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Archive: Blondie

202

“You guys heard about this panopticon thing? You heard about this?”

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Blondie, 11/4/19

I was going to say that Dagwood, who is apparently willing to stick his tongue into some sort of measuring/scanning apparatus and have the details of his mouth biology stored indefinitely in the cloud in order to prove his “loyalty” to a restaurant and get few percent knocked off his bill, represents the ultimate version of the modern human, willing to trade away his privacy for pennies. But then it occurred to me that restaurants could just do this with facial recognition, which makes me assume that this is actually just some kind of sick fetish idea on Dagwood’s part.

Mary Worth, 11/4/19

I fully expect that I’m going to be bringing you my close analysis of Wilbur’s Drunken Double Date multiple times this week. Today, as we learn that Zak does not subscribe to the cult of the grind prevalent among so many tech founders and game industry execs, we should pause and appreciate Wilbur’s facial expression in panel two, which is a pretty good illustration of a very, very drunk guy trying and almost succeeding in holding it together.

Dustin, 11/4/19

One of the core bits of Dustin lore that I already hate myself for knowing is that Dustin is a temp who gets assigned to generic white-collar office jobs from which he almost immediately gets fired because he sucks at them, but somehow his temp agency keeps finding him more work. Anyway, it’s definitely out of character for him to suddenly be given a job in the skilled trades, and I’d like to believe that it represents some narrative shift in the strip, but I’m assuming the cartoonist saw the phrase “Quick Lube” and thought, “Ha ha, you know who wouldn’t be quick at lubing things? That incompetent millennial Dustin!” We should probably be glad the strip ended up like this and not about sex stuff.

The Lockhorns, 11/4/19

My favorite thing about this strip is that Leroy has turned away from his wife and is heading into the bar while she narrates her disdain for him to some passerby. “Wife making mouth noises, but no time to process them,” he thinks. “Daylight waning, along with it opportunities for day drinking.”

178

“If each and every strand of my combover is perfect, Iris will have to take me back!”

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Mary Worth, 10/29/19

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I am very excited to watch the total emotional meltdown our boy Wilbur is going to experience during his double date with Iris and her handsome young stud and, uh, some other lady who’s temporarily slipping his mind right now, probably she’s not very important. The biggest question that we’re going to need answered: when his brain breaks, what form will it take? Will the massive flood of negative feelings be directed outward, at Iris and Zak, leading to him getting kicked out of the restaurant at best and slapped with a restraining order at worst? Or will it all go inward, at himself, leaving his ex and her perfectly nice boyfriend to spend an evening awkwardly consoling him as he weeps loudly into his appetizer? (Estelle at this point will have excused herself to the bathroom, where she’ll escape out the window and flee to the nearby frontage road so she can summon an Uber.)

Blondie, 10/29/19

I guess the joke here is that the only thing that could make it worth Lou’s while to deal with job-killing government regulations is Dagwood’s insatiable appetite. But my initial interpretation, which I find much funnier, is that Dagwood is just now learning that for whatever reason in his town the health department subjects food trucks to much stricter scrutiny than restaurants, so when a food truck parks in front of his office, he’s excited to finally enjoy a lunch that won’t cause him terrible diarrhea.

Dustin, 10/29/19

“Autumn is here … it’s the season for apprehension and dread.”

“You’re thinking about Halloween?”

“No, I’m thinking about how watching the leaves wither and fall from the trees makes me realize that all life is ephemeral, about how winter is coming and how it feels colder in my bones every year as I age, about how I know that while spring comes around again every year, eventually it won’t come around for me. Uh, I mean, pumpkin spice, am I right? So basic! I’m definitely not haunted by visions of my own demise!”

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Josh gets personal

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Blondie, 10/11/19

A little something about me, folks: I have plantar fasciitis and various hip/lower/back/hamstring problems, which means that shoes that don’t work exactly right for me can cause me a lot of cumulative physical discomfort. Right now pretty much the only shoes I wear that aren’t dress shoes (and thank goodness I barely ever have to wear dress shoes) are these bad boys from Keen plus their sandal equivalent, both of which I own in multiple colors at any given time. And so while to my eyes Dagwood’s shoes look wildly uncomfortable, I respect the fact that he spotted the grey version of the brown shoes he always wears on sale and immediately snapped them up.

Family Circus, 10/11/19

Here’s another little something about me: I’m a huge baby about horror movies and thus almost never watch them, but I do like to read the plot descriptions of the really popular ones on Wikipedia, where, stripped of the filmmaking arts, they just come off as vaguely ridiculous. Anyway, based on the Wikipedia plot summary of 2018’s Hereditary (and, uh, spoilers ahead for a year-old film, I guess), Billy’s “trouble” is that he was supposed to be the human host for an ancient demon worshipped by a coven led by his grandmother, but the evil spirit was implanted in Jeffy instead, which quite honestly explains quite a lot.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/11/19

This is kind of Linda to say, but of course Buck already knew. They had already expressed deep intimacy the only way Funkyverse characters know how: by engaging in awful wordplay together.

Mary Worth, 10/11/19

“Look, Estelle, are you expecting emotional fulfillment from a heterosexual relationship with a man? You think I’m happy with Dr. Jeff? I barely even like Dr. Jeff. Now get out there and become Wilbur’s girlfriend, for the love of Christ.”