CSotD: Let’s Break For Some Sunday Funnies
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Okay, this is political, but Doonesbury has always been a mix of humor and politics. And it’s a point worth making: People have noted that Clinton shrank the deficit, but I haven’t seen this kind of detail, and the contrast between a well-thought-out plan unfolding over time and the wacky, unaimed destruction currently going on is instructive.
This is the opposite of Bannon’s “flood the zone” approach, because Trudeau wants you to stop and think, which is an old-fashioned approach but not a bad one.
Paul Noth adopts a different approach, sarcasm, though one that is certainly in Trudeau’s toolbox. And this is sarcasm because, first of all, nobody frames the plan in such plain terms, and, second, the goal is to blame lower levels and not just the lowest levels.
The cuts and accusations currently under way are aimed at anybody who can’t fight back, which, as we’ve seen, includes people who are certainly not at the lowest levels but are just low enough to be vulnerable.
Okay, enough politics. Let’s lighten things with this
Juxtaposition of the Day
I thought it was odd yesterday that polka music not only showed up twice in my feed but in romantic settings, though obviously with different results.
I’m not against polkas. I’m all in favor of letting loose and having fun. We had dance lessons when I was in junior high, taught by a couple who went from town to town. He’d demonstrate the steps with each of the girls, she’d demonstrate with each of the boys, then we’d pair up and dance.
For the polka, I’d pair up with Gretchen, who was two years older and wicked cute and would not have paired up with me for anything else but we fit together for that. I have no idea how she felt about Norse mythology, which I liked, or math, which I did not. Perhaps things could have been different.
My negative polka experience came when I lived across Plattsburgh Bay from the former air force base, which was the site of a weekend reggae fest. A little reggae goes a long way, especially when you’re distant enough that you can’t hear the melody but only the percussion, which did not vary a whole lot for two entire days, at which point I started referring to reggae as “Jamaican polka music.”
Perhaps if I’d been listening on the porch with Gretchen, I’d have felt differently about it.
An accident of timing: This Flying McCoys appeared in the paper the same day we saw reports of an American Airlines plane making an emergency landing in Denver because one wing was about to burst into flames. The passengers didn’t have to bounce out on trampolines, but they did get to exit onto the opposite wing, which I’m sure delayed their plans but gave them a story to tell the folks.
Sure could have been worse, in which case the coincidence wouldn’t seem so amusing.
On another timing note, Bill Hinds certainly penned this Tank McNamara before Elon blew up another of his Spacex rockets, but perhaps not before people began noticing the tendency for Tesla swasticars to have misadventures.
There have been social media postings saying the Tesla has a worse safety record than the Ford Pinto, but I take those sorts of claims with a grain of salt, since they never seem to include links to sources. And there were surely more Pintos than Teslas on the road, so you’d have to evaluate them in terms of probability rather than pure numbers.
But then that wouldn’t likely come out in Tesla’s favor.
However, it’s kind of like the rich guy in the tuxedo getting hit in the face with a pie. It’s a lot funnier when it happens to a toff than if it happened to One of Us, and Teslas are certainly for toffs, while the Pinto was for regular folks.
The cartoon itself also reminds me of Chuck Barris’s suggestion that he could have a TV show where people would be invited to kick the crutches out from under a small child and people would be clamoring for the opportunity to be on television. I’m sure there’d be no problem finding people to ride in the backseat of a death car as long as they were on TV.
Let us turn to more pleasant thoughts:
Nice timing, though this is a case where your mileage likely does vary. But we’re starting to get some warm weather and I expect we’ll soon be advised to take in our bird feeders, because Bruno’s gonna wake up hungry. Obviously, a pint of seeds doesn’t do much for a 350 pound bear, but they’ll make the rounds until it adds up, and will knock over a few garbage cans in the process.
Blackies aren’t particularly dangerous if you don’t do something really stupid, but they oughtn’t to be taught to become bold, and every year we’ve got some poor bruin who needs to be transported into the wilderness for having overplayed its hand in town.
We had a legendary bear who refused to let being captured and exiled slow her down, but she came to a sad end. It’s best to avoid letting them become too comfortable in our presence.
When I was a reporter, we had someone hit a bear, which did significant damage to their car but the bear bounced off and went back into the bush. My colleague who covered the mishap managed to sneak past the editors that “the bear refused treatment at the scene.”
He’s now the editor, and I’m sure the paper is better for it.
Arlo continues to channel my thoughts. I had some great girlfriends in my college days, each of whom I look back on with affection.
On the other hand, as I’ve noted before, my second bachelorhood was superior to my first. As a young man, I was constantly in love, but settled judgment leads to fewer, deeper ties.
Alfred Lawn Tennyson managed to bury that charming line in an over-long, over-depressing poem. Robert Herrick spoke for youth, and more concisely.
While, at any age, it’s the near-misses that sting.
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