Now that I’ve planted that nasty earworm, I’ll send you off to see the rest of this week’s Mo, which is always a pleasure but this week particularly apt.
I’ve never been one of those people who hates Mondays, in part because I’ve had jobs I liked, in which case going to work was fine with me, and I’ve had jobs I hated, in which case Monday was no worse than any other day.
And in part because I’m enough of a workaholic that I usually kept up with things through the weekend so it wasn’t that huge a shift back to full-time.
But the Monday after a holiday is tough, and I’m not the only person who took at least the latter half of this past week off, which means there’s little new among editorial cartoons.
So we’ll soak up a little caffeine with Mo, check out some done-in-advance comic strips and leave the current events heavy lifting for tomorrow.
Not like the world’s crises are going to disappear while we’re regrouping.
Start with Barney & Clyde, llamas and the odd way information leaks around the edges of normalcy, by which I mean this should have been a bigger story because it’s both encouraging and really weird.
The weirdest part is that about 10 days ago my ulcer kicked up in a way that sent me to the ER, which is what smart guys my age do when they can’t confirm the cause of chest pain. I’m always a little apologetic, but I don’t want to be That Guy who is found dead with a pocketful of Tums.
I was tended mostly by a student from the Dr. Seuss School of Medicine, and, while we were waiting for some blood chemistries to come back, I asked him if he’d heard about llamas and flu vaccines and, before I said more about it, he said, “Oh, because their antibodies are on a single strand?”
He hadn’t heard about the research, but he knew that llama antibodies are unique because they’re on a single strand. Turns out he’d done research work creating antibodies as an undergrad.
I sometimes think about moving, but living in a place where the lowest kid on the rung at the local hospital can pull up stuff like that keeps me right here, thankyouverymuch.
What I know about llamas is that they always poop in the same place, which makes cleanup easy and also means you can let them in the house. Also that they’re very good at carrying your gear but they’re not strong enough for you to ride on. And that only the permanently stressed veterans of petting zoos spit, unless you really piss them off.
And that if you live in an apartment in town, you’re lucky to be allowed to have a dog. Don’t push your luck.
Meanwhile, over in Candorville, Lemont ponders immortality.
My resource on immortality is my mother, who is 94 and openly content to let things play out however they will. She’s been on that calm wavelength for at least 14 years and thus I’m a lot more casual about all this than Lemont.
When we were talking on the phone at Thanksgiving, I made the Lemont-like observation that I’ve outlived a lot of the people in front of whom I have made an ass of myself.
Which is comforting.
The trick, she was kind enough not to point out, being to quit adding younger ones.
Juxtaposition of the Day
One key to a long life is to watch for food poisoning. Jill and Rob managed to poison their families at the original meal, while Tank’s neighbor is cautioning him against leftovers.
Either I’ve got my newsfeed a little too well cultivated or the worriers of the world have given up on telling us that stuffing will kill you unless you eat it before taking it out of the cavity.
According to all the warnings I used to see this time of year, dressing becomes irredeemably toxic the moment it leaves the bird.
Maybe they figure we’ve all switched to Stove Top.
I mention this not to downplay the misery of food poisoning but to mock the misery of worrying.
I once wrote a 24-page tab on risk assessment for kids, inspired by a 10-year-old who burst into tears when her father’s GF served beef. She was sure they’d all die of mad cow.
On the other hand, I’m not entirely unsympathetic. I learned the hard way that, while the Pioneering counselors at Camp Lord O’ The Flies knew how to pitch a tent, read a compass and build a fire, they apparently didn’t know that you can’t store a big honkin’ jar of mayonnaise unrefrigerated in the trip shack.
First day of our camping trip, Gary Marmon blundered into a hornet’s nest and had to go to the hospital before we even had lunch.
Lucky little bastard.
End-Of-Year Juxtaposition
Aside from all the Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays and so forth, it’s also the time of year when the self-employed begin to think about ways to spend tax-deductible money before Dec 31.
The news that Verizon throttled down the “unlimited” data stream of California’s firefighters touched off a bit of paranoia I’ve had in noticing that my laptop always seems to get a little, well, quirky this time of year.
And, after everything we’ve learned about Facebook and Google in the past few months, how paranoid is it to wonder when you notice clusters of updates?
Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to start a new urban legend.
It’s easier than taking the heat for buying cheap laptops and expecting them to last more than a year.
And, since I can’t apply Mr. Boffo’s most excellent solution to the problem, it’s best I accept Adam’s overly optimistic view of what a shiny new laptop is going to do for me.
I remember when I felt that way about a new box of Crayolas.
It is, indeed, beginning to look a lot like Christmas.