CSotD: Rirez

Nous sommes ici, at the AAEC and ACC Convention in Montreal, and I’m gradually re-learning to shift from English to French and back again as well as recalling that once you find the place you’re looking for and then find a place to park, you have forgotten how to get where you were going.

Fortunately, we’ll have buses the rest of the time.

Things began last night with a small get-together, a few speeches and a tribute to missing members Ed Hall and Pascal Élie and will continue today with a full schedule which I plan to cover.

Meanwhile, there are still a lot of VP Debate cartoons flowing in, but I’m going with humor pieces instead:

If timing is everything in comedy, Garey McKee couldn’t have done better with this Batch Rejection, because it’s good I was driving here instead of needing to catch a plane.

Yesterday as I signed off from posting CSotD, my computer totally crashed and I had to reset the whole thing, which took about two hours and, while it saved my personal files, wiped everything else — email, social media and whathaveyou — so that I have to re-sign into everything.

And through it all, Microsoft is hoping I’ll use the occasion to become their Best Friend Ever. Edge is only the edge and I live in constant fear of the whole fam damily.

Meanwhile — editorial opinion — I’m unclear on the Google monopoly hooha, but between AI and the search engines launched by the social networks, I’m willing to withdraw my comments about Bing producing the worst search results on the Intertubes.

If you want to find out what nincompoops think, they’ve collected, collated and ranked it for you!

As long as I’m in glowering mode, Frazz (AMS) hit close enough to the bone. We have one Starbucks and another under construction, but I don’t go by either very often. I do, however, go past a Dunkin Donuts and it’s much the same thing with less hoop-de-doo, and often a long, long line of cars.

I don’t get it. Coffee is incredibly easy to make at home, and much less expensive, while donuts are donuts. I want to believe all these people are the ones whose turn it is to get the donuts for the office, because why else would they sit there in line?

And when, in a month, they’re lined up to vote, I’m gonna try to wipe this image from my mind and assume that they’ve all studied the issues and are deeply committed and suchlike.

Okay, here’s another dyspeptic gripe: The Other Coast (Creators) is normally very tuned-in to the animal world, and I am always happy to see cartoonists push canine adoption, but gimme a break.

There are desperate shelters that ask less than this, and should be avoided, but the bulk of adoption agencies seem to go too far the other direction. I’ve had people say it’s easier to adopt a kid than a dog, which is an exaggeration I hope for the kids’ sakes.

Still, many canine adoption agencies not only insist on fenced yards — not going to the dog park twice a day like I do — but require home inspections and long, involved forms and providing multiple references.

For people looking for a dog, the search is sometimes less for the perfect pup than for an agency that will let you have one.

Some sensible compromise is called for.

I’ll spare you the rest of a rant that could be a book.

Ellis Rosen touches off another potential rant, and this one is twin-mounted.

My ADHD makes podcasts less than ideal. I’d rather read — perhaps skim — a transcript than have to sit still listening to people talk. True in classrooms, true in churches, true in speeches. It’s why I like NPR: Most stuff is delivered in bite-sized chunks, not full hour harangues.

The second element in my rant is that, having worked in radio and TV and done a fair amount of public speaking plus editing the written word, if I’m going to listen to you, I’d like you to get to the goddam point.

I’d sooner wait in line for a donut and a cup of mediocre coffee than sit there listening to you giggle and talk about your weekend and make inside jokes.

Most 45 minute podcasts could be 30.

The others could be 15.

Dagnabbit.

And yet, Lynn Hsu, as old and cranky as I am, I have long since abandoned two spaces after a period, so I got a good laff out of this one.

I put away my typewriter more than 40 years ago, and I threw it away nearly 30 years ago, having realized I no longer had to drag it out to fill in forms for anyone.

I do maintain a newspaper writer’s typesetter style of putting punctuation marks inside, not after, quotation marks. And, despite howls from the hipsters, I end sentences, even on-line, with a period or similar indicator.

As for the Oxford comma, I use it when it’s needed and skip it when it’s not. The point of writing is to communicate, not to Follow The Rules.

BTW, “dagnabbit” is one word.

Didn’t laugh at this Pearls Before Swine (AMS) because it’s not funny. Some cartoons are supposed to make you laugh, some are supposed to make you sigh and nod your head.

When it all began to collapse, when companies quit their pensions and then dumped their 401k’s and, for that matter, when I realized what writers make in this world, my good old Stoic response was “Well, we’re all gonna have to think of something.”

Which once again brings back to mind this Between Friends (KFS) from 2006:

My mom just turned 100. I’m hoping my luck is better.

But not all aging is bad. Arlo & Janis (AMS) has always reflected the generation its names suggest, and women going gray is part of that cohort. Janis is on board.

Arlo, being blonde, may not be going gray himself, though even blonde guys start to show a little snow amid the straw. But there’s nothing sillier than a gray-haired guy with an obviously same-age wife whose hair is dyed Deep Denial Brown.

Forget those Madison Avenue BS artists: Embrace the true meaning of “I’m worth it,”