Terrible children (and old people to be fair)
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Pluggers, 1/31/25
I actually sleep with a second pillow — not because it prevents me from falling out of bed, how would that even work, honestly it makes no sense to me and looking at the drawing doesn’t make it make more sense, also do grown adults fall out of bed, this is insane — but just because I like to hold onto something while I sleep, probably a habit I picked up with stuffed animals as a kid and never truly grew out of. Very early in our relationship my wife started referring to this pillow as my “girlfriend,” a term that has stuck to this day. Anyway, that’s a long way to explain why the first thing I thought when I saw this panel was “the caption should be ‘plugger polyamory,’” which is bad, but you have to admit a lot less bad than a lot of Pluggers panels that could be captioned “plugger polyamory” might be.
Marvin, 1/31/25
Honestly if I had to pick a favorite kind of Marvin strip, it would be the ones where it’s made obvious how much Marvin’s parents dislike each other. I presume it’s because each holds the other primarily responsible for the creation of Marvin, whom they dislike even more.
Family Circus, 1/31/25
God, look at how happy she is. He’s almost asleep! Several blessed hours of unconscious Jeffy time, coming right up!
87 replies to “Terrible children (and old people to be fair)”
Family Circus:
“Okay, sweetie — we’re almost to the end. ‘He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.’ “
@Bob Tice: That’s a deep cut.
Plugger polyamory, is that like the rhino, the couch, and the TV maybe?
Thel contemplated the pillow, and the freedom ahe could achieve. “It would be SO EASY,” she thinks. Alas, all extra pillows are necessary, to keep her from falling out of bed, apparently. Next time, Thel!
MW:
“Oh, Mary. I am inspired to song by your invitation and your prodigious muffin production output.”
“Knock yourself out, Dawn.”
“Let me make you frown, ’cause I’m blowing through
Flawed Mary’s yields
Muffins congeal
Muffins to get wrung about
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
“Nibbling is queasy, with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all you eat
It’s getting hard to eat some crumbs, but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me
“Let me make you frown ’cause I’m blowing through
Flawed Mary’s yields
Muffins congeal
Muffins to get wrung about
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
“No one, I think, is in high tea
I mean it must be by a scone
That is, you can’t, you know, spoon in but it’s all right
That is, I think it’s not too rad
“Let me make you frown, ’cause I’m blowing through
Flawed Mary’s yields
Muffins congeal
Muffins to get wrung about
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
“Always, no, sometime, think it’s free
But you know I know when it’s a scream
I think I show up, see, ah, yes, but it’s all wrong
That is, I think I dis a brie
“Let me make you frown, ’cause I’m blowing through
Flawed Mary’s yields
Muffins congeal
Muffins to get wrung about
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
Flawed Mary’s yields forever
[extended outro]
Sly…Mary…calls….
MW-Yet when Wilbur is involved Mary describes that stuff as endearing quirks.
MW-This story is going to prove how much of a hypocrite Mary is. When Wilbur acts this way it’s an endearing quirk and Mary encourages people to stick with Wilbur. But here Mary will encourage Dawn to break up with Dirk.
Great — I just got up and these strips make me want to go back to bed.
MW: This sounds like a job for that master of intimidation, Keith Hillend.
RMMD: “Mostly, I look at the TV and the bottoms of ice cream cartons.”
(I’m not snarking here, that sounds like a dream life to me)
Pluggers would be happier with an anime waifu body pillow but unfortunately lack the cultural background to know about them
I too was baffled by Today’s Pluggers. One of the minor problems of being old and sleeping with multiple pillows is having to pick them up off the floor when they fall off the bed. Although, if you regularly fall out of bed, pillows on the floor is a good thing, I suppose.
FC: Hopefully the rich, green tones in Jeffy’s bedroom are achieved with arsenic.
The way I know it, you can use a pillow to avoid falling out of bed by sticking the pillow under the mattress, so as to create a bump at the edge to stop your body from rolling over. But it’s clear the artist has never heard about it, so he can’t draw it
@Ettorre:
A Plugger taco, so to speak.
FC: Dammit, PJ. Can’t you alternate once in a while? Thel’s right boob is just about empty.
Marvin: Just as everything eventually evolves into crabs, every comic strip background – home, office, hospital, college – eventually evolves into a coffee machine.
FC: If no-one else is going to say it, I will: Thel’s breasts are looking extremely large today. Do you think she’s pregnant? Do you think, heaven help us, there’s ANOTHER Keane brat on the way?
Marvin’s parents are worse than the Lockhorns. With Leroy and Loretta, at least you know their marriage is a complex sadomasochistic sex game and they have sworn not to produce any children. Marvin’s parents are miserable, they get no thrill from it and yet have no problem generating new people from this situation
FAMILY CIRCUS: Yes, thought Thel. The rat poison in their pudding cups is working right on schedule. Soon Jeffy will sleep…permanently!
MW: Trimming the bushes that dotted the grounds near Charterstone, Carlos Alora had observed the encounter between Dawn and Mary, and as he snipped, he considered the situation. “The senorita, she is desolate. I, Carlos, know the ache of the heart. But I have seen the man she has been keeping company with for the past week, and he is not a good man. Of this I am certain. He has many of the endearing quirks of a dictator.” He stopped mid-snip, and gazed at his pruning shears. A slow smile grew into a wide grin as he saw Dirk’s car pull into a parking space.
PLUGGERS: That Plugger is imagining that those pillows are Thel (I bet you he’s even saying the Family Circus caption while doing so to boot.)
FC: Thel isn’t just jutting, she’s about to burst that sweater.
FC: Hurry up, Mommy. I can’t hold in this fart much longer.
MARVIN : Geez, Armstrong, stop rifling through the Lockhorns syndicate’s garbage and write your own jokes for once!
MARVIN (2): Panel #1: Well if that’s how you want to describe husband’s old Hustler’s, Jenny….(Which would explain why Marvin’s not around to react to this “gag.” It’s the only gross bodily function that hell-infant would consider inappropriate to be around.)
MARVIN: “I’ve taken away something you love and replaced it with something you hate. Enjoy the rest of your day, dear.” (walks away)
PLUGGERS: Pluggers sleep with many, many pillows because they have sleep apnea and would otherwise be snoring loud enough to wake the neighbors.
FC: “Read faster, Mommy. The all-consuming blackness will soon be upon us. It’s already reached the window.”
Pluggers – Dr Moreau would have a field day with the inter species pairings of the plugger matrimonial universe….
Marvin – What! You wouldn’t ever even consider throwing away our precious mementos of Marvin growing up!! Of course, I’m referring to his used loaded diapers….
FC – That vodka formula works like a charm….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Marvin:
I thought that Marvin had only one bedtime story book in his inventory: Taro Gomi’s Everyone Poops.
Usually, it’s the unintentionally dark Family Circus strips that do it for me, but the genuine urgency in Jeffy’s plea made me laugh.
@Bob Tice: Soon the Keane children will be the competitors in Gen Z’s variation on that story, The Hunger Games.
P: Pluggers remember when “Do you sleep with two pillows?” was the first thing the doctor asked at your checkup! Because apparently if you can’t fall asleep with only one pillow, you may have orthopnea, “when pulmonary congestion causes the lungs to become stiff and non-compliant” which is a very Plugger thing to have happen. Anyway they stopped asking me that, because there are lots of ways to sleep with multiple pillows I guess, but your Plugger with three-pillow orthopnea is in pretty bad shape.
M: I had thought of Jenny as the least dislikable character in this strip but it turns out she’s history’s greatest monster.
FC: This is completely relatable, no notes. When your small child peacefully goes to sleep it’s great!
JP: Droning on.
@2+2=7: That reminds me, I haven’t seen The Lockhorns for a while. Wonder what they’re up to?
…a good joke. Huh.
MARY WORTH: Dawn: “No the relationship is very healthy! Dirk tested negative for chlamydia and everything!”
MARY WORTH: Um…Dawn. If Mary “Your-father-has-endearing-quirks” Worth thinks the relationship is “unhealthy” (even with your blatant whitewashing) then that’s a sign your new man is more toxic than a farm at Chernobyl.
Is that a euphemism?
Yes, Josh, grown-ass adults fall out of bed all the time. It’s a common problem with the elderly. So you stick the sleeper in the middle of the bed and put a pillow on either side. That prevents them from rolling off the bed, or makes sure they’re awake when they try to get out intentionally. To @Ettorre‘s point, they make mattresses with a sort of lip on the edges to prevent people from rolling out (think of a well-used futon mattress, except designed that way). And for @Hibbleton, you put a “fall mat” next to the bed, either one of those anti-fatigue mats for people who have to stand on hard floors, or in more difficult cases, a scaled-down gymnastics mat.
Sorry to be a downer. It’s just that I know a lot about this stuff now, and, well, Pluggers is about death and managing the anxiety of knowing that death is approaching, right?
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: Sadly, no!
MW: “Dirk isn’t as romantic or kind as he used to be.”
Dirk ever being romantic or kind: Footage not found
@matt w:
The Lockhorns must have gotten a new gag writer. For a while now, the strip has been pretty funny.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Adding (ugh), the use of hospital rails on a bed in a facility is considered a restraint, and their use is discouraged, same reason wheelchairs don’t come with seat belts anymore.
RMMD: “Why do I remember you? Lady, that hairdo of yours was the laughingsto . . . uh, quite distinctive.”
CS: Batton is so engrossed in his own fascinating story that he doesn’t notice Skip continually sighing, rolling his eyes, and checking his watch.
MW: “Mary, I’m determined to make this relationship work, even if I have to let him beat it out of me!”
Marvin: Sure, there are people who see books as a single-use medium for delivering entertainment and/or information, and who get rid of the books after having read them once. But Jenny is an author! Authors generally see the value in keeping a good book around for years and reexamining it to see what was good about it–perhaps to emulate in their own work. So yeah, Jenny’s ‘oh, I got rid of all your treasured favorite books because you’ve already read them and obviously have no use for them anymore’ only makes sense as an act of antagonism.
Pluggers: Here’s where I get to be embarrassed to admit I have fallen out of bed in the past year. I slept right through it.
Marvin: This remake of War of the Roses (1989) sucks.
FC: Thel is grateful she gave up a little of her precious booze for this moment.
The Family Circus: Thel’s plan to end her parental mistakes with carbon monoxide poisoning is coming along nicely, I see. By the time the authorities read this panel, she’ll be somewhere on a Central American beach with a piña colada and her 1970s boobs.
Plugger: I can’t really focus on the joke here because I’m too distracted by the fact that this plugger is sleeping alone, and what this means for the avatars of Plugger that inhabit this strip. Are there bachelor Pluggers? Widow Pluggers? Do Plugger couples sleep in seperate beds like the Ricardos? I’m never quite sure where the real Plugger world touches this fantastical Animal Plugger world. Oh no, the word ‘plugger’ is starting to lose meaning…help!
Marvin: Gotta admit, I’m liking that Jeff is just refusing to engage in this conversation at all , seemingly in defiance of the writer/artist. I’m not sure I would have picked him as the comics page character to gain sentience and rebel against his creator, but I am interested to see where this goes.
FC: Thel is thinking “Man, you could set your watch to those benzos. See you in 18 hours, loser!”
The most delicious part is realizing that I have seldom, if ever, seen a book in the Marvin house, meaning that Jenny (?, let’s go with Jenny) has allowed her husband to build up his book reserves, only to wipe them out so she can make this joke again and again. It’s like the Lockhorns, except Dionysian!
RMMD: Don’t get too excited, Summer. Look at that swollen chin in panel two. This guy has inoperable cancer and is not long for this world.
JP: Okay, place your bets. Whose drone was it? CIApril’s? Mayor ‘I’m not a Republican Stawman!’ Sanderson? Lil’ Dunk? Ian Mollusk?
Luann: Aaaaandd cue Stef barging in….
Pluggers: The third pillow covers the gun he sleeps with.
—And a tip o’ the hat to Gary “I Dare You” Miller of McKinney, TX
New game: literally any and all Puggers you read from now on, compare the actual caption with “plugger polyamory” and see if you learn anything about yourself.
@Lauralot:
Exactly. And with Dawn throwing the “L” word around and talking about having couples photos taken after only a few weeks of dating, it’s looking like Moy left a whole chunk of time out of this storyline. Even she can’t remember the drivel she writes from day to day.
RMMD: “I hope you won’t find me forward — but have you looked in a mirror lately? At your tits, I mean. You might want to put a bag over your head when you look in the mirror. What I’m saying is, you have big tits.”
I’ve figured out why Mary Worth serves chocolate muffins when she wants to meddle: They’re filled with sodium pentothal. Power move, respect.
MW: I didn’t really think that Mary was going to say the relationship was unhealthy. Pretty shocked by that actually.
MW: It’s weird to see Mary try to steer Dawn *away* from a dysfunctional relationship. Did a human replace her?
Dustin: Yeah, you didn’t even mention their experiences with unemployment!
@Hibbleton: I went back to Sunday and found a joke that could’ve been about me* and I’m shook.
*the browser tabs one
Pluggers are so economical they snore with one Z. They use the others in their Cheez Whiz.
Today’s Marivin is such a raw example of how people in awful situations make their own lives worse because of their own hopeless myopia. Jenny got rid of Jeff’s books as an act of malice because she’s more focussed on hurting him than making herself happy. If she could focus on the bigger picture, she could get rid of Marvin, making them both happy and freeing them from this excrement prison built by their (literally) shitty baby.
Save yourself time, Thel, and sneak him some Nyquil at suppertime. Everybody wins!
Went back through the Marvin storyline for some reason and… this is not a punchline but a perfectly reasonable observation? Pictures go on the wall, books go on the bookshelf? Also Jenny wants to put up a family picture presumably including Marvin, continuing the “history’s greatest monster” theme.
Luann: Here’s where the studio audience goes, “OooooOOoooo.”
CS: “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
9CL: “Dull”–this week’s strips.
MW: Mary best teach Dawn how to do a throat punch and eyegouge. She’ll be needing those skills. There have been lots of stupid plots in MW but for some reason this is enfuriating me.
RMMD: He’s and English teacher and is not put off by Summer ending a sentence with a preposition? He must really be smitten.
MW: Time for a dream sequence featuring Dirk with a bad combover and a bottle of Johnny Walker Purple.
@Ettorre: Sailor Moon came out in 1992 and first aired in the US in 1995. The first generation of magical girl anime watchers will be well into their 40s now. There will be soon be Pluggers with waifus. May God have mercy on us all.
“A Plugger doesn’t need a dakimakura. He can make do with a sack of straw and a sharpie.”
Pluggers – Honestly, this is a rare Pluggers to appear here that doesn’t need a snark, it’s a legit way older people might use to prevent themselves from falling off.
Marvin – Having a kid hampers adults ability to do things like visit friends or engage in hobbies requiring attention like reading. Jenny throwing out the books, totems of a time when Jeff had free time for good narratives or exploring interesting topics, is his personal burning of the Library of Alexandria. Now even his past pleasures have been taken over by that wretched child.
Family Circus – Thel had to go to the secret backroom of the local Christian bookstore, where the books of benign folk magic are that could lull this melonhead to sleep. These are the magic tomes that in the past got people excommunicated, shunned, or, that one time in Salem, hanged., But the magic knowledge nonetheless continued as the women, barred from formal leadership in their churches, still managed their underground church, hidden mostly n in plain sight as the patriarchy in charge considered women’s matters beneath them.
BG&SS: “Dang!!” he says, with two exclamation points? Jedge Potter is going to die on the lowest level of the judicial bench. I’d figure he’s so used to being overturned he just tosses another unopened envelope onto the pile.
@Philip: Thel the Conjure Wife. I can just see her squatting out there in her shack on the bayou, corncob pipe stuck in her mouth, muttering to herself as she stirs her iron cauldron.
@Schroduck: You’re a Plugger if you have no problem waiting ten volumes for the childhood friends to hold hands
Marvin: This is missing a fourth panel where Marvin’s Dad splashes his hot coffee into his wife’s face, giving her horrific and ultimately fatal third-degree burns while Marvin smirks at the reader and makes a disgustingly bad pun about how coffee and feces are both brown.
Re Pluggers, Josh learns a harsh lesson on just how old his readership is.
MW: “This makeup you lent me really covers my black eye.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
Sorry to be a downer. It’s just that I know a lot about this stuff now, and, well, Pluggers is about death and managing the anxiety of knowing that death is approaching, right?
Pool noodles under the fitted sheet along the edge of the mattress are also a cheap, effective speed bump.
I think there are a number of us on here who are well-versed in Plugger Tricks of the Trade. I often come here for the comics, and stay for the group therapy.
My dad fell out of bed once because the mattress was so old whatever structure created a firm edge was broken. He spent some time in the hospital. He’s in a home now. So, “Pluggers live in deteriorating surroundings, not because of lack of funds but because as they age, managing their own affairs becomes increasingly challenging both mentally and physically, a situation that too often becomes obviously untenable due to a serious incident,” ha ha?
Don Abundio, translated:
“I want to be a star, Juan… so I’m dumping you for Don Abundio”
“But… I have connections in the movie business, theater, and television”
“So do I…”
“I own a movie studio, a Broadway theater, and a TV network!”
Hey now…/raises eyebrows/
@Rita Lake:
There are!? To me, the assumption that such people exist, and that there’s nothing surprising about them, was the most bizarre thing about today’s strip.
@matt w: Wow. So this is not the first time Jenny has expressed the attitude that books are basically like Kleenex, that you use each one once and then throw it away.
@Rita Lake:
Oh, she writes romance novels. It’s a good thing I’m not the sort of person who’s a snob about romance novels, because otherwise, this fact combined with her attitude about books is pretty much an assemble-it-yourself joke kit.
I’m a trifle surprised to see a Plugger asleep without his CPAP machine, probably leaking enough air to blow his eyelids open and wake him up. In fact, that might make a good submission for the Chief Plugger. Feel free to use it.
OK, I’ve never thought about this before, but do each of the four Keane Kids have their own separate bedrooms? If so, does the priority list for storytime vary throughout the day based on who has displeased their parents the least? That would explain why Jeffy is nodding off; he’s been riding the bottom tier for weeks now, and it’s after 11:30 before Ma or Pa make an appearance. Dolly keeps requesting middle chapters of Moby-Dick just to twist the knife.
FC: “Unconscious Jeffy Time” is when they drain off a couple of pints of his blood to cash in at the blood bank.
I know decluttering and minimalism are the rage these days, but if books are the one thing keeping your husband from going full Jack Torrance on you and your abomination spawn, you should probably hold on to them even if they don’t bring you joy.
RMMD – Augie doesn’t realize that Summer is a vampire. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked such a triggering question.
FC – I wonder if the townsfolk ever did find Hamster Huey’s head.
Pluggers – Wouldn’t he be more likely to fall out of bed if he’s propped up like that? From all the comments, it seems that he should have the pillows on his side.
I don’t like to use pillows. I use one only when I sleep on my side.
JP – Time to start a new conspiracy board with pictures and string.
@taig: Yeah, that’s basically how i expect this drivel to end. 18 days of telling Tom Batiuk’s life story, and it took 17 of them for “Batton” to get the point where he applies for the job. Then he’ll say “the rest is history” with a smirk.
FC-“Read faster, Mommy. I want to get to the climax.”
JP: Yeesh, how DID the Cavelton Police ever get to be this corrupt? Damn your eyes, Mayor Sanderson!
Luann: “Stefani is horrible and shallow. I’m just shallow. And I wanna date the quarterback, okay?”
GT: Whoever said the Barajas/Merrill team couldn’t do conflict and action? Not I! Bang, zoom!
@Bob Tice: I . . . buried . . . Wilbur
The Familiar Mucus: “Hooray for NyQuil™!”
@I speak Jive: “horse…….radish …..sauce.”
Short-form Pluggers: Plugger email is AOL.
@Banana Jr. 6000: The smirk! I knew I was forgetting something!
PLUGGERS-. FINALLY a comic I could not relate to because I have no pillows on bed. So maybe I’m not a Plugger! Then Josh had to ruin it to equate pillows with lovers. Yeah, Josh, you’re right again.