Compressed speech
Originally published 30 June 2003

So many people wrote me after this ran, wanting to know what the heck Millie was saying in the last panel.

Apparently they believed it was important to understand that in order to get the joke. I don't think it is, but maybe this was my version of Gary Larson's famous "Cow Tools" cartoon--no one got the joke, and some people believed that figuring out just what it is cows do with the tools depicted must be essential to the joke, but Larson hadn't actually thought it through that far. He just thought cows using tools was funny.

Unlike Gary Larson, I actually do know what Millie is saying in the final panel--it's "don't worry about it," mashed down and somewhat corrupted. I don't think the joke depends on knowing that--in fact, I rather hope it doesn't. That's just a bit of trivia.

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