Friday is for avoiding suffering
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Pardon My Planet, 2/28/25
Not sure how we’re meant to understand the scenario here: did this couple literally spend their last dime on this beach vacation, leaving them in a position where they would be forced to stiff their dog-sitter when they got home? Or has the relatively small charge for dog-sitting services — which in my experience is usually paid in advance, these days often through Rover or other similar apps — pushed them across some threshold where they’re forced to acknowledge their own acute financial crisis, possibly because they recognize that they’ll be unable to make even the minimum payment on their credit card when it next comes due? At any rate, their problems are over now, as will their lives be in a few days when the massive dose of radiation they’re absorbing right now finally kills them both.
Mary Worth, 2/28/25
I have to admit “Why do people learn things the hard way instead of accepting advice?” is a pretty good tactic for talking up an advice column. People are, I think it goes without saying, pretty lazy, and if you explain that half-reading Ask Wendy on their phone while they’re watching TV or something is a “life hack” that allows them to avoid the terrifying, vivid highs and lows of an active and emotionally full life, I think they might go for it.
90 replies to “Friday is for avoiding suffering”
MW: Mary knows the hard way is the only way people learn. That’s what keeps her protected in her Ivory Condo of Advice, sending platitudes down to the common scum who keep making stupid mistakes and not listening to her! It’s pretty comfy in there, and you get fish cakes.
MW-“Dear Wilbur, how many times have I told you to stop writing to me? There is no help for you. You are far beyond redemption.”
RMMD-“I will continue to run this story into the ground.”
MW-Because those people have not yet accepted Mary Worth into their lives.
FC-“And they’re all clapping.” A shot of penicillin should fix them up.
FC-“Mommy says to take a cold shower. Her crafting group is scissoring.”
“Why do people learn things the hard way? Like how putting your laptop on a table is better for your back, since you don’t have to hunch over as much. Well, they’ll learn when arthritis kicks in. Suckers!”
“…. For example, my friend Wilbur W. doesn’t dwell on how he could be, nay rightfully should be, dead many times over, but instead focuses on the moment, like a Buddha who has achieved satori, if by “satori” you mean “one with the mayonnaise” and he very much does. But I digress.”
Purple Stripeybutt Worth: “It’s Kilroy!” “No, it’s Wilson!”
JP: Yup, he forgot, or ignored it.
RxMD: “I’ll show her for trying to interact with the outside world!”
Like the treadmill in the living room being the solution, Summer should have gotten a Real Doll.
@Little Guy: The problem is that in Westview, they only have the low-selling “Melvin: the Mild-mannered Schlub King” edition (that plays a real roots county ditty when you squeeze it!)
PMP: Looks more like a vast expanse of desert than a beach. Where’s the ocean? Are they spies, posing as confused tourists, sent by the US to monitor aboveground nuclear tests somewhere in Central Asia? With the prospect of capture and imprisonment, you’d think they’d set aside money for long-term dogsitting.
RMMD: Dude, you need HELP. Have you ever read “Ask Wendy?”
PMP: I read “On the Beach” for school. I don’t recall this jaded pair.
MW: The thought cloud cut off her quote source: “—Monkeys on typewriters”
The featureless desert of their “vacation” spot tells me they’re at a nuke testing ground in a bizarrely over-the-top suicide attempt. Also, they didn’t want to pay the dog-sitter.
PMP: Baby sitter would have been a better choice
PMP. It’s actually quite simple. He was just a really bad dog
MW – Mary will learn the hard way the results of bad ergonomics. From what we know of her relationship with Dr. Jeff, that’s the only hard experience she will have. I hope she at least learns from it.
Bizarro:
“Dear, it looks as if our mushroom appetizer has arrived!”
“Why do people learn things the hard way instead of accepting advice? Why couldn’t Karen Moy kill off Wilbur Weston when the entire comic strip-reading world was begging her to do it? I wouldn’t have to sit here and do his job right now.
You readers know that’s who you’ve been asking for advice, right? ‘Wendy’ is a balding, mayonnaise-slurping, 50-something, mentally and emotionally vacant man. Whatever problem you had, it’s probably much bigger now that you know that.”
MW:
“Or maybe because it’s me giving the advice, which, of course, is utterly Worthless.”
PARDON MY PLANET: The current administration’s ad for Trump Tower: Gaza.
MW: Dear Ask Wendy,
Answer: “Fantasize” “Hard Way” “What’s at hand”
Question: What is heavy petting?
PMP: What’s actually going on is the dogsitter made it clear that they require compsensation, but refused currency, leaving the couple to wonder *how* they’re going to pay the dogsitter. As the days of their vacation started going by, they got more and more worried about it – wondering if it would involve something illegal, or sexual, or both. But now? Now they don’t have to worry at all. Now whatever insidious form of remuneration their no doubt creepy, Gollum-esque dogsitter would have demanded of them is so much dust in the wind – like they’ll all be soon.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Because as you can see, Wilbur, the hospital administrator keeps giving the drug addict the keys to the pharmaceutical cabinet and mama needs her meddling high!
MW: Nothing better encapsulates Mary’s personality than today’s image: Mary, alone in her darkened condo, posing the question to nobody in particular ‘Why doesn’t anybody listen to my advice? There must be something wrong with them.’
FC: Who has a shower door with a hole in it?
@Bob Tice:
I don’t understand what today’s Bizarro has to do with mushrooms
If you like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the blast,
If you’re not into thinking
About the future, nor past,
If you like playing with a pink ball
In the dunes round the bend,
You’re the love that I’ve looked for;
Come with me to the end.
MW: It must gall Mary to know that she can fill in for the perennial loser Wilbur, distribute her pearls of wisdom to the masses (via print?) and that as far we know no can tell the difference. By the way, is she doing this for free? If so, I have some advice for her.
MARY WORTH: Sounds like all this time, Mary has actually been writing a sex column. (Mary does not understand why people do things “the hard way”, as a certain blue-balled doctor can attest to. She wonders why people can’t learn things the “chaste-hand-holding-while blathering-all-about-your-neighbors-personal-business-over-a-plate-of-undercooked-carp-at-a-glorified-Red-Lobster-knockoff” way. Maybe they just keep fantasizing about the way things could be, like, say, desirable elderly women will eventually relent and marry them or even go beyond first-base with them or other such flights of fancy.)
Pardon My Planet: Fun fact I learned by meeting a couple of the vets who were at the first hydrogen bomb test at Enewetak Atoll: they didn’t get cancer, but their firstborn children did, which is apparently a pattern and something to think about in regards to the sins of the father being visited on the next generation. Anyway, these folks aren’t going to die, they’re just going to stiff a cancer patient.
PMP: We should all aspire to reach this level of Glass Half-Full.
MW – Mary’s going pretty messianic for someone who once advised Estelle to take Wilbur back.
Bizarro: I feel like the comics page version of ‘Simpsons Did It’ is ‘Far Side Did It‘.
MW: I like how Mary has gone rogue and is just writing an opinion column now. Clearly the citizens of Santa Royale just weren’t asking interesting enough questions.
Mary Worth: “For example, if people would just accept that the only colors you need are muted shades of blue, purple and mint green, our world would be so much calmer. Yet the young insist on their horrid reds, yellows and whites, and the balding columnist must have his mismatched plaids. Why must they suffer so?”
Mary could do with some advice about sitting up straight but will learn the hard way that she’s about to throw out her back.
RMMD – Well, this has taken a dark turn. Hope Mr. Nice-Guy Teacher packs heat or knows martial arts.
Bizarro – I saw The Howler Monkeys open for The Arctic Monkeys. Much poo was flung.
MW: people don’t take advice because the advice giver is often a Karen.
RMMD: a nice, boring, little story about Summer finding love wouldn’t have been exciting but it would have been okayish. Instead they’re giving us a story about an obnoxious, stupid loser jersey which will end when his face gets broken. I expect Summer will emerge okay.
Mary Worth: Cthulhu’s word for the day is “kyphosis“: The Elder Gods do not get kyphosis. (Nor do they take advice.)
PMP: “Yep, that dog sitter is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. [clinks cocktail glasses] Heh heh.”
There are some weird angles and proportions in Mary’s living room there. If we’re just seeing things how she’s seeing them, I guess I don’t need to ask her advice on dropping a little acid before sitting down to work.
PMP: Given how small (relatively speaking) that explosion looks, I’m pretty sure they simply planted an IED in their driveway blew up their dogsitter. True, they probably blew up their dog and the entire house as well, but it was worth it to dodge those rip-off dogsitting fees.
PMP: They’re watching God turn a large tree into salt and figuring that the Rapture has arrived. They’re not worried about paying the dogwalker because they know that he has led a sinful and dissolute lifestyle.
MW: Ha haaa, Mary can’t be bothered with all the tedious “Ask Wendy” letters (“I caught my boyfriend cheating.” Zzzzzzz). So she throws them away and is now just using the column as an opinion piece to spread her platitudes to the public at large. She’s never felt more alive!
CS: Having earlier exhausted all his stupid Amazon scenarios, Batty has now thunk up a whole new range of idiotic options. Thousands of productive federal workers are being fired, and this clown still has a job.
JP: Uh-oh, Sophie’s gonna run away and join the circus.
RMMD: This guy could really use a hobby. Or a job.
BF: You can’t tell me Benoit is not balls-deep in a 21 year old office intern from Laval right now.
Dustin: Dustin looks confused that this woman shot him down. I like it better when he’s mad when a woman shoots him down.
RMMD: Orange Suit Psycho wracks his brain. “There’s gotta be some way I can get her to like me. Oh I know, I’ll kidnap her!”
GT: I was tempted to ask why putting in the work is in quotes and nothing else is, but I’m learning.
That definitely doesn’t look like Mary’s living room. Must be her second living room, the one she just uses for writing Ask Wendy. All those newspaper columnists and community college professors live like kings at Charterstone.
@Liam:
MW-Because those people have not yet accepted Mary Worth into their lives.
Ha haaaa! Very good!
PMP: That Alamogordo vacation package was too cheap to pass up.
MW: “That’s why I bring a hammer when I meddle, so they can feel the pain before heeding my advice.”
FC: Bil was definitely hoping one of “Mommie’s ladies” would stumble into the bathroom, but, no, it had to be Jeffy.
Dustin: I really hate to say this, but leave the thesaurus and ickiness to Brooke.
“I mean, I warned you not to get two twenty-kilogram Labradoodiums. You knew the moment they mated they’d reach critical mass!”
PMP – Funny, funny stuff….
MW – Oh – if only I was God….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Cleveland Mocks: But do you have a personal relationship with Mary? Cuz I mean just ask Dr Jeff Cory – pretty darn rewarding, I can tell you….
Luann: “Or… my vulva is throbbing.” “Too much honesty.”
CS: These school bus shortage jokes
neverfail to make me laugh.9CL: On the one hand, they’re not praising Edda for her hotness. On the other, the strip is still pretty gross.
@Guts Dozier: Nicely done!
Today’s Crankshaft
YAWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN (falls asleep)
MW has been typing with that laptop on that coffee table for years now. I’m awaiting the upcoming romance someone doesn’t quite have with an English orthopaedic surgeon.
Ursine Pluggers aren’t sure if the stick is for them or their dog. Wait, is it a racial insult in the Pluggerverse to give an anthro dog a stick?
RMMD: “Nobody disrespects me that way”? Seems you’d be used to it by now.
But seriously, Summer needs to file a restraining order, and get one of those doorbell cameras installed. Yesterday.
MW: So yeah, this is the moral for those in abusive relationships, a situation that often involves a thorny combination of legal, financial, and emotional dependence that can be difficult to extract from even when you do know it’s a bad situation: just listen to some nosy busybody’s advice! I have some advice for you, Mary, and it involves where you can go, what you can do, and a variety of things you can sit on.
Mary Worth: “My lord and savior, Mary, why do people not just drop their petty wants of free will and self-determination in favor of listening to your glorious, always-accurate advice? Love, Someone Who Is Totally Not You Astroturfing”
C’shaft: Have they considered the possibility that there’s a driver shortage because so few people are willing to work with Crankshaft?
Dustin: Dustin’s so bad at this he can’t even do negging right.
GT: “We’re focused on winning, which is why we’re alienating our star player because of a personal grudge.”
JP: Being cleared of murder means that all of Ann’s lesser charges of fraud etc. have also been dismissed and will never, ever be spoken of again.
Luann: My guideline for a date is to put an end to it the minute the other person starts saying things like “set some guidelines for our date” and “relaxed as a stack of flapjacks.”
Pluggers keep finding new ways to be cheap.
RMMD: Unfortunately for Summer, Goatee McStalker happens to be a mobster from the 1930s.
I cannot accept either Mary Worth herself, or any Plugger, using a laptop. I could accept a Plugger very occasionally using a Kaypro CP/M “luggable” from 1982 to print out a nutjob religious newsletter that the church secretary “mysteriously” has trouble xeroxing and mailing. Mary Worth uses a Windows XP SP2 desktop where even the viruses are so decrepit as to mostly not run. The CRT monitor bezel is covered with faded Post-Its containing all of Mary’s “computer wisdom”.
PMP – If she told him once, she told him a thousand times: Nevada doesn’t have a sea coast.
MW – That’s also why people read Mary Worth.
Don Abundio, translated:
“The Admiral sure was drunk last night, wasn’t he, Abundio?”
“Like a maniac!”
“Did he finally pass out?”
“No. I had to throw him overboard”
“I couldn’t get a life jacket on him, but I made sure he’ll come bobbing back up eventually!”
@TheDiva: Dustin is doing a better job of socializing with the opposite sex than Luann, who has irrationally determined that hurling doggerel at her date is the key to his heart.
Dennis the Menace. Isn’t that a bit TMI, Mrs. Wilson? Does Dennis really need to know all that?
CS: When a State Senate gives tax dollars to Uber drivers who then somehow carry public school students, (on the Constitutional principle of “dibs”) enrolling those students and their money to Christian schools, I can say “We saw it here first”.
CS: This is actually a real thing. I once took some adult IT courses that were held at the home of an alternative high school. Someone there explained to me that the school system hired cabs to transport all the expelled, pregnant, violent, and other alt-school kids to class every day. And this was before Uber got big; so if anything, Uber might actually be an improvement.
@Ukulele Ike:
Benoit. Balls. Got the reference.
Curtis: Curtis, it’s 2025. No one says “swag” anymore. I’m pretty sure all the youngsters say “drip” now. I hate the fact that I know this. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the local park to sit on a bench and yell at the kids.
Dustin, Luann: Amazing how Dustin, who the strip intentionally tries to convey how terrible and pathetic he is (Just like all young people under 45 amirite?!), manages to be LESS awkward at dating than Luann, who apparently is so nervous that she can’t even talk right. Say what you want about Dustin, but at least he has confidence.
…actually, you know what? These two deserve each other. And hey, maybe Dustin can escape his horrible family and move in with the DeGroots! You might say that’s implausible, but Bernice has lived there rent-free for years now.
Dennis the Menace: I’m imagining senile George Wilson wearing a cardboard Burger King crown while sitting on the toilet trying with much difficulty to relieve his severe constipation. Thanks for that!
Pluggers are too destitute to afford luxury cars so they have to compensate for their small genitals with sticks they find in the woods.
GT: Since when do the athletes being interviewed wear headphones? Also, why is he staring away at the person talking to him? If an attractive woman came up to me to start a conversation I sure as Hell wouldn’t be staring off into space.
@Guillermo el chiclero: The GT “artist” probably saw that while watching a pro sports broadcast.
Many of the announcers are kept in the press box or far away from the sidelines so it’s easier just to have a production assistant at courtside to hand a headset to the athlete.
@TheDiva: Dustin’s so bad at this he can’t even do negging right.
Which makes him no worse than Dirk.
@UncleJeff: I commented before I saw the strip.
I think I can see the small stub of a microphone near Martymoonreplacement’s right ear but no mic near the anonymous notrodneybarnes Milford player.
The look on Gil’s face is pure “what the hell am I doing here?”
Fred Basset Spanish to English.
File under post #69 – MT – Trail’s gonna be snackin’ on Cherry’s pie
@JamesBont: LUANN: Dustin, Luann: Amazing how Dustin, who the strip intentionally tries to convey how terrible and pathetic he is (Just like all young people under 45 amirite?!), manages to be LESS awkward at dating than Luann, who apparently is so nervous that she can’t even talk right. Say what you want about Dustin, but at least he has confidence.
Oh boy, the Trufans do not like being asked why Luann should be considered any less of a loser than Dustin, or Brad when he was her age. At least Brad had a friggin’ job. They usually fall back on infantilizing her like she’s still 12 years old and just needs to find her place in the world.
Pardon My Planet – I feel bad for the rest of the planet, but when these over-extended characters’ first thought when Russia drops the bomb is about not having to honor their contract with their working class dogsitter, all that propaganda about the decadent bourgeoisie is justified.
Perhaps Pardon My Planet can now shift from a daily gag strip to a post-apocalyptic tale of the dog sitter and her loyal litter of dogs surviving in the wastelands.
Mary Worth – In Mary Worth, the worst thing in life is thinking for yourself, or learning through personal experience. Take advice from the unmarried spinster who had a son in the past, but who has been written out of the script. The son never happened, Mary is too committed to helping people to actually live the life of domestic bliss expected to you. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Mary’s advice is like crack! The first one’s free. Once Wilbur returns, the readers will have to seek Mary out in person. She’s already got a couple of batches of muffins in the freezer.
MW: Now that this story line will likely conclude this weekend, in retrospect I kind of enjoyed seeing Dawn treated like crap. Most story lines don’t have that sort of silver lining.
FG:. What a relief learning that since these are real people in real time, to learn our science teachers were wrong! People CAN breathe without assistance in outer space just as they WONT explode from lack of air pressure. Guess there really is no need for NASA safeguards after all. /S
GA:. Dying snuggled with friends when you’re elderly. Not the worst way to go. But they’ll be rescued and Walt will love the nursing home.
JP:. Siding a bit with Soph. It’s not right she should have to be the rescue net, always putting her own life aside to serve her self-centered family. But I’m guessing that instead of getting to a nunnery, she and Reena will ghost their families for a month.
Dustin’s lack of effort in finding or keeping jobs is completely with odds with the tremendous effort he displays into singles bars.
RMMD: So what’s it gonna be, tough guy, slash her tires or leave a flaming sack of shit by her front door?
DT: Today in “Everyone else in Neo-Chicago law enforcement is even more incompetent than the main characters”, Dick assumes (and will, of course, be correct) that when the morgue was trying to identify this body the first time, they either didn’t take its fingerprints, or didn’t actually check them against anything.
Heath: It is a very brave choice for a comic like this to have the mice actually say “He’s mailing it in.” Why not just go all-in? “Yeah, he’s wearing a shirt with ‘cheese’ written on it and eating cheese. That’s whimsical, I guess. Bit derivative of the helmet thing. Or the flag thing. Sometimes I think this
cartoonistcat is running out of ideas.”JP: Hey, remember when Randy was in the basement yelling at Ann that she was a blight on the family who had dragged them all into her mess, again? Remember when he was at the prison yelling at her that he had absolutely no reason to think she didn’t murder her partner in crime? Well, stop remembering those things immediately! Randy never gave up on Ann! Never!
@Bryan:
#76. LUANN:. “… Luann just needs to find her place in the world….”
Unfortunately, they’re going with the tired trope that what she needs is a good man to take her by the hand and guide her through life.”. Yeck, disgusting even as I say it. :-(
@MKay: Me too! I read “On The Beach” as a young teen and later saw the movie. I was judgy about some choices made by the characters, being a judgy teen in general. But now as a senior, I admire the attitude of this pair. I bet they’ll just continue reading after the cloud becomes less interesting to watch. And it’s not like they could avoid death by running away in a frenzy like the people who escaped Pompeii. Nope, they might as well finish their drinks and their magazines. I think those are magazines.
JP: Randy, how sweet of you. And when you have a moment, I know this very wealthy generous Nigerian prince.
MW: This gauzy advice is brought to you by the excruciating neckache Mary is giving herself by placing her laptop on the coffee table instead of, say, the kitchen table.
PMP: Okay, they’re on outdoor recliners, they’re wearing bathing suits, they’ve got a tiny beachball with them. But I don’t see any ocean. The “beach vacation” they’re taking is on a nuclear testing site. Clearly this is the consummation of a suicide pact, and I only hope their dog is young and cute enough to land a happier home.
maybe their dogsitter asked for a nuclear explosion as payment
Pluggers: Awww, this one made me a little nostalgic. My Dad was always keeping an eye out for good sticks, limbs, branches, anything that could be repurposed into something useful. One of the best prizes was a branched limb that could become the base of a plant stand. I still have three of them.
Zits Spanish to English.