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Gil Thorp, 7/26/22

Wow, sorry, I guess because I’m an effete urban liberal I interpreted yesterday’s Gil Thorp scene as a bunch of public school employees enjoying an afternoon at a coffee shop, when in fact it’s a bunch of manly coaches pounding down hard liquor at a bar! The sort of bar where the bartenders will awkwardly flirt with you after you’ve been recently (?) abandoned (?) by your family, and also where you can just get your ass extremely kicked by the rowdy fellas from New Thayer.

Mary Worth, 7/26/22

OK, I know I’ve made it clear that I hate Jared very much and that by and large his simpering facial expressions send me into paroxysms of contempt, but I have to admit that the weird thing Jared’s doing with his mouth here in panel two is a wholly appropriate reaction to unexpectedly having to have lunch (and talk about your relationship problems) with Mary Worth.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/26/22

“Also, Hootin’ Holler’s tenuous connection to the economy of the outside world means that it’s just good sense to harvest whatever local calories we can! Store up fat for the winter now, paw!”

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Mary Worth, 7/24/22

I am currently reading The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which I highly recommend if you want a more-or-less accessible intro to not just the end of the universe but the current state of scientific consensus on big-picture cosmology stuff. One of the parts that I find hardest to get my head around is what it means to say “the universe is expanding,” which it is, and if I’m understanding things right this doesn’t just mean that individual stellar objects are continuing to move outward from the Big Bang origin point into the void, but that the fabric of spacetime itself is in some sense spreading out.

Weirdly, I might’ve just gotten a little insight into this from today’s Mary Worth. Throughout this Jared-Dawn horrorshow, there’s been some discourse on this blog as to whether Jared or Dawn has the greater claim to be the wronged party and/or history’s greatest monster. But only today — in which we learn that Jared can never truly commit to Jess by smooching her until his ex, whom he dumped, agrees to be friends with him, and this will become the central engine of the remainder of the drama here — did I realize that it’s actually the narrative fabric of the universe they inhabit itself that’s at fault here. This takes a real load off my mind, honestly! Jared and Dawn can no more stop sucking than distant galaxies can stop hurtling away from us into infinite space (which they probably can’t, since according to the book most people now no longer believe in the Big Crunch hypothesis).

Slylock Fox, 7/24/22

Ahh, isn’t this a pleasant rooftop scene! Everyone enjoying snacks and beverages, Slylock flirting the only way he knows how (by posing elementary logic puzzles, a little too eagerly), and … what’s this? Notorious sad drunk McGruff the Crime Dog, just sitting there silently watching the proceedings? Has he been invited to the gathering out of pity, or did he just stumble up to the rooftop for a weekend suicide attempt and decided to act casual about it?

Dennis the Menace, 7/24/22

I’m just gonna say it, Dennis: that isn’t a very good question at all. Do better next time.

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Mary Worth, 7/21/22

A lot of you commentors have interpreted my endless rage against Jared as indicating that I somehow don’t think Dawn is a bad girlfriend. Dawn is in fact a bad girlfriend! I just don’t mention it that much because the behavior in the strip that’s supposed to indicate that Dawn is a bad girlfriend is in fact bad behavior, whereas the behavior in the strip that’s supposed to indicate that Jared is a great guy is in face incredibly off-putting. Anyway, Dawn is getting the business from her friend Cathy, who’s telling Dawn what’s what in between enormous bites of salad. We’ve already established that this Cathy is at least the second Cathy Dawn’s been friends with, so maybe we’re about to get to the part where Dawn friend-dumps her and moves on to another Cathy who hopefully will never call her out on her bullshit, and the cycle can begin anew.

Daddy Daze, 7/21/22

Wow, it turns out that the Daddy Daze daddy’s goth pal is actually his next door neighbor. Which tracks, honestly? Can you imagine him maintaining a relationship with someone he doesn’t just run into accidentally all the time?