Being able to distinguish objects and surfaces from their surrounding space? Real nerd stuff
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Dustin, 1/8/25
I think I speak for insufferable pedants everywhere when I say that I immediately clocked this as not being an actual line from Confucius — it’s way too touchy-feely — and felt great satisfaction when exactly 5 seconds of research proved me right. It’s widely attributed to the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, as part of the longer quote “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything,” but nobody seems to have a specific citation for it, so that’s probably not true either. I leave the details to the elite team of Brainyquote investigators in the comments, but I do think that if there were even a thin thread connecting this to Confucius, you’d find that attribution everywhere online, because the older and more exotic the source of an anodyne statement like this, the more people love it.
Anyway, it made me wonder: What would Dustin’s dad think of Confucius? I feel like his opinion would be mixed: obviously he’d be into the filial piety and respect for hierarchy, but Confucius rejected the strict codes of Legalism and emphasized that an enlightened ruler leads by means of moral example, which a lawyer would be dubious about. I also considered trying to figure out what Dustin’s dad would think about Thomas Carlyle, but it turns out that his Wikipedia article is really long, and why would I waste my precious time on it when I could be making jokes about Dawn Weston walking into a door in Mary Worth?
Mary Worth, 1/8/25
In other news, Dawn Weston, having eschewed corrective lenses for the dumbest reason imaginable, walked into a door in Mary Worth, which incredibly means that she didn’t even get out of her own apartment building before we were treated to The Mr. Magoo-ening Of Dawn Weston. Honestly, looking at those doors I half expected them to open automatically, and maybe she did as well, who can say. Anyway, I look forward to Dirk tactically abandoning his “Nerdgirl” taunt and moving on to “Bruisegirl Nosebleedchick.”
Hi and Lois, 1/8/25
Ditto, she’s been around since 1954, she’s never had any teeth, and at this point she’s pretty sure she’s never going to have any teeth. Stop taunting her! Mush is all she will ever know, across however many decades she has left to suffer in this ageless hell!
174 replies to “Being able to distinguish objects and surfaces from their surrounding space? Real nerd stuff”
MW: Can’t think of a better way to begin the day.
H&L: Where did Trixie learn about filet mignon? Has Sunbeam been introducing her to the high life?
Dustin: I don’t blame Josh for focusing on the misattributed quote in panel 1 to blot out the horrors of panel 2: Dustin’s dad hoping someone will “discipline” his son and “ride him a little” to “get the most out of him”.
H&L: “You expect Mom to breast feed me? That lady barely acknowledges my existence.”
MW: Let’s hope she’s driving to meet Dirk.
Confucius say Dustin’s Dad is insufferable asshole.
Dustin’s dad pushing his son towards an epicurean philosophy where Pandora kept hope from escaping from her bottle to show men they had no hope of escaping their mortal existence and thus embracing ataraxia or emptiness makes a lot of sense.
“Your head is already there, kid”
MW:
Minutes later….
“Subduralhematomagirl! How great to see you!”
As someone who wears contact lenses and *also* has a pair of emergency spectacles, if Dusk walks into a door while wearing neither, she has no right to be out and about without a white stick.
Dustin: I like hiw Dustin’s dad took a pithy quote about life and immediately assumed it was supposed to be career advice? Like ‘Live, Laugh, Love your 401K”
MW I can’t imagine how blind Dawn must be to have not seen that door. Those contacts she wears normally must make her eyes look like two eggs sticking out of her skull.
H&L Does anyone else find the excessive amount of space in these panels kinda weird? I think Ditto does. He looks a bit unnerved in that last one
MW: Dawn ditched her glasses so she wouldn’t have any trouble getting banged, but this probably wasn’t what she had in mind.
JP: If only this was merely extremely clunky exposition. Instead, it’s yet another baffling retcon or Marciuliano completely forgetting his own story. Granted, it’s not explicitly stated, but it’s very strongly implied that Yelich took leave on his own initiative, because it wouldn’t make much sense for his superiors to wait several weeks to let him round up every member of several large criminal organizations and then forcibly put him on suspension after he’d already been sober for months and doing supposedly excellent detective work. Does this rewriting of history at least serve an important purpose? Nope, it’s just so Yelich can make some equally awkward wordplay to mock Sam while smugly sipping coffee. Or maybe that’s Sam’s extra arm glassing Yelich for his smart mouth. Is it still called “glassing” if the cup is ceramic? Now that’s something to ponder.
CS: If you were wondering if Batiuk used up all his
bettermaterial during the first two times he did this week-long gag, today’s strip answers that question quite definitively.GT: The bad news is that Milford’s totalitarian regime permits no freedom of expression or dissent no matter how mild. The good news is that Bucko the Albino will make a mint suing the school for this flagrant assault and battery.
I’m sure fortune cookies are still a thing, if however culturally dubious, but I doubt there are any retrograde enough to start their fortunes with “Confucius says.” Still, I guess it could be worse; at least it wasn’t “Confucius say.”
MW: Assuming that is an automatic door, that proves it. The Westons have no soul.
JP: We all knew that already, Yelich! Get to the sordid, small-town/big-city conspiracy part!
RMMD: ‘My life is a pathetic shell of an existence and eventually yours will be too, tee hee!’
MW: You’d think, given Bruisegirl’s previous mention of having been picked on as a child for her looks, that she would realize bullies don’t just stop using their chosen taunts when an aspect of their target’s appearance changes.
Family Circus: Billy has sure been whomping PJ’s head pretty hard, hasn’t he? A few more strokes and it will be in his chest cavity.
@Bob Tice: Collapsedrushedtoemergencyneurosurgerygirl!
GT: It’s the SoyBoy meme, reacting to any new Star Wars/MCU!
I once heard a quote “Detective who catch red herrings all day, might as well quit job and become fisherman”
It kind of sounds like something Confucius would say, but even then I have doubts, something doesn’t feel right about that.
H&L — “Trixie: I Have No Teeth and I Must Eat Steak” — one of Harlan Ellison’s lesser known works.
MW — In fairness to Dawn, either those are automatic doors or someone has removed the handles.
“The elite team of brainyquote investigators” ok but Mary Worth has the courtesy to gank brainyquote on Sundays when I have more time. It seems as though a bunch of 19th century brainyquote compilations like Tryon Edwards’ New Dictionary of Thoughts (1877), Elizabeth Thurston’s Mosaics of Life in Poetry and Prose (1881), and Wm. Hardcastle Browne’s Heartthrobs of Gifted Authors (1878) all have this as “Arabian Proverb.” I don’t believe that for a second. More later, maybe.
Meanwhile, on the one hand Trixie is bigger than Ditto and growing uncontrollably so Ditto is justified in ragging her about her food choices. On the other hand, Trixie is bigger than Ditto and growing uncontrollably so Ditto is unwise to rag her about her food choices. But that’s Ditto!
G. *(&@#(&@#(! Thorp – I’d like to think that the Hammer would have preferred to use the 2014 meme (Something her right in the something) but stuck with “Bring Back Marty!” since Something her right in the something would have been flagged by even those clueless sensors.
At least the Hammer did once get in a good reference to MILFord.
MW: Dawn should have at least worn her glasses while she was choosing her clothes and dog collar to wear.
The only thing I really know about Thomas Carlyle is that he was the first person to call economics “the dismal science,” in an essay called “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” which was even more horribly racist than you might think from that title, and also weirdly obsessed with pumpkins. Economists are sometimes very smug about this. The combination of “awful human being” and “gives someone else the occasion to be smug” makes me think Ed Dustindad would love him!
MW: Dirk the Dick will now call Dawn blindgirl or clumsygirl. But will being unable to see the object of her infatuation make a difference to Dawn.
Dustin: I too struggle to make sense of this quote. Hope is most strongly associated with Christian eschatology, and if there’s one thing Dustin ain’t, it’s Christian.
Mary Worth: Sighted enough to coordinate her outfit to the plastic lilacs in the apartment lobby, but not enough to avoid walking into the front door. You may not like it, but this is what peak Mary Worth performance looks like.
Also Mary Worth: You’d think with a dog collar like that, Dawn wants to be owned, but by the front door probably isn’t what she had in mind.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: @jroggs: Whoops, accidental echolalia there.
H&L: “I’m not eating it, dimwit. See! The bowl is full. Now put me on the floor so I can chow down on some Alpo.”
Dustin: “Hope isn’t everything, Dustin. You need to feel the lash of the whip.”
H&L: Trixie should know that the one advantage of mush is how suitable it is for spitting on your brother.
MW: Yup, she’s Wilbur’s daughter.
Dustin’s dad arguing in favour of discipline and hierarchy is actually more Confucian than the fortune cookie
MW: Dawn inadvertently points to cigarettes when she tries to buy a pack of gum and instantly becomes ten times cooler and more confident. [Takes a long, slow drag and exhales in his face]:
“Who’s the nerd now, Dirkwad?”
MW: The story of this date can serve as the basis of Wilbur’s next “I Shouldn’t Be Alive!” column after he gets back! Is Dawn’s destination for this date somewhere on the other side of Kelrast Curve? But if Dawn can’t see just how good-looking Dirk is, then what’s the point in putting up with his company?
GT: I remember that guy from The DaVinci Code. Look out Luke if that is supposed to be you Luke, he’s dangerous!
MW: You can’t always tell with kids, but in panel 2…yeah, she’s Wilbur’s daughter.
Maybe Dustin’s dad isn’t a complete asshole and is encouraging his son to get a job that includes a little pony play?
***
She’s not eating that mush, Ditto! Have you ever seen a baby with a bowl of food in front of them? Only a fraction of it ever makes it into their mouth. That none of it’s in her hair should tell you she has no intention of consuming any of it.
MW – If I change my appearance and stop using a medically necessary device, a hunky but vapid and cruel man who habitually insults me may pay attention to me.
Dawn’s as loathsome as her father.
MW-“How did you get your bruises, Dawn?” “Dirk beats me.”
MW-Does wearing glasses help Dawn see distances? I know without my glasses I would be able to see distance.
MW-Since the automatic door didn’t open for Dawn it is proof that she has no soul.
FC-“Listen, Mr. Parker. It’s a shame that they cancelled ‘Spider-Man’ but you can’t live in our comic strip.”
Curtis-Greg had money hidden in his chair.
“Mary, I swear, my boyfriend is not beating me! I just walked into a door!”
“I believe you Dawn. You words might not be convincing, but your stupidity is”
This is it. This is the greatest Mary Worth of all time. I have seen the top of the mountain, and it is two panels of Dawn Weston walking into a door.
btw, that’s one hell of long stretch of itchy, irritated eyes. I’m guessing it’s dookie infection, and Dawn needs to learn to wash after she wipes.
Phantom- Can anyone figure out where this long dreary story is going?
JP- Ditto.
MW- Ibid.
It looks like Dustin is on the verge of embracing the “Principle of Hope” by German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. Of course, Dustin’s staunchly conservative father opposes this, but Dustin should be also aware that the heretical and humanist Marxism of Bloch will be met with coldness by his Tankie friends!
MW: I’m absolutely blind as a bat without my contacts (and this came up, much to my detriment and others’ concern a little over a week ago), but I can 100 percent identify A FREAKING DOOR WITHOUT THEM.
Also, and this should go without saying, this is where Dawn lives? She should have, blind or not, a pretty dang good idea of where the doors are to her building…
@Liam: Two kids come walking up behind Dawn and the door opens for them.
Rod and Todd: Thank you door!
Ditto is already trying to give his little sister an eating disorder
Why are those two in a Chinese restaurant without the rest of the family? Is Dustin’s dad trying to tell him some bad news in a public space where he will not make a scene? “Speaking of hope, Dustin, I guess you are hoping now to go back to your room, with a roof over your head? Well, hope is often wrong!”
“Bruisegirl Nosebleedchick”
I’m going with Bonkus McConkus
What pairs well with pink, polka-dotted pants, a leather jacket and an S & M collar? A contusion, of course.
I mean, Dustin’s dad is correct that in order to achieve a goal, you need to match your ambition with sustained efforts and accountability checks. But look at Dustin. He’s constantly falling asleep, he has trouble holding a job, he has no long-term plan for his life, he has very few friends and women find him discomforting. Dustin wishes he had hope because he’s suffering from clinical depression!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I dunno, Dustdad’s philosophy of “you should be working hard every available moment and if you’re not you deserve to suffer” sounds a lot like certain forms of American Protestantism.
Glasses or no glasses, how did Dawn manage to walk into the door with the side of her head? Especially when her head isn’t the most protuberant part of her body (in that direction, it’s her shoulder).
Mary Worth: Here’s a tip, Dawn, from someone who has never gone through what you’ve going through but has a lick of sense: walk with your glasses, drive with your glasses, and take them off as you’re entering whatever bowling alley/shooting range/axe throwing bar Dirk has you treating him to.
@Schroduck:
#2. DUSTIN:. Sounds like after lunch, Dustdad is taking son to an Army recruiter
What if walking repeatedly into things is what will make Jared fall in love again with Dawn: “I dumped you because you were superficial and shallow and because of incompatible interests. But now that your face is full of bruises… You know that’s what lifts my boat!”
MW: Blind Dawn walks mouth first into Toby. “I taste gin.”
Mary’s worst : Any chance this is a take on “The Sopranos ” and someone just shot Dawn?
@Unca Bob:
Phantom- Can anyone figure out where this long dreary story is going?
JP- Ditto.
MW- Ibid.
____________________
Luann- Etc.
9CL- Ad nauseum.
Dustin-And it helps if that supervisor who is riding you is a bit attractive.
Dustin-He who has hope has everything in bed.
The fact that Dawn doesn’t wear her glasses until right before meeting Dirk explains why she’s still going to community college 30 years on.
Dustin: Now I kind of want to see Dustdad meet Mary Worth, just to see the pithy, vague axioms of the latter play off the smug Boomer superiority of the former:
“Very often we seek the things that are inside us all along…”
“But we must seek things outside of ourselves too: specifically gainful employment, a house, and a wife who will do all the domestic labor while you complain about her cooking…”
MW: Apparently everything Karen Moy knows of myopia she learned from Velma in Scooby-Doo, where losing your corrective lenses means groping around you blindly and mistaking a corrupt landowner dressed as a seven-foot-tall yeti for your gangly stoner friend. This will work out in Dawn’s favor, though, as she receives help for her relationship drama when she mistakes Mary for Dirk.
Dustin – This message of “anti-hope” feels like something a Boomer who was attempting to appear enlightened would have told a Millennial in 2008 when they declared they were voting Obama. This comic setting and situation is 15 years out of date, as today Ed would be full MAGA and wouldn’t have eaten at a Chinese food place since buying fully into the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Mary Worth – It was already evident that Dawn is too submissive in this relationship, no need to literally put her in a dog collar to drive it home.
Hi and Lois – Meanwhile, Ditto’s favorite food is processed chicken nuggets in dinosaur shapes, which spend most of their middle processing stage as various states of meat-and-filler mush
MW: Dawn smacks face-first into the Doors to Self-Respect and snarls, “STUPID DOORS!” She stumbles back down the hallway and decides to take the back way out.
CS: Coming tomorrow: Ed suggests framing kids for crimes they did not commit and sending them to juvie to reduce the surplus population.
JP: “I wouldn’t be so sure, Yelich. Alan Parker is also on the case!”
“Parker?! Heh heh heh, HA HA HA HAAAAAA! HAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAA. Stop it! You’re killing me, Driver! You’re absolutely killing me!”
Your’re a Plugger if you don’t work and your car doesn’t either.
Dawn is wearing pajama bottoms, a belt, a half-tucked-in top, and a choker. Nerds are notoriously fashion-blind, so I don’t think Dirk’s going to change his tone. Also, Mary will notice the black eye and express concern over Dawn’s insistence that she “walked into a door.” Mark my words!
Dawn is wearing pajama bottoms, a belt, a half-tucked-in top, and a choker. Nerds are notoriously fashion-blind, so I don’t think Dirk’s going to change his tone. Also, Mary will notice the black eye and express concern over Dawn’s insistence that she “walked into a door.” Mark my words!
Dustin: As the world’s least youthful “young person,” I’m pretty sure Dustin knows that “When you’ve got your health, you’ve got just about everything” is the tag line from an old Geritol commercial. Forget hard work and discipline — he’s well aware that the key to living well is a liquid vitamin tonic with 12% alcohol.
Mary Worth: Say what you will about Dawn, she’s a vibrant woman who dives into life head-first!
Hi and Lois: I think it’s impressive that a baby Trixie’s age can handle a spoon on her own! Especially since she must have learned how to do it all by herself, since, as now, there are seldom any parents in the vicinity to help her eat. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has to open her own Gerber’s Single-Grain Baby Cereal containers.
Blondie: Dagwood’s attempts to keep his wife happy through sheer sexual magnetism have failed once again.
C’shaft: Lena’s going to great lengths to avoid saying she supports abolishing the Department of Education.
DT: And as we all know, the US military never looks the other way when it comes to soldiers engaging in ethically questionable activities.
GT: Guy in a red hat heckling a Black female journalist? Finally, something in this story that feels realistic.
Luann: Luann wants to take initiative in pursuing romantic relationships, but knows that taking the initiative is only for evil slutrampwhores like
TiffanyStef. So she makes it very plain that she has no intention of chasing guys, just kind of tagging along after them hoping they’ll get the hint.On a serious note, here’s hoping any and all LA-area ‘Mudges are safe today. Take care of yourselves.
@GarrisonSkunk: Mary’s worst : Any chance this is a take on “The Sopranos ” and someone just shot Dawn?
___________________________________
We can always hope!
MARY WORTH: Clearly Dawn thought she could win over her new asshole boyfriend by appealing to the Velma Dinkley fetishism that’s so popular nowadays.
Family Circus: they are hunting the Babadook.
Dustin: Is his father not so subtly suggesting he whore himself out? I’m certain that Dustin would find a way to screw that up as well.
Mary Worth: The mention of Mr Magoo reminds me of the controversy when the 1997 movie with Leslie Nielsen came out because it makes fun of people with visual impairments. Disney added a disclaimer to the film saying that the film is not an accurate portrayal of people with visual impairments.
GT: I’d say a guy who wears a hat like that has no room to criticize anybody. And that’s not even taking into consideration whatever those things on his chin are.
SFx: Big screw-up on the “Spot six differences” thing on CK today. There are no differences. They ran the same panel twice. For a while, I thought I was losing it, but there’s no other explanation.
Dustin: I’m reminded of a joke/thesis about the godawful webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del – infamous source of the “Loss” meme – that claimed you could make every installment of it actually funny by editing out panels to get rid of Tim Buckley’s lame jokes, skeevy writing, and tendency to overexplain punchlines. I bring this up because of you clipped out that final panel in favor of just having Dustin stare at his father in baffled horror after listening to that bizarre monologue, it’d have made this legitimately amusing, certainly moreso than this lame pun.
Mary Worth: Oh shit, Dawn walked into the background drawings!
Dustin – Now, about marriage – you need a ball crushing harpie to slowly suck the life out’a you. Just like the succubus that married dear old dad….
MW – Oh Magoo, you’ve done it again….
H&L – Oh sunbeam – reduce this vexing homunculus to a mummified raisin that will ridicule me and my wholesome and heart heathy diet no more….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Her parents are so neglectful that Trixie probably has to steal Lois’s debit card, drive to the store herself, buy the baby food, drive home, open the baby food, put it in a bowl, climb into her highchair by herself before eating.
@Ettorre: Dirk: I did not hit her! I did not! Oh, hi Mary.
DUSTIN: “You’re right dad”, Dustin exclaimed. “I will take that rentboy job at the S&M themed escort service after all!”
DUSTIN (2): Josh, I thought the whole point of this strip was that Ed was supposed to speak for “insufferable pendants” everywhere?
@Ettorre: “You’re a clumsy idiot too? I knew we were destined to be together!”
MW – In dog training, they tell us the way to stop an unwanted behavior is to get the dog to focus on something else. So if the dog is jumping on the furniture, for example, you teach to “sit” rather than just saying “no!” What I’m getting at is, if Dawn doesn’t want Dirk calling her Nerdgirl, she should keep the glasses and lose the bra.
FG: I ADORE PRINCE THUN!!!! What a magnificent warrior! I’m going to use his response to Shark Marshall Kleen whenever I’m challenged: “FALL BACK OR RAISE YOUR STEEL!!!” For ex: I’m in the store and someone tries to muscle their way in front of me at the produce bin or my husband is pestering me about some petty household issue – and I shout “Fall Back or Raise Your Steel!” That’ll show ’em, by Ned! \0/
Mark Trail Mix: Everybody’s Got Something To Hide, ‘Cept For Mark And His Manatee.
Have Ditto and Trixie always been the exact same size?
MW: when Dawn runs over a bunch of pedestrians Dirk will call her murdergirl.
GIL THORP: I do admire that the comic went all out and had the heckler guy put on his most vampiric chalk-white foundation with his red hat to make absolutely sure we “get it.”
GIL THORP (2): It’s good that Rene Belluso from the doctor comic branched out and was able to find a new scam to work with by posing as paid troll pretending that “Marty Moon fever” is “going viral” (we, of course, know this is a con because usually “Marty Moon fever” is something that takes a few weeks at the free clinic to get rid of.)
Dustin-You hear that, Dustin? You have to have give head to get ahead.
FC: Whatever insect or arachnid is on the ceiling, I am just waiting for it to jump or fall off, straight into Jeffy’s nostril.
Dustbin:”Forget the carp about hope, Confucius! What are my lucky numbers for Powerball??!?!”
The Familliar Mucus: It’s terrible that Thel enlists the kids in getting her latest Bil substitute out of the house.
@cheech wizard: If Dawn doesn’t want Dirk calling her Nerdgirl, she should keep the glasses and lose the bra.
______________________________________________
Then she’ll become “Tittiegirl.”
@Professor Well Actually: Roadhog!
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
MW: Finally, the Window Eels get their revenge on someone!
REX MORGAN M.D.: Um…Beatty? You don’t have to keep putting the “alt-text” as “text” you know.
REX MORGAN M.D. (2): I “love” how this comic insists that we “check up on” every boring nonessential tertiary character to see what they are up to, when the answer is always “nothing” (even worse: 4-7 weeks of “nothing.”)
MW: The doors don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles.
@cheech wizard: “That’s how I got my man!” –Helen Kudlick
MW – Given the dog collar and the facial bruising, I think her new nickname is Dumb Bitch.
I know this applies to just about every Dustin strip, but how amazing would it be if after staring blankly at his dad in panel three, in panel four Dustin punched him right in his self-righteous face?
I imagine Ditto’s thinking: “Welp, that takes care Trixie. Who else’s day can I ruin with a single question? Maybe I’ll amble over to the Thurston house and ask Irma ‘Ugh! How can you be married that drunk loser?!’ That’ll rub her never-changing sham marriage in her face.”
GT: Coach Thorp usually brings a few dozen doughnuts for the team before a game, but this morning the gas station had a big sale on the day-old apricot turnovers, and the kids just made pigs of themselves. “No, no…too many turnovers,” groans Gil during the first half.
What the HELL, Journal of the American College of Cardiology? You are just going to let someone* footnote BrainyQuote for an attribution? If you were as cavalier about sourcing your medical procedures, we’d all be dead. Anyway Owen Arthur was born in 1949 long after the quotation was first attested, so that ain’t it.
*Specifically, the president of the American College of Cardiology
@TheDiva: Luann wants to take initiative in pursuing romantic relationships, but knows that taking the initiative is only for evil slutrampwhores like
TiffanyStef. So she makes it very plain that she has no intention of chasing guys, just kind of tagging along after them hoping they’ll get the hint.That’s how it works for women in this strip. Remember Bernice stalking Piro in the hopes that he would ask her out, instead of simply asking him out herself? Remember how long Tiffany has been mooning over Kip instead of simply propositioning him? The Evanses have an extremely patriarchal mindset, which includes the belief that girls can never ask a guy out themselves, and must instead sit back and wait for the guy to pursue them.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I’d like to think that the Hammer would have preferred to use the 2014 meme
You shouldn’t post links like that at this site. It sets a bad example for the others, and makes it hard for me too.
Dustin: “You need discipline, and someone to push you and get the most out of you!”
“Wait…isn’t that what your doctor keeps telling you?”
“Shut up, boy.”
I searched an Arabic translation of the phrase and got a bunch of Arabic quote sites that attribute it to Thomas Carlyle, so I’m calling this as “phrase made up by some 19th-century doof and attributed to an Arabic proverb by anthologists like Tryon Edwards, who never included any citations, damn him.”
MW: Is this supposed to be their version of wackiness? Should we be laughing as if this were America’s Funniest Home Videos? We are not amused.
MW: Lassie, Dawn has fallen down the well! Go get help!
I’m with Dustin on this one.
I imagined Dirk calling Dawn Spazgirl!
@Johnny Q: The gathering of spastics at the next table glares at Dirk in disapproval, as the waiter prays they don’t order the soup.
Pluggers – He should use Earl Pickles’s practice of covering it with duct tape.
Rex Morgan – I wonder if this is the start of a romance for Summer. The first sign will be a visit to the town by a new roots country musician. Or maybe an aerospace engineer who’s a fan of roots country. Or a member of a comedy vaudeville team. Whoever he is, they’ll meet at the mom and pop diner while Wanda tells them about the specials.
Mary Worth – Good grief, how blind is Dawn without her glasses? I hope she’s not driving to see Dirkbag.
I can just imagine his new nickname for her – “You’re my little flower – black eyed Dawn.” He should also throw “klutz” in there. Of course, he’ll smile the entire time. Can’t she take a joke?
Last summer I mistook a curb for a slight ramp (it was at night) and ended up with two black eyes, bruises all over my face, and scratched glasses. I sympathize with Dawn, even if she is a shallow idiot.
MW – “Ow! What th’–? When I wore my glasses, I used to be able to pass right through that door without opening it, like a ghost! So all along, it was the glasses that gave me that power?”
@The Grandstander: If Dawn don’t wanna be a bum, she better chew gum.
@Lord Flatulence: Then she’ll become “Tittiegirl.”
Funny, that’s exactly what the natives of some hurricane ravaged island are calling Wilbur right now, as they make him dance for their amusement.
Beardo: Doing an arc about a dying dog. Well done but jeez, happy new year.
MW: What I’m learning here is Dawn has the awareness of a bird slamming into a clean window.
@Lord Flatulence: speaking of that, Kelly over in RMMD has got one now. Doesn’t reduce my suspicion that she’s pregnant one bit.
That’s what she said.
@UncleJeff: re: Beardo: January 4 was very moving. The past few days have been much more light-hearted.
A mischievous Ghost Dog could be a great comic character! ”No one can see him; no one can hear him — yet there’s kibble strewn all over the kitchen floor and someone…or something….peed on the mud room carpet.” Think of Topper. Think of Casper. Think of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Think of Chopper Chicks in Zombietown.
Fifty years ago today, Mr. Blackwell named Helen Reddy the world’s worst dressed woman. The motley group of runners-up included Charo, Fanne Fox and Bella Abzug. Meanwhile, a US Navy task force steamed toward the Indian Ocean, supposedly for reasons related to the oil crisis.
Newsreaders saw fashion icon Waldo Weatherbee get assistance putting on his coat before making a mockery of himself. Steve Roper observed suspicious activity as dawn broke over the marina, and the Jungle Patrol washed its hands in a case taking up the entire first page of the Bangalla Times.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: re RMMD: So you’re going with Kelly in the Preggers Pool? Summer is probably pre-menopausal too, but I’ll stay with my Death Pool pick, Nurse Michelle, for a poignant death-in-childbirth. Anybody got Dawn? A long shot, for sure, but it would be awesome.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Oh please! You know that all Rex Morgan M.D. characters get their jollies from roots country ditties and diner meatloaf. This is as much “stimulation” as their mild-manner hearts can handle. Pregnancy is for the bad girls who leave the house without their hairbands (the filthy harlots!)
JP: Another thing, Sam. Ann got into some trouble overseas in some third world shithole named Bangalla. Something to do with smuggling poached ivory. They’re sending over some geek in a spandex purple onesie to skullpunch her, whatever that entails.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Oh! My tabs of Ecstasy!”
“Will you help me pick them up?”
“Too late…”
“… but I think you just turned on the whole neighborhood!”
Another GoComics list.
15 Cozy Comics to Hibernate With This Winter
@Cleveland Mocks: First panel was repeated. Has now been fixed on CK.
@Peanut Gallery: Why doesn’t Don Abundio offer to give the pretty lady a brand-new pearl necklace?
(hurrr hurrr hurrr)
MW-Now Dirk can call Dawn klutz.
Ziggy-Where does Ziggy get parts for a Pinto?
@Ukulele Ike: Because that particular pickup line was never mentioned in Esquire.
@Liam: Ziggy is doing 1970s high-gas-prices jokes! This is exactly what I was looking for (unsuccessfully, I might add) yesterday, when I was trying to help out Tuesday Chik. If she’s determined to do hackneyed jokes about inflation, there must be a ton of those gas-prices cartoons she could repurpose, if only she can find them. Maybe look for some 1970s comics anthologies at a flea market?
@Ukranazi Stepan: As someone whose uncorrected vision is probably worse than Dawn’s, all I can say is that she has too little situational awareness to be out unsupervised under any circumstances.
Dustin, meta: I don’t know much about Thomas Carlyle, but I do know a bit about the Scottish people, and while I agree the quote as presented in panel 1 is a bit touchy-feely, the full context of “He who has health…” makes me pretty sure that, if a Scottish person did say it, the intended reading would be something like “Whit dae ye think ye’ve got tae greet aboot? Ye’re no deid, are ye?” Dustdad would approve, I think.
Phantom: I forgot to note this on Monday, but I see that whoever this actress/singer/model is, Manley has finally acquired a second reference photo of her! Of course, alternating between two positions looks even weirder than when she was completely motionless.
It says a lot about this story that I’ve been far more engaged in the puzzle of her real-world identity — a puzzle, to be clear, for which there are no clues beyond Manley’s likeness and one strip where she speaks in broken English — than I am in whatever else is going on. Especially since, as a forty-something who mostly listens to folk music and rarely watches TV shows that don’t have spaceships in them, it’s very likely I’ve never heard of her anyway.
RMMD: Were you wondering what was going on with these characters during their long absence from the strip? Of course not, because you strongly suspected the answer was “absolutely nothing”. Turns out you were right!
@Ukulele Ike: #114
I just read that whole sequence of “Beardo” with the dying doggy and the doggy angel and just started crying…I have no trouble believing that our pets communicate to us like that when they cross the Bridge. I remember after my beloved cat Lucky (19+ yrs old) passed away and before my nusband and I had adopted another cat, I was lying in my bed ready to doze off when I heard the distinct sound of a bell on a cat’s collar and a soft “thud” at the foot of my bed and the footfall of cat’s paws on the blanket. It could just have been my imagination or…I like to think I was being visited by my little guy. <3
@Pozzo: This is more than I would expect of Kelley. An editor must be watching over him.
Bizarro: Hooboy, whatta day! They call askin’ for a couple of panel-ready Spiders, regular size. Said their technology would take care of the rest. Well, when my Intern got over there with the talent, it turns out that the Bizarro embiggening device was on the fritz – and that’s how they were gonna transform one guy into a Giant Spider. So to not have to cancel the gig, they had their wardrobe and makeup people turn Intern into the co-star! I think it turned out exceptionally well – they even used his own glasses – and I think he enjoyed it. Free beer, too.
I just hope he’s not been bitten by the Show Biz performer
ArachnidBug.@matt w: That’s appalling. Citing BrainyQuotes as a source should be grounds for automatic failure and/or demotion!
MW: Success! The door didn’t call her Nerdgirl.
@131 Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!:
And he drives an O2.
@Peanut Gallery:
I use the more authoritative Bartlett’s for quotes, but it doesn’t include my favorite David Mamet quote (“People may or may not say what they mean… but they always say something designed to get what they want”). BrainyQuotes does, and even gets it right!
Occasionally a blind pig finds an acorn—a saying they attribute to Roger Ailes.
@Ukulele Ike: I’m impressed with the sophistication of one who still spells it doughnuts.
Although when Gil says it, I arsume he pronounces it as donuts.
Rhymes With Orange made me laugh today.
Bizarro: OMG!! Ha ha! Off panel are the spider who scared Miss Muffet and the spider who enticed an unwitting fly into his parlour and sucked the life out of her. Happy hour indeed!
@erdmann: Both The Room and Mary Worth have an understanding of the basic rules of melodramma, but they suck at execution
Dustin-Now tell Luann this.
@taig: It could have been prevented if someone had put a silhouette of a female figure on the door.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I’m so sophisticated, I pronounce it “duffnuts.” This often leads to confusion at the Dunking Doughnuts counter.
@Peanut Gallery: Another rite of passage for young cartoon mermaids: “It’s time you learned what the best tuna is. Just in case someone asks.”
The Westons might be saddest bunch of dorks in comics.
MW: I’m impressed that Dawn somehow managed to only crash the side of her head into the glass door instead of her nose. I made the mistake years ago of leaving a dentist office before the nitrous had completely worn off, and when I crashed into their glass door, I was not so lucky.
Helen Reddy may have been sartorially challenged, but her risibly awful white-girl “dancing” was a thousand times worse. She made Elaine Benes look like Twyla Tharp.
@Uncle Lumpy: I first heard the blind pig/acorn saying from my mother about sixty-five years ago. Roger Ailes musta stolen it.
RMMD: Given the numbers of young adults who move back in with their parents these days, Summer may not be eating her ice cream alone indefinitely.
JP: All those who would be perfectly okay with Ann staying in prison for the next few decades, raise your hands. Yep, I thought so.
GA: This is your FGANSW (Friendly Gasoline Alley New Story Warning). The Evil Doll story has ended, and now Walt and Gertie have just discovered that somehow, Walt’s house has become subject to the rules of a HOA. Avoidance is recommended. (It’s too late for me.)
I wonder how many weeks and months the Mary Worth team will be having Dawn walk into construction sites and destroy her body before they finally relent and allow her to learn her valuable lesson, “don’t go on dates with assholes”.
It’s not just that Dustin’s dad is an asshole, it’s that he’s incredibly small-minded. Obviously voted for the wrong guy in the last three elections.
@Anonymous: But that would eliminate all Dawn plots for eternity!
@Anonymous: DustDad voted 3rd party three times?
(Sorry — I’m just trying to lighten the mood a bit…)
MW: Dirk the Dork is nothing but a coward. He flinches from calling Dawn to her face what he calls her to his friends.
@Handsome Harry Backstayge, Idol of a Million Other Women: That’s a horrifying site, Wilbur in a grass skirts, his man-boobs, with painted nipples, flapping around.
@Lord Flatulence: #156: For the sake of public decency they’ll make Wilbur wear one of those coconut bras.
@Guillermo el chiclero: And as the old expression goes goes, his ass is grass….
@astroboy: Where the hell did you see Helen Reddy dancing badly, in her bad clothes?
@Anonymous:
RE: SLYLOX FOX
First panel was repeated. Has now been fixed on CK.
Much obliged, Anonymous.
I’m a plugger, but I l love doing these little kid’s games.
Or maybe I should say, BECAUSE I’m a plugger, I love . . .
@Ukulele Ike: Not to shabby sartorially, but dancing all the same – -https://tinyurl.com/satorial
Dustin: Interesting. The Chinese restaurant/fortune cookie thing had all the earmarks of a one-day gag, yet Dustin and Dustdad are still there, reading the fortune cookie. Okay, I sort of lied about the “interesting” part.
H&L: Ditto is overcompensating. He’s already nostalgic for the security and certainty of infancy. If that meant that food didn’t have texture, it was a small and worthwhile tradeoff.
MW: You know how they put bird silhouette decals on windows so that, like, pigeons don’t crash into them? Well, apparently they need a bigass Weston decal on this door.
9CL: Of course Alistair couldn’t get away with charging a whole nickel for psychiatric advice either, but that’s everyone in this strip.
BB: Killer picked the worst possible day to shave off his mustache.
C-Shaft: “And we can’t practice child sacrifice, even if keeping Crankshaft on the road is already sort of like that.”
GT: The guy heckling Jackie is an albino in a MAGA hat. Subtle editorializing there, guys.
JP: Thanks for the heads up, Det. Yelich. So how long would she be in prison if she had a good lawyer?
Phantom: Hey, at least he didn’t beat you guys to death, the way you’re doing with this turn of phrase. Note that the other guests have firmly shifted into the “pretending to be interested” stage, and it’s getting pretty damn difficult.
RMMD: This is the first time we’ve seen Kelly below the neck in 2025 and, uh, there seem to have been some developments. She angling for a transfer to Judge Parker?
@Smokey Stover: #115: Mr. Blackwell was always a mystery to me. He was billed as a famous fashion designer yet I’ve never seen a Mr. Blackwell dress or lines of clothes for sale in any department store. I took a fashion illustration course back in the 70s where we had to study several fashion magazines. Never saw a Blackwell design in any of them. A talk radio host once commented about him, “If you’re going to do car reviews shouldn’t you at least know how to drive?”
@Poteet: I first heard the blind pig/acorn saying from my mother about sixty-five years ago. Roger Ailes musta stolen it.
We always heard it as, “even a blind acorn is right twice a day.”
@Artist formerly known as Ben: re: RMMD: Kelly is away at college somewhere, but what exactly do we know about this “college?” It’s possible that they’re fattening her up to slaughter, roast, sauce, and serve her with a garnish of spring potatoes and asparagus.
Dustin: “A supervisor who’ll ride you a little and get the most out of you.”
How about
“A union who’ll ride your boss a little and get the most for you.”
@TheDiva: DT: And as we all know, the US military never looks the other way when it comes to soldiers engaging in ethically questionable activities.
_________________________________________________
You can’t handle the truth!
@TheDiva: Fair point, but no one ever accused Calvinists of being hopeful.
@Schroduck: Bwahahewwww.
@The Breathtaking Bonehead Brothers: HAR!!!
@I speak Jive: Hee hee!
I remember one year we had to put stickers on a window to keep an aggressive male cardinal from constantly attacking its reflection. Dawn is going to see herself in a mirror and think Dirk is cheating on her.
@Poteet: It’s too late for all of us. We are the damned.
@Ukulele Ike: I mean, I just noticed her boobs were bigger, but if the eager culinary students at Cannibal U are into white meat…(And this is only going to get more offensive the longer I go on, so I’ll take a breather.)
@Peanut Gallery: “… but I think you just turned on the whole neighborhood!”
____________________________
He’s dating Mary Richards?