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Blondie, 7/18/26

Blondie likes to make extremely on-the-nose jokes about obscure holidays. But they usually show up on the day itself, and National Ice Cream Day falls on a Sunday, of course. Maybe part of the joke is that Dagwood just can’t wait? I mean, look at the way he’s eyeing his wife’s dessert before he’s even finished his own.

Between Friends, 7/18/26

Big news in Between Friends: Maeve is getting married! Again! To her cheating, lying, emotionally manipulative, marginally employed snake of an ex-husband! If second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, second marriage to this guy is how experience gets its revenge.

Heathcliff, 7/18/26

By car, scooter, elephant, cannon, or [squints] fish-guided bubblegum balloon—a cat’s gotta travel. Bro, man. Bro indeed.

Luann, 7/18/26

After months of agonizing “trying,” Toni Daytona-DeGroot is at last pregnant. “Thank God,” she exclaims, “I can finally stop having sex with Brad.”

Hey there! I’m filling in for Josh through Sunday the 26^th. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you have any trouble with the site, your subscription, emails, or Patreon. Enjoy!

—Uncle Lumpy

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Blondie, 7/12/26

Back in early 2024, Dithers had to regretfully report that DithersCo wasn’t using AI tools to boost productivity, with his employees mostly using their computers to play dumb and possibly scammy games on Facebook. In the subsequent months, it appears that the company has adopted AI — but, sadly, primarily as an automated toady for the boss, who has become the latest CEO to succumb to AI psychosis. Ironically, Dagwood and his coworkers are immune, since they refuse to engage with their devices on any level deeper than “Renegade-Rhino-Rummy.”

Zits, 7/12/26

I hadn’t mentioned it here, but earlier this year Zits went into reruns on weekdays and is now only doing new strips on Sundays. But that doesn’t mean the strip is shying away from storylines relevant to today’s teens, including real dark ones like “Jeremy gets dumped for a computer.”

Mary Worth, 7/12/26

Man, I didn’t think you could beat “Wilbur Weston thinks I’m a druggie loser so I might as well do drugs” for sheer patheticness, but then today Mary Worth hit us with “I’m going to flush these perfectly good drugs that probably cost me a week’s worth of pay from my minimum wage job down the toilet so I can live up to the version of me that Dawn Weston believes in,” respect. It’s amazing to think about how much more embarrassing this is than if he had just put “local bald guy thinks im losser should i do drugs yes or no” into ChatGPT or Yahoo! Answers or whatever.

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Daddy Daze, 7/7/26

One of my favorite aspects of The Shining, which is one of my favorite all-time movies, is that for most of the movie’s runtime it’s not clear whether the evil hotel ghosts are real or creations of Jack Nicholson’s increasingly deranged mind, until a point towards the end when they unlock the pantry where Shelley Duvall has managed to trap him. My experience with Daddy Daze is informed by a similar narrative tension: Is the Daddy Daze baby really communicating something with his “ba”s that only the Daddy Daze daddy can understand? Or is the Daddy Daze daddy merely projecting his own thoughts and concerns onto incoherent babble, possibly knowingly and possibly delusionally? Today, the Daddy Daze baby’s whimsical antics seem to have produced a real physical object, which implies that the Daddy Daze daddy isn’t so much mad as he is living in a mad universe.

Blondie, 7/7/26

Real joshreads dot com heads know that I enjoy what Blondie has to tell us about how old people are navigating the modern age. Remember when there only used to be three TV channels, and the weather gal on every channel told you it was the same temperature? Now there’s a million channels plus apps on your phone and what not, and everyone is talking about “Real Feel,” which is different from just the regular old temperature in some way that’s hard to understand. How’s a person supposed to stay tethered to actual, physical reality in this kind of information environment? I guess you should probably just go with what your boss says, right? He must know what he’s talking about, that’s why he’s the boss.

Dennis the Menace, 7/7/26

Damn, Dennis, it seems like your notorious antisocial behavior is starting to have an impact on your personal life! I guess the person you’re menacing the most is … yourself.