CSotD: Monday Merriment (Closet Cleanout)
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I’ve still got an oversupply of funny stuff, so, since I’d just as soon not sink into despair this early in the week, this Paul Noth piece is as political as I’m going to get today. I’ll simply add that, if they cut off everybody’s head, there’d be nobody left to build cathedrals and fight Crusades.
However, society needs to make sure those who cooperate never reach critical mass.
Though, as Non Sequitur (AMS) tells us, the system tends to roll along on the theory that the Empire will never fall.
Captain Renault: We are very honored tonight, Rick. Major Strasser is one of the reasons the Third Reich enjoys the reputation it has today.
Major Strasser: You repeat ‘Third Reich’ as if you expected there to be others.
Captain Renault: Well, personally, Major, I will take what comes.
History does suggest that its lowest points are followed by a period of peer review.
One more political observation, this from the Buckets (AMS). There’s no fair way to make voters take a test, as several Southern states have proven. But it wouldn’t be hard for polling companies to ask a few questions before they dive into collecting opinions.
I’d welcome poll results that said, “Among people who think Costa Rica is in Europe …” or “… who believe that the Moon landing was faked …”
Enough politics. Let’s have some laffs.
Reading Ben (MWAM) as he and Liv prepare to go see the Rolling Stones reminds me to quit thinking of myself as “middle-aged.” When you hit 75, it begins to seem amazing that any of the people you admired as a kid are still around. Thank god for youngsters like Jackson Browne (76) and Janis Ian (73).
And kudos to Daniel Shelton for using Mick Jagger (81) to make the point, rather than the cliché of mocking Keith Richards, who is nearly half a year younger.
I got a burst of nostalgia from Sunday’s Brewster Rockit (Tribune), which echoes a scam I hadn’t thought of since the days of underground papers, when people would place classified ads offering to tell you how to make money in your spare time if you just sent them a dollar.
The answer was to put an ad in the paper offering to tell people how to make money in their spare time, and I’m sure it worked, so maybe it wasn’t a scam. But it was.
Incidentally, magazines in the era had ads for nose-hair trimmers, which were offered as bait, since it’s a fussy unnecessary purchase, given that most people use nail scissors. They didn’t make money by selling nose-hair trimmers but by compiling a sucker list to sell to other mail-order vendors.
It’s gone hi-tech since then. I clicked on a video of a mongoose and a cobra a few weeks ago and my Facebook feed has been full of mongoose videos ever since.
And I’m convinced that Richard Attenborough and Neil deGrasse Tyson each have large buildings full of people frantically posting to Facebook while they walk up and down the aisles saying, “Now, make sure at least two-thirds of it is absolute bullsh*t.”
It’s also possible that neither of them know it’s going on, particularly Attenborough, who (spoiler) has been dead for a decade. (Update: Had the wrong brother. See comments. David is still alive, though I still suspect he hasn’t become a spammer.)
In today’s Moderately Confused (AMS), Jeff Stahler makes the important point that not every cartoon has to carry a serious meaning or spark deep thoughts. Nicely timed, too, since I’ve been hearing complaints from the South that it’s winter and we’ve had some sub-zero temps up here, too.
More winter humor from Frazz (AMS), which often requires that you stop and think before you get the joke. I particularly admire how Jef Mallett has softened the character of Mrs. Olson, who, in the early days of the strip was just an antagonist.
She’s still a fussbudget and Caulfield enjoys getting under her skin, but here’s a case where they’re both right.
To begin with, I’ve lived in places where six more weeks of winter would be the good news.
I was born in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where the tradition began, but we moved to the Adirondacks, and when we’d drive to my grandparents’ at Easter, it was like the beginning of the Wizard of Oz. We’d start in snow, all black-and-white, then pass through mud and finally arrive in southeast Pennsylvania in full Technicolor, with grass and flowers and blossoms.
Unlike Dorothy, I wasn’t yearning to go back home.
There’s also this: Punxsutawney isn’t in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
Plus, in the German tradition, it was a badger, which I wouldn’t recommend that you pick up and wave around.
I read Zits (KFS) mostly to feel better about my own parenting. We had great vacations, as well as weekend trips to interesting places. Kids in comic strips hate camping and museums, but my boys really enjoyed them and continued the practice by doing interesting things with their own kids.
Sometimes you look at paintings by Marc Chagall or Edward Hopper, other times you ride a roller coaster or watch fireworks. It doesn’t have to be either/or, if “interesting” and “fun” are established as equivalent.
Juxtaposition of the Day
A collection of relationships starting at the top with the lowest. Bravo offers a grim look, and one that is deserved criticism, but that puts a twist on an old complaint from the other side of the table. You used to — perhaps still do — hear women say, “I went from being someone’s little girl to being someone’s wife, and I never learned to be myself.”
Men can say somewhat the same thing, though I think, in both cases, no longer getting married at 20 and 21 makes transitioning from child to adult a little more likely. Admittedly, however, women mature more quickly, and, as Rita Rudner said, men who live alone are like bears with furniture.
But while there’s still, as seen in Pickles, an instinct for men to be the hunters while women are the gatherers, those roles are blending, such that Arlo gets credit for being a decent, useful guy.
Meanwhile, over on the chest-beaters and incels channel, Jesse Watters asks “What kind of man goes grocery shopping with his wife?”
The kind who is mature, useful, interesting and fun, I guess.
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