You’re never gonna get an AI to dig a ditch, I tell you what
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Mary Worth, 8/11/26
Welp, I guess all the Tommy business has been resolved and now we can finally get into what we really want to know: what’s life at the Weston condo unit like when it’s just Dawn and Wilbur? Oh, you know, normal stuff, Dawn buying pans that are way too small, Wilbur being like, “Dawnie, there’s not enough room on that pan for all the food we like to eat,” Dawn taking it back to the pan store, which probably is used to this by now because they stock the small sizes that nobody really wants, etc.
Shoe, 8/11/26
Yeah, I’m just going to say it: the Perfesser is right, it sounds like his support group isn’t supportive at all and he’s not really getting much out of it. Did he accidentally join a class about how to do comedy roasts, and none of the other students are particularly funny, and this is the best they could do? Because that’s a common mistake.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/26
Big news, everybody! The scam twins were planning on kidnapping Sarah, but then their jailbird uncle explained to them what a “felony” is, and now they’re having second thoughts.
Dennis the Menace, 8/11/26
Everyone’s smiling in this panel and I think that’s lovely. It’s honest hard work, it keeps you in shape, you’re outdoors in the fresh air, and you often make a union wage. Yes, sir, ditch digging’s the life!
62 replies to “You’re never gonna get an AI to dig a ditch, I tell you what”
MW – Wilbur: “Dawnie, were you on pot when you bought that pan?”
It’s concerning when you realise that Jimmy is the smart one in his family.
I love how those scam twins are an obvious copy-and-paste job — same face, same hair, same angle, same clothing, same expression. I wonder if they can tell each other apart.
MW: What even is this plot line? What’s happening? Every time Moy starts a new arc, I think “Well, we can’t get any further from the basic fundamentals of storytelling and common sense,” and every time, she throws attempted goldfish murder or purple gorillas or Stevie Wonder or too-small pans into the mix. I don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.
RMMD: Rene, you’re slipping in your evil mentorship. If you’d put half as much effort into training your nieces as you did into promoting the Mirakle Method, they’d have taken over the world by now.
Are Rene and the Twins aware that the prison records these conversations?
.MW:
“I’m unable to play baseball using this pan, Dad!”
” ‘Baseball,’ Dawnie?”
‘I can’t ‘Bundt‘ with it!”
MW Its nice that this strip gives us regular reminders of how dumb Dawn really is, just to explain why her life is the way it is.
Shoe This would normally be a lead-up to the infamous Shoe Google Eyes of Horror, but Roz doesn’t flinch at all. The Perfesser dying alone would be the least shocking thing to happen in this strip.
MW What you were thinking was that you were allowed to maybe, just maybe, make one egg in a nice little pan that slips easily into the dishwasher. But until you move out away from your oh-can-I-squeeze-my-4-eggs-in-with-yours-thanx! dad that will remain but a dream…
Beetle Bailey : that second panel should be of the dugout locker room, with the speech bubble coming out of one of the closed lockers. Hey, that’s where Lt Fuzz was when his team played baseball in high school!
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Dennis the Menace :
a) “Yup, I’ll be diggin’ ditches and gettin’ bitches.”
b) Dennis then demonstrated his current aptitude by digging Mr Wilson’s grave in his front yard.
c) Funny to see what the “You won’t amount to anything and be stuck forever” dead end job was back in the 1950s, and how the perception of which job it is has changed throughout the years (currently, it’s “has college degree, can’t find any job at all”, right?)
************
Rex Morgan M.D. : only in this strip would the villain be defeated by being told their plan would get them in serious trouble, and thus deciding not to go through with it. Oh well, as long as Rex still doesn’t have to get involved appearing in his own strip!
RMMD: The FBI is way too busy trying to find Antifa to bother with the kidnapping of Red Chief.
Shoe:
In a subtle but interesting defiance of comic strip convention, Roz doesn’t respond to Cosmo’s setup with so much as an “oh?” Based on her expression in the first panel I would normally suppose she lacks the psychic energy to do much of anything, but crushing depression is the ground state of being for the characters in Shoe and most of the time they still manage to keep up a conversation. Strangely, she seems marginally less miserable in the second panel. Nothing the Perfesser said justifies this change in mood, so I’m guessing she actually realized “hey, I don’t have to actually listen to this guy” and promptly stopped paying attention to him, immediately lifting her mood slightly.
DtM;
“An’ I’d like to start with the last ditch Mr. Wilson will interact with on this Earth, if you get my drift, Joey!”
RMMD In someone of normal intelligence, being reminded that kidnapping is a major felony beyond some beat cop law enforcement after saying “it’s *all* figured out” would yield a cuttingly sarcastic “that *does* sound serious” because of course they would have that in mind. But here I think they literally had no idea because everything they know about scamming seems to come from reading Slylock Fox for how to be a villain and figuring all they need to do is avoid violating some Kids Corner Fun Fact and they’ll get away with it.
MW – Moy is breaking the single most sacred rule of the strip. Mary must bask in the glow of her often unearned part in the resolution of the previous arc and spend two weeks repeating all the plot points to Dr. Jeff. There are sure to be consequences for this failure to follow protocol.
RMMD: To whom it may concern: Since Cut/Copy/Paste has taken you this far, how about an arc where Rene masters cloning and creates a felonious female army?
SHOE: This kind of funny, although I’m sure The Perfesser isn’t the first to drive a support group to unanimous loathing.
DtM: Number one reason workers strike gas lines- distraction. Blowing up the neighborhood would be Dennis’s crowning menace.
DtM: You’ll never get rich by digging a ditch.
RMMD: Here’s some advice for aspiring comics artists: just make all your characters twins. Then instead of drawing two people, you can draw one person and copy paste them. Add one little line on their forehead and no-one will be able to tell they’re the same drawing!
DTM: Sick of the neighborhood children coming to his house for no clear, Mr Wilson has resorted to the drastic measure of having a moat built around his lot. You didn’t think this through, Mr Wilson! This won’t stop Dennis, and now he’ll be treading all kinds of muddy water into your carpets!
Rex Morgan, M.D.:
I’ve never been to prison, but I was under the impression that during visitations a guard is present in the room at all times to monitor the interaction. And yet here Rene and his nieces are, brazenly discussing a kidnapping plot for anyone to hear. I’m guessing this will have no impact on the progression of the story, so presumably the guard went “Well, he told them not to do it, so it’s probably fine.”
DtM: I know Joey is supposed to be the dumb one, but unlike his buddy Dennis he realizes that this is an insult that could lead to them both being buried under a sewer pipe.
RMMD: Holy crap, these twins have no prefrontal cortex whatsoever.
MW: Dawn doesn’t realize Wilbur knows the pan is too small because he tried to cook his favorite dish of huevas rancheros with mayo. Or maybe she does but thinks she can exchange the food encrusted pan the way Wilbur tries to exchange his mayonnaise encrusted polo shirts.
DtM: “You won’t get the chance, kid. Mr. Wilson hired me to dig this grave and…other matters.”
DtM;
“Mr. Wilson said the only thing I’m equipped to do is to dig Mariana’s trench. But I don’t know any ‘Mariana.’ “
@Anonymous: Well, it shows the artist knows comic history.
Wally Wood has a famous quote from the pre digital era “Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.”
@Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Who do you think “Dawnie” will run into on this errand? Never lose faith in the MW universe-the rules shall be obeyed and the readers be damned!
MW What _was_ I thinking? Well, that I needed a pretext to Go To The Store in order to happen upon Brandy’s Return. Little does she know that she owes her fine, sober boyfriend to _my_ encouraging words, otherwise he’d be ODing in a gutter right now! I will observe from afar and report back to Mary that my meddling apprenticeship is coming along well, then she can complete the cycle with her boat and restaurant magic to release us for the next meddle!
DtM: Having a dad who’s a (now retired) millwright and carpenter, I always get a little defensive when anyone trots out the “manual labor=failed at life” trope. That guy’s performing essential maintenance on vital public infrastructure, Mr. Wilson! What did you do with your day, apart from sitting on your porch and yelling at the kids on your lawn?
MW: The small pan gets the most use in our household, it being the perfect size to make a grilled cheese or heat up a slice of ham for a sandwich. Wilbur is the kind of guy who could go through a Costco-sized package of bacon in a single sitting, however, so I can see why Dawn’s needs might be on more of an industrial level.
RMMD: “Secondly, ‘kidnapping’ would count as something happening, and that’s not allowed in this strip. You might want to try over at Judge Parker; those people get abducted at the drop of a hat.”
RMMD:, take two: “It’s not like fraud and attempted murder on a cruise ship, where they give you free reign to roam around the vessel to the point where you can slip off at the next port with nobody noticing, something that’s totally possible to do on a modern cruise ship.”
Mary Worth: Huh. “Dawnie.” Here I thought they called her “Dawn” because she was dull as dishwater, and today’s strip doesn’t do much to change that opinion. But maybe not? Maybe Wilbur actually likes her? Very odd, much to consider, etc.
@TheDiva: George is a retired mail carrier, so it’s not like he made it all that much further in life, just a better pension.
Dennis the Menace: “Anyhoo, mind if I get a start on my future endeavors with your backhoe?”
JP: Teleporting is still in the future, so put on your thinking cap, Ned, and give Soph the support and advice she needs over the phone. Remember, she knows she’s just a temporary babysitter confronting a d lusionsl Mama Bear.
6Cx: Looking so party! Hope she meets a nice sandwich at the game.
How old are the twins supposed to be? They seemed like young teenagers when we first saw them busking, but since then we’ve seen them driving and drinking wine. I ask because someone in their early 20s, much less two someones, not understanding that kidnapping is a very serious crime that will get all sorts of law enforcement involved is…well…it doesn’t speak well of the Glenwood City School District, I’ll say that much.
Alt title for Josh’s post today: All Things Are True; Everything Is Permitted
Why is Wilbur talking in that stilted, early-reader prose? “It is too small to fit much food.” Is he trying to explain to an unseen audience of preschoolers what small is? “The pan is small. It is not big. Not much food can fit in it. This pan is smaller than my stomach.”
JP Bets on whether Neddy has twigged to Supposedly-April is *really* suspicious and will tell Sophie to beware the likely-Doppelganger??
DtM — “Yeah, digging ditches and breaking rocks. But he did say I’d get to live in a big house. . .”
MARY WORTH: Dawnie: “‘What I was thinking’ was ‘Shouldn’t we own more than one pan, the way most families do?’ Then I smacked my forehead for ridiculously thinking we were like normal people in any way. Duh!”
MW: Do you know what other pans that are too small in the Weston household? Dawn & Wilbur’s brainpans. Too bad they can’t exchange those.
MW: It’s early, and I read “Dawnie” as “Dwayne” and thought that the comic was finally getting progressive.
MW: Explain “Pan”
Roasting pan? Baking Pan? Sauce Pan?
The dialogue seems to indicate that they’re actually talking about a plate. Which confuses me.
@Chance: Because clearly, Josh applied the A.I. quip toward the wrong comic.
DT: Hell, today’s Supreme Court would probably be cool with you swiping the packages off the stoop before they’re even opened.
Dustin: Dustin, Dustin, it’s all in the framing. “I worked in tandem with a colleague to meet company-mandated goals in record time.” You’re supposed to have an English degree; you should be better at BS-ing than this.
Nice try, Perfesser, but you will not die alone. Because you are in a legacy strip, you will keep suffering forever, no respite, unless your strip/the comics page/the entire newspaper industry dies, then you’ll die with plenty of company
The twins are good nieces. Normally, Rene is getting humiliated by everyone, including children. But speaking with those two morons, he must feel like Einstein!
@The Rambling Otter: Also I forgot Frying Pan.
But who just calls a frying pan (if they’re even referring to such) as just a pan?
It seems odd to me.
@CanuckDownSouth: My bet is Neddy didn’t get that far before Sophie hung up and NotCIApril is going to be smashing Sophie’s phone in the next two seconds.
My question is whether Sophie is carrying the Idiot Ball and is going to say ‘Go on Charlotte! Go to your Mommy!’
I’m also going to guess AnnDoris and Ronnie(?) are going to be left behind to ‘work out the details’ of the new TV show and we’ll conveniently not see them for about a year as we dive right back into Poteet’s beloved [/sarc] cloak-and-dagger crap.
@TheDiva: Dustin: He would be, but he didn’t take enough STEM credits and just got a BA
“Okay, Dawnie. It is too small to fit much food.” When was Wilbur replaced by a robot? Not that I’m complaining, it’s probably an improvement, but it should probably work on actually vaguely sounding like a human being.
RMMD:
“The FBI?”
“The ‘Federal Bothering of Identicals.’ ”
“Oh. That does sound serious.”
CURTIS: Curtis is between a rock and a hard place, either way hell lose his bike. Quick! There’s some place you’ve gotta be ten minutes ago.
GA: indeed, at first glance it looked like a barbershop quartet of cows.
S4th: Confusing for Sally? Think of what it must be like for Aunt K. Did her past 39 years actually happen?
JUMP START: Yay, the good kids won! Well, the needy kids anyway . They must have led one heck of a rousing along.
Judge Parker went to the trouble and expense of starting a plot, then having the villains realize it’s not worth the effort. The strip could learn a lot from Mary Worth, where they’ve made the decision to never start the plot at all! It’s just Dawn’s adventures with a small pan, from now until the end of
timeprint publishing.RMMD:
“Why don’t you two do something constructive, like write a monograph on The Dog Star?”
So Cosmo does not consider Roz part of his support group and Roz is not offended at not being considered his friend? They are surprisingly self-aware!
@Anonymous: One Garfield cartoon, had Jon’s twin nieces* Minerva and Drusilla come to visit.
Gave this line.
Jon: Hello Minerva!
Other Twin: I’m Minerva, she’s Drusilla.
Minerva: No you’re not! I’m Minerva.
Drusilla: Oh, right!
*The word Niece seems to be a mistake, as they’ve also been referred to as Jon’s cousins, because Jon only has one sibling and God forbid Doc Boy ever reproduce…
Oh, no. Dawn’s in a pan-ic!
Dennis the Menace-I always figured Dennis the would be the sort to make the other guy dig the hole.
FC-That’s not what she was talking about, Dolly.
RMMD-“Let’s do that. Let’s get the FBI involved.”
FC-And the woman in the office said that after she saw Thel in that little number.
Speaking of pans, let me give you my review of Mary Worth…
***
I… I… I think I like these dipshit twins. As characters, not as people! From believing they’re criminal masterminds by pretending to be buskers to not thinking it would be a big deal to kidnap someone to never talking about roots country or some other hipster crap, they are a breath of fresh air in the panels of Rex Morgan, M.D.
@Tabby Lavalamp: “Unca, what if we were to kidnap roots country legend Mud Murphy Mountain, or whatever the hell his name is?”
“Oh, that’s fine. No one gives a shit about roots country.”
@Pozzo: “You might not ever get rich/but let me tell you it’s better than digging a ditch.” —Car Wash, also known as “Dennis the Meanass’s other possible career path.”
MW-Too much ice cream can mess with your head.
@TheDiva: On DT – Yeah, and don’t forget to bring the evidence for you to conveniently ‘find’ in the garbage! Maybe you can bring a ‘John Doe’ cadaver from the county morgue and then you can nail Lardass for murder? He gets squirrelly about it? Hell, he’s a murderer, just shoot him!
Seriously though, that decision sounds as badly decided as ‘Plessy vs. Ferguson’…
Mary’s the Worst: Oh, Josh, you are so trusting! It’s obvious to me that the Dawn/Tommy thing is just getting started: Dawn’s rushing off to exchange that “tiny pan” because she needs a bigger one now that Tommy is moving in with her. The pan that was just big enough for her (and definitely not big enough for her and Wilburp, which was of course her reason for purchasing it in the first place) is nowhere near big enough for her and Tommy.
MW:
June shuffled into the kitchen and headed straight for the coffee, responding to Karen’s perky “Good morning!” with a sneer.
“What’s wrong?” Karen quickly asked, rising from her seat on the sofa.
“What’s wrong is I went to art school to study drawing and after all these years perfecting my art you’ve got me drawing PANS. PANS and SHOPPING BAGS.”
Karen blinked. “Well, I just wanted to introduce some domesticity into the story, you know, sort of a rest from all of the ‘sturm und drang’ of the Tommy Beedie story. I thought talking about a baking pan would be a nice break from the intense drama.”
“IS it a baking pan? Or is it actually a FRYING pan? Or maybe a SAUTE pan? There’s a big difference, you know, and I have no IDEA what kind of pan to draw, so I’m left with a shopping bag. A SHOPPING BAG, Karen. Do you have any idea how much tuition I paid to learn how to render the human form, muffins, and domestic animals? Shopping bags are Drawing 100.”
“Well, gosh, I didn’t think about what kind of pan it needed to be, but now that you mention it, it will require you to draw the appropriate food, once Dawnie comes back with the right size,” Karen said thoughtfully. “You tell ME, June. What kind of food do you want to draw? Eggs? A lasagna? What about a sheet cake?”
June was slightly mollified, but frowned as she considered the implications for the plot. “Well, I guess that depends on who will EAT whatever is in the pan. Wilbur says “It is TOO SMALL to fit much food.” Are they planning to entertain a crowd? What would be the occasion?”
“That’s a good question. And I don’t think they should be talking about a muffin pan. That’s Mary’s department. So we can at least cross THAT off the list.”
“I’m surprised they’re still hungry, after eating all that ice cream.” June put down her coffee cup. “You know, this could work if we had something in the pan that they couldn’t eat. Or even SHOULDN’T eat.”
“You mean like food poisoning…?!” Karen asked, some alarm in her voice.
“Well, it might not have been serious if Dawn had used the SMALL pan she started out with, but now that the new pan will hold MORE FOOD, it would lend itself to a more widespread event. And if the pan had enough food in it to serve, say, the whole Charterstone community, it would certainly make our readers concerned for ALL of our characters. You know, just like when the balloon went down. They were really attentive in that episode.”
“You’re right, they were.” Karen frowned, thinking. “But WHAT kind of pan is it? We have to figure that out!”
“Hmmm. What. Kind. of. Pan?”
MW- “Oh why didn’t I consult with Mary before buying this? She knows everything about cooking”