CSotD: Wicked Funny

If I’m going to use a New England-based Halloween pun in the headline, I should start with a New England-based comic, so here’s Wallace the Brave (AMS)‘s landscape of Snug Harbor, RI, to which I would add that social media has been full of wet blanket discussions of what candy is no good, but the kids have a variety of favorites, demonstrating that tastes vary and nobody needs to share your bad trip.

Though I note that there are three lollipops featured but none with twine handles, perhaps because the Saf-T-Pop people weren’t able to get it together this year. There are supposed to be times when supply and demand even out, but this seems suboptimal.

Will Henry will be hosting a launch party for his latest collection Sunday, with cake and signing of books, a scant half hour from Providence where the Rhode Island Comic Con is taking place.

Jonesy offers a less idyllic view of the holiday, and I laughed but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of tricks in the wake of trick-or-treat.

Used to be that driving around the next morning revealed a hellscape of toilet paper and smashed pumpkins and I suppose there are still places where that’s true, but it seems between school events and trunk events and suchlike that actual trick-or-treating mostly involves very young children in the early evening.

Though even in the olden days, most of the houses that got vandalized for not handing out treats were neighborhood grumps who had antagonized the kids well before October. Halloween was just an excuse for payback.

Bizarro (KFS) wins Costume of the Year, demonstrating that you don’t have to be elaborate, you just have to be clever. The gag evokes a sort of “Well, of course!” laughing response, coupled with a bit of jealousy that you didn’t think of it yourself.

The best costumes generally do.

Though Mike Luckovich suggests a truly horrifying costume, which is so repulsive as to count as a trick even before the little monster solicits a treat.

Too Much Coffee Man (AMS) suggests that, even if you shut off your porch light and just watch television, there are plenty of monsters out there. The scary part here being that way too many people are indeed thinking those things.

Enough politics, however. Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints, which used to outpace Ash Wednesday for the number of hungover people in the pews. Perhaps it should still.

Juxtaposition of the Holiday

Andertoons — AMS

Loose Parts — AMS

A bit of synchronicity in kitchen appliance humor, to which I would add that I saw a lot more gags about witches eating children this year, which is odd since I mostly associate that with Hansel and Gretel, while the classic Macbeth caldron is only for making potions, not a food prep device.

Mark Anderson had a thing for appliance humor this year, having dropped this more Thane-of-Cawdor-based gag two days earlier, creating something of a Juxtaposition of Hisownself.

All of which forced me to think about it and realize that the giant caldron, while an important bit of stagecraft for the Scottish Play, is probably illogical for the making of potions, since you want a small, concentrated dose to slip into the vessel with the pestle.

Or not. I keep mixing them up.

Jonesy returns with a reminder of who else appears on your doorstep this time of year, as it starts to get cold outside and the mice get tired of dining al fresco.

Which makes autumn a lovely chance for cats to put up a rejoinder to all the gags about how ungrateful and useless they are as pets. Or else to prove that the gags have them pegged right.

In any case, if you notice caraway seeds on your kitchen counter, that’s not what they are.

And here’s another gag about noxious pests, from Pearls Before Swine (AMS).

Back in the Good Old Days, there arose an add-on that stored your passwords so you didn’t have to remember them, but then someone pointed out that putting all your passwords online was a serious compromise of security. It still exists, but I don’t know anyone who uses it.

Now, however, I get notes from Microsoft every few weeks, begging me to finish “setting up my computer” by which they mean handing over more and more of my personal information to their tender mercies.

And I’m reading that we’re all gonna give up passwords in favor of a single code which will be so much easier, by which they mean easier for me but I can’t help but think how much easier it will be for anyone who gets hold of it. Plus it assumes you trust the Cloud.

I’ll admit I may have that wrong, but what I know I have right is precisely what Rat is trying to reject, which is getting pinged any time anyone anywhere says anything that might tangentially include me.

Last Sunday, I took a drive out to the coast and, about an hour out of town, realized I’d forgotten my phone.

It was wonderful.

Dark Side of the Horse (AMS) drops this strip just as I have been scratching my head over ads for a new phone that fakes your photos, not just sharpening or adjusting lighting but apparently cloning better expressions from one shot into another.

I’ve long hated people who post filtered photos of improbable landscapes, since seeking out the real thing is so much more rewarding. But I’m ambivalent about cloning the best parts of various shots into a single pic, as long as it’s just being used for faking your personal shots of friends and family.

But, of course, it won’t be.

Among the people like grocery checkers, bank tellers and pump jockeys who are losing their jobs to do-it-yourself technology, you can count news photographers, now that reporters are expected to shoot their own pics, often with their own phones.

Self-appointed, self-certified “journalists” are flooding the Intertubes with phony videos and doctored photos.

Sigh. Lies and hype and propaganda used to at least take a little skill.

(I suppose it would be possible to re-edit this, tightening up the focus and fixing the color, but it would kinda go against the point.)