The computers are actually responsible for a lot of the other problems
Post Content
Blondie, 10/20/26
I feel like panel one here is a great illustration of what a gormless dipshit the current iteration of Dagwood Bumstead is. He’s the type of guy who watches an ad for a car dealership, and the narrator of the ad announces that the car dealership hired a surprise pitchman, and he’s so surprised that he yelps out “HUH?” and gesticulates around wildly. I don’t really have a strong opinion about the Santa stuff, it’s legit to be unhappy about that but also legit to not care or even to be kind of excited about Christmas months in advance, I just have contempt for a guy who allows himself to be fully emotionally invested in the narrative arc of a 30-second local ad spot.
Mary Worth, 10/20/26
Looks like all’s well that’s ending well for Toby and Ian! I guess the lesson learned is that if there are rumors flying around about your husband’s infidelity and you’re thinking about confronting him, maybe don’t? Or maybe just wait till you actually get to the restaurant, because there’s a good chance a surprise party is awaiting you there and it’s going to make all these problems go away. Imagine how awkward it would be if you started a big fight in the car on the way over!
Shoe, 10/20/26
“And you’re gonna have those too, now that a critical mass of people have decided to stop vaccinating their kids! Hope you enjoy your computers, I guess.”
38 replies to “The computers are actually responsible for a lot of the other problems”
MW – Toby does realize she’s going to have to fuck Ian on this trip, right?
In the spirit of true intimacy and vulnerability, Ian is allowing Toby to reach her hand to his face and peel off that ridiculous fake beard.
The Goggle Eyes of Horror in Shoe are entirely warranted today. What a whiplash-inducing change of subject and tone! That’s what Skyler gets for chatting up old people unsupervised in an empty diner.
MW:
“Now, of course, Ian has far too much avoirdupois to sit in a conventional airplane seat. I hope he doesn’t mind being stored in the baggage hold for the flight over!”
MW:
“I absolutely love this beard of yours, Ian! Say — are you going to go as former Surgeon-General C. Everett Koop for Halloween?”
Shoe:
“…and I hear the plague is making a comeback in Russia!”
Murky Tail:
Blue Shrimp Selling: surely the most nefarious criminal activity since the golden days of the Mafia during the Great Depression!
____________________________
Questioned Discontent:
I used to like Brun, and I’m glad she’s back, but being so grateful for being allowed back in the land of the living after years that she’s kneeling on the floor before Hannelore and Anhlikeable is a bit much.
Blondie:
“He sure gets around!”
“He certainly does! — wasn’t Mr. Gwenn just on 34th Street in NYC, performing miracles?”
MW: “I’M THE GOD! I’M THE GOD! BOW DOWN BEFORE ME!”
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
She anaesthetises herself with gin so she doesn’t feel any of that.
MW: In another magnanimous gesture for the happy couple, Mary attaches milk crates to Toby’s feet so she can look Ian in the eyes.
MT What’s “shady activity” that you can discover in a simple web search? Oh no! Several 1-star reviews! He didn’t honour his money-back guarantee!
FC: Taking a year from my life, that’s what you were doing, Billy.
Pluggers: Pluggers are old, medically decrepit meatsacks addicted to prescription drugs #5,839.
Pluggers: But the plugger will say in his defense, “At least it ain’t the street dope you kids today take!”
JP: Omigod!! Someone’s shot the RHB! In the back no less!! Look at her slumped against Neddy gasping her dying words!
RMMD: “Speaking of ‘going south’ Summer…”
RMMD@: Is that Buck in the background?? Come Sunday are we going to pan from this bland couple to follow the *other other other* bland couple?
Luann: No, the *real* question is can you buy an RV and sell the house before Luann gets home from Adult Daycare.
MW “God I hope they think of me when they’re making sweet love on their trip. I hope they think of me the whole time…”
Shoe I’m not sure exactly what we’re going for here. Is this a “kids wer tougher back then” comment, or a “don’t be nostalgic about the past” one? Maybe a “we didn’t have no fancy computers, we only had deadly childhood diseases to entertain us!”
Special to Ukulele Ike: Well, I finished the eighth volume of ‘The Bellybuttons’. Thank you again for recommending it. I still wanted to smack almost all the characters* and after volume 6 the ‘Beetle Bailey’-esque beatdowns didn’t seem nearly as humorous, but I was really glad to see Jenny’s character arc and resolution.
I was disappointed to learn that the creators separated and that makes a ninth volume highly unlikely** because I would have liked to see Karine and Vicky get proper resolutions too, but I’m glad we have what we have.
*Except Hugo, he seemed to figure things out a lot faster than everyone else.
**That said, I’ve seen other comics that went on hiatus for a long time only to finally be given a proper sendoff, so never say never…
MW: If this ends without Nelly repenting at the hands of Mary, why did we waste our time?
H&L: Never give the car keys to someone whose eyes you’ve never seen.
LUANN: Ouch! At least they took a few moments to talk to Bernice before she grabbed her already-packed boxes from the front lawn.
GT: PTA meetings at Milford must be like a year-round Halloween Horrorfest.
RMMD: How does Augie take food in? He never unclenches his teeth.
The worst part is, this is the 17th time Dagwood has seen that commercial.
Old guy in Shoe: “Yeah, we had to make our own fun. I violated so many Geneva Conventions.”
Blondie is very startled by the side and back of her flat-screen TV.
MW: So has Nelly just ceased to exist? Does she work like the monster in IT, and now that Toby no longer fears her husband’s infidelity, Nelly lost all her powers?
Blondie: Seriously, Josh? This man watches his flat-screen television edge-on, and all you can comment on is Santa?
Blondie: Look at Dagwood’s expression in panel 2. He KNOWS. He KNOWS some beloved cultural icon has sold out. But who?
Ok, disappointing, he thinks, but at least it wasn’t Chef Boyardee.</i€
Blondie: Oh, please. Costco and Lowe’s have been selling Christmas decorations since the beginning of the month, and craft stores started displaying their holidays wares in September (cause, you know, you need time to actually make anything you plan to use this season). If you got your improbably skinny butt up and away from the television every now and then, you’d know that.
MW: “At least she will if she remembers to thank me for it. Otherwise, I’m putting a handgun, a pound of fentanyl, and a bag of Florida oranges in her carry-on!”
Shoe: Great Halloween-sdjacent strip! “Wow, Biz, how did you survive all those diseases?” “I DIDN’T!” (cackles, thunder crash)
Blondie: I call shenigans. We all know Dagwood goes to the kitchen to make a sandwich during commercials.
MW — “Weeks of secretive planning” amounts to booking the party room at Not the Bum Boat, sending a group email, and showing Ian how entering “Maui” in his browser’s searchbar will allow generate a multitude of links to hotel sites, but hey, no one else is going to pat your back for it. . .
Six Chix: Another day of mental stimulation trying to parse Bianca’s strip. This is…a horribly deformed woman? This is…a man (are those vertical lines a mustache?) in a dress? It has hairy legs but this is Bianca so, who knows. So the ‘joke’ is, are you dressed as a woman or a witch? Or, if you’re going to dress like a woman, grab a broom and clean up this kitchen?
At least I know I’m not a Plugger because Pluggers do not read Six Chix.
MW: funny how all that mean-spirited gossip actually had no impact.
I zoomed in on Blondie and her crossword puzzle grid makes no sense. The words aren’t crossing!
Dustin: Dusdad is unable to conceive of a situation where a) Dustin did something nice for him and/or b) Dustin did that thing reasonably well. This tells you all you need to know about the character, and the strip in general.
GT: “I’m so mad I’m going to Irish step dance right here on the field!”
JP: Why is Charlotte so upset? It’s not like Neddy’s going anywhere, unless…oh crap, April’s going to “eliminate the competition,” isn’t she?
Luann: This is the most we’ve ever learned about Bernice’s family, and it mostly implies that they don’t want to be around her at all. I like them already.
RMMD: “Because they want to lock down the rights in the unlikely event that my book becomes a big enough cultural phenomenon to demand a film version, criminey woman, do you have any basic reasoning skills?”
SH: “No time”? Her contractions were six minutes apart and now suddenly she’s going to drop the baby right there in the middle of the dog park? Maybe it’s tied to the bizarre biology of the improbable human-animal-hybrid people.
GT: I guess families in the the Valley Conference must be all well-to-do sports sickos since they can either (1) afford to move to a new school district or (2) afford the fee to attend an out-of-district school—or perhaps some third option where they rent a studio apartment in the new district that they designate as their official residence while actually living in their old house. In any case, this seems like a lot of money, time, and effort to spend to get your athletically mediocre child marginally more playing time at the cost of all her friendships, as well as her last vestiges of love for you.
@Charterstone: Dune: Never mind that the kid may pull a Dorothy and refuse to sign up for a sports team at the new school because they don’t want to face their friends across the playing field. Although that could be the real plan all along by the saner parent, who has been trying to break their spouse and kid from the dream of mediocre playing skills yielding a world-famous sports career?
@TheDiva: On RMMD – ‘I hate to break it to you AugieDoggyDingDongDaddy but your book becoming a cultural phenomenon would be interesting and exciting, so you can forget that happening while you’re in this strip! In fact, why don’t you give up this charade of being worldly and modern, leave this Thai equivalent of P.F. Chang’s and go have some good ol’ greasy American food down at the diner or Motel!’
On JP – She’s upset because she knows that CIApril *will* abandon her yet again. As stupid as Neddy is, she’s probably manna from heaven for someone seeking some modicum of stability.
Mary thinks that all the secret planning and the associated emotional turmoil were justified by the resulting happiness. Mary embraces Bentham’s utilitarianism, if not Machiavellian “ends justify the means”. I guess this explains her surname. The pain and violations of norms are acceptable, because in the end it is all… Worth it!
Shoe: In the Shoe-niverse, is “chickenpox” considered a racist term? Do chicken rights activists make doomed attempts to puncture the social prejudice embedded in this name, or are they too busy with more basic issues like the open murder and consumption of their kind? Much to discuss.
Blondie: Dagwood’s not leaning forward with interest, it’s just how he has to watch TV that they’ve decided to take the non-Euclidean nightmare geometry of their living room to the next level. Now every piece of furniture is 90 degrees from every other piece. You can’t see the TV screen any more, but at least you can’t see your spouse either.
Today’s Shoe is a boomer comics, at most a Gen X comics. Children today would not marvel about the lack of computers, but the lack of smartphones and vertical videos. Having a childhood with a computer on a desk is a sign you should have regular medical check-ups
“He sure gets around!” Blondie thinks that Santa should be celibate, just like Saint Nicholas. Giving him a wife like Mrs Santa is enough to make him a slut!