Hateful Monday, meatless lasagna
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Rhymes with Orange, 7/20/26
Lady lets herself be intimidated by inanimate objects. Gonna be a long day.
Six Chix, 7/20/26
Unhealthy, infected, diseased, rotting, morbid, disgusting meat. How to say you’re vegan without saying you’re vegan.
Dustin, 7/20/26
The animosity between Ed Kudlick and his son Dustin is well-established, but doesn’t it seem lately that their barbs are getting sharper? I mean, today’s exchange is basically, “You’re lazy and doomed to failure!” / “You’re stupid and can’t speak English!” It won’t be long before these breakfast chats devolve into cursing and flinging coffee and cereal.
Phantom, 7/20/26
The Phantom’s very first nemeses—the pirates of the Singh Brotherhood—were in it for the loot. But the motivations of the current crop are harder to parse:
- Leopold Braga, Admiral in the navy of landlocked Rhodia, says he serves its ruling junta by serving Ignis Vindicta, but how? Is there some bribe, contract, alliance, or other alignment of interests between the parties, and if so to what end?
- Chatu “The Python”, Wambesi terrorist, used his native Bangalla as a safe haven to carry out attacks in Rhodia. So why does Rhodia, through Vindicta and Braga, want him on the team?
- Eric Sahara started out a billionaire playboy, then took up recreational lone-wolf terrorism as “The Nomad”, taking over Chatu’s gang when he thought the Phantom had killed its leader. Why? Don’t know!
Elon MuskIan MolluskIgnis Vindicta (tr. “Fire of Vengeance”) is a wealthy motormouth nutjob who wants to rule the world from space. He surrendered all control of his Nomad/Chatu project to an AI programmed on his own bullshit, and constantly brags about how he has no influence over what it does. Why? Got me.
Beyond “bad guys do bad things,” these villains are united only in their hatred of the Phantom, which kinda seems like a side quest, and hasn’t worked out well for any of them in the past.
—Uncle Lumpy
130 replies to “Hateful Monday, meatless lasagna”
Rhymes with Orange: The narration caption doesn’t know that Celestial Seasonings tea also has little platitudes on the box (nor that company founder Mo Siegel is the President of the Urantia Foundation, a racist UFO religion).
The RwO author avatar is already mentally compromised and totally unprepared to resist propaganda, but at least it might make the strip a little more interesting!
6C: TIL that at least one of the Six Chix thinks that the Irish-made Billy Loaf (or “Meat Clown” as it’s called in the meme) is a diseased unfit for human consumption. The US is truly in a disturbing new age of revived anti-immigrant hysteria.
I love the high stakes Reeky Rat is going for – a pair of gloves! If he teams up with the Doublemint Twins in Rex Morgan, they could rule the world.
Rhymes with Orange:
“That’s nothing, hon. The mug that’s behind, and obscured by, those three has an image of a freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, the first and fourth letters of the alphabet, and a picture of Dorothy’s aunt from The Wizard of Oz!”
“What message is that supposed to convey?”
” ‘Carp’ ‘A’ ‘D’ ‘Em’ !”
Six Chix:
Is that processed meat at the bottom of the frame beef tongue? — holey cow!
MW: It looks like we’re in for a retrospective of Wilbur’s quirks, foibles, and failures. Bring it on!
Phantom:
“Terror…I haven’t faced these kinds of depredations since my starring role in 1955’s epic Soldier of Fortune!”
“You are so right, Mr. Gable!”
CS: This is actually quite a brain-teaser. On the one hand, yes it’s Batton Thomas as we’ve all been predicting for weeks. On the other hand, for once he’s NOT blathering about the minutiae of his career to Ol’ Man One-Arm. Then AGAIN, he’s sucking the Silver Age Comics [censored] once more. However, Thomas is also throwing away what little money he presumably has left on something he apparently already owns, which makes him a moron, which makes me happy.
GT: Ye gads, this wedding has opened the Ark of the Covenant! The crowd is melting before our very eyes!
GT2: ‘Kiss the Bride before I swallow you! I’m HUGE!’
DT: This underpraised underling is going to petulantly poison the Petrillo’s to cull this corpulent crook!
Ph: How very human… Terror… Flag on the Moon…
RMMD: Sigh… can we just cut to these two sharing a cell with Unca’ Renimmy shaking their fists and saying ‘We’ll get you next time, Morgan! *Next* time!!’ and be done with it?
And now to check Judge Parker and… Aaaggghhh!!!! The Raspberry-Haired Brat is possessed again! She’s spinning her head 360 degrees!!!
Phantom:
Admiral Braga simply doesn’t have a malevolent enough look to be serving Invicta; he doesn’t project monomaniacal evil well enough. The jauntily-placed hat and the simpering grin make him more qualified to be a stand-in for Captain Stubing on The Love Boat.
CS: This is Tom Batiuk saying “that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about me for a while.”
MW: I wondered how this strip was going to get out of the corner it painted itself into. The solution is to focus on one of Wilbur’s many appalling behaviors, and ignore all the others. “You were an alcoholic. And you pushed away a very good woman because you couldn’t deal with her cat showing up your singing performances. A woman I set you up with, by the way. Then you drunkenly proposed marriage on a cruise ship, fell overboard, and should have died. Then when you somehow swam to a convenient island, you thought it’d be funny to let us all think you were dead, and then show up. And you got fleeced by a South American dating scammer. And you hooked up with a complete psycho who should have killed your own daughter. And I write your column for you while you go on lengthy vacations. Should I go on?”
Pluggers: No, you’re thinking of Nirvana t-shirts. Leave it to Pluggers to be 20 years out of date in a joke about being 20 years out of date.
Luann: Make it stop.
Hi and Lois: Why is there even an old armchair like that in the attic? From the look of the attic access door it shouldn’t even be able to physically fit! What are they saving this chair for? Did Hi go through great effort to put it up there just so he can have moment of solitude? It’s the middle of summer so that attic is also probably over 100° and he’s suffering heat stroke but at least he got to read some of his book without being nagged.
RWO: I don’t have this problem because I only have one mug with text on it, and that text just says “I ? Butt Drugs.”
RwO — “World’s Best Mom” would seem a more appropriate motto to fail to live up to.
The Ghost Who Appears More Frequently When Uncle Lumpy is Filling In — There’s going to be a data center with skull marks all over it by the end of this!
@Lauralot: Heart. I Heart. I thought I could copy and paste the symbol, but apparently not.
Phantom, meta: That’s “Landlocked FASCIST Rhodia!!“
GT (Beth) “Wait, I had vows written, too! I.. I really am a cipher, aren’t I?”
Just wait for the ceremony to be over dearie and then _maybe_ we’ll let you develop a character trait or two.
yyCurtis: Oh. No. Please, Lady Who Wears a Cross Because It’s Pointed Out That She Wears a Cross. Don’t call his mother. Especially don’t call his mother and yell at her and say that he was on your steps selling drugs and that he’s a drug dealer. Because that will NOT end well.
@Banana Jr. 6000: On Luann: Stop? Oh, the Evansii are just getting started! Wait’ll the biddies at the Market hear about *this*!!
RwO – Try Not to Shit Your Pants….
6C – Just wondering…does anyone out there eat head cheese….
Dustin – And by failing, you are succeeding. Checkmate! Well played….
Phantom – Don’t forget to shake it all about – that’s what it’s all about….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
RwO: My favorite coffee mug says, “Eew, People,” and I mean it.
SXCHX: If I owned a deli, I would DEFINITELY sell incurable meat. Also, reprehensible slaw.
MW: Wow, I’ve never seen Mary call in her chips before. Is Tommy nudging Wilbur out of the #1 position?
Say what you will about Dustin, its namesake’s body language is lovingly depicted. In the first panel, he shrinks away from his father, repelled by his intrusive voice and presence. In the second panel, he mulls over his father’s statement, looking for loopholes.
And in the third panel he, I don’t know, kind of turns into Tintin? It’s not a visual punchline, but it’s certainly… intentional.
What future, Ed? Everything is getting automated now, and soon it will just be CEOs and investors until the investors start wondering what they’re paying the CEOs for.
Dustin : ‘s expression in that second panel…. that’s 100 % “I *DID* do something to prepare for the future. I went to college, like you told me to do.” if I ever saw it.
**********
Moose & Molly : Meanwhile, Chester Crabtree and Moose’s mother-in-law, while making CLEAR they don’t actually like him (and think he’s a loser), are showing more support towards him succeeding a job interview in a single strip than the Kudlicks have shown towards Dustin in… I wanna say the ENTIRE run?
***********
Phantom : look, simply having “we’ve all fought the superhero we’re teaming up against before” is good enough for most supervillain team-ups, because I’m sure there HAVE been instances of a group of villain not even having THAT (though I can’t name any specific cases, because I’m not that obsessive of a fan, I’m not Batton Thomas or anything)
RMMD: The girls need to get the DVD: Emily the Criminal and learn some basic scamcraft.
DT: Did we ever see or hear the ransom demands of Widescreen and company? Was it some cryptocurrency demand? I have forgotten. Question for the board, can one cryptocurrency be used to purchase another cryptocurrency?
GT: We have passably human Gil but no vows from Beth? I guess that means Gil has the last word in their marriage?
MW: Forgot that in the Sunday flashback, Mary was in sensible pants? Hiking jeans?
Phantom: The science-military-industrial complex is doing well on Mongo! Flying ships, flying dreadnaughts.
@The Quiet Man: Luann is basically fundamentalist propaganda. It’s here to tell you who should make love (a married couple intending to create a baby); who shouldn’t make love (Luann, with Phil, even though they are in a committed relationship); who makes love for the wrong reasons and are therefore bad people (Tiffany, even though we never actually see this); who makes love for the wrong reasons, but you should tolerate them because they’re basically decent people who might decide to get saved someday (friends such as Tara), and who gets to stick their nose in everyone else’s business (Bernice).
And Luann’s learned helplessness fits perfectly into this model. She’s not special needs. She’s exactly what she was raised to be: uneducated, servile, incapable of making a decision without some man or parent telling her what to do.
@Tabby Lavalamp: I saw a news story called “AI raises one $100 million in venture capital by itself.” So yeah, I think that process has already started.
@Tabby Lavalamp: More likely the CEOs will wonder why they need investors, since they’ll already have all the money and all these *people* are just cluttering up *their* solar system…
@The Quiet Man: Eric Sahara is definitely caught in the wheels of progress. He should have shot first, asked questions later.
MW-The difficult time being the death of a fish.
Dustbin- Ed got that from a MASH rerun.
MW: given Wilbur’s hate for Tommy, why in the world is he obsessed with Tommy’s mother?
“I show the Late Thread Cuisine, so Baja doesn’t have to”
~Isabella Bannerman (probably)
Phantom: Apparently Doctor Strange has joined this villain team-up as well.
RwO – Drinking from her “Carpe Diem” mug at her office job, she thinks “It should say ‘Carpe Tunnel.'”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I hear Don Abundio had new floors installed”
“Yes! It’s some super-expensive new material!”
“And that’s bad?”
“Yes!”
“We’ve all been ordered to try not to walk on it!”
The Familliar Mucus: Thel’s going to starve the Mellonheads.
RwO: “Piccolo”
It’s nice to see Goku’s green alien buddy get some work after Akira Toriyama passed away. Rhymes with Orange wouldn’t be my first guess though.
6C: Looks like something that would be at the Meow Wolf thing in Vegas.
Dustin: “What future? I have no hope of financial independence or home ownership, a planet devastated by climate change, and your generation won’t cede power until you’re all wheelchair-bound and have brains turned to mush by multiple strokes, and probably not even then. I’m just reaping what you’ve sown, you pompous ass.”
Phantom: I’m amused by what comic strip writers assume AI can do versus what it’s currently capable of. For example, chatbots are more likely to act like absurdly sycophantic yes-men than sass back about anything. The drone should be telling the Python that yes, he is free to do whatever he wants, and explain how he can escape by running into the dense jungle where it will be unable to follow him easily.
(Also, I think this strip vastly overestimates the supervillain potential of Elon Musk, a man who has proven time and again that literally all the money in the world cannot keep him from being a pathetic dork with an overinflated notion of his own coolness and a desperate need for validation from others. If Elon did go all Lex Luthor on us, it wouldn’t involve a creepy alien mask and ominous Latin handle; he’d throw on a black cape from Party City and start calling himself X-Man (Not to be Confused With the Marvel Characters the X-Men, But a Man Named ‘X’ as I’ve Decided That’s the Most Awesome Letter of the Alphabet).
@Charterstoned: Just don’t bring back the Boxing Wilburbabies.
@Dennis Jimenez: “Head cheese” a.k.a. “Souse” as in “some old drunk”
GT: I love how they’re not even bothering to pretend Beth is important in all this. We don’t even get to see her looking at Gil with fawning adoration.
Luann: “No big deal, we’ll just do what we do with Shannon and palm the kid off on Luann or Bernice or whoever happens to be free at the time.”
MW: Yeah, and look at how well his life has gone since then!
RMMD: So their scam is basically shoplifting with extra steps and making sure that the store staff gets a very good look at you and will remember your presence. Rene is right, you gals are idiots.
@Banana Jr. 6000: 9- Having Mary ghost write Wilbur’s advice column would be akin to a guest artist drawing Gil Thorp.
@Professor Well Actually: And how is Wilbur’s relationship with Tommy’s mother not a plot point? Or is it getting to that?
@TheDiva: Regarding RMMD, a few days ago someone mentioned the “Not Always Right” site, and I checked it out (warning: Not quite as addictive as TV-Tropes). There actually are people who try to pull “scams” that are this pathetically obvious. They are generally caught and banned from the store, if not arrested.
Of course the twins here have a small amount of plot armor, meaning the staff of this store has to behave like idiots so the designated hero can thwart the twins’ plans. I’m sticking with my prediction that it will be Sarah, who as a typical modern American teenager, visits the mall frequently.
MT- Gorilla Monsoon sure is selling the knockout in this arc. Hasn’t he been counted out yet?
GT: Yeah, I noticed that both of them
made upprepared their own vows, but we only hear Gil’s.Was Beth’s just “I will obey Lord God Thorp” over and over?
Pluggers know there’s nothing more punk rock than wearing a tee shirt for no work or exercise, then hand-washing and line drying, so it lasts fifty years.
Slylock: A pair of gloves? So Reeky has an appetite for petty larceny only because he doesn’t have the stomach to do real time.
Blondie: Hey, prematurely jaded Elmo, maybe you should make some friends who don’t sincerely compare their middle-class desk job to coal miners’ risk of silicosis, pneumoconiosis, and COPD.
BG&SS: Are Snuffy’s boxers the only piece of clothing in the whole county which aren’t patched?
Between Friends: Shouldn’t there be a Maeve “angel” on her other shoulder?
Wait–that is the angel? Oooooh.
DtM: I’m relieved we didn’t get
“The HOA doesn’t allow Jackson to swim in it.”
Given Rhodia’s role as a major flag of convenience for leaky oil tankers, bow-backed break-haulers, and shadowy smugglers, it’s not a surprise they have an admiral. It is a surprise he doesn’t have an eyepatch.
H&L: Has anyone ever really muscled a whole easy chair up into the attic?
LUANN: Well, they are expecting. So no matter how dirty and sweaty Brad is after a long day of firefighting, there’s no point in his taking another shower.
S4th: How did Ted grow to be 7 feet tall in that last panel?
So we’re supposed to believe that Pluggers still fit into their t-shirts from the 70s? How off-brand is that?
@Liam: Not even a fish, wasn’t this particular interest of self-pity because his shower radio broke (or more likely just needed new batteries)?
@Professor Well Actually: Hey, just ’cause her son’s a druggie doesn’t make Irish any less hot. It’s not like Wilbur ‘Chick Magnet’ Weston cares about her mind, or interests, or anything like that.
@The Quiet Man: D’oh, *instance* of self-pity, darn it….
THE PHANTOM: Panel #2: Dr Strange looks like he’s regretting leaving the MCU to try to making it on his own.
@Professor Well Actually: I think that’s why he hates Tommy. In Wilbur’s mind, if Tommy were less “troubled” Iris would be able to pay more attention to Wilbur’s sweaty combovered “charms”
Which is more likely? That the AI model has “taught itself to mock its victims”? Or that the engineers have built roughly a zillion expressions of contempt into its code? Obviously, neither is as probable as a megalomaniacal tech billionaire having his judgment clouded by AI psychosis.
“It won’t be long before these breakfast chats devolve into cursing and flinging coffee and cereal.”
That sounds much more entertaining than what we’re getting. I hope it happens soon.
@2+2=7: Now that you mention it, I think you’re onto something. I’m curious now whether that’s the direction this goes in and whether Mary continues to coddle Wilbur (‘there, there, there’s a wonderful woman out there for you!’) or delivers a verbal b*tch slap (‘MOVE ON! She’s happily married, you wannabe homewrecker!’)
Rhymes with Orange – Glad this woman makes her coffee at home. There is no way she would survive the next Starbucks special cup drop, nor the annual culture war over the holiday cup.
Six Chix – The bottom meat has fillers, artificial preservatives, and screwworms
Dustin – I would never accuse Dustin of being with it, but the Doomerism is captured here.
@Rube: #49: Of course they can. They were always fat. Reminds me of an actually funny Lockhorns cartoon from way back where Leroy is proud that his old army uniform still fits while Loretta says, “Of course it still fits. You were always in terrible shape”.
Rhymes With Orange / Dustin: The obvious problem here is that the Rhymes With Orange couple and Dustin’s dad both use similar, cheap Target coffeemakers. Take the time to make a quality pour-over, people! Not only does it allow you to control pouring speed and saturation — which brings out the nuanced flavors of perfectly ground beans — but the entire practice gives you a thoughtful, meditative practice to start your morning. (Of course, Dustin will never do this, because taking on any skills that would be useful for a barista could lead to him getting an actual job.)
@Little Guy: #14: Rhodia may be fascist but it isn’t landlocked. Remember, Captain Savarna was able to shell Gravelines from her private warship many adventures back.
GIL THORP: Ok you guys are being so judgmental. The guys from Stanford already explained that right now, the only thing Beth can say is her favorite dishwashing detergent. Once they iron out the kinks she’ll be able to do more like coo about how Gil is the most perfect and awesome man ever. (Also did the cues from puffy, drunken, crying, Marty Moon not convince you heathens: This is romantic! From Beth’s lack of voice to the barely-hidden vagina of her wedding teddy. How can heartless can you be to not feel the tenderness!?
GIL THORP (2): Indeed by focusing so much on Beth’s lack of prescenes, you ignore that Gil’s vows are kinda shit. Like, the first time we met Beth she was already flirting pretty blatantly with Gil, so I don’t get this “When you finally noticed me….” bit when she was already planning to be his rebound from the start (something she was doing when Gil was still married, by the way. I point I notice he doesn’t relate to the audience when recalling their “epic romance.” Unless he thinks “wife’s lesbian affair with golf coach” is how the world “mutes and slows down.”)
MW: If this ends with Wilbur going off the rails and off the cliff, I’ll but Karen Moy lunch.
GT: Since it’s Milford, only the groom gets vows. Stand there and smile, little lady.
Rhymes With Oranges: “No, read one of these positive messages as you drink or fuck off.”
Six Chix: Reading Six Chix is like trying to communicate with some alien being that speaks a language humans can’t fully comprehend. I’m reminded of that episode of Star Trek where Picard has to work with an alien who speaks only in allegories. “Darmok and Jalad on Comics Curmudgeon blog, reading Six Chix.”
Dustin: Maybe I would take Dustin (the comic) and it’s “lazy kids these days!!!” attitude more seriously if it ever gave the impression that Ed was even marginally happier and more successful than his slacker son. Instead, he comes across pretty exclusively as a miserable, unlikable, depressive asswipe who’s become trapped in a hell of his own making by clinging to a lifestyle he hates for the sake of conforming to a societal ideal that became a joke to anyone other than arch-conservative pundits and their sycophants over forty years ago at least. Like, Dustin may not have a serious job or his own place or whatever, but he seems to be generally having a somewhat decent time in life anytime we see him. Which is much more than can be said for the rest of his family, who all seem to think they’re noble for being sad fucks who never have any fun whatsoever.
This installment shows the end point of this key flaw in the comic. Ed – and extension, the author for whom he is a self-insert – trying to high-handedly judge his son and “be a real man” only to get his ass verbally kicked in the most laughably lazy way possible by someone who is, according to Ed’s fundamentally broken ideology to life, a weakling that he’s supposed to trump everytime.
“Yeah? Well you’re a failure as a father!” Dustin retorted. “Just look at your kids!”
9CL: If I had a nickel for every time one of my adult children asked me about their mother driving me mad with rutting desire, I’d be penniless, because why the hell would they ask me that?!?
Oh dear, Uncle Lumpy has an entry with both Rhymes with Orange and Six Chix. At least he didn’t include Alice, which certainly would have created a black hole singularity.
@Little Blue Bicycle:
#62 MW: curse that auto-incorrect! It took the second “t” off butt.
@Guillermo el chiclero: This comment for some reason made me realize I had NO idea where Bangalla is supposed to be, geographically speaking. That led me on a bit of a wiki walk about Phantom Lore and led to some rather odd discoveries on my part, namely that the series itself couldn’t make up it’s mind on where the place was.
Originally, the comic was set somewhere in Southeast Asia (specifically an island in – according to Lee Falk – the Dutch East Indies; what we call Indonesia). Than it was moved to being a neighbor of India. And than at last we reach modern times (or, well, the 60s onwards), where it’s apparently now in East Africa, around the approximate region of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Weird!
@TheDiva: Beth exists entirely as a sort of status symbol to try (in incredibly pitiful fashion) to make Gil look successful and cool by giving him a trophy wife, a vain attempt to restore his (deluded) prior image as an awesome dude that was permanently shattered when he drove Mimi into the arms of another woman.
@The Rambling Otter: Everyone’s favorite Namekian has had to go into illustrating for newspaper comics to make ends meet so he can raise Gohan (Goku sure as shit ain’t doing that). A sad end to the career of a Z-Fighter.
@Banana Jr. 6000: That’s such a good summation of Luann and why I fucking hate it so much.
@Banana Jr. 6000: I feel like Mary Worth is gonna try and rewrite history a bit and justify all of Wilbur’s awful behavior over the years as being caused purely by his alcoholism, when it very clearly was not.
LUANN: I love the panicked response on panel #3, like “Oh shit, we have a situation that can’t be solved by naughty innuendo! What are we going to do now!”
Six Chix-Don’t let Tuesday Chix see this. She might fall in love with it.
Crankshaft-And when the writer is out of ideas Batton is brought in.
@taig:
And I’m holding Breaking Cat News in reserve.
@Guillermo el chiclero, @ectojazzmage:
The indispensable Phantom Wiki puts Rhodia as Zimbabwe (part of Rhodesia when The Phantom first mentioned it). I’ve always thought of (current) Bangalla as Botswana—well-governed and generally affluent. But neither is a jungle nor has a coastline.
@UncleJeff: Thanks for that. Now I won’t be able to see anything else for the rest of the day.
Whatever you do, don’t think about “It’s a Small World, After All” because it will get stuck in your brain.
9 Chickweed Lane: I’m starting to miss good old Thorax. Yes, sir. Good old Thorax. How I hate him.
Gil Thorp, All American: Beth didn’t get any lines because Gil won the coin toss. I guess.
RwO: We have a SNEEZE THE DAY for allergy season.
Dirk Twacy Hollistic Defective: Is this arc going to end with a “Police Squad!” type joke? “Well, Frank, looks like Solly Tare is headed for Solitary!
@Guillermo el chiclero: Captain Savarna may have dragged that battleship overland to get it close enough to shoot at Gravelines, like a canoeist doing a portage, because she is JUST THAT MUCH OF A BADASS.
@Ukulele Ike:
I miss Savarna. Shipping her with young Kit was a bad decision.
Crank: Yeah, I’m out. A solid month of glurge followed by Batton Freaking Thomas? No, thank you.
Does Batton know that, once you’ve bought one collection that includes Flash #123, you’re allowed to read it more than once without having to buy another one? It doesn’t count as data piracy or anything!
DT: It’s kind of hilarious how Costellos (for some reason) decided to give this guy the quirk “talks in l33tspeak”, and immediately chickened out of this when he actually has to say anything beyond “Bo0o0o0M!!1!” either because he wasn’t up to the self-imposed challenge or possibly because he believed the target audience of normies wouldn’t be.
JP: It’s okay, Soph, from what we’ve seen that’s exactly how Neddy handles things too!
Pluggers: Pluggers don’t know that when teens say “nice X” to their elders, they are always being sarcastic.
S4th: Hey, Katherine finally gets a name. Although I suspect she usually goes by “Kathy” to complete the Jackie parallel, but obviously she’s not going to tell the scammers that.
@TheDiva: AI uses the same smarmy, corporate-speak language as Microsoft Clippy, and the restaurant Jennifer Aniston worked for in Office Space. Even if I did want its help, and even if it could give me the right answer, I still wouldn’t listen to it because of how condescending it is.
@Anonymous: Honestly, there is a chair just like that in our attic, and it also wouldn’t fit through the trapdoor, because the trapdoor has been refitted twice. Why is it there? Well, partly because about 70% of my comics collection is up there and sometimes I just want to sit up there and read (although not in this hot weather, no … and not in cold weather either … but sometimes), but mostly because there’s now no way of getting it out of there without a saw, and it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
@Dunkelcopter: @Uncle Lumpy: #72: In the days when the strip took place on the eastern Indian Ocean Bangalla was spelled Bengalla, indicating the Bay of Bengal.
@2+2=7: I’ve mentioned this before in relation to the current arc, but when Tommy was first out of prison and trying to rebuild his life with Iris’s support, Wilbur’s advice to her was almost exactly “I’m not saying you should throw him out of the apartment, but have you thought about throwing him out of the apartment? It’s called tough love!”
@Uncle Lumpy: I agree, it made her look like a creepy cougar. Savarna needs to be forever comic-strip young, like Kit and Diana.
6Cx: There actuall is an Italian coldcut, mortadella, that looks a lot like that incurable meat.
CS: Batton Thomas buys random comic book collections, in hopes of that they might contain The Flash #123 so he can read it again. Just like how I often buy baseball card collections because I need to review what Rickey Henderson’s 1982 statistics were. When the world gets to be too much, sometimes I just have to go back to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum!
@ectojazzmage: Not to mention the sheer hypocrisy of Ed nagging his son about self-improvement when he spends at least half his time resenting his wife and doctor for telling him that he might be better off if he ate a vegetable and exercised every now and then.
MW: OK, now I think I see what’s in the long bottle Wilbur is drinking from, and it’s worse than I could have imagined…Amaretto!
@TheDiva: And the rest of his time at “work “, sitting in the break room scarfing the support staff’s donuts.
@ectojazzmage: re: Phantom’s location
“Originally, the comic was set somewhere in Southeast Asia (specifically an island in – according to Lee Falk – the Dutch East Indies; what we call Indonesia). Than it was moved to being a neighbor of India. And than at last we reach modern times (or, well, the 60s onwards), where it’s apparently now in East Africa, around the approximate region of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Weird!”
Just following the retreat of European colonialism.
(I always thought it was set in 1970s “free states” around South Africa)
@Charterstoned: I live to serve.
FBoFW: April again shows us why she’ll be a great veterinarian.
DUSTIN: Dad doesn’t have to be so hostile just because he’s a lawyer; think how jovial and genial Bob Tice, our lawyer, is
MANDRAKE, like S4th, shows us why we shouldn’t use time travel unless we’re precise about location and time
@Activist: Sure, Bob Tice is jovial, but Voshkod and I are real assholes.
I thought “beating the punning out of you” was part of every law school curriculum.
@Rube: Libel, sir! Or possibly slander! Defamation! I’d see you in court if I had stepped into a public courtroom in the past few decades!
Late Thread Cuisine: You may have thought yesterthread’s meat cake was grody…get out your barf bags now.
RwO: For most of my life, I was always under the impression that you drank coffee out of mugs, and tea out of teacups.
There is a British online reviewer “Mike J” who is always drinking from a mug, which I believed to be coffee.
Someone told me it was tea, my mind kind of blew a little.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I had Mortadella just a few weeks ago.
Wasn’t bad.
@Voshkod: I am sure I couldn’t fit in my robes, even if I knew where to find them, so I think that the courts will continue to do without us.
@Baja Gaijin: I’ve seen this one before!
@Rube: Robes? Sorry, your honor, no contempt intended.
@Voshkod:
#96. Voshkod and Rube, may I suggest you refresh yourselves by monitoring a controversial case? Just sit quietly in the back and try not to jump up and object to incompetence and bias. Do your crying at home over a .. cup of tea. Your presence is needed.
@Activist: Our kid complains that my wife and I made TV law shows impossible for him. All the “Why are they presenting the case out of order? Why doesn’t he just re-examine” took him out of the story.
@Rube:
I know medical shows drive doctors nuts and cops yell at TV crime shows. I wonder if cowboys yell at westerns?
@Rube:
#104. Wait until you monitor a real trial, with life and death consequences, and you find an obviously biased jury was empaneled, that one or more attorneys are grossly incompetent, that the lies of witnesses are unchallenged. Your alert presence can help all stay on their toes
@Rube: Yeah, I pretty much can’t watch lawyer, cop, or spy shows anymore without annoying people.
Italian Mortadella = baloney with a college education.
@Activist:
You know how in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” the incredulous questioner asks Jessica Rabbit why she’s so fond of Roger, and she responds “He makes me laugh”? Well, that’s why my students like me….
@Uncle Lumpy: I dunno about cowboys, but I grew up on a farm and I know the media have some pretty odd ideas about what farming is like. You don’t see many shows about it anymore, though.
@108 Ukulele Ike: I had mortadella in Bologna. It tasted like baloney.
@Rube:
In 1970-1971, TV shows with rural settings and characters, like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Hee Haw, and The Andy Griffith Show disappeared from prime-time TV, especially CBS. This was called the “Rural Purge,” or more colorfully, “Farmageddon.”
@Uncle Lumpy:
#112. Yeah, it was those “hick” shows that made me be embarrassed to be a farm kid in the 1970s. Regained my pride when I overheard Prince say, “Farm kids are the greatest….”
@Baja Gaijin: It’s a nice addition to a “big sandwich,” the type that makes Bianca Xunise’s heart flutter.
It goes into New Orleans’ Central Grocery’s muffuletta sandwich, along with ham, Genoa salami, provolone, and that great oily green olive salad. The best sub at Chicago’s Fontano’s is the “Big Al:” mortadella, cotto salami, Genoa, provolone, plus your favorite toppings. Don’t skip the hot giardiniera.
I would not include baloney in a cold hero sandwich, but mortadella really works. Must be the extra garlic.
@Uncle Lumpy:I once had an amusing conversation with a doctor about unrealistic TV shows. He was complaining about House MD and Grey’s Anatomy (though he said that the medicine in the latter was generally ok-ish, it was just the soap opera stuff dialed up to 11 that he said was absurd) and wanted to know my opinion of a show in my particular profession. The show being Big Bang Theory (I’m a physicist, working in a similar department).
Just for the record: Generally, no, scientists aren’t like that. A few are, but most are just more-or-less normal people who if you ask them what they did over the weekend will say something boringly normal like “went to my kid’s soccer game” or “my boyfriend and I went on a nice hike in the mountains”. I’ve only really seen the show in clips and other bits and pieces, so can’t say I’ve ever reached the point of yelling at the screen.
REX MORGAN M.D.: I know I risk the Morgans’ Scolding Finger of Wraith for this take, but I am now firmly on Team Sour Valley Twins here, because any manager naive and stupid enough to fall for such obvious implausible bullshit deserves to be ripped off. (Manager Schlubby: “Are you girls done collecting ‘inspected metchadise’ to take back to the ‘corporation’? I would see you off but I have to go close the register I left open and…you know what, it’s fine. I trust people here not to take advantage of my blatant gullibility and cluelessness.”)
@Dmsilev: I was talking with the chief of a police department serving a city of 125,000.
His biggest TV show complaint was “Hill Street Blues”.
Everybody wanted a ‘Hill & Renko” jacket (satin with a fur collar).
The chief pointed out they could not fit their Kevlar vests underneath.
His cops were more interested in being stylish.
@UncleJeff: Belker was the absolute hero of that show for working cops from what I could see, take it FWIW. Generally, though, cops always seemed to find Barney Miller the closest to reality.
@Rube: That does not surprise me at all.
@2+2=7: Manager Schlubby will give them the keys to his new minivan because, gosh, all the expensive electronics that need to be investigated simply will not fit into Tweedledee and Tweedledum’s compact car.
@The Rambling Otter: #99:
@Ukulele Ike: #108:
@Baja Gaijin: #111:
Mortadella fun fact: Real Italian mortadella was illegal to import into the US from 1967 to 2000, something about infected swine. There was even a movie comedy about that, “Lady Liberty” (Italian title: La Mortadella), starring Sophia Loren. She played an immigrant who was trying to bring one through customs at JFK.
@121 Guillermo el chiclero: That’s fine with me. The mortadella bologna I had wasn’t anything special, even on foccacia with figs and cheese. Mortadella from other areas of Italy may have better flavor.
@Activist: re reFOOB– I had a similar experience with my kids’ babysitter (who was training to be a nurse at the time). I came home from an outpatient surgery, and she asked to see the incision. Couldn’t exactly tell that cute young thing that the surgery I has was a vasectomy.
@Baja Gaijin: Are you CRAZY? The Bologna baloney is NO baloney!
Or, as Rube Goldberg said a hundred years ago, “That’s the old baloney!”
@Dmsilev: My family is always telling me I remind them of Sheldon. Which royally pisses me off.
I work in IT, where Sheldons are a dime a dozen. Sheldon did well in an IQ test when he was 8, and never felt the need to learn anything after that. Sheldon is arrogant, proud of his social incompetence, and never learned any skills that might make him useful. IT departments are very willing to tolerate weirdness in someone who’s good at fixing problems. That is not Sheldon. IT departments fire Sheldon because he’s insufferable, and has been given enough chances to learn how to do his job. And somehow, he still thinks he’s superior to everyone else.
A few years ago, I realized I was a Sheldon. My response was to start listening to other people for the first time in my life, and put a lot of effort into improving my people skills. Improving them from bad to mediocre has improved my career and my life immeasurably. I now understand why I didn’t get past jobs I wanted. And I’ve learned how to get jobs I didn’t deserve, just by being a functional human being.
God, I hate Sheldon. And the TV promo that pops in every five seconds to tell me how great he is. And anyone who thinks he’s some kind of positive standard to admire.
@Banana Jr. 6000: The character of Sheldon Cooper is a theoretical physicist, not a technology assistant. Despite his failures to communicate with others, he would have value in a research setting where he would have to coexist with people who might have the same social blind spots. Over the years, the creators of BBT gave` Sheldon a backstory to explain his behavior and shaved some of his rough spots.
If it makes you feel better, Jim Parsons had trouble with the character and said he would never perform him again, no matter how much money he was offered.
@Anonymous: “than the Kudlicks have shown towards Dustin in… I wanna say the ENTIRE run?”
That’s because Dustin exists solely as a vehicle for Steve Kelley to shit on “kids today.”
@Al of the Christian Singles Jungle Patrol:
#123. Glad you didn’t show or describe the incision or you would have lost a hard-to-replace baby sitter!
PHANTOM: Whoa. I get the feeling from this strip and Uncle Lumpy’s commentary that the Purpliverse is now a vocation. I think my brain in these latter years is better suited to the silliness that is JUDGE PARKER.
MT: The gorilla is blue. The gorilla is blue. Time to pile this entire story in the ambulance and push it into a large body of water.
LUANN: And if Shannon is anything to judge by, you’ll be bad parents. But look at the bright side. The other parents at the grade school will have children who are more empathetic, well-behaved and enjoyable for other humans to be around. But none of the other mommies will be able to match Toni’s head (if that really is a head) of hair.