CSotD: Friday Funnies – Feb 22

How better to kick off a Friday Funnies than with a Juxtaposition screen shot to show exactly how it fell on my page?

I had already given Arctic Circle a superior chuckle, because my boy Vaska is quite the opposite and does not want to go out at all in foul weather.

Fortunately, ridgebacks have iron bladders and he has gone 24 hours without a bathroom break, though I tend to force him out into the yard out of concern for his well-being. (A handful of kibble tossed into the snow will do it, his love of food being stronger than his hatred of precip.)

But then I immediately came to Between Friends and the superior chuckle turned into a sigh of recognition, because the boy is now eight years old — considerably younger than Kim’s dog, Newman, but still old enough that he no longer requires two outings a day to keep us both sane.

Which is good, because I don’t feel any great urge to wander out in snow and zero-degree weather either.

 

So let’s switch from funnies that work because they remind us of our own lives to this Bliss, an example of funnies that work because — Egad! — I read “Little Lulu” for years without pondering the possibility of “Big Lulu.”

 

Let’s stay on the fear theme for a moment with last Sunday’s Brewster Rockit, about which there’s a point to be made, which is that, while the strip has a fairly simple style, it’s not so plain that Rickard can’t make a gag that depends on the doc’s facial expression.

The joke simply doesn’t work otherwise, which is notable in part because Brewster Rockit is based on broad slapstick. But that doesn’t preclude such things, and you can often see the same look of puzzled dread on the face of Bud Abbott, who is hardly a model of subtle humor.

In fact, one of the advantages of comics is that Abbott & Costello had to conclude the gag, while Rickard can simply pose the situation and then leave it hanging.

Bud Abbott is on my mind because I’ve been reading “Dreyer’s English” and one of the points he makes is that Abbott has two T’s at the end.

He makes a lot of points, some of which I disagree with, most of which I embrace, and nearly all of which have been making me literally laugh out loud, which I rarely do.

Strong recommendation for anyone who cares about language but doesn’t like snippy, know-it-all lectures from sticklers who are often wrong anyway.

For instance, here’s a “rule” he acknowledges and then dismisses, breaking it in the process:

To which I would add that, if they were discreet individuals, they wouldn’t be suspects in the first place.

Okay, now where were we?

 

Betty demonstrates why I haven’t bothered hooking up my smart plugs.

I don’t have a Significant Other to sting the way she just did, but, then again, note that she could have just reached over and switched on the lamp herself.

My apartment is small enough that I can pretty much just reach over and turn on anything I want from wherever I happen to be.

That also means Alexa can hear me, and can be heard, from pretty much anywhere, but instead of turning lamps on, she does things like, for instance yesterday playing an hour and a half of Jelly Roll Morton while I edited copy.

Which is a helluva lot more useful than turning on the lights.

 

And speaking of my small apartment, Adam raises a familiar point, because I have a small gas stove behind which I know there is a good knife and the glass lid to a baking dish I use often, but I can’t move it out without also moving the table next to it on which are a microwave, a toaster and several potted plants which is why I didn’t retrieve them when they first fell down there.

As for anything edible that might be back there, I’d have to put the dog out before looking and please see above for his feelings about that happening in February.

It’s okay. I’ve got another knife and most things can be baked without the lid, at least until the weather changes.

Yes. I’m blaming the dog.

I have to. I already said I don’t have a Significant Other.

 

Lola speaks for many of us, though I think you don’t so much need a horn as a four-year-old who could jam your cart into their Achilles tendons more innocently than you could.

If there were ever an excuse for ordering your food online, it would be to save the mental anguish of experiencing other people at the grocery store.

Those of us who work at home already know not to shop at noon or five o’clock or at all on weekends, but they’ll find you anyway.

And the people who can’t pick out a can of tomato paste without phoning a friend for advice and reassurance are hardly the worst of it.

Our coop, a non-profit, socially conscious but otherwise mainstream grocery store, has a “round-up” option, where you can round your bill up to the next dollar, with the change going to local food banks, homeless shelters and suchlike.

They’ve made some substantial donations from these individual little dribs and drabs.

So the other day I got behind a lady (I use the word intentionally) in fashionably hip clothes, who had a half dozen reuseable bags and a cart full of top-end chi-chi groceries — kale and dark chocolate and kombucha and so forth — and she rings up $237.68 worth of greeny, socially conscious stuff.

And then, asked if she’d like to round up, said “No.”

It was 32 freakin’ cents, ferchrissake.

But, hey, it was her 32 freakin’ cents.

Proving that you can dress woke and eat woke and bag your groceries woke and still be a sleepwalker.