CSotD: Sunday Funnies for the Old Folks

My initial response to today’s Duplex (AMS) was to wonder just how old that movie is, and, when I looked it up, I found it was released March 28, 1963, making it 60 years old as of Tuesday. So perhaps Glenn McCoy is saluting its anniversary, but it still means that all but the most dedicated cinema buffs would have to be a step shy of 70 to recognize it.

That’s a niche audience, particularly since it was great and scary and amazing on the big screen in 1963 and not so much on VHS 20 years later, when I tried to show it to my sons and their friends and lost any of my Cool Dad credits, the special effects having become far less special in the interim.

It was mostly Tippi Hedren being chased around by shadow puppets. The boys were un-frightened and decidedly unimpressed.

There are, however, still things that horrify me, and one of them is getting in line behind a Coupon Queen, as seen in this Ben (MWAM). I’ve always liked Olivia, but she lost some ground here, first of all, for having forgotten her coupons. Most Coupon Queens manage to take up plenty of everybody’s time just sorting through their stack in the line, never mind coming up with it later.

And second for false economy: I rarely use coupons, because they are primarily geared towards getting you to buy something you weren’t going to, and no matter how much you save, you’ve spent more than you intended to, and more than you had to, since they seem to specialize in junk food.

Every once in awhile there’s a coupon for tomato sauce or something basic, but, for the most part, if you know how to cook, you’ll save by buying the unassembled ingredients.

Which, by the way, leads us to those boxes of food they’ll ship you, which contain everything you need to make a terrific meal. Which you can then serve on the IKEA table you also weren’t able to figure out how to assemble.

Anyway, I haven’t run into a lot of Coupon Queens since they put in self-check stations. Another triumph for automation: Even if they do go to one, they’re only tying up a single station, not the whole line.

I got several good laughs from a changing-times story arc in Betty (AMS), and this one got a special chuckle. The medical center here makes you listen to a whole list of things before they tell you what number to push if you want such-and-such, and part of it is their fax number, which always makes me wonder who uses those anymore?

Theodoric of York?

At one small paper where I was editor, I found that our clerk was getting the police and fire report each night by fax, and then keying it into the system. “Can’t they just email it to you as a file?” I asked, and so she asked, and indeed they could.

You don’t ask, you don’t get.

Switching to four legs (birds having two), The Other Coast (Creators) sent me back on a nostalgic trip to a house I rented in which the kitchen door opened to the garage, so I set up a ramp in the garage window and left the door open so the dogs could come and go at their ease.

This required Rhodesian ridgebacks, who have a good sense of boundaries, or at least mine always did. I’d come home for lunch and the dogs would be dozing in the sun, though, as in the cartoon, it took some training to let them know it was okay to leave the house.

If we had a dog stay over, he’d look at the rickety rabbit-wire fence outside and say, “Dude, there’s a hole right here!” but the ridgebacks would say, “Daddy wants us to stay in the yard.”

Other people’s dogs were a bad influence, but only as long as they were with us. Once they went home, order was restored.

By contrast, over in Pooch Cafe (AMS), we have Poo Poo running free. You don’t see a lot of dogs running free anymore. Reward or not, they’re generally viewed as dogs who need to be rounded up and returned.

In the Olden Days, we knew all the neighborhood dogs and you could say, “Butch! Go home!” and he’d turn right around and head back to his house. Or you could pick up a stick and have a game; the dogs were as happy to see you as to see their owners.

Those days are over. Besides, if a dog is out wandering around by himself, who’s gonna scoop his poop?

And don’t say Tippi Hedren: She’s got bigger poops to scoop these days.

Indeed it can’t, Dave Coverly. Just separate the dog from the ball, get in the car and drive away. You don’t even want to know.

A language note from Frazz (AMS): My kids came home from their mother’s farm in England talking about Wellies back in the late 80s. I’d never heard the term until then and I think, on this side of the Atlantic, it’s a bit pretentious. People who wear Wellies probably stand on queues instead of in line, and they may also live in flats. The worst would be if they had a pair of bespoke Wellies.

That would be downright twee.

Dunno about Alaskan Fishing Boots, but barn boots are pretty common around here and have to be left on the porch because they smell as if you’d been clumping around amongst the cows.

However, that’s subject to local usage: Youngest son went off to college and discovered that Carhartts were hip, which shocked him to the core, given that, where we lived, the Carhartts were usually left out on the porch along with the barn boots and for the same reason.

Galoshes, however, are quite different. They’re a specialized overboot, and you wear your regular shoes under them. As seen here, they have buckles, though they might also have a zipper, but, either way, when you take them off, your shoes stay and perhaps your socks as well.

I don’t know the last time I heard anybody say “galoshes,” but it was probably also the last time I heard anyone say “dungarees.”

As for “rubbers,” those are low-cut galoshes that fit over your shoes, but saying “rubbers” will get you arrested in the state of Florida.

So watch it.