Troubling youth, etc.
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Pickles, 8/18/26

Not to sound old, but I do find someone replying “k” to me to be irritating sometimes (and to prove I’m not doing generational discourse, I’ll say these people are as likely to be older than me as they are to be younger). But expecting someone to type out “okay” instead of “ok”? That’s madness. That’s insanity.
B.C., 8/18/26

Speaking of generational discourse, I’m not sure what syndicated newspaper comic strip I would’ve guessed would be the first to go in for “Weren’t things different and better back in the wonderful long-ago year two thousand and twelve?” nostalgia slop for millennials, but I definitely would not have picked B.C.
Hi and Lois, 8/18/26

There are something like 1.5 million real estate agents in the US, according to some cursory Googling, and I don’t think there’s ever been a comic strip dedicated to their specific interests and concerns, so maybe Hi and Lois should lean into that and become primarily realtor-focused. The Roaring ’20s ended and Blondie shifted from being about a cool flapper and her dissolute failson husband to being about a suburban dipshit who’s bad at his white collar job but manages to hold onto it anyway; so too, as America’s economy becomes increasingly asset-based, we must turn away from Hi’s generic office antics and instead focus on his wife’s attempts to facilitate people cashing out their home equity and hoping the money lasts until they die. The creative team will need to do a bit more research on the various dilemmas realtors encounter in their day-to-day life to give the thing a little more variety, though. They can’t all be about hoarders!


35 replies to “Troubling youth, etc.”
Has there ever been a more resigned, hang-dog Realtor® than Lois? Not a good image for the profession, sweetie; buck up!
Lois’s work deals with hoarders while Blondie’s work deals with hors d’oeuvres.
Pickles:
“And here I thought you were texting me ‘Potassium,’ and I couldn’t understand why you would be engaging me about the periodic table!”
H&L: A good tip is to bake something before a showing so the house smells homey. Maybe you could hire Maya from Blondie’s catering business to do a crossover.
Usually these references either make me feel old because something that seems like yesterday was twenty years ago, or they make me feel old because something that seems like twenty years ago was last year and far too much has happened since then. But “‘Gangnam Style’ was 14 years old” seems just right. Thank you, B.C.!
Hi and Lois:
“What do the two of you call the interior decoration style here, anyway?”
” ‘Chip’s Room’ !”
B.C. : There’s no “is” though. It goes “OPPA GANGNAM STYLE”, no “is”.
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Crankshaft : it’s a robot waiter. I guess Josh and C’Thulhu looked ahead when they made their jokes about yesterday’s comic, because they read ahead and know how the rest of the week will play out.
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Frazz : Wait, characters in this strip claim that sometimes they feel uncomfortable over how judgemental they get? …Pull the other one.
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Hi & Lois : this isn’t a hoarder’s room, though. Heck, it’s barely “messy room with too much stuff”. This is like the time the Flagston’s got “snowed in” by a snowfall that barely covered their backyard sandbox and had multiple patches of their lawn visible!
I’m going to do generational discourse about PIckles. How come Sylvia is in her twenties and her mom is over seventy?
Pickles: Well, you seemingly texted your daughter about going for lunch from the next room, so who’s to say who’s really lazy and callous here?
BC I can only assume thst if I go back into the B.C. archives from 2012 I’ll find references to how good things are going, right? No complaints about the kids these days or how we lost our way as a society? Maybe I’ll just check back in around 2040..
H&L That is…accurate. That’s what you do to sell a house. Am I missing a panel or…?
“In my day you would scratch down ‘Oll korrect’ and attach the note to the carrier pigeon, the way the good Lord intended!”
Life was so much better back in 10,012 BC.
H&L: The wife tells her husband that they need to clean out their horde for the sale so it looks like no one lives there. Lois corrects her; “No. Not ‘no one’! Just you two. I already hate you and we only just met.”
Pickles: I have to admit, someone doing the “thumbs up” emoji to my message gets under my skin in a way I can’t fully explain.
B.C.: Nostalgia waits for no man. Good Lord, was 2012 really that long ago?
BC: This is a clever BC, because young people (forty somethings) recognise the Gangnam Style reference, but the strip’s target audience (eighty somethings) can just read this as a reference to the comedic stylings of Jerry Lewis. Hey, sexy LAY-dy!
Also BC: It’s fun to imagine how Johnny Hart would have felt to learn one day his characters would speak Korean and then say the phrase “sexy lady”.
@pugfuggly:
In 2012, we were half-seriously worrying that the World was going to end because the mayans had made no further calendars after that year (or something).
As for 2040….
@Schroduck:
It’s fun to imagine how Johnny Hart would have felt to learn one day his characters would speak Korean
In 2040, the B.C. characters are going to sing “Yeongwonhi kkaejil su ?omneun/Gonna be, Gonna be GOLDEN” instead.
PHANTOM: “When an evil man is at rest….”. Is narrator referring to Chatu/ Cobra or to Freaky/ Vindicta?
Pickles – WtF….
BC – Name That Copralite….
H&L – Well, lived in is one thing, but maybe start by getting rid of the steaming full adult undergarments….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
H&L: As hoarders go, you probably couldn’t get the show to even consider these two. But, in the name of all that is holy, STRAIGHTEN THAT PICTURE!
MW: “That’s great, Wilbur! Now, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to give in to an irrepressible urge to pelt you with tomatoes.”
RMMD: There’s been no money coming in during all of this plotting. I see a dine & dash in the near future.
DtM: If Dennis can dodge juvie and jail, he could have a future as a food critic.
GT: Fencing sounds like it could keep Keri busy figuring out how it’s sexist/racist/ageist/elitist/capitalist/ materialist.
BC — I read that as “Opa is Gangster style” and was mentally composing a strongly worded email to the editor asking that my grandfather’s reputation not be tarnished in this way.
Picky — I guess a “Thumbs Up” emoji is out of the question, then. . .
Hi and Lois: When my brother moved out of his landlord’s house.
He left a bunch of recycling and garbage in the bedroom.
1- Despite the landlord asked to clean it up, he also said in an earlier text “You can just leave the room as-is”
2- The landlord is a con-art, and happened to steal 1500 dollars from my brother (so screw him)
3- When I was helping my brother move the last of his things, I suggested I did help clean up the mess, my brother said not to worry about it, and literally 3 minutes after we left, the realtor showed up. So it would have been impossible to clean it up that fast anyway.
DT: Is this arc a dig at current media / software businesses? The head honcho is a nepo whose video tape old man somehow left him in charge. He is making a mess literally and figuratively. His sloppiness is leaving clues scattered about. His selfishness and ego (worrying about scamming Nyle about videoboards) while his real cash cow, the multimillion dollar ransomware business is largely ignored and left to the workers…
RMMD: The twins discover thinking is hard.
GT: Sure, why not, there must be many of them – Google says, New York, parts of California and Illinois…and now I guess it includes Milford.
FG: How did Ming lose the first time against these guys? Was he sick? Seems like he is wiping them away.
JP: Why would Charlotte be afraid of a woman who angers easily, is violent and suddent appears and disappears? Especially when Neddy is so easily manipulated.
“Oh. I thought you were just skipping two letters. I’ll go return your father’s hood to the closet.”
Wrecks Moregone:
Why is Jeanjane or Janejean cradling her face in both hands without resting her elbows on her knees? Is she trying to protect her neck from turning ochre like Janejean or Jeanjane’s did?
@MKay: I’m not certain if you are referring to fencing items, or the sport fencing.
As I refuse to read Gil Thorp, unless it’s unavoidable (Josh showing it on this blog)
Wrecks Moregone:
They can always scam Wrecks by turning up at his clinic for a consultation, knowing perfectly well that they can then sue him for quackery and negligence.
Oh, wait, that would be logical and legal. Forget it.
Hi and Lois: As someone who just recently moved an agèd relative and is now in the process of clearing out her longtime home for sale, I am here to tell you that yes they can all be about hoarders, especially the ones that save 14-year-old Pickles strips clipped from the dead-tree newspaper.
Of course it’s bad to mutilate the original form of OK! Not only does it celebrate an underappreciated statesman like Martin Van Buren, but it is also a reminder of how at some point Anglos were considering a rational form of spelling!
@Anonymous: My friend very much enjoyed the show about organizing-master Marie Kondo.
I watched the first episode on Netflix, the wife was complaining about what a messy pig-hole their house was.
I was confused, their house actually looked very nice and stable in comparison to mine.
I think BC takes place in an alternate universe where Covid and/or nuclear war were so severe to throw back civilisation to the stone age. Of course things were better 14 years ago!
MW: Dang, I botched a prediction last week, when I said that the end of the Tommy arc meant the Supplemental Nutrition Garden Plot™ had served its purpose and would never be seen again. Though I guess I could argue that the Tommy arc has not ended, just moved to a new phase with Dawn.
“We need to stage your house to sell it. This means we have to fake it being a home full of love and order while being the total opposite. Don’t worry, I am perfectly suited for this task!”
@treetown: FG: I wasn’t reading the strip yet, but the impression that I get is that they presented a united front and Ming was caught off-guard by the alliance and the appearance of Flash and co. This time, he’s amassed his loyalists and is dividing and conquering before our heroes can consolidate their forces.
@Ettorre: Actually, I feel that the idea of being flung back to the Stone Age seems preferable to…. whatever the Hell society is now.
Humanity needs humbling if anything.
Rex Morgan, MILF Diver – Shouldn’t we give credit to Bobbsey Twin 1 for her refinement in saying “Darn it” instead of “Fuckin’ shit”?
MW: Wilbur’s medication is kicking in. He is now in his docile phase.