Facial expression theater
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Dustin, 6/26/25
I really love the fact that Ed looks utterly joyless as he prepares to shove that forbidden donut down his donut hole. He doesn’t even want it, really; he’s just eating it to make some kind of point in his long-running battle with his wife that she’s never even going to find out about.
Pluggers, 6/26/25
This plugger, on the other hand, is gazing upon that expired can of beans with a keen expression of mingled trepidation and desire that borders on the erotic. Surely there are some risks worth taking, he thinks. Is botulism really such a terrible way to go out?
Hi and Lois, 6/26/25
Obviously Dot and Ditto did not enjoy Hi’s bedtime story, so I have to assume that the big smiles on their faces indicate that, in the moment just before they slipped off into unconsciousness, they realized that finally they weren’t going to have to listen to any more blather about fucking golf.
160 replies to “Facial expression theater”
H&L: In his left hand, Hi is concealing the bottle of Benadryl he had each child take a swig from.
Impoverished Plugger weighs the risk between food poisoning and starvation.
MW-Sounds to me like Mary is trying to bring Wilbur and Dawn together.
H&L: “…my Chip rolled off the green…”
I guess if you wanted to get rid of one of your kids, rolling him off a green is as good a way as any.
Pluggers – That’s actually true for canned foods, which is what is being depicted.
Ed IS utterly joyless – it’s only the first donut of the day. The first one just kills the shakes and nausea. The second donut? That’s where the real fix is.
MW: Oh, gad. Get ready for a flashback…! Moy and Brigman head off for a long vacation after submitting old panels depicting “The Many Moods of Wilbur” over the years.
Dustin : DustinDad is just bored and annoyed because this is the twelfth time he’s done this bit today; what do you think happened to the 11 other donuts?
And he’s barely looking forward to having to do it another 12 times, after the coworker who bought these for everyone notices they’re already all gone and goes to buy another dozen.Dustin: Really curious as to what Ed is going to do with that second log. Review it at the end of the week so he can gloat?
Pluggers I like how the grey background suggest the interior of a bunker. 2023 wasn’t too long ago, especially when you consider that that timelock isn’t going to let you our until 2028…
H&L: I think the real lede here is that Dot and Ditto share a bedroom? And without the trope of a line drawn down the middle of the floor and a bedsheet hung between the beds?
Dustin: Ah, wedded bliss, where your love and hate for each other are in perfect alignment. Except Ed has no love for anything with a pulse.
MW: I remember when Wilbur moved in. Toby thought he would be a handsome bachelor (ha!) since she was on her fourth mimosa, Ian rightfully mocked both Toby and Wilbur, and Mary was ready to meddle her way into knowing all the details of his divorce to dig the knife in deeper. And then Mary proceeded to slut shame Dawn because she wore pants and her hair looked like a helmet to protect her soft spot.
Ah, the
goodold days when Toby and Ianhad personalitiesexisted, Mary was uncomfortably nosy, and Westonmania had yet to sweep through Charterstone.Dustin: I like how the artist just flipped the other guy in the last panel. Much easier than erasing the coffee cup.
@Liam: If she is, she should make sure Dawn is spayed before anything happens. Better go get Dr. Ed Harding with his immaculate record and Libby will “treat” Wilbur to the special seat she and Pierre prepared for him.
Zits: I like that Jeremy knows he’s going to be living with his parents until he’s 40. He’s been reading Dustin and he can’t do anything to change his fate.
Dustin: Why should he make any effort to prolong his life that he hates? He fathered Dustin so any chance of redemption was lost decades ago.
Pluggers: He could go to a food bank and get some free food that at least isn’t years past it’s expiration but Pluggers don’t have any self respect and are also extremely lazy. He’s not even going to heat up the contents of that can. He’ll sit in his underwear and eat it cold with a spoon.
Dustin – What other notes does Ed make in his secret log? That he runs with scissors? That he goes swimming (something on the forbidden list for him since you have to wait a half-hour after eating)?
MW: Just thinking about how Wilbur embodies all of the 7 deadly sins.
Let’s have a series of flashbacks of Wilbur exhibiting pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. There’s a metric shit ton of material to work with.
It can end with Dawn’s head in a box.
@Charterstoned:
#7: Would that be a Wlbumentary?
Pluggers Break Bad Part 4: Having lost all track of time after a bad trip in his brother-in-law’s unfinished basement, this old plugger keeps forgetting that he ate ten minutes ago.
MW: So, now DAWN is the problem? The reason that Wilbur is single, barely working and an all-around schlub? Amazing.
RMMD: Hmm, Cory and Wanda? Maybe this will finally pick up some steam.
H&L: And Time Out is watching golf on TV while duct-taped to chairs.
Dustin’s Mom also insists that the sugar be kept next to the microwave, on the opposite side of the break room from the coffee pot, so that Ed will get a few extra steps in.
H & L — Actually, the twins nodded off on No. 4, but Hi refuses to pass up the opportunity to recount his entire round in excruciating detail. . .
Dusted — Since when does a doughnut count as a meal? And this guy calls himself a lawyer?
@MKay: To be fair, when Dawn isn’t trying to get into some man’s pants, she acts like she’s six years old and obsessed with her dad.
H&L: Wait, Chip? Like, your son? What, did Lois veto calling the twins “Putt” and “Drive”?
Dustin: I’ve long been convinced that Dustin’s long running “Dustin’s dad eats donuts at the office strips” are all sexual (exhibit 1, exhibit 2), and today’s entry doesn’t exactly dispel that theory. Helen doesn’t let herself eat anything heavier than a kale chip, so she gets her food kicks voyeuristicly through her husband’s open
marriagediet and the sordid tales of the pizzas and donuts he snacks on behind her back. But now Ed is developing a genuine intimate connection to his sidepiecesorders, and he’s about to learn that true infidelity isn’t physical… it’s emotional.Beetle Bailey: There’s not even a real joke here. Of course weeding a 3 foot flower garden is going to be less effort than combat training. What’s really remarkable about current BB is just how incomprehensibly terrible the artwork is. It looks like it was created with an outdated version of Microsoft Paint.
MW: Mary’s perfectly parabolic coffee cups cannot be put down once filled and must be completely emptied by the drinker. This way she makes sure her “guests” receive the proper dosage.
Every possible take on the stupid fat guy who gorges himself with the office donuts has already been done a million times better by Homer Simpson.
Marvin: Jenny hands the volunteer at the thrift store a cereal container sized box of donations. “Sure you can spare it, lady?” He says as he holds up a scant handful of clothes. “Oh, wait. Give me back that thong. It’s Jeff’s favorite.”
Do you think Ed is also billing some client for the time he takes to eat that donut? Or billing multiple clients? My guess is yes.
@Schroduck: They just can’t stick to the bit. Hi and Lois are location names, Chip is golf or stone (like Flagston), Ditto and Dot are printing, and Trixie isn’t anything. If I’d named the kids Hi and Lois would have teenage Farley, baby Neera, and the twins Hithery and Yonathan.
Pluggers’ canned vegetables sit unused long after their expiration dates, a problem that never occurs with Pluggers’ bags of potato chips or candy.
Dustin: I for one look forward to this moment being used to impeach Ed’s character and veracity in the Bar Association hearings: “Mr. Kudlick, on June 26th, 2025, did you or did you not state that you would ‘keep two sets of books’ in regards to your donut-based diet? It’s a yes-or-no question, Sir.”
GA: Ah, yes, scientific proof by linguistic manipulation. Thank you, Officer Descartes.
MT: It’s Cherry Bikini Time!
JP: Geez, is Bianca Xunise ghosting for Ces? Next thing, Reena will be asking a Sursild to be a bridesherring.
Curtis: “Good thing you’re no Will Smith!”
What really makes this work is that Dustin’s dad is a lawyer, so he knows exactly what “keeping two sets of books” means. “I am committing accounting fraud against my wife. I will be sentenced to no more than sixty months in prison, fined no more than one million dollars, and be forced to repay this donut.”
Hi and Lois: Right now, all across America, grandmothers are holding up the tissue-thin local Gannett paper for grandfathers, saying “Oh, how cute. Do you remember when the kids would pretend to be asleep to get you to shut the f–k up about golf?” And the grandfathers are saying “No, dammit! I’m a Plugger, I have dementia!”
@Little Guy: Re Mark Trail: [comes around sniffing]
Edit to add: She looks like she found a whole bunch of the Devil’s tobacco there in Lost Forest.
JP: The setting may be “beyond charming” but the characters are beyond stupid. I’m going to have to drop this comic again. Please let me know if anything ever happens. Preferably someone getting murdered.
H&L- At first, I was thinking that Lois’ discovery that he uses golf to put the kids to bed was an indictment on her parenting. Then I realized that other than watching a game on TV, with a kid, this is Hi’s only interaction with his children, and he has no idea where they keep their story books.
MW: “It seems like only yesterday I was a single working guy without a care in the world!” And that’s exactly what you are right now, Wilbur! Except Mary is doing your work for you! Not only have you not grown since then, you’ve actually gotten worse.
Frazz: The central problem with this entire strip is that you can only be the “cool grown-up who’s friends with kids” until you’re about 27. Year after year after year of this adult hanging out with 10-year-olds outside of school really strains credulity.
CS: It’s bad enough when comic strips work back from the punchline, but this punchline doesn’t even make any sense. “Pano” is all, and “rama” is sight, so is Jeff complaining that the photo is so wide he can’t see anything? And if Ed and Chris are both are in the photo, who took it? It was sent via phone, so Ed and Chris must have asked someone to take the photo on their phone. So today’s joke is that a rando in another city didn’t frame a photo properly. We’re watching two characters talk about how passersby interacted with Ed Crankshaft in events we saw last week. Such are the emotional stakes of the Funkyverse.
You know what is perfectly framed, though? That goddam Winnipeg Blue Bombers logo. For the sixth time this week. Does Tom Batiuk have a grandson on the team? Are they having a The Flash promotion this season? Did they choose Lisa as the mascot for their cancer awareness foundation? Is it still plugola if Batiuk is only getting paid in egopats?
Garfield: There are no bathrooms clean enough to make food in. Even if you wash your bathroom every day you should not be doing any food prep in the bathroom.
Someone needs to tell this to former VP Harris.
JP: coffee? espresso? Maybe she’ll figure out the difference after drinking a mugful of espresso shots.
@Banana Jr. 6000: re CS: And it’s not even their actual logo. So I’d assume it’s not a plugola and he’s avoiding getting in trouble for using the team’s intellectual property.
Dustin: “Donut accounting fraud” is a new crime, but it’s also a boring crime. You don’t see that every day.
@Hibbleton: Benadryl? Since infancy Dot and Ditto’s nightcap has been Dimetapp–they love the simulated grape-like flavor.
Dustin – Aren’t donuts basically just pastry zeroes? Problem solved.
Yes, Ed! Eat yourself into an early grave! Yes! YES! Ha ha ha ha!
***
Lois looks concerned that Hi’s golf obsession is metastasizing into monomania. Don’t be worried, Lois! If this happens, your comic could be become the next hot property after the raging pop culture success of Gearhead Gertie.
MW: “It seems like yesterday I was a single working guy without a care in the world!”
AT BEST, Wilbur, YOU STILL ARE!!!!! And that’s at best because as far as I can tell, YOU AREN’T EVEN WORKING!!!!! Mary is doing your job!
You’re just the walking embodiment of someone’s id, floating through life, ruining everything you touch!
Seriously, how anyone write that line of dialogue without even a hint of sarcasm? I’m genuinely upset by this, something is definitely wrong with me lol
JP: You think she’s excited now, just wait till she finds out how enthusiastic Norwegians are about liquor.
“I’m going to have to keep two sets of books. Just like I do with my billable hours. I haven’t done a lick of work for a client in six years and I’m still pulling down half a mil a year. Hell, I stopped paying my bar dues four years ago. It’s a racket, it’s all a racket and my life and the law is the lie so as God is my witness I’m going to eat this fucking donut no matter what my shrew of a wife says! Did I mention my son’s a waste of space?”
Mary’s doing Wilbur’s job, and he couldn’t care less about Dawn. Without a care in the world? He’s even more of a big manbaby than he used to be.
Today’s Pluggers would have been more meaningful if it had a guest appearance of the Time Ghost from the XKCD comic. The realization, one that’s both chilling and sweat-inducing, that an expiration date of 2026 is next year and not 30 years into the future.
“2023 wasn’t all that long ago, at least in dog years. And I’m a dog, and this is dog food, so, worst case scenario, I eat it, throw it up on the carpet, and eat it again. Game on.”
Dustin – DustinDad’s heavily-lidded ennui is based on the fact that in late-stage capitalism all forms of protest, rebellion, or subversion are quickly captured and commodified into a product. Instead of live fast, die young from the newest drugs while listening to the newest music, all he can do is eat stale donuts in the company breakroom.
Pluggers – Pluggers can’t let their hoard of food they panic-bought during the COVID epidemic go to waste. Being able to feed this expired mess to guests is important, since talking about the price you originally paid for those beans before the early 2020s inflation will provide much of that meal’s conversation.
Hi and Lois – Reading Hi and Lois comics has been proven by the FDA to help people facing chronic insomnia fall asleep due to boredom.
@LTJpezcore1: The last time Wilbur did any work was when he decided to write about extorting the stories of hurricane survivors months after Helene and Milton hit and in a place that barely had any lasting damage. You know, instead of going to where the impact was much stronger like Georgia and the Carolinas because he would rather be in Miami.
CS – Jeff, don’t do wordplay. You suck at it. Leave it to the experts like Cranks… never mind, just don’t do wordplay.
@Old School Allie Cat: “Pastry Zero” is Dustmom’s pet name for her husband.
(I saw Pastry Zeroes open for Red Hot Chili Peppers at Red Rocks…)
Dustin: It’s somewhat comforting to know that a man who hates everyone else so much also hates his own existence, and is trying to eat himself to an early grave.
Dustin – So…obviously, I’m a fat lying fucker….
Pluggers – It’s a “best if used by date.” When was the last time a Plugger ever went with the best, anyway….
H&L – And then, I finally felt some movement in my colon, so cinched down and pushed….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
@Needless Exposition: And even then, we really don’t have any proof that he wrote anything or that it was published anywhere.
@Voshkod: Why doesn’t he just keep one book and lie in it? Keeping true and false records is what gets you caught. This guy isn’t much of a laywer.
BB; Crank; 9CL: No jokes in evidence. The poor creators must all be plumb tuckered out from the stellar work they put in Mon-Wed.
@LTJpezcore1: I’m just amazed that not only does Wilbur stay employed, his salary is high enough that he has a condo in Southern California and he’s putting Dawn through college because she definitely isn’t getting scholarships. Does she even have a job anymore?
C’shaft: You can’t engage in wordplay without first understanding words have meanings. This is less playing with the word and more poking at the word with a crude spear while making suspicious grunting noises.
GT: Special guest stars Peter Jackson, Luis Guzman and Dennis Rodman as Gigi’s brothers!
JP: Cleared two shelves in the fridge for their what? Was she expecting them to pack a bunch of yogurt cups and ready-to-eat salad kits in their suitcases?
MT: Is Cherry passive-aggressively pointing out that the other two aren’t doing a thing to help her, or is she taking all of this on herself because she knows her husband and son can’t be trusted with anything?
MW: It’s impossible to imagine Wilbur as young and carefree. He seems to have sprung into the world in his current form like a fat, balding, stupid Athena.
SH: No, we call it a basketball hoop. Or is “basketball goal” one of those bizarre regional dialect things, like calling a water fountain a “bubbler”?
@Needless Exposition: Is Dawn even going to college anymore? She seems to spend all her time on tepid relationship drama (her own or her father’s).
@TheDiva: This is actually a really good point, wasn’t the whole Dirk thing an “over winter break” relationship?
@Needless Exposition: It definitely shows a complete lack of understanding of what a part time advice columnist would actually make…
Pluggers: Later, the Plugger has a shotgun in his mouth, and he’s thinking, “I bought these shells 30 years ago.” (Apologies for the grimness)
Dustin: “Now let me tell you about what a piece of shit my son is…”
HnL: Tomorrow morning, those kids will be looking wistfully at an expired can of beans.
@Banana Jr. 6000: The parties accept as stipulated that he is not much of a lawyer, your honor.
@MKay: Yes, and it would be Wiburrific.
Pluggers: The main takeaway from Pluggers that I’ve gotten from my time reading this blog is that Pluggers are absolutely pathetic weirdos who are desperate to brag about literally anything in an attempt to justify their unearned egos, even if its something that absolutely nobody should be proud of. The fact that this now includes bragging about eating rotten food like some kind of fruit fly is a new low, but not one I’m terribly surprised to see they’ve reached.
Hi And Lois: At least Hi is self-aware about how much golf sucks, which is more than can be said for most golfers in my experience.
MW: “But they were shitty gifts, Mary. Literally.”
FC: Imagine spending most of your excruciatingly short life in Jeffy’s clammy hands.
@Anonymous: 39: There are no bathrooms clean enough to make food in.
You’ve never been to Buc-Ee’s, where their motto is “Our bathrooms are so clean, we leave mints on the urinals!” I noticed they just opened up a new one in Mississippi, first one outside Texas.
Luann: Where is she getting money for new tires? It can’t be from her minimum wage job, even in California. I’m going to guess Luann has a secret life that we’re not being shown.
CS: I love a joke that’s not even funny when one is under the influence of nitrous oxide.
9CL: The comic strip where romance goes to die.
Pluggers: Honestly, you’d think a guy who’s dinner consists of two-fisting kidney beans straight from their cans would be less concerned about overall concept of culinary freshness.
Dustin: Does Ed really think he’s going to get away with this? I look forward to the end of the week, when his wife hooks him up to both a lie detector and a blood-sugar monitor.
Hi and Lois: While it’s not unusual to see twins sharing a room, it is a little strange that their beds are right next to each other, like they’re Blondie and Dagwood in 1952.
@Needless Exposition: Not related to your point, but your comment reminded me of how weird it is that Mary Worth is supposed to be set in California when almost everything about the community in it screams Florida. I legit half expect us to eventually get a storyline where Wilbur and Dawn have to fight off an alligator in a swamp.
Pluggers: Expired for two years? Rookie numbers. If you’re not trying cans from that long-forgotten Y2K stockpile in your basement, are you really a Plugger?
Frazz – I have to spend the summer biking, running, and swimming, and then I have to brag about it and harshly judge anyone who doesn’t do it. It’s a requirement for keeping up my Smug Club membership.
Mary Worth – This platitude fest and Wilbur worship has gone on much too long. I’m to the point where I would welcome a story about Saul Wynter and his dog over this crap.
Mother Goose & Grimm – I don’t like fart jokes, but that last panel is begging for one.
Rex Morgan – “Wanda, this here is a fella who might be my son, whom I met a few days ago but didn’t mention to you until now.” Yeah, that should go well.
JP – Even the Keane melonheads wouldn’t behave as stupidly as these two.
9CL – If Brooke thinks that either of these two comes across as anything other than an opportunistic narcissist, he’s mistaken.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I always heard that you had to wait a full hour after eating before going swimming. When I was around six years old, I thought that if I went into the water forty-five minutes after eating, I would immediately drown.
@nescio: Not only that, but bags of potato chips aren’t resealable, so they have to eat the entire bag at one sitting.
Pam’s expression sums up this intellectually dead spatter of Crankshaft. She’s neither amused or annoyed, just trying to remember the last time they got kinky for the sex time. Or what she did to make that last batch of pork chops come out so good.
Dustin: Dustdad learned financial records keeping from Max Bialystok of “The Producers” fame. One set of books you show to the IRS and one set of books you never show the IRS.
@BillieVee: #75: That’s nothing! A real plugger is still eating off his fallout shelter stockpile from the Cuban Missle Crisis.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Agnes and Trout are talking about Trout’s mom’s vibrator, but I will not be further addressing that fact.
@Needless Exposition: Pedantic note: Florida tends not to get the kind of lasting hurricane damage that places that New Orleans and the Outer Banks get. Florida is uniformly flat, and mostly above sea level, so there’s few places for water to accumulate. You’ll notice the lake/river level is way up, but that’s about it. Unless you get a direct hit from a monster (e.g., Andrew in Homestead) or you’re below sea level, the aftermath of a hurricane is mostly just annoying. That long after the storm hit, Wilbur would have barely noticed any difference in anyone’s life.
@A Grave Mind: It’s like Pam and Jeff are having this forced, inane conversation to avoid talking about how Ed is destroying their lives. “So how about that picture he sent?” “Uh, yeh, it’s not framed that well.”
@I speak Jive: #77: Years ago I was on a family trip with my in-laws on the Frio River in Concan, Texas. After eating a hearty breakfast cooked by my late mother-in-law, I told my teenaged nieces I was about to perform a death defying stunt so this might be the last you’ll see of me. I’m going swimming right after eating. Of course, they didn’t get the joke or had any idea what I was talking about. So I had to tell them one of those old man stories, “When I was your age there was this old wives tale about……..”
@LTJpezcore1: Then again, the Camerons also seem to be making pretty good mint for a college professor and an artist so part time that she makes Wilbur look busy. I think Moy’s understanding of money is as outdated as her technology knowledge.
@ectojazzmage: Honestly I thought it was set in New England since the main cast is a bunch of WASPs who seem to be trapped in a 1950s mindset.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Yeah, that’s why I thought that Wilbur going to Florida to interview hurricane survivors was a front for him going on vacation on the newspapers’ dime.
@CanuckDownSouth: I think it used to be their logo, though. It was just a University of Washington-style W, not like now with the bolt and the italics. I interpreted it as a throwback t-shirt. Don’t ask me why I know that.
@Needless Exposition: #61: The strip is not doing anything that’s been common on TV sitcoms for decades (I’m talking to you, Friends), characters living lifestyles way over what they could afford if they were real people.
@Needless Exposition: Wilbur’s employers must be pretty oblivious. If he went on that trip for that reason, he wouldn’t even have brought back a story. They also haven’t noticed someone else has been writing Wilbur’s column for months now. But it’s totally in character for him to exploit his do-nothing job for free vacations.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
The tumbleweed puffs past them, as they try to recall what acid they used in Breaking Bad to get rid of that body
Agnes: Have you ever jumped to the wrong conclusion based on not enough information?
H&L: I’m not smart enough to find the joke to be made regarding Hi’s chip onto the green and his son’s name being chip. Have at it the rest of you.
@Nobody: I can see now that some of you have attempted it.
@BeckoningChasm: Dustin: I like how the artist just flipped the other guy in the last panel. Much easier than erasing the coffee cup.
That would be too much work!
@pugfuggly: Dustin: Really curious as to what Ed is going to do with that second log. Review it at the end of the week so he can gloat?
Do you mean his log book or his log in the toilet? Either way would work.
H&L: Is Hi eating potato chips on the green?
Dustin: All for a stale glazed? If you’ve made up your mind to cheat you may as well get in early and grab a Boston crème, at least.
Pluggers: Pluggers aspire to the Simpsons’ level of familiarity with poison control. Dare to dream!
9CL: Brooke’s males either look like broad-shouldered supermen or scrawny dweebs. Put white hair on the latter and he appears to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
C-Shaft: I have no idea what “a lot of pano but not much rama” is supposed to mean. Too bad this isn’t a visual medium so Batiuk could actually show us the photo.
DT: NGL, daddy issues stemming from daddy treating a generic impressionist painting as an idol are a pretty weird area.
GT: Don’t cross Gigi’s brothers or they might start podcasting about you.
JP: Ever since she saw Leah, Reena has been thinking she’d have to make do with McDonald’s McCafé® roasts.
MW: Memento Mary? This dialogue would fit perfectly with the premise that Mary has undergone a severe brain injury and has no idea who she’s talking about. That would explain a lot about the whole Wilbur situation, in fact.
Phantom: “Not now, Major. I’m running late for my weekly gaslighting session.”
6C: If the Chix are in a Cronenbergian body horror contest Thursday Chik just made a strong showing. Not that it’s over. She’s up against a rival who can do a monthslong arc on sandwich fucking.
@A Grave Mind: Whatever it is, Ed has probably already ordered it from Bean’s End, and it’s eating a hole in Pam and Jeff’s house as we speak.
Ed Crankshaft should be the easiest person to murder in the history of fiction. He buys so much dangerous crap with his own credit card, and has a long history of causing problems with it. If the police found half his corpse in a melted bathtub, they’d take one look at it and say “eh, he was bound to do it eventually.”
Dustin-You should see the juggling Ed does to keep his wife not find out about his second family.
“Haha… but seriously, Chip was caddying for me. He tripped, rolled off the green, and fell 200 feet off a cliff to his death.”
@Anonymous: Hey, don’t go insulting South Park like that!
@matt w: Trixie is Imperatrix Soli.
Zits Spanish to English.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: I remember them trying to explain that Monica got such a nice apartment because it belonged to an aunt or something. The only character that ever seemed to be living within their means was Ms. Chanandler Bong since he had the most steady not a transponster job and even then he had Joey as a roommate.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Wilbur’s life is a vacation since he has no responsibilities, gets paid for doing nothing, lets Dawn be babysat by whatever stranger she wants to rub pelvises with, and is a karaoke celebrity. Yet he still feels entitled to a vacation every other month.
GA: But Mister Police Man, this isn’t a city or suburb, it’s…oh lordy, I already ranted about this idiotic story several times, let it end let it end let it END.
@106 Poteet:
There is no end to Gasoline Alley.
@Needless Exposition: Wilbur’s socialite ex-wife secretly pays for the publication of Wilbur’s column so she can say, if the subject of her ex ever comes up in conversation, that he’s a journalist, which is less humiliating in her wealthy social circle than saying “His profession is feeling sorry for himself while repeatedly making locally-notorious bizarre life choices, please don’t ask what he did when his pet fish died, oh my GOD.”
@Sequitur: *SOB*
@Poteet: That would explain a lot. Though I doubt Wilbur’s writing even gets published anywhere, except maybe a vanity press. No editor on earth would have let him do that idiotic post-hurricane story, much less pay travel expenses for it.
I once had a condo neighbor like this. He was an early-60s alcoholic, but his ex-wife cared enough for him to put him up in a cheap but dignified condo. (Before the neighborhood got gentrified. Now it’s all AirBNBs, rentals to visiting physicians at the nearby hospital, and me.)
“You’re not eating any donuts?” is a very strange thing to say to someone who has just eaten eleven donuts.
@Charterstoned: #4
“…and then I knocked him into the water hazard where an alligator ripped him to shreds…and that’s our story, kids! Sweet dreams!!”
@Charterstoned: 37
We are long overdue for another “June and Karen in their bathrobes shlurping coffee and trading snarky banter as they hash out the next storyline” vignette!!!
@Astroboy: #16
“Let’s have a series of flashbacks of Wilbur exhibiting pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.”
All at once.
Crank: Why does Jeff expect Washington Square Park to contain either a giant spaceship from a classic Arthur C. Clarke novel or the Hindu god said spaceship was named after?
DT: So, Lovejoy never understood why his father talked to the painting, and also the first time he tried it he saw a “demon” come out of it and his dad thought he was crazy because it was just a painting, and also Lovejoy’s dad continued talking to the painting and Lovejoy thought he was crazy because it was just a painting? That’s all been in one week. Please, destroy the painting before it gets retconned again!
MW: “It seems like it was only yesterday I was a single working guy without a care in the world. But now I have responsibilities. I have Willa to think about. Oh, and the human girl that used to belong to my ex-wife, I guess, but I think it mostly feeds itself.”
Pluggers: Torn on this one. On the one hand, I’ve heard that food waste due to following best before dates too rigidly is a serious issue, on the other, two years feels like pushing it. And now I’m reminded of a former Prime Minister who advised the people of Britain to scrape the mould off their jam and it’d be fine. Is Theresa May a Plugger?
SH: Is it? Is it a good answer to remind the merfolk that fishing is something humans do, even if humans who are currently playing basketball don’t? Assuming, as always, that we’re living in a Disney’s The Little Mermaid fantasyland in which all sealife co-exists peacefully and subsist entirely on kelp or something, and eating fish is only ever done by humans and maybe sharks because they’re The Baddies.
Zits: Jeremy complains that he’ll never get his chores done because he’s fundamentally lazy and sees no way of not being fundamentally lazy. Did someone hand him a Dustin script by mistake?
Hi shows that much more awareness than the average golfer about their stories.
@LTJpezcore1: #46
“…without a care in the world”
Without a care for anything or anyone other than himself…
@taig: #70
re. FC…fireflies became a threatened species only after the Keane kids were unleashed to run amok around the yard trying to catch them (or swallow them).
@I speak Jive: #76
re MW…I know. I have been cleansed…renewed…reborn…now that I’ve decided not to read the strip ever again but enjoy it vicariously via the brilliant snark on this blog.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: #80
OR – eating the last of their WW2 rations of canned meat and biscuits! (I still have some ration stamps from my parents’ life during those years…)
@I speak Jive: I have… bad news about next week’s strips. However, Wilbur is not physically present in them, so I suppose that’s a silver lining.
9CL – “I shall have to bone up on all the subtleties, then throw away the bone,”
Said nobody, ever.
Dementia always wins.
@Charterstoned: And the night before that, Chip’s girlfriend laid him on the green. Unless I misheard…
Don Abundio, translated:
“Don Abundio, these squirrels are extremely intelligent…”
“Yes, officer?”
[Sign: PARK]
“Do you think I should stop feeding them?”
“No, it’s best to get on their good side…”
“They might take over the world someday!”
@Needless Exposition: #105: I know it wasn’t much of an enviable lifestyle but on “Married with Children” Al Bundy worked at a shoe store for starvation wages, his wife was a lazy unemployed sponge who spent everything on herself, yet they still owned a house. Even if somebody gave Al that house or he inherited it there’s no way he could afford to keep it.
@Daisy: Hey, I didn’t think anyone cared!
@Guillermo el Chiclero: I like to think that the dark monologue Ed O’Neill’s character in Wayne’s World was Al Bundy after he snapped and killed Peg. Even Kelly and Bud got jobs when they were older but Peg just ate the money like a goat in a milkweed patch.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Don’t Al and Peggy in turn (if I recall correctly) sponge off of Marcy and Steve/Jefferson? Even though Marcy hates Al, she’s always coming over and helping them out for some reason… like she’s enthralled to a family of vampires.
@White Rabbit: We have one in Johnstown Colorado also, and I testify that the bathrooms are excellently cleaned and watched over by well-paid individuals.
@BillieVee: I’ve got Y2K MREs that I probably need to start eating. The emergency drinking water packs expired in 2015 — I probably need to try out a few of those as well.
@Needless Exposition: Yeah, something that used to really irk me, is with those online videos/listicles of “Top 10 Best TV Moms” tended to include Peggy Bundy.
Seemingly ignoring the fact that she is a TERRIBLE mother.
Then later on I realized that according to the people who write those lists. “Best” simply means “Hot”…
@The Rambling Otter: Also, I should note that Roseanne Conner from Roseanne, snark aside (and real-life controversy aside) was a protective Mama Bear who worked for a living, fed her family, did fun things with her family like go to Disney World.
I don’t think that she ever appeared on those lists, meaning that according to the internet, Peggy Bundy is supposedly a better mother?
@Anonymous: Garfield: There are no bathrooms clean enough to make food in. Even if you wash your bathroom every day you should not be doing any food prep in the bathroom.
______________________
Even if you have a garbage disposal installed in your shower? (Asking for Cosmo Kramer).
@Horace Broon: On SH: And how does he keep stuffing the air-filled basketball into the hoop without it shooting to the surface? Maybe he’s using a bowling ball.
@matt w: I was mumblety-mumble years old before I realized the names Hi and Lois were descriptive, as in “highs” and “lows” of married life. Unfortunately, things are so bland in this strip “highs” and “lows” are pretty much the same level.
@taig: @I speak Jive: I have… bad news about next week’s strips. However, Wilbur is not physically present in them, so I suppose that’s a silver lining.
__________________________
Lt. Col.Wilbur Weston’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan, it spun in….there were no survivors.
@The Rambling Otter: Also, I should note that Roseanne Conner from Roseanne, snark aside (and real-life controversy aside) was a protective Mama Bear who worked for a living, fed her family, did fun things with her family like go to Disney World.
____________________________________________
But would she still have taken them there had the Mouse not owned ABC and comped the whole trip?
Pluggers: When we returned full-time to the office earlier this year, I realized that I had a can of Beefaroni in a drawer that expired in 2021. I haven’t opened it yet, but my assumption is that it is still every bit as enjoyable as it was on day 1.
@Daisy: I’ve been following Mary Worth since I was a teenager, and I will probably stick with it. The only thing I can think of that would cause me to stop following it is if Jules Rivera would take over the strip.
@taig: We don’t have to look at him? Thank goodness for small favors.
@GarrisonSkunk: “…There were no survivors.” That’s what they want you to think. We got our hopes up when he jumped off the cruise ship. He’ll turn up again, all tanned and rested.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: They pimped out Kelly. She brought in extremely high fees, especially in the early seasons when she was underage.
DT: As far as I can figure out the current plot, that painting is a Time Machine. With demons.
Phantom: Jungle Patrol has been a lot more pleasant to be around since they started hiring hotties. Unfortunately, none of the girls will give the boys a tumble, and they all keep photos of John X taped to their vibrators.
@I speak Jive: #138
That would indeed be nightmare-inducing. =:0
@138 I speak Jive:
The last day you see Wilbur is this coming Sunday. Be prepared for a Mary/Dr. Jeff kiss later that week right in the middle of a discussion about Wilbur!
@Charterstoned: #126
We do!!!! Those vignettes are hilarious and often are the only things that keep me invested in that otherwise insufferable strip. PLEASE DON’T DEPRIVE YOUR LOYAL FOLLOWERS OF THAT ONE SMALL BRIGHT SPOT IN THE DARK VOID OF LEGACY SOAP COMICS!!!! PUHLEEESE!!!!! I’M BEGGIN’ YA!!!! *SOB*
@Sequitur: Concluded by Dr. Jeff vomiting because of either Mary’s Poligrip breath or her being a woman. You decide!
@Sequitur: Let me guess – we’re finished with Wilbur himself, but Mary has several days of patting herself on the back. That’s the cue for Dr. Jeff to chime in with praise for Mary, but he kisses her to shut her up.
@Sequitur: But seriously, at this point Wilbur is basically Poochie where people will constantly ask where he is if he’s not on screen and talk about him.
@Tom T.: In my office I have a can of wahoo (a tuna-like fish) that I received as a gift from the Governor of American Samoa in 2001. I often say that I’ll open the day of my retirement, and leave it in a desk drawer for my successor.
Surprised Josh didn’t select today’s “Alice” for discussion, today, Alice decides to have a cheese sandwich for lunch, sounds like the perfect blind date for one Willburp J. Weston.
@Ukulele Ike: I found it funny, one episode of Doctor Who, had the Doctor hanging out with Vincent Van Gogh. Then some years later, some lost paintings of Van Gogh were discovered one of which had a sort of blue-rectangle in the background.
The Doctor Who fanbase lost their minds.
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: Water expires? I still have a sealed 12-ounce can of water from 2004, produced by the local Anheuser-Busch factory. I lived in south Florida at the time, and they produced free canned water for locals during that year’s insane hurricane season. I kept it as a little memento. It’s around my home somewhere. I don’t remember it having an expiration date.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I have a few bags of water in various ‘building collapse’ kits they gave us in 2001-2002. I suspect the water wouldn’t taste good, but it would be better than no water. Now, the energy bars, those worry me.
Presumably the whistles still work.
@Dr. Pill: I was going to protest, as The Guy Who Rates The Darkness Of Hi And Lois, but the “highs” recently are either Trixie chilling with Sunbeam (before their recent breakup) or Hi and Lois reminiscing about the first time they screwed.
@Voshkod: Yeah, I wouldn’t drink it if I had any other options, but I’m struggling to imagine how water can go bad. Maybe it reacts with the container over time? But if it’s packaged in a way that was designed for an emergency in the first place, it should still be pretty good on that point.
@147 GarrisonSkunk:
Josh probably didn’t pick it because it makes no sense at all.
To be honest I don’t follow this strip so it’s possible something happened in the past that sheds light on today’s strip but I doubt it.
@Banana Jr. 6000: The water packs I have are certified by the Coast Guard or something (they are for life raft use), so that’s probably the reason for the expiration date stamp. I’d bet they are still good to use.
@Liam: Oh please, I’m surprised enough that Ed has a first family.
MW:
Jones boy Wilbur should be killed to death!
George W. Geezil
Wilbur oughtta be murdalized!
Moe Howard
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol: #154: An ex-Navy Vietnam vet told me one time he and a buddy were assigned to cleaning out some old lifeboats from WW2. They still had the sealed survival rations on board, including the K-Rat bars. On a lark they decided to eat them. He said if those WW2 vets actually ate those things on a regular basis they weren’t lying when they said how tougher they were than the younger generations.
The slang term for them was John Wayne bars and they tasted like chocolate flavored soap.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Thank you for that story. Encountering small anecdotes about human kindness is especially cheering these days.
@Guillermo el Chiclero: Now I know what food is served to chocolate addicts like myself in the underworld.
@Sequitur: True, it makes absolutely no sense at all, and maybe that is why I laughed like a loon. Your link-providing is appreciated.