CSotD: Friday Funnies on Auto Play

Pajama Diaries sparks a high school memory, which is appropriate since what Jill is dealing with is a high school kid old enough to have a social life but not old enough to have her own car.

My GF and I had a standing date Friday night to watch a movie at her house, which fortunately was a large enough farmhouse that she could banish her folks and sibs to other parts of it.

But, since I didn’t have a drivers’ license, my dad would have to run me over there and then come back and get me at 11.

12 miles, each way. I said “farmhouse.”

BTW, we broke up because I was headed off for college and she didn’t want me to go. I knew she’d never leave our little town and I had itchy feet, so that was the end of that.

But she married a guy who taught English at our local school, so she got the kind of guy she wanted and got to stay where she wanted to live, too.

Smart girl.

 

Exactimundo, Red. Pick the one who is fun and wants to do the things you want to do.

You can work out the dating and marriage thing later. For now, focus on the Bettys and Mary Anns who make you happy, not the Veronicas and Gingers who aren’t fun to play with and surely wouldn’t be fun to live with.

 

I don’t know where that leaves Maeve, because I like her enough that I’d like her to be happy, but my experience is that needing to have every hair in place is a symptom of insecurity.

Which is to say that you can like a Ginger or a Veronica, or, for that matter, a Maeve, a whole lot and still not want to get tangled up in their issues.

This specific Between Friends strip is not from the past week but, rather, is a reasonable starting point for a brilliant arc in which Maeve does some serious examination of the toxic relationships her needs have brought her.

Sandra Bell Lundy has received kudos for examining Major Societal Issues like domestic abuse and breast cancer, but she deserves applause for working on this personal matter, which isn’t on any foundation’s grant list.

Go read the arc — I’ll wait.

 

Juxtaposition of the Week

I love it when a Juxtaposition presents itself together on one of my comics pages.

And I have to confess that I don’t know Nickelback. I got the joke in Dogs of C Kennel because everyone hates on Nickelback, just as they hate on Crocs and cargo pants and comfortable “mom jeans.”

Like the fellow in F Minus, they enjoy hating and they’re definitely volunteers: Given the fact that Top 40 Radio is dead and there’s no excuse not to have your own music lovingly curated on your phone or Alexa or wherever, there’s no earthly reason you would ever have to hear Nickelback.

Or Air Supply. Or Bobby Goldsboro. Or the Andrews Sisters. Whatever the cheesiest music of your demographic.

Unless it gives you pleasure.

Note that the F-Minus guy is creative enough to find his own targets of hate and not look to the group for guidance.

 

And then there’s this

I got a laff out of this Half Full, but it occurred to me — possibly because I’d just scrolled past that Juxtaposition — to wonder why everyone picks on CVS when there are other stores that also print out yards of receipts when you didn’t want any.

I’ve seen a few stores that ask if you want a receipt before they waste the paper. Some, like Staples and Best Buy, offer the option of an email receipt, while our local co-op simply prints one or doesn’t, depending on your preference.

It makes me wonder how much it costs to reprogram cash registers to offer the option, rather than waste money on miles of paper nobody wants.

But back to the question, why pick on CVS? And then a little bell rang in my head, so I went and had a look.

The folks in Wyoming might not get this gag, but everyone else will.

Which makes CVS an excellent choice, though K-Mart is equally generous with unnecessary paper and also pretty much everywhere.

Then again, knowing how CVS works doesn’t involve the level of shame as admitting you’re familiar with K-Mart.

It also occurs to me, by the way, that the megapharmacies like CVS and Rite Aid have destroyed what used to be a really solid career. You still have to know a lot to be a licensed pharmacist, but working for these corporate yahoos is pretty thankless.

It’s as if you were a good auto mechanic but the only jobs were at Jiffy Lube.

 

Speaking of sucky jobs, over at Retail, Cooper and Val honeymooned in Hawaii, and did not return to Grumbel’s willingly.

But it brought to mind a close high school buddy who I lost track of, except that I heard he’d had a very rough post-Vietnam landing back in the States.

(To bring the day full-circle, he did have a car in high school and gave me a ride every morning our senior year.)

So 33 years after graduation, I was in a Lowe’s about 150 miles from home and he walked past in the blue apron of an employee.

We talked awhile in the aisle and he told me of biker gangs and addiction and getting clean and working construction and owning his own homebuilding company and then deciding to hell with being an entrepreneur and just working 9-to-5 to pay the rent.

We promised to get together, but I went back later and they told me he was gone: He and his GF had vacationed in Florida and transferred to a Lowe’s down there.

I guess he and Coop have a different definition of what it’s like to be in hell, though I’d sure take Coop’s experience over Kenny’s.

 

Don’t Read This

Okay, you wouldn’t listen. Let’s see you un-read that Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

 

Drive on