Unsettling Friday
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Blondie, 12/12/25
Mr. Dithers is no doubt all too well acquainted with Dagwood’s relationship with food, so he’s no doubt well aware of how transgressive a statement he’s just made to his employee. Dagwood’s thing with food isn’t about sex — it’s much, much deeper — so fortunately for Dithers this doesn’t fall under sexual harassment regulations. Honestly, employment law doesn’t even have a name for what just happened here, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking.
Dennis the Menace, 12/12/25
“There can be no punishment greater than to no longer feel the gaze of God upon you. But if God knows that you will never transgress against His commandments, will He not inevitably look away?” is some pretty menacing theology, I have to admit.
Alice, 12/12/25
Hello, friends. Have you been looking for opinions about the new crowdfunding platforms? Well, I’ll tell you one place you shouldn’t look: the syndicated newspaper comic strip Alice. Alice doesn’t think about the new crowdfunding platforms. She doesn’t think about them at all!
87 replies to “Unsettling Friday”
RMMD-Now, Summer, you know what you have to do to show your appreciation to Auggie. You must do a special job.
MW-Yes, Ian. For once in your life be big.
FC-Hint. Hint. Wink. Wink.
Here’s a poser: In what room does today’s Dennis the Menace take place?
Blondie – Do you know that every night when I go to bed with Cora, I’m fantasizing about snuggling up to your wife’s perfect boobs…..
DtM – Satan is more rewarding than Santa, if you’ve got to kiss someone’s ass….
Alice – This strip is more in line with a Go Fuck Me account….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
Kickstarter came out in 2009. GoFundMe is 15 years old. Patreon, the baby brother of crowdfunding sites, is 12 years old. Not only would I like to know Alice’s opinions on the new crowdfunding platforms, I’d be interested to hear their names. Maybe they’re better than the existing ones, and people would prefer to use them! Who knows? Alice doesn’t!
DtM:
“And here I thought, Margaret, that ‘North Poll’ was a survey of people to see what they thought of the kid who played me in the television adaptation of our comic strip!”
Was honestly expecting “Unsettling Friday” to include today’s Hi & Lois, in which Chip tells his best friend that he’s planning to abandon him in order to make more money.
Blondie: They skipped the panel where Dithers wipes the drool off his shoes.
Hmm, spareribs.
DtM:
Since Dennis basically hates Margaret (and with good reason), why is he giving her a Pro Tip?
DtM- If Dennis gets into so much trouble all the time, hasn’t Santa long since given up on him? Sounds like he’s trying to make sure someone else only gets coal.
DtM:
“Okay, a little off-topic, Margaret, but why is it that the visages of all the adult females in our strip look like they came off of the front of Betty Crocker cake mix packages?”
Blondie: Dagwood is really unsettled by Dithers’s reference to spare ribs dipped in gravy instead of barbecue sauce, he’ll be awake all afternoon contemplating inappropriate condiment and sauce pairings (but won’t get any work done).
Alice: “I have no skull and have a nebulous cloud where my brain should be.”
Alice: Good choice putting the “Crowdsourcing” subtitle in the footer. Otherwise, I might have thought this strip was about an alien and clerk making small talk while checking forms at the DMV.
DtM: Since Dennis almost certainly discovered hidden Christmas presents when he was a toddler, he’s known all along that “Santa Claus” was his own mother, seen here in the background, leering at Margaret.
So today’s panel really spells out why Dennis is so menacing. He just wants more attention from his mother, a woman who is constantly pining for the daughter she never had.
Did the Alice creator used to be one of the Six Chix?
Alice:
“Want to go see the new Picasso exhibit at the art museum in town, Alice?”
“Nah. It’ll be quicker and cheaper if we just look in the mirror!”
@matt w: Looks to me like they’re in a department store or a mall.
What are the “new” crowdfunding platforms? Did Alice just find out about Patreon? Are they going to relitigate the arguments from 2014 about how it isn’t real work if you don’t work within a certain amount of institutional complexity that allows your boss to take the majority of profits from your work? Or are they going to discover the exciting new world of independent work – especially in creative fields – crowdfunding enables, where workers can be answerable only to their customers directly rather than skittish, incurious investors? Or, I guess, they could even be heading for some elaborate discussion of the merits of different platforms and how diverse the crowdfunding business may need to be? I guess those are the three main. . .oh, Alice just doesn’t. Okay then.
BLONDIE: Amazing that after all this time, Dithers doesn’t know that all a food metaphor will do is send Dagwood out for a four-hour lunch.
Dtm: So Dennis LIKES it when Santa watches?
SF: Unlike Scrooge, Ted will learn nothing from this experience. The Idiot of Christmas Present will go on to become The Loser of Christmas Yet to Come without missing a beat.
RMMD: Gold-digger Summer is practically drooling in the last panel. We can only hope that some of those big bucks will go into purging the ponytail.
MW: Maybe Sunny has convinced Toby that he is a person trapped in a parrot’s body, and that only Ian’s destruction will restore him! Or, maybe Toby’s language skills are sub-par. Probably that one.
Alice: Due to the scrawly font I misread ‘platforms’ as ‘flatworms’ and, honestly, I think it was an improvement. Alice would at least have an opinion on those.
MW: After Toby and Sunny run off together, Mary appears at Ian’s door with a bowlful of muffins and plateful of advice. Only then does he realize that Toby is his one true “prize possession.”
“Toby!!” He cries with a mouthful of crumbs.
Alice: “All right, enough small talk. Now, let’s tackle this heap of paperwork here. We’ve apparently got some kind of work to do!”
MW: “PLEASE be the bigger person and LET IT GO…”
Huh. Well, now that Toby has conferred personhood on the parrot, things have moved to the next level. Now we can expect that Mary will eventually be called to intervene in this peculiar love triangle, serving seed muffins to Sunny as she tries to explain the deep and abiding love between Ian and Toby in a marriage that doesn’t leave room for a feathered interloper. Gotta say, I’m looking forward to dinner at the Bum Boat, when Mary recounts to an astonished Jeff all the latest hijinks at Charterstone.
Luann: Yes Steffie, bringing a nervous animal whose housebroken status is unverified at best to a place where food is prepared and served to paying customers is a brilliant idea! You can keep him in the kitchen and bring him out when some kid orders the Happy Meal! You’re the ‘Smart One’ this week! Doesn’t that feel nice after sharing the ‘Idiot Ball’ with that insufferable little ‘prodigy’ last week?
This strip could have taken place anywhere– outside by a mailbox! at a desk at school! Dennis’s parents’ living room! Margaret’s living room! But instead, we appear to be at… some kind of shopping facility? Perhaps the mall? Which might have a mailbox somewhere inside…? Margaret, the point of Santa’s workshop is to answer the question “What do you want for Christmas, little girl?” out loud and not with a perfectly-penmanshipped
love letterlist of demands, but I dunno, you do you, I guess.Blondie: And so the fumbling attempt to unionize Dithers & Co comes to an abrupt sense. The workers shouldn’t have picked a foreman who’d sell them out not even for spare ribs, but for the idea of spare ribs.
When Dennis gets his podcast up and running, he’s gonna do j-u-u-u-s-t fine. After all, P.T. Barnum once explained the twenty-first century better than all the political scientists and pundits with a simple, direct, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,.”
Wary Morth:
Parrotes eunt domus.
Anyone else notice that Dennis suddenly looks like a teenager? Dennis pubescing? Very menacing!
JP: Guess who else is on a collision course with wackiness?? Our favorite little sociopath who should be in a jail cell or rubber room for her criminal assault on a suspect in an active police investigation.
@matt w:
I don’t believe that today’s “Dennis the Menace” is actually taking place in any room. I believe that Dennis is on an acid trip, inspired by the likes of Dr. Timothy Leary or Hunter S. Thompson, and that he is just hallucinating Margaret, his mom and the background venue. I say this for two independently sufficient reasons. First, we know for a fact that he can’t stand Margaret, but here he’s actually giving her a helpful bit of advice designed to maximize the probability that Santa will pay attention to her when it comes to the Christmas wish department — Dennis would simply not do that in real life for Margaret. Second, Dennis’s mom is portrayed as actually standing at a respectful distance from him, honoring the concept of personal space — as opposed to her usual stance of being right in his face about things.
Too bad Wavy Gravy wasn’t there to warn him in advance that the acid he was dropping would make him hallucinate Margaret in particular.
Alice: Whenever I see this strip, I think “What if Picasso made a comic strip, and what if he wasn’t very good at it.”
@Ukranazi Stepan:
“Eunt? What is eunt?”
I’m beginning to think that Dustin needs professional help. And by that I mean “hiring hookers.”
MW:
“Toby, this is what Ozzy was singing about when he did ‘Crazy Train’ !”
Frank and Ernest: I don’t whether it’s Frank or Ernest, but whichever one isn’t speaking but has his mouth wide open—as if to say, “Beer! Pour it in here! All of it!”—is extremely unsettling. I can see why this strip was recognized as a Champion of Creativity by the American Creativity Association in 2006
Heathcliff: Alternation caption: “He’s in his Lionel Richie era.”
MW: Does Toby think of the parrot as bona fide person? Probably! And as an ethical vegetarian I can’t find fault with that, but what I find hilarious is Professor Ian Cameron, who I am sure does not think a parrot rises to a state of personhood, is so mad he thinks this bird is laughing at him with sentient intention.
Pluggers walk out of public restrooms looking like sloppy, soggy messes. But we already knew that.
Alice: What does Alice know about OnlyFans? Does she think about OnlyFans? Does she use OnlyFans? These are all questions I would prefer go unanswered.
GT: “Hola. My name is Isis. My Mom named me after an Egyptian goddess but I believe I am the reincarnation of an Aztec goddess, hence the “hola,” even though my last name is Finnegan. Also, chemistry.”
Blondie: God, I wish this was a Sunday strip so we could get a more thorough description from Mr Dithers. “You’re like a spare rib dipped in gravy. Slow cooked over mesquite, ready to slide off the bone. There’s a little cob of corn next to you, and maybe some potato salad. Am I making myself clear?”
DtM: This strip makes little sense until you realize that it takes place in the same 1950s world that gifted us the ‘Horny for Santa’ musical genre.
Alice: “Well, I guess we’ll just go back to staring at this stack of paper in our lightly-colored void. Sorry for interupting…”
Blondie: Speaking of spare ribs, as who does not, there’s reason to think the rib of Adam’s from which God fashions Eve isn’t in his thorax at all, there being only one “bone” a man possesses that a woman does not. Dithers know that Dagwood’s appetites aren’t just nutrition, they aren’t just sexual, they are about man and God and law, and hungers that go to the deepest levels of nature and destiny. Also gravy, apparently.
Has Dennis always had twin quincunx tattoos on his face, or did he just join a gang?
@pugfuggly: RE Dennis the Menace: Tell me about it. One of the most unsettling things I ever sat through was a Christmas concert involving 5th graders singing about Santa hurrying down their chimneys tonight.
@BeckoningChasm:
“Now write it out 100 times by sunset, or I’ll make you an ex-parrot!”
DT: Speaking of active police investigations, I’m betting this lady is going to turn out to have some connection to the Schmatman that Costello is about to spring on us. I can think of no other reason why she’d be here in this crummy hideout and not be complaining so much Ozob is ready to pull a ‘Fargo’ on her.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: eeeeeesh
Dennis the Menace: A+ reading of the book of Job, Dennis makes a great Satan, just deeply delectable levels of menace, can’t wait for God to show up to Margaret on a pile of ashes and berate her for three chapters about how He made the hippopotamus and she did not, but she gets a bunch of extra Christmas presents.
Pluggers remain convinced that other people are interested in their lack of basic hygiene.
@pugfuggly: Indeed.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: And on more “mature” note, every December Playboy, and the dozens of cartoons involving Santa and naked sluts.
I once saw a (wonderful) mini-comic of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It condensed the 900-page novel into 16 pages smaller than the palm of your hand.
Alice reminds me of that comic. Part of the joke is that the strip exists at all. I mean, the “gag” here is that the strip’s creator doesn’t know anything about crowdfunding; she doesn’t WANT to know anything about crowdfunding! She made a whole comic that’s basically “don’t talk to me about crowdfunding.”
The comic isn’t funny, but that’s a hilarious thing to do!
MW: Why is Ian’s arm so short? Was his mother prescribed thalidomide late in her pregnancy?
You don’t want to know what Pluggers do when a public restroom is out of toilet paper.
@Victor Von: And she gets to use her “art” to answer all her friends who keep telling her “You know, maybe if you checked out Patreon, you could pay for lunch for a change.”
Don’t fret, Margaret, the Security Advancement National Tracking Agency (S.A.N.T.A.) will always be watching you.
@The Quiet Man: At a restaurant they didn’t even check on to see if pets were even allowed? God, why didn’t we just give Stef the Nobel Peace Prize? (Also, isn’t the puppy mill that’s sponsoring this Adopt-a-Mutt foster system supposed to be finding the dog a permanent home? Far be it from me to question the integrity and decision-making skills of a program that lets traumatized pups stay with flaky, unverified college nitwits in their no-dogs-allowed dorms, but I kinda think an organization whose very purpose is giving troubled dogs a good home shirking that responsibility might be a bit sus?)
@matt w: The viewing room at a funeral home?
I see that the color monkeys assigned to Blondie were bored. You expect me to believe the walls in Dagwood’s generic office building are painted with a twilight gradient? I don’t buy it.
@2+2=7: It’s easier to list the few things this foster dog story gets right (presumably by accident) than what it gets horribly wrong!
@Lauralot: “MW: Why is Ian’s arm so short? … ”
Hmmm, perhaps Ian’s arms are shrinking, slowly turning into wings. Soon Sunny will be sporting a neckbeard and before long, their metamorphoses will be complete. As a literature professor, Ian ought be aware of 2nd century novel The Golden Ass and hopefully come aware from the experience with a newfound perspective on our seemingly non-sentient animal companions, though I doubt it.
Phantom Good thing the art here isn’t the mess of Gil Thorp, I can be pretty sure I’m following the action in this visual medium as Patrolwoman Clueless gets grabbed through the bars but her kitchen ally safely gets her gun before the prisoners do. A Thorpian tussle would have us questioning how many arms each person has and whether any of them were attached to a character’s body
Pluggers dribble pee down one leg of their slacks so nobody notices they wiped their hands on their shirt.
Luann: California lets you bring your dog into restaurants? That’s charming, if not hygienic.
Menacing? Acting the good citizen until the eyes of the state move on and then working to control the system from within is menacing, Dennis. Enjoy your time in the panopticon, boy. Margaret certainly will.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Is it a genre when there’s only one song? I’ve never heard of any others that go in the same direction, or at least any that get anywhere near as much airplay as that one at this time of year.
@CanuckDownSouth: Yeah, it’s easy to count to zero, but I still doubt anyone in this strip could do it.
When Blondie entered the, she began to scream. Her husband had already opened his belly and chopped out a rib, which he was hungrily devouring, the morsels of chewed flesh falling out of my opened stomach onto the bed. “Why, Dagwood, why?” she screamed, and with a full mouth he mumbled “something the boss said” and “pass the gravy.”
MW: Following this page for years now, I have learned that even the legacy comic strips stumble upon something genuinely entertaining or funny. This Ian vs. Parrot Saga is one of these cases!
Alice: Someone manages to get themselves into the weird, outdated world of newspaper comic strips, then talks shit about the online world that is one way for the everyman to get some content out there? Your medium is basically obsolete, so keep it to yourself.
Alice: Funny, I have the same opinion (or lack thereof) about Alice.
Blondie: I mean sure, the easiest way to shut down any argument with Dagwood is to mention food and make him forget what he was talking about.
@Rube: IIRC, it was Peter on Family Guy who said “Christmas is coming! The girls on the p*rnhub ads are wearing elf costumes!”
Luann: One other thing, Tiff. Make sure you bring Dash to work the day the county health inspector is there so the place gets shut down.
Luann: When Tiff brings that dog to a place where food is served she’d better have a white cane with a red tip and a leash with a handle on it.
Pluggers: I must admit I’ve been guilty of that, especially in a restroom with no towel dispenser, but let’s hope Claude Manx doesn’t also consider his shirt the handiest, all-purpose toilet paper.
On a personal note, I once had a co-worker step out of a porta potty wearing a croptop midriff-baring shirt when he went in wearing a shirt with tails. Apparently there was no TP so he used his pocket knife to cut the tails off his shirt to wipe his ass.
BLONDIE/ yDUSTIN: Some temp agencies are great. I worked for years through them, and several (esp. Manpower) gave it’s employees much appreciated presents lol ke wrapping paper, candy, etc.
FG: finally– empress Aura shows some skill.
JP: actually Glen is texting , “where ARE you? Why aren’t you at your desk?”
Gasoline Alley: I know Becky is ready to pitch in, but in what town is the nearest charging station? Hootin’ Holler?
FC: Dolly will break off the engagement after receiving five golden ring-necked pheasants. She was not raised to appreciate ornithological accuracy.
Lockhorns: That’s big talk from a woman who’s not exactly Clara Bow.
HtH: Hot water washings? In this culture? (I seriously don’t know if they had so much fuel that they could spend some on washing non-hide fabrics.)
H&L: Chip, your current guitar’s limits vastly exceed your effort, talent, and musical ideas. Learn to play it better before upgrading your band or your tools.
BCN: Oooh, bonus points for including Belle’s happy post-Scrooge marriage; that’s a real deep cut from the Christmas Carol track list. And the last panel is a spot-on paraphrase of the actual dialogue.
DT: Rojo, is it really a good idea to wear your clowning costume while you’re in the shop? What happens if you get a last minute call for a kid’s birthday party but there’s oil stains on your bright green overalls?
Dustin: Interesting, putting the punchline in the first panel and working backwards from there. It’s like the Merrily We Roll Along of comic strips, only without the possibility of ever being vindicated by history.
GT: Isis is immediately (if clumsily) established as a “recent transfer” and an ESL speaker. I sense a heavy-handed immigration rights story on the horizon.
HotC: The Once-ler’s last name is Scott? Who knew?
JP: Like this strip?
Luann: Who’s dumber, the idiot who suggested to bring a dog to a place which is 100% guaranteed to not allow non-service dogs, or the idiots who think this is a brilliant idea?
MW: “Please, Ian, don’t make Sunny wish you into the cornfield.”
RMMD: “You mean more to me than any amount of money,” Augie says, with the exact same expression he has after grading fifty middle school essays on The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in a row.
SH: In attempting to avoid the question of how a pregnancy works for their human-animal people, Safe Havens just created more, even less comfortable questions.
Alice – “What do you think about the new crowd-funding platforms?”
“I don’t. That’s why we have AI, to think about stuff like that for us.”
“Oh. So, what do you think about AI?”
“I don’t.”
“Talking with you is always informative, AliceGPT.”
MW: Ian, unnerved by the increasingly destructive antics of the parrot, finally loses his mind, and while viewing “Babette’s Feast” on Prime Video (R) one evening, is inspired to prepare a special dinner for Toby, served on a silver platter…”psitticine en sarcophage…”
Toby, deeply impressed by the exotic, savory dish, suddenly asks (between chews), “Have you seen Sunny?”
@MKay: Amazing that after all this time, Dithers doesn’t know that all a food metaphor will do is send Dagwood out for a four-hour lunch.
Hey, if it gets Dagwood out of his office, that’s a win, right?
Don Abundio, translated:
“Oh, Lady Veronica! You’re a great dancer”
“Thanks”
“Where did you learn how to rule the dance floor like this?”
“Roller derby, naturally”
DT: Bravo to Rojo Ozob for a life of total artistic commitment! Even when he is in his underwear just hanging out, he keeps his clown make up (which he calls war paint) on. A truly consummate pro. Does his gal pal’s spidey sense tell her The Katmandon’t is somewhere lurking?
Dustin: Well, Dustin, you just walked into that one, like a solid door.
Flash: The good guys deal with the octopus thing just like Captain Nemo did in the movie 20,000 leagues under the sea (electricity). Thomas Edison, in his elephant electrocuting heart, would be pleased.
MW: That’s right Tobey, you tell him! He is the bigger parrott, er Human and so should as a bigger lumbering person. Clearly Sunny is the little baby that Tobey always yearned for.
RMMD and FC: Lesson for the kids during this holiday season. Love is measured by tangible material costs like a book contract with life altering money or rings that cost 2 months’ salary. Sponsored by your pals at DeBeers diamond consortium.
I genuinely think the author of Alice is diagnosable. With what, I don’t know. But something.
MW: When Toby isn’t home Ian kills the parrot and has it taxidermied. Toby is too stupid to notice the difference.
FG: Pour a flinty dry white wine, melt some butter and pass the lemon…. Hors d’oeuvres time. (Bones is wearing a chef’s toque)
S4th: I feel like this is the type of conversations they have at Disney when they’re about to write up the next SW movie/streaming series.
PLUGGERS: Are smart. Those handblowers send germs far and wide.
R..D: I liked Summer until she proved herself a gold digger. Sure, Kelli’s college costs a bundle but there’s no excuse for greed
So little effort goes in to the “comic” strip Alice that the creator should be put in jail. Seriously.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Hey! You forgot to mention how He fly-fishes for whales!
@Mr. Satanism: Not the creator, the publisher.
GT: “Hola, I’m Isis. This is my sister Hamas and my brother Al Q. Mom says we’re holy terrors.”
FRAZZ: good observation kid, some homonyms are antonyms– like raze and raise. But ive never figured out if you sanction an act you outlaw the act or a instead you permit it
JUMP START: 30 exciting days of Shark and the mob trying to play nice.
MANDRAKE: So pizza delivery person has to drive the distance, find conspirators at foot of lane and undo them, drive up treacherous lane, and deliver pizza hot in 30 minutes. Sure hope Mandrake tips.
@Activist:
On Frazz’s word games : how about when you read that a headline that says “[Artist] Resigns”, and now you have to wonder if they quit their career or if they simply renewed an existing contract?