CSotD: Random thoughts on a Tuesday morning

(Or Wednesday. Whatever. I’m retired; I don’t have to know that stuff anymore.)

Well, then, we’re making progress!

This sequence in Pros and Cons (KFS) cracked me up in large part because I only dipped a toe into therapy during our divorce, and that had more to do with setting up visitation and so forth. Which means I came in with lowered expectations and anything that proceeded was a bonus.

So while the first strip above cracks me up, the second is more reassuring as the fellow lets the hot air out.

And speaking of unrealistic expectations, Barney & Clyde (Counterpoint) doesn’t mention either fruits or vegetables, but if you watch daytime TV at all, you’ve seen some awfully confident experts make some awfully confident claims about supplements.

But they’re also awfully vague. I already eat plenty of fruits and vegetables but I don’t eat a lot of jellyfish and that’s likely my problem, judging by TV health experts.

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Dave Granlund)

(Jonesy)

I’m not sure Granlund recognizes the connection between computer literacy and certain related career fields, but young people who spend a lot of time playing on computers are indeed setting themselves up for success in certain areas, though I’m also not sure anyone still plays those games on arcades anymore.

Jonesy is more realistic, recruiting them and then letting them train in a familiar setting.

Of course, at some point they have to learn to sit up and there is a sense that people who grew up using computers in their bedrooms and then spent the pandemic Zooming instead of going to the office have some learning to do.

But Agarwal and Baker also suggest that having learned ChatGPT shortcuts may put them at a different sort of disadvantage, although submitting a 43-page resume might fall under the category of “baffling them with bullshit.”

However, I read an article the other day about workplace rules nobody tells you, but one it didn’t list is this: The boss doesn’t read.

Various job sites will warn you to keep your resume to two pages, but once you get into a job, I strongly recommend keeping everything to a single paragraph, preferably a paragraph composed of one sentence.

One of the early tell-all books about the Trump White House said they tried to reduce any papers they gave him to the shortest form possible, and to work his name into it in order to hold his attention.

I’d already learned that one.

Unintentional Philosophy Department

I am 100% sure Mike Baldwin didn’t intend anything more than a visual joke in this Cornered (AMS), but I appreciate that it is the older priest who uses only a single rod and line.

Chuang-Tzu famously writes of a butcher who, as a young man, sharpened his knives often, but, with time and experience, sharpened them rarely, because he now cut meat without striking bone.

Similarly, the old priest could argue that, with time and experience, he only needs one line.

Speaking of fishing and philosophy, F Minus (AMS) brings up a point that I have never quite figured out.

It was once a common rule, when young boys got their first BB guns, to teach them that you don’t shoot animals just for fun, and once in awhile you heard of a kid forced to cook and eat some little beastie he had killed, in order to teach him the lesson.

Similarly, we threw fish back because they weren’t yet big enough. It was both the law and good common sense. Larger fish were “keepers” and destined for the dinner table.

I’ve never understood catch-and-release. It feels like rather than taking the chance to be a part of the ecosystem — the “Circle of Life” — you’re putting yourself above it, dispensing your godlike mercy.

I suppose real fish learn that getting a torn mouth and the hell scared out of them is a normal, recurring event in life.

But I’m more like the fish in the cartoon: It doesn’t make sense to me.

However, I’m completely in synch with this Bliss (Tribune), because our dogs often step into the cool waters of the Connecticut River and pause to relieve themselves before resuming play, and it always reminds me of a time when a security camera caught some guy taking a whiz in a reservoir — I think it was Chicago — and so they drained the whole thing at a cost of five figures.

Which in turn reminds me of WC Fields’ explanation of why he never drank water, which is that fish **** in it. They don’t, by the way, but they might as well, since the females lay eggs in nests in the gravel and the males swim over them and fertilize them and, yes, it’s in your drinking water with a whole lot of other stuff, most of which you would never detect and which certainly wouldn’t harm you but which is neutralized in the purification process anyway.

I was in Oakland once and saw signs on the beach requiring diapers on little kids if they swam in the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know how many municipalities still discharge at least their storm drainage if not their untreated waste water into the Pacific, but I’m pretty sure you’d need an army of two year olds to come close to the damage.

But I like the mental image of fish climbing out of the water in Indonesia because an undiapered kid let loose in California.

While on a related topic, Anne and God wonders about this, and so now I do, too.

I understand stockpiling bread and drinking water, certainly. Okay, bread certainly and drinking water if you are on a well or otherwise electricity-dependent for your water. This far upstream, our drinking water supply remains safe and available.

But I’m with Anne on the toilet paper thing. After the initial panic has subsided, you should be okay.

Unless you’re reading on a desktop, I can’t possibly do justice to Sage Stossel’s extensive discussion of bathrooms and classified documents and 95 theses, but this link will take you to her page and presumably a larger version.

I find most cartoonists who do extended pieces run out of material before they run out of space, but Stossel maintains focus throughout, and offers some fun thoughts along with a little actual history and philosophy. If you can’t see it here, go visit it there.

And as a bonus, she provides an opening for one of my favorite musical selections!