Meanwhile, back on Earth…
I imagine Cayla looks at her husband at least once a day and mutters “Amazing…” Today she finds herself in awe of Les’ typing skill. Les explains that he enrolled in typing class in high school as a way to get close to Mary Sue Sweetwater. His scheme to impress Mary Sue by becoming an awesome typist backfired when he got himself promoted to “the advanced class”. Even Les’ failures are a result of him being just so good at everything! All’s well that ends well, though, as his keyboarding chops impress Cayla (chicks dig men who can type fast). Mary Sue, meanwhile, would later find herself on the receiving end of some classic Westview karma.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Not only do I continue to fantasize about Lisa, my sainted wife who died of cancer, but I also dug this big, blowsy named Mary Sue. By the way: Who are you, and how did you get in my house?”
That may very well be the stupidest idea ever expressed in this comic, and that’s saying something.
Cayla should be accustomed to Les and his fast “typing”. I bet he finishes his paragraph and she never gets the satisfaction of having him finish one of her paragraphs.
Les Moore: Master of the Mundane.
Is there supposed to be some cleverness in the fact that the writer fell for a Mary Sue? That could almost be clever if 1) Les were a teenage fan fic author and 2) it didn’t describe Batuik’s feelings for Lisa.
At first I though Cayla was responding to Les and his self-aggrandizing carpet of retconned lies with a terse “pure bunk”, thus setting the long and anxiously-awaited “murder-suicide” arc into motion. The I re-read it. And after the queasiness subsided I found myself wondering how Cayla had never witnessed her husband…an educator and (ahem) writer by trade…type before. She sure is easily impressed, too. But that’s already been very well established, has it not?
Mary Sue Sweetwater: the object of Les’ revolting sweaty high school geek fantasies who wisely avoided him back then only to become a morbidly obese admirer of his (as well as being a subtle reminder that Les pulls in WAY hotter ladies than that these days) many years later. Yes, I remember her. Hopefully the local firefighters and EMT’s will be able to remove her from the house in time for his next book-launch-signing-option or whatever.
all the women in funkytown seem to just lurk around the house standing behind husbands with lame setup lines for loser husbands
“Where did you learn to type so fast?”
This is such a stupid question to ask of a professional writer that I’m not surprised that Cayla would be asking. What also doesn’t surprise me is that Les goes for the woe-is-my-life self-pitying elaborate explanation rather than the obvious one:
“I’m a writer, and have been interested in writing all my life. The number of pages I’ve typed is somewhere in the five figures. That’s why I type so fast. You don’t really pick up on much, do you?”
@TFH: I humbly request a masthead change (even if just for one day): “Son of Stuck Bunky”. PLEEEAAASSE, we’ll be good, I promise.
Oh, and Cayla, for the last time, run.
TFH sez: look up!
Look at that startled reaction in the fourth panel, with the little motion lines.
“GAH! Who just spoke? Oh, it’s erm, uh…well, I forget her name but I’d better say something quick before she sees the kind of pr0n I’m downloading…”
Panel 2: linda, waht are u wearring…
Panel 3: “Where’d you learn to type so fast and why are you sitting here in the Creepy Blue Twilight? Turn on a light fer Chrissakes.”
Panel 4: “Eeek! Umm- uh, PEOPLE WERE MEAN TO ME IN HIGH SCHOOL, THAT’S HOW I LEARNED TO TYPE SO FAST WAHHH BOO HOO!”
Les: “Where did I learn to type so fast? Well, like all other behaviors in my life, it was caused by my obsessive hatred of all those who I feel unjustly rejected me. Just as a college professor DARING to fail one of my papers caused me to center my entire existence around proving I was a better writer than him, my typing skills were induced by my intense sexual desire for a girl who DARED to not make her favors available to me.”
Cayla: (backs away slowly)
Les: “…..yesssss….everyone who ever wronged me will look on what they wrought….look upon me and DESPAIR….”
Crayola: “Poor honkey.”
Goatee: “Uh, WHAT???!!!”
Crayola: “Um, Bunky. Poor Bunky.”
Funky and Bunky? Yeah, whatever.
I hadn’t seen the original Mary Sue Comes Back as a Fat Blob strip, but I was not the least bit surprised to see she had “let herself go,” just like all the other women from back in the day. I’m sure BatSuck fantasizes that all the girls (or guys??) he pined for in high school are all fat, bald blobs now. Sour grapes. GLAD they had nothing to do with him.
Amazing how characters who have known each other a long time are always just finding out things that should have come up a long time ago.
Crayola: “So what are you doing, clacking away on that doohickey over there?”
Goatee Boy: “I’m writing a new book. It’s called ‘Life Still Sucks Without Lisa.’ It will be a best seller, and fans will line up out the door at my book signings.”
Crayola: “Say what, honkey… uuhh Bunky?”
Goatee Boy: “Yes. I’m a writer. This is called writing.”
Crayola: “Aren’t you the teacher everybody hates, who works part time at the pizza joint?”
Goatee Boy: “Yes, but I’m also a famous, best selling author with a Hollywood screenplay deal.”
Crayola: “Dayum! I didn’t know that! So why you workin’ part time at a pizza joint ?”
(Goatee Boy angrily slams laptop shut and waddles off.)
Stay Bunky, TFH. You’re awesome.
“All work and no play makes Les a dull boy.”
“Bunky”….lol. It sure beats “Spanky”, at least. The whole idea that women cannot resist pinning cutesy little pet names upon Beardo makes me sick beyond words.
“Type fast? You know, I wrote that John Darling book under the crushing gaze of Lisa, Lady of the Lash. Every day, Lisa and that damnable whip, a regular cat-o’-nine-tails would wail mercilessly on my naked back, urging me to type faster, ever faster. I might as well have been picking crops in a field for a cruel overseer. I felt like a common slav…oh, sorry never mind…Anyway, in the main, I wanted to kil…on, sorry, never mind…by the way, do I know you?”
Ladies…when you catch your husband watching porn…just move along and don’t say a word. It will save us the effort of coming up with lame-ass excuses like the one Les has unleashed on Cayla.
“So Les, everyone that you loved either turns up dead or morbidly obese. Why is that?”
Sure, it is TYPING that causes Les’s carpal tunnel
Wait, somehow despite reading the post this morning, I didn’t know Mary Sue was a pre-established character. So he doesn’t realize how fitting it is that his self-insert is pining away for a bland Mary Sue.
Also, middle aged women, you saw that comic! Drop that weight right now! You’re making the Great Goatee’d One gape in shallow, self-absorbed terror. The only women who approach him should be sexy and youthful!
“SPANKY???” Wait, isn’t that what Dead Lisa called Goatee Prick? Yuck. Do I even want to know why?? Probably not. MONKEY Spank, more like it. I think any pet name for this guy would be gross.
And who he calls people “Kiddo,” it makes my skin crawl.
And WHEN he calls people “Kiddo”… Sorry. Effin autocorrect.
I am in no way astonished that this author conflates writing and typing.