Bob Eckstein starts us off today with a cartoon that is only “bathroom humor” by implication, but, then, if you don’t know the expression he’s alluding to, you won’t get the joke.
I laughed because I tend to lump podcasts and videos into the category of things I don’t much follow. I like to read, but my ADD makes it almost impossible for me to track audio books, podcasts and videos, which is not such a good thing in a world in which I guess nobody likes to read and non-textual media are taking over.
I listen to Bulwark podcasts, but I do it by downloading them and listening to them in pieces as I take the dog to and from the park, a drive of about 10 minutes that mirrors my audio attention span. This is also why I can listen to NPR’s news shows or watch Nicolle Wallace and Katy Tur — they switch topics at about the rate I was going to lose focus anyway.
This should make TikTok perfect for me, but, while it’s good on brevity it seems a little light on depth. Seeing that TikTok is becoming a major news source for people depresses me.
As Joy of Tech notes, the growing influence of TikTok is being echoed throughout the Intertubes and will surely extend to all industries. Including bathrooms.
But wait! There’s hope! Since Joy of Tech posted this cartoon, Instagram has repented its evil copycat ways and is reversing its move to be just like TikTok.
And who do we have to thank for this? Newton Minow? Marshall McLuhan? Vance Packard?
No, it is the manipulators of media, not its critics, who have spurred this reform:
Money talks, wisdom walks, but I don’t turn down help, even from people I haven’t much admired. This doesn’t mean that I think Kylie and her erstwhile kinfolk are going to set us all to wandering the forests reading books like the underground rebels in Fahrenheit 451.
For that matter, it’s hardly in their interest to persuade Mildred Montag to switch off her interactive soap operas and get a life.
But I’ll take what I can get.
As Rhymes With Orange (KFS) warns us, it’s probably too late anyway.
I’m not against paywalls, though there are only so many things I can afford to subscribe to and I’d like to see some micropayment system. But I strongly object to sites that offer to let you read their stuff if you’ll simply give them your email. To quote the scriptures
Waitress: Well, there’s spam egg sausage and spam, that’s not got much spam in it.
Wife: I don’t want ANY spam!
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m becoming increasingly reluctant to get into debates with people who can’t tell form from function or how something is phrased from what it means, though, yes, it’s hard to resist.
There are times when a grammatical error is so foolish that, while it does change the meaning, you’d have to be as big a nitwit as the editor who let it through in order to mistake what it is intended to say.
In this case, if you read just a little into the story, you quickly found that the boss had purchased tickets for EACH of his employees, with the important proviso that they would share the booty if any of the tickets proved a winner.
Which apparently didn’t happen, but that prompts an old argument I made more than 30 years ago, and that everyone has made since except, of course, for the enumerates who keep lotteries in business.
In any case, while I reserve my right to wince when people can’t tell the difference between “may have” and “might have,” I’m hardly enough of a dork to base a serious argument on the error.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Getting back to the bathroom, the term “regularity” has been used in advertising for decades, but I don’t recall the topic coming up on the funny pages, which makes having it appear twice in the same day striking.
As Baldwin suggests, it’s not usually what we mean when we call someone a “regular guy,” and, as Ben says, fretting over such things is an old person’s way of thinking, though as our digestive systems age, regularity really does become an issue.
Gotta admit, I like the way Olivia tiptoes, making it unclear whether she’s talking about bedtimes or, y’know, that other thing that isn’t often like “a breath of fresh air” but should be neither surprising or spur of the moment. There’s some excellent wordplay in those four panels.
If nothing else, it means that, should some outraged reader phone the paper with an objection, the editor can always accuse them of having a dirty mind.
And here’s a sign of the times, from Monty (AMS), as young Montague — and his butler — are spending the summer at camp.
When I was at Camp Lord O’ The Flies, ticks were not yet a concern but regularity was an official obsession, and counselors were required to ask campers each morning if they had had a BM and when, the ideal being twice a day and the answers being recorded on a sheet to be turned in every week.
It was also the rule — far more honored in the breach — that each camper do a naked pirouette each morning to be checked for bumps, bruises and scratches, though not, in those days, ticks.
Plus we had a weekly “Soap Bath Day” on which campers headed for the waterfront to make some attempt to clean up. I don’t know what the soap did to the lake, but just having the kids in there regularly was probably pollution enough.
And Jen Sorensen hits another of my perhaps eccentric points, which is that I’d rather deal with real smells, even the less charming ones, than with laboratory improvements.
Some people are genuinely allergic to this ghastly stink-pretty, but, as she notes in that second panel, others are insensitive to it on several levels.
Me, I’m such a sensitive guy that I even have a relevant song to close out on today:
I fear the innumerate are too plentiful to count.
By the way, the last suggestion in Joy of Tech should be feasible, although probably not on a profitable basis.
Well if you’re going to mention regularity, I’m going to share a limerick I wrote. The first line is no longer accurate, but it scans.
My bladder is sixty years old.
It hates both the heat and the cold.
And my doctor suspects
Polyuria’s next,
Which is not peeing parrots, I’m told.
Re: today’s musical selection, if you haven’t seen the documentary “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” you must. I believe it’s on Netflix. I thought it started out kind of scattered, but focused into a loving deep dive into industrial musicals like “In My Bathroom” and one man’s obsession to find them all. And I shit you not (ordinarily I’d find some other word choice, but with today’s topic it seems right), a modern rendition of “In My Bathroom” by the woman who originally sang it will bring a tear to your eye.
Scented cat litter is obviously not designed to draw in a cat.