CSotD: I’m Your Comic Weekly Man!
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If you’re old enough to remember The Comic Weekly Man, you’re also old enough to make the connection between Big Ben Bolt (KFS)‘s current opponent in the 1963 Vintage Sunday arc, Chief Thunderhand, and his very close namesake, Chief Thunderthud.
I don’t know why it didn’t hit me until today, but, once it did, Cowabunga! Or, to be more historically accurate, Kowabonga!
Mind you, my memory of Indians on the show are chiefly of Princess Summerfall Winterspring, played by Judy Tyler. Neither Indian was played with any sensitivity, and Chief Thunderhand carries on that tradition, but that’s who we were and often who we still are.
For all the attention political cartoonists have given the horrors of the residential schools, both in Canada and in the US, and their longtime criticism of racial mascots, the funny pages are still full of people sending smoke signals and suchlike.
A fellow from Blue Corn Comics used to pop up on the rec.arts.comics.strips newsgroup to object to these stereotypes, but I haven’t heard from him on Facebook or Twitter.
Anyway, what I was wondering this morning was if John Cullen Murphy was winking at the Howdy Doody fanbase with this name or if it was mere coincidence.
Juxtaposition of the Dogs
Here’s a bit of funny/not funny. At a dog park I used to go to, someone had an in with a local tennis club and would periodically dump about two dozen worn balls into the place, which spared people from having to bring their own. It never benefited me, since my ridgeback would chase a rolling ball but lose interest when it stopped. He’d bring it back once out of politeness, but, after that, his philosophy seemed to be that, if I wanted it, I should oughta hang onto it.
Where we go now, people do BYOTB, and I have to keep them away from my current pup, since, like the dogs in Rubes, she has no intention of returning a ball, plus she can skin and split a tennis ball in about two minutes. And does.
Dogs of C Kennel isn’t so funny, however. People who use the park as a driving range are rude enough just for appropriating so much space for themselves, but the balls they leave behind are small enough to be swallowed but too large to pass through, potentially triggering a fatal blockage.
I knew a fellow whose husky swallowed one, and it cost him $4,000 to retrieve it.
At which point I feel I should pass along today’s Argyle Sweater (AMS) to remind you that I don’t take everything seriously and, in fact, that I laugh at stupid puns.
Matt Davies steps over from the political page to drop a current events chuckle. Obviously, the economy is political, though it verges on Q-Anon conspiracy to think that Joe Biden can flip the entire world economy off and on at will, using a Jewish Space Laser.
But the old Bill Clinton advice, “It’s the economy, stupid” is more germane than ever at the moment, and Davies touches on a sore spot for those of us who have retired and are trying to live on what seemed like a decent nest egg until the markets collapsed.
I see people praising various streaming shows online and it does arouse my curiosity, but what also arouses my curiosity is how much you’d end up spending a month if you subscribed to all these services.
One of the ways people get a grip on their spending is to write down everything in a notebook — that cup of coffee, that bottle of wine, that candy bar — so they can see how it all adds up. The same thing goes for being online, not just for all those streaming services but for news sites as well.
It does add up, and I don’t mind being nickel-and-dimed to death, but I resent being $9.99-a-monthed to death.
And Real Life Adventures (AMS) sums things up nicely, about 48 hours after I went ahead and booked flights for October’s CXC/AAEC doubleheader in Columbus.
The 2020 AAEC Convention in Ottawa was canceled and the 2021 took place on Zoom, and so it will be nice to go see everyone, but the price of gas is such that it’s cheaper to fly than to drive.
Not sure that counts as normal.
Juxtaposition of Arlo & Janis
I can still pay my bills, but, as in this Arlo & Janis (AMS), I don’t see many on paper, or, at least, not many I have to respond to on paper.
I write a monthly check to my landlord, but, beyond that, I don’t know that I write more than a half dozen checks in a year, and, if you want to get paid on time, offer me an online option. Actually writing a check, finding and addressing an envelope — you ought to be paying me for all that effort.
Stamps I’ve got. I bought a roll of Forevers right before I retired and I suspect I’ll have enough left over at the end that they’ll be able to use them to mail my ashes back home.
Meanwhile, Janis may not be dedicated to online billing, but she’s way overinvested in online meteorology.
As Arlo suggests, complaining about weather forecasts is our national sport, and the notion that you can reduce it to the precision these silly apps claim certainly doesn’t help matters.
I’ve lived in places with definite geographic/geologic weather breaks, and TV meteorologists are usually cautious in saying, “If it does this, then we’ll get that, but if it does that, then we’ll get this.” Out west, it was the Albuquerque Lows that might break one way or t’other, and here in the East, it’s the Nor’Easters that either dump a load or wander harmlessly out to sea.
Problem is, nobody pays attention to the explanation: They just look up when the graphic lays out the week to come, without having heard a word about the variables. Our TV guy even has a tone that plays before the graphic, which is more polite than shouting “Hey! Wake up!”
Anyway, giving these people “precise” apps was just cruel.
Though not as cruel as planting this weather-related earworm:
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