CSotD: Breathless Laughter

This Buckets (AMS) is as close to the Washpo/LATimes thing as I’m getting today. As I wrote yesterday, I’m impressed that the Post has allowed so much pushback from staff, so it’s pretty clear that nobody in the front office feels they speak for the CEO.

OTOH, I’m somewhat confounded by all the calls not to cancel subscriptions because it will hurt the people who work there or whose comic strips run there. I understand it, of course, but it seems self-serving, and it reminds me of other times and other issues.

Back in the days when antiwar activists demonstrated against Dow Chemical, the company’s defense was that napalm was only a small percentage of their business, which seemed kind of lame, since it was also a good reason to stop making the stuff.

I’m a big believer in boycotts. I didn’t eat table grapes back when Cesar Chavez was organizing the farm workers. Granted, my own expenditures on grapes were pretty insignificant, but there were a whole bunch of people boycotting them and it had an impact.

But I’m probably the only person who isn’t Oglala and still boycotts Arizona Iced Tea for their plan to market “Crazy Horse Malt Liquor.” They not only dropped the idea but they’ve changed ownership a couple of times in the years since then, but I can still find other things to drink and I even know how to make iced tea myself if it comes to that.

And the Goya people say the old man at the head of the company is the only fascist there, but I buy Old El Paso and Herdez. I doubt my choice comes up at board meetings, but I really don’t care if it matters to them. It matters to me.

So subscribe or don’t subscribe, but I think it’s kinda cheap to praise people who resigned in protest and then keep your subscription so you can support the people who didn’t.

YMMV.

Here’s First Dog on the Moon to brighten things up. I’m nowhere near the ocean and it’s not the right season for swimming up here in the Podes, but I’m all in favor of taking a walk for even a bit more than half an hour.

As the Monkees or Taj Mahal or somebody said, take a giant step outside your mind.

Pearls Before Swine (AMS) explains why I try to avoid looking at my phone when I’m out walking the dog. I’m glued to my computer at home and I only carry the phone “just in case” because getting away is supposed to mean getting away.

“Just in case” is just in case I trip and break my leg, not just in case I want to ruin the moment.

Frazz (AMS) demonstrates why I don’t set my phone to beep when texts come in. Before I retired, my boss knew that if I didn’t answer an email soon, I was out with the dog and she should call me, but that level of availability reminded me of when Alexander Pope gave the Prince of Wales a puppy with a silver tag on its collar that read “I am His Majesty’s dog at Kew. Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”

And here Pooch Cafe (AMS) riffs on a classic Twilight Zone episode from 1962, which might be too esoteric a reference except that Twilight Zone is part of cultural history rather than mere trivia, and the cartoon punches a rather large hole in the concept.

As it happens, I was thinking of putting my cookbooks in the Little Free Library down the street because I invariably look up recipes online and compare two or three to come up with a plan rather than opening a book to see the One True Way of making something.

Juxtaposition of the Day

Arlo and Janis — AMS

Bizarro — King Features

I got a laff out of both of these comics, but it’s been an entire additional lifetime since I was in the commercially desirable 18-34 demographic.

The Heidi Game was in 1968, 56 years ago. The median age in the United States is 38, so I guess that giant whooshing sound was this strip going over nearly everyone’s head. Which doesn’t mean it was a bad gag, but it sure qualifies as an inside joke.

Bizarro is a little more uncertain. We had yoyos all over the house when I was a kid, and mostly the kind in the cartoon, though the butterfly ones didn’t tangle quite as quickly.

I can’t remember if my kids — who are around 50 now — had yoyos, but I do remember that in 1988 when Tommy Smothers started doing yoyo tricks on TV it seemed like an anachronism.

Again, no reason not to make jokes for an older crowd. We enjoy them. But it has occurred to me that I am no longer the Trivia King because trivia contests these days are about music and TV shows that my kids watched. Nobody’s gonna ask about Sky King or Little Peggy March.

Sic transit, baby.

I’m not old enough to identify with this Ian Boothby cartoon, but it’s history, not trivia. I’m against the Great Man School of History and more into the Great Movement School, but I think knowing that the Wright Brothers owned a bike shop is part of what makes history fun.

And teaching kids that there have always been grousers and complainers would make history a whole lot more engaging than having them memorize a list of trade goods from the Hanseatic League.

This Argyle Sweater (AMS) ran a few days after I mentioned eating garlic bread on a date. Italian restaurants were plentiful and cheap when I was in college and asking your date if she’d like to share an order of garlic bread was a good way to gauge her level of enthusiasm about the evening. Sharing garlic was a tacit agreement to share earthy breath later.

Though the example that came to mind was of an evening with a very lovely, intelligent, captivating young woman who agreed to share some garlic bread apparently because she’d already decided there was no way on earth our breath quality was going to become relevant.

We all wanted to be Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Mais, hélas, she left me breathless.