture. And with extreme prejudice, too!”
MW: If you were interacting with Mary Worth in real life, would you eventually notice that she spends a lot of time silently judging you while giving you a funny look? ‘Cause she must do that with everybody.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the words “famous” and “well-known” do this much heavy lifting.
Mary Worth Mashups: What if someone else was behind the computer screen in the final panel? Here are three alternatives.
MW- we have Harry Hart, our lovestruck octogenarean. Before that was Bats Belfry, the crazy “girlfriend”. I think Moy wasn’t telegraphing her newcomers story before, because I think I would have remembered Dawn’s abusive boyfriend if he’d been named Slap Demean.
MW1: Never fear, nondescript woman(?) prisoner! CIApril, with her able assistant Bogdan and useless sidekick Randy will soon crash through the wall in their stolen Soviet truck and rescue you! Just try not to look like a guard when they arrive!
MW2: ‘[AI] it will probably soon be able to do scam convos well enough that the criminal syndicates that profit off these cons will soon find that kidnapping people is no longer cost effective, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad.’
Probably bad, because the gangs will find it more cost-effective to simply engage in non-metaphorical slaughtering.
RMMD: Y’know, I was remembering yesterday how, back before Mud, before Truck, before Sarah the Supergenius, even before Buck, there was some storyline involving a young girl gone bad (not Sarah’s babysitter or her meangirl cheerleader rival) which climaxed with her cornered in an open field, ill-gotten gains in one hand and a gun in the other. Ordered to drop everything and surrender, she turned with a dramatic ‘TRY AND TAKE IT!’ It was gripping, shocking even. Then I look at things like today’s strip and just heave a sigh…
S4th: Uh, Ces? You *just gave* these characters a break. You had them go on a ski holiday that somehow didn’t turn into another one of your reality-warping disasters. Has writing JP ruined your sense of continuity that badly?
Y@Cheez Whiz: Well, now you make me all the more curious. Even having not seen the film myself, I would agree that it would be a different movie with Monroe. Sellers is a bit of a wild card though. He could be a scenery chewer himself unless he trusted a director enough to let himself be controlled and 1965 is right around the dividing point between his classics like ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘A Shot in the Dark’ and incomprehensible junk like ‘The Party’ and ‘The Magic Christian’.
@Baja Gaijin: I hope Mrs. Italian Sub gets out of this situation. Also, I’ll just say I’m happy it wasn’t Wilbur in a speedo.
MW: All Trixie’s messages are acrostics. Each text contains a help message in manipulated letter placement. She thinks; “I knew this degree in English Comp would come in handy.”
Rex Morgan, M.D.: If I walked into a motel lobby and the clerk was wearing a white short sleeve shirt and a tie, I’d turn around and walk out. Something freaky going on there.
GA: ”The Groceries are” are too expensive for them to buy any, so Walt and Bumblebee Nurse are going to have to give up eating. Not just swap out pork chops for canned corned beef. Eat nothing at all.
Mary Worth: Either everyone along the Thai-Cambodian border is Caucasian, or this call center is conveniently within rescue reach.
MW: On one hand, Mary Worth can’t work up any sympathy for the victims of human trafficking unless said victims are white. On the other hand, there is a non-zero chance that any attempt to depict Asians in this strip would end up looking like a WWII-era Dr. Seuss cartoon, so this may be the lesser of two evils.
RMMD: Mudgus’ headshot tried to off itself after he transformed from a mildly interesting antagonist to a completely boring protagonist.
C’shaft: Jeff has been fantasizing about a catastrophic event ending his and everyone else’s miserable existence for a long, LONG time.
Dustin: Dustdad’s mug says “World’s Okayest Lawyer,” which I would argue is false advertising.
JP: Well, good thing secret private prisons in Siberia just leave the keys in their cargo trucks like that.
Luann: The thing is, both of these characters are so dumb I can’t tell if they’re being sarcastic.
MW. Looking at panels 5 and 6 I think Mary has found her long lost brother.
Crankshaft: “And Richard Nixon is the worst president we’ll see in our lifetimes.”
”You can say that again.”
I’d be interested to see Luann marry Phil. Imagine the two of them living together (with of course Bernice as the third wheel roommate, like TJ), and the escalating passive-aggressive putdowns Phil would constantly be launching at his new wife who won’t pick up after herself and can’t advance beyond table busser at not-McDonald’s.
And, of course, Phil’s two housemates spending decades at the local community college without graduating would be more fuel for the fire. The readers might eventually develop some sympathy for this guy. “He might be a snarky *#$%!, but at least he’s bringing home the bacon. And what’s his reward? Supporting two people who are about as helpful as that Zonker fellow from Doonesbury!”
Dang it, soap strips! Your execution is questionable at best, but I have to admit it. A scammer storyline where the scammer is sympathetic and forced to bilk people is genuinely interesting.
And while the Li’l Fergus story had too many embellishments, the idea of a cult’s self-help doctrine accidentally helping someone is also fun and novel, and calling Fergus “the boy with the beard” is downright hilarious.
Maybe there’s a world where soap strips are good for something other than being targets of mockery? We can’t know, but I assume Sequential Art Scientists are working on this question in the Comics Theory Lab even as I write this.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women:
@TheDiva:
I can see the worst possible combination. The call center/prison is located ‘out of cell range’ in the Charterstone National Forest (with convenient road access!) with white victims overseen by Yellow Peril stereotypes (think Dr. Daka in the 1943 B****n serial) who went into deep cover after Pearl Harbor. So deep they never learned that the war is over and Japan lost.
Pluggers: I call “Shenanigans!” Pluggers do NOT use push mowers; they have lawn tractors suitable for 10-acre farms even though they own an eighth-acre plot in suburbia. Also useful for driving to the mailbox.
MW- So how did Hardly make his money anyway? I think he dressed pretty much the same way as he is at the pool party, but also wore a turbin and wrap around sunglasses. He managed a stable of professional wrestlers. (All heels, of course.)
Blondie, the Neighborhood Bumstead : Don’t forget to check Dagwood’s Johnson Rod!
@Anonymous: #61: Are you referring to the late, great Ernie Roth, AKA the Weasel, AKA the Wizard of Wrestling?
Blondie, the Neighborhood Bumstead : Don’t forget to check Dagwood’s Johnson Rod!
Rex Morgan – Mud’s picture fell off the wall and broke? That’s the most action packed development in this strip for months, and we didn’t see it.
Mary Worth – This is going to turn out to be a double meddle – Mary will open HH’s eyes to the scam, and she will also rescue the young man from his enslavement with the scam compound. The young guy will praise her for weeks when she finds a pet for him. And you thought that orange cat was forgotten.
Edge City (Comics Kingdom) – This is so true.
FC – The melonheads had to listen to HTT Grandma rant for an hour about their harlot mother before she gave them those presents.
Wow!
A (moderately) funny Oglaf in longer than I can recall.
@Baja Gaijin: They don’t load for me.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women:
Imagine Mary having to interact with anyone who’s not white.
MW – “Things are seldom what they seem / Skim milk masquerades as cream”
— Gilbert & Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore
And this is definitely going to be another skim-milk story.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Doris, you’re good for first base, Flo for second base, Mary third, Laura for shortstop…”
“Ana, Eva, and Rita, wait in the outfield”
“You sure know a lot about baseball, Don Abundio”
“No, dating!”
@Ukranazi Stepan: #12: Don’t even think it. We barely made it through Truck’s finger injury cliffhanger. I couldn’t last through his E.D.
@Ken: #21: I know, right? Sunday is the day for narration boxes; what would have been wrong with, “Meanwhile, in a dungeon far, far away?”
Luann: Nancy speaks: “Oh, sure, blame the dog.”
@Ukranazi Stepan: Hey, thanks, pal. I knew Pablo Escoboar wouldn’t let ya down. A real pro – although he can be a ham sometimes….
So we’re talkin’ Pigeons this week? Sure you don’t wanna consider Parrots? They’re trending now. But maybe not the best choice for non-speaking roles – it’s hard for ’em to keep their mouths shut. I think we can provide a couple of Pigeons from our Avian assets. Oh, their contract usually requires you have a statue or monument in the scene – hope you can work that in for them.
MW Did Tommy the Tweaker go straight or fall off the rails? Because the enslaved character looks like it could be him hitting rock-bottom. I assume Moy is plotting this to be in North America otherwise I think Brigman could easily draw other ethnicities (see her Marvel Comics work), but Moy’s plotting… yeah. Yellow Peril could be an understatement.
I am also mildly intrigued that we’re getting something more nuanced than “AI chatbots will scam you”, but rather an Engineer.ai story where humans in bad working conditions are still cheaper to use than advanced AI tech.
FC: “Did I say lunch was ready? I suppose we can have it for dinner instead”, she says, then goes back into the kitchen, grinding her teeth hard enough to strip enamel.d
@Liam: “MW-Here we go folks. Another Luddite screed against technology.”
Well. On Friday, the billionaire owner of Block laid off 4000 of his human employees (40% of his workforce) and said you can look for many more layoffs to come because “Artificial Intelligence” will replace the work they do.
And on Friday, the Secretary of War said he was cutting off negotiations with another high tech company because its owners did not want to give the Trump Administration carte blanche to use its AI technology against civilians or to create a Doomsday Device eliminating any human controls over launching those little ol’ nuclear missiles.
Of course, MW will do something much less interesting.
@Guillermo el chiclero: The Grand Wizard was one of the all-time greats (Personally, I’m more of a Bobby Heenan/Jim Cornette guy).
MW: So it turns out that Trixie is in prison, and that without her makeup she looks hideous.
@Tom: Huh. I knew Lovecraft was a world-class hater, but I did not know about the Dutch. Even an Old One can learn something new.
Mary Worth Mashups: What if someone else was behind the computer screen in the final panel? Here are three alternatives, hosted on another website.
@Tom: @I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Wouldn’t it be great if HPL could come back for just one day, so we could take him to the seaside and treat him to a deluxe Shore Dinner?
@Guillermo el chiclero: You betcha! I grew up in Indianapolis, In. When I was a kid, he was on TV there. He was known as “Abdullah Farouk” in those days and managed The Shiek. Many bloody battles with “The World’s Most Dangerous Wrestler” Dick The Bruiser. “Pretty Boy” Bobby Heenan was also a fixture in those days. We’re talking late sixties,early seventies.
Schlock Fox And Comix For Kinky Kids: “Monorail!”
@Anonymous: #83: As the Sheik’s manager he wore a fez rather than a turban.
“At my age, I cannot afford to wait! That’s why I am dating someone who is already pregnant!”
RMMD: Sorry, Mud. Some damn Amazonian parrot flew in here one day and smashed your picture, saying play Muddy Boots, play Muddy Boots, ha-ha-ha, squawk.
MW: Is that some skinny dude with long, stringy hair or a scrawny, flat-chested chick?
MW: At least this despondent woman(man?) is thinking up an escape plan, as opposed to Randy Parker, who had no plan whatsoever but will brag to Bogdan later it was his idea for CIApril ex machina to conveniently show up all along.
MW: Not to worry, prisoner of indeterminate gender, Patrolwoman Han of the Jungle Patrol and Stripeybutt will soon be there.
Wilbur and his Colombian gold-digger, Estelle and her scammer, this guy and his scammer… how come so many cons happen to people in Chatterstone?! Well, they chose to continue living near Mary Worth, so they are already self-selected patsies!
Mud, he asked you how long you will stay, don’t answer “‘bout a week”! The poor guy needs to input some specific number of nights in the system, be mindful of service workers!
@Guillermo el chiclero: Correct. And Bobby Heenan wore like a sequined jacket and one of those triangle ties. Bobby was a kid then. Still had acne. But man, did he draw heat! Factoid: Although he managed guys like The Shiek, in real life, Earnie Roth was Jewish. That fez made him look like a Shriner.
Jump Start: Remember how yesterday, we were joking about radios in RMMD that only played roots country, news headlines or other plot advancers?
@Guillermo el chiclero: Correct. My reply got swallowed a couple times. Anyway, it made him look like a shriner.
RMMD: I like how that antique radio can change colors day to day. Maybe it’s casing is made out of the same stuff mood rings are made of.
MW: In Charterstone’s basement, Carlos Alora’s low-overhead call center provides him with a much-needed second income.
Crank: “These characters have been depressed for their entire lives. That’s the joke.” That’s it. We’ve hit Peak Funkyverse. Batty can stop now.
Also, I’m willing to be corrected on this point, but was the greenhouse effect a talking point amongst doomsters of the seventies? Air pollution, sure, but specifically that?
DT: Goodness, it’s the return of fan favourite Mr Gabriel, the villain of that classic story “Eric Costello read something about William Mann’s blackmail racket in 1900s New York, but didn’t really understand how it worked.”
FC: “We just happened to be passing Grandma’s, and just happened to pop in, when it just happened to be baking day, and PJ just happened to be wearing his ‘I [heart] Grandma’ shirt.” Sure, this is part of HTTG’s ongoing campaign against Thel, but I don’t think Big Daddy Keane is entirely blameless here.
OTF: It took me so long to even realise Deth was meant to be a Roomba vacuuming up the time that I almost missed that the metaphor (as usual) makes no sense. It’s when a Roomba (or any other vacuum cleaner) is full that it can’t do any more work, not when it’s empty!
Phantom: I absolutely love how the Walker coat of arms is already purple on one side and blue and black diagonal stripes on the other. I’m honestly surprised there isn’t a skull!
RMMD: “Don’t worry, I’ve told everyone not to throw the darts so hard next time!”
SFx: Slylock has noticed that the rollercoaster is an absurd cartoony design that would never work in real life for multiple reasons, exactly one of which also applies in the cartoony world of Slylock Fox.
Blondie: And that’s how you get the customer to say, “huh, so $239 for an oil change isn’t that bad, really.”
RMMD: Can we please go back to Lorna Starr and her ginormous boobs? A careful character study seems called for.
@Rover Berkeley: Phil and Luann are the kind of couple that should both be involved with other people. They both need partners who will counter their social awkwardness, not reinforce it.
@Horace Broon: re: DT: My god, you’re right! Mr. Gabriel! He was the main villain in the story about the time-travel painting, right? No? The rat-eating? The flagpole impalement? (In any case, why is HE helping Silver Nitrate?
Tomorrow’s Adventure: Nitrate runs like a bunny into the next room and encounters the Three Margies, who take their turn trying to hide him from BB Eyes and his not-a-Tommy-gun, after Big Margie determines he’s a gentile. In the third room, Fishhead and Lena the Library Lady await.
@Ukranazi Stepan: OK, I’m not the only one who sees Tommy here.
CURTIS: hey, what’s Barry getting for writing Big Bro’s report?
BF: maybe charge a $5 tax for each time some salesperson says, “This tek will make your work easier.”. Hah!
JUMP START :a new character debuts!
TINAS GROOVE: Suxanne 1, Philosophers 0.
The Familiar Mucus:” Mommy! I told Gramma about the dead guy you’re keeping on top of the fridge.” “Thanks, Jeffy.”
@Horace Broon: #95: re-CS: You’re correct. Greenhouse gasses didn’t become big until the 1980s, after acid rain and nuclear winters had their turn.
@Ukulele Ike: #99: And after that, he jumps into a manhole where Yeti guides him through the city’s sewer system.
DT: When BB Eyes took that guard’s AR-15 I didn’t see a spare magazine. I hope BB’s realized he’s just expended all of his ammo.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Y’know, when ‘Mudges complain about ancient 1940s-50s Dick Tracy villains hauled from their graves and put through their paces again, I always think What, you want more stories about Yeti and Fishhead and Doubleup and the Three Margies? Sprocket Nitrate and the hippie guy and the Tottens?
@Ukulele Ike: Wasn’t there one called “Twitch” ?
MW – And thus was born the Piña colada song….
Late Thread Cuisine: They call this “shepherd’s pie.” I’m not sure they know how those words work together.
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – Maybe the cook was sloshed. I like shepherds pie, but I’d pass on that.
@Baja Gaijin: The Cheez Whiz is an interesting touch.
@Baja Gaijin: If it’s made with chopped/minced lamb and topped (even partially) with mashed veg, I think it counts – even if the classic is fully topped with mashed potato. (If it’s another meat, I was taught it’s “cottage pie”. It does look like a particularly poor example with pearl onions giving overly-big bites, the meat in chunks instead of a fine mince to take the sauce, which is ickily congealed.
RMMD: Judging by Doug’s attire I’d say there’s a Book of Mormon and not a Gideon’s Bible in each room.
@110 I speak Jive: Um, yeah, sloshed or high on ditch weed?
@111 taig: Even more interesting, it’s not Cheez Whiz, it’s mashed sweet potatoes. Seriously.
@112 CanuckDownSouth: Chopped lamb. And canned whole mushrooms. And brown sugar with the above-mentioned mashed sweet potatoes.
@Baja Gaijin: Re the sweet potatoes in the cuisine recipe – I have a recipe that uses ground turkey for the meat and mashed sweet potatoes for the topping. I made it once and thought that it was pretty good. It did not have pearl onions in it.
I like shepherd’s pie/cottage pie; however, Mr. Jive complains about it, so I don’t make it very often. It’s been a couple of years since I made it.
9cl – -a dog taking a dump… real classy there, Brooke.
Rex Morgan, MD – This is the start of a Hallmark story about how the big city, formally famous starlet finds “real America” in root country music, with the help of wildman Mud Murphy, who is finally domesticated. Rex is lucky, as his eye patch from surgery means he doesn’t have to watch this like the rest of us.
Mary Worth – This human-trafficking storyline might pan out if we get the Mary Worth version of “More Zippers, Mule!” in the course of the story. I’m counting on you, Karen Moy!
@Baja Gaijin: Well, mashed sweet potatoes do make more sense than Cheez Whiz.
@Baja Gaijin: brown sugar glaze works with ham and mashed potatoes, but with lamb’s depth/funk? Egads. And the sizes of everything – I love a halfway-decent cottage pie, but that would have small bits: peas and teeny carrot dice and ground meat. It’s best with a smoother pie filling, not a chunky stew.
MW: Okay, so apparently Iris’s son Tommy, despite no longer being a tweaker, has landed himself in deep trouble, either in prison or some kind of press-ganged work crew. That’s involved in you-can’t-spell-catfishing-without-AI schemes. These are a couple of twists I didn’t see coming.
RMMD: Sorry you had to see all that, Lorna. But you did ask.
@Baja Gaijin:
Is it from the Hannibal Lector cook book? If so, it might contain parts of actual shepherds.
BB: “Oh, I’m doing just fine after my headfirst fall, old man. Thanks for asking.”
C-Shaft: A sit-down conversation with Jeff is a surefire way to feel better about the imminent apocalypse and has been for a good 55 years at least. (Seriously, how is Crankshaft still driving?)
Dustin: I don’t care what a fictional character eats—or anyone else, really—but the sight of Dustdad assaulting the donut with those beaver teeth is so displeasing I wish the camera would cut away.
DT: Yeah, there are circumstances where having GK Chesterton hide you behind a bunch of cardboard boxes just won’t do it, and this is one of them.
JP: Among others, RIP to the gulag barber. Most of the prisoners didn’t see much of you, but you were key to maintaining Randy’s Eminem buzzcut.
Luann: As ever, Luann falls desperately short in shutting the fuck up skills.
@Deadly Goon Bugs: As the Act I finale of Sweeney Todd says, “shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top!”
@CanuckDownSouth: Agree. Chunks of meat and kidney and mushroom in gravy are wonderful in a steak & kidney pie, but shepherd/cottage pie requires fine dice and a smooth filling.
All this talk of meat pie is driving me to bake one of my pork pies. Ground pork sauteed along with tiny bits of onion, celery, carrot, and potato, plus stock and a bay leaf. The Quebecois season theirs with cinnamon and cloves; I prefer oregano and maybe a dash of mustard powder.
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: DT: I’d feel safer if I was hiding behind G.K. Chesterton.
@Ettorre: It’s OK; this motel specifically caters to Country-and-Western stereotypes. It’s also acceptable to order a meal in the dining room by simply requesting “Rustle me up some grub.”
@TheDiva: Thank you for pointing that out re MW. I had been thinking this could potentially have been a great opportunity to make the strip more accurate and interesting by using an Asian character. But I forgot about that little depiction challenge.
Also, I just checked online, and it seems the Golden Triangle pig-butchering operations are now trafficking and enslaving people from South America, Eastern Africa, and Western Europe as well as Asia. Now I’m really hoping we won’t see that MW prisoner get an organ or two harvested. That’s one thing that can happen to the prisoners.
@Ukulele Ike: Either his bulk or his philosophical musings would afford more protection.
So, General Chuma fled to the US and used his muckmen business model for pig butchering?
@Artist formerly known as Ben: “The tree is anarchy, and the lamppost is civilization. The tree is beautiful, but at the moment, we only can see that by the light of the lamppost.”
Time to read The Man Who was Thursday again. I’m sure I got that wrong.
@Baja Gaijin: Having checked the date, I do remember that 1973 was kinda like that.
@Ukulele Ike: So I take it that watching FATHER BROWN on public TV is not giving me an entirely accurate view of what G.K. Chesterton was actually like as an author and thinker, right? [ducks]
@Ukulele Ike: It’s been a while but I know the exact part of the book you’re talking about.
Tonight’s installment of Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective has been brought to you by Dunder Mifflin
RMMD: Just change the name of this stupid strip to The Wacky Adventures of Mud Murphy already.
@taig: @Baja Gaijin: The Cheez Whiz is an interesting touch.
_______________________________________
Don’t Cheez Whiz on the electric fence!
RMMD:
Thesis: the cubic volume of Doug’s coiffure is expanding at a rate greater than that of a container of cooking Jiffy Pop. Discuss.
RMMD: Judging by the short-sleeved white shirt and skinny black tie of the hotel clerk, it appears that Mud has walked right into a 1960s-era government trap where the G-man isn’t even hiding the fact that he’s a Kennedy Boy fresh of integrating the Jim Crow South. Can’t wait to see where this goes.
RMMD: So is Lorna the daughter of Brenda Starr? Grand daughter? Love child? I would have asked why she didn’t follow in Brenda’s footsteps, but I’m sure that Lorna realized that being a “Starr” reporter Isn’t the career path It was back in grandma’s day . . ..