CSotD: A variety of projects

“Heart of the City” sparks memories not of ceramics class but of shop, since our first project in seventh grade was an aluminum ashtray.

We had to cut a round piece of metal, hammer it on a mold so it became a dish with about a half-inch rim, then add the grooves (“rests”) around the rim, hammer in some words with the metal letter punches and polish it up.

Most of the guys (girls took home ec) were putting in their parents’ first names, but, since I was a wiseass back then, I hammered in my own message.

 

We finished up that project, I took it home and my mother promptly quit smoking.

I guess she didn’t get the joke.

 

I wish the science project by the little girl in Adam Zyglis‘s cartoon could have a similar effect on her mommy.

It would also be interesting to see what might happen if one of these innocent little human petri dishes broke out in measles and, when her classmates did the same, a few civil lawsuits against her parents for negligence were to happen.

I got through the panoply of childhood diseases with no apparent harm, though my dad sure didn’t enjoy having mumps as an adult, but even if there was no long-term damage, there were still the trips to Dr. Kerr and I wonder what might happen if a dozen families decided to charge those costs back to the nitwit who doesn’t believe in science?

 

Not that measles are the deadliest hazard facing our kids, and here is a case in which “The Whole World Is Watching,” given that this cartoon comes from Rod Emmerson in New Zealand.

Kiwis have their own firearms issues, but perhaps that simply makes our chaotic slaughter that much more horrifying.

In any case, he’s hardly the only cartoonist to point out that we’ve got a lot more pressing issues than some poor people coming here to pick vegetables and clean motel rooms.

And, y’know, work at swanky golf resorts.

Nor is he alone in pointing out that Nero only fiddled because golf hadn’t been invented yet.

 

Meanwhile, as Tom Toles notes, there is to be another summit between the Dear Leaders, with the only apparent breakthrough being that Trump will finally get to visit Vietnam.

The meeting is in Hanoi, so perhaps he can stop off and see where they used to keep heroes who do get captured.

“Captured” in the physical sense, that is.

Not in the “Fool Me Twice” sense in which Trump specializes.

 

I’ll give Trump one thing: He was never a frat-boy. Whether that was a conscious choice, a result of his bouncing between two colleges or a matter of not successfully pledging, who knows?

W was a Deke, however, and, as Walt Handelsman points out, some of his brothers are headed for the Big Frat House down in Louisiana.

And a few people who used to work at LSU no longer do and some more may follow.

Part of Bush’s backstory is that he felt cheated by being in college at a time when fraternities were déclassé, which, being of roughly his vintage, I can confirm.

We didn’t have frats at Notre Dame, but a couple of my friends on the football team confessed, years later, that they felt they’d landed in the wrong part of history.  Frat boys at other schools were even more misplaced.

DKEs, however, despite the prestige of counting a Supreme Court judge among their brothers, have a multi-generational reputation for boorish behavior — I doubt the makers of Animal House pulled that particular Greek letter out of a hat — and this is unlikely to help.

Except, perhaps, by hastening the demise of a system with little to recommend it in the modern age. Up in these parts, Dartmouth is virtually at war with its Greeks.

 

And speaking of conflicts, and going back to that whole “Emergency” fraud, it’s starting to be hard to find cartoonists beyond the fringe who remain enamored with Dear Leader. Nate Beeler is a moderate conservative, but this is hardly a moderate commentary.

One would expect more conservatives to be publicly appalled at Trump’s disrespect for the Constitution, but many of them have simply decided it’s safer, or more appropriate, to attack other targets or to comment on the weather.

 

However, as tax season approaches, many working families are discovering that the “tax break” they got last year wasn’t nearly as lucrative for the middle class as they had been told at the time, and, as David Horsey points out, they’re also beginning to figure out that Dear Leader’s tariffs are not being paid for by the Chinese but by them.

It is a puzzlement, but I think the GOP had better smarten up, because the American people are starting to.

 

Here singeth one: