Fathers get so little positive play on the comics page that, having been a single dad, I’m gonna lead with today’s Brevity.
Cargo shorts notwithstanding, it’s good to see a father in the funnies who isn’t a clueless, annoying loser.
My father, who was otherwise very present and attentive, didn’t teach me to shave. I think I learned it by reading Playboy, a magazine well-suited for the lesson since most young men become its customers just before they start needing to know how to shave.
Still, it’s an emblematic lesson, when it comes down to “Who’s watching the kids?” such that, when I decided to get rid of my beard years ago, I called my son’s second-grade teacher and asked her if she’d like me to come in and shave it off in front of the class.
“Why?” she asked, to which I responded, “How many of your kids have never seen a man shave?” which took her aback for a moment, and then she realized how many fatherless homes they came from and, yes, the kids were fascinated.
I don’t think I ever showed my boys how to shave beyond whatever they picked up that day, but they’re both excellent cooks, despite what you’ve seen fathers do in kitchens in the funny pages.
As for the cargo shorts, I wouldn’t mind them so much if (A) there were any other choices in the store besides them and dorky Bermudas and (B) they didn’t have those damn Velcro closures.
And, BTW, “Dad jokes,” play-wrestling and “Got your nose!” are how kids learn to think, and react, on more than the mundane level.
Pity a world in which nobody teaches them that.
Meanwhile, as long as I’m all meta about the funny pages, here’s a fortuitous
Juxtaposition of the Day
Apparently you can.
In editing the kid-written publication that pays my rent, I go back and forth on what to call language which may seem inappropriate, because the kids will note it in their reviews, generally in the course of bumping up the age for which they recommend the book or movie.
Sometimes they call it “swearing” or “bad language” or something, but the one their editor knocks out is “adult language.”
You may or may not laugh at fart jokes, but one thing they are not is “adult.”
A grocery store where I used to live had a sign in their cereal aisle to let you know where the bran flakes and Grape-Nuts were. It said “Adult flavors.”
I knew what they meant, but I laffed anyway.
Here’s an adult topic
I’m surprised at how few cartoonists took advantage of Sunday’s larger canvas coming the day before taxes are due, but I liked the Duplex in part because he managed to work in both the threats of an audit and the dreariness of the task.
I remember what it was like to do your taxes by hand, but I’ve used Turbo Tax for several years.
Which isn’t free for those of us who are self-employed, because we have a lot going on beyond a 1040 and a couple of W-2s and have to purchase the upgraded version.
And Eno is not self-employed or there would be a lot more paper and clutter on his table. And adult language.
For the self-employed, the tension is in claiming everything you can but not such oddball things that you attract undue attention or generate even more paperwork.
When self-employed people do their taxes by hand, they end up on the phone with the IRS a lot, which is like that old joke about the kid who says, “I did the math problem three times and here are my three answers.”
Interesting Tax Tip: If you get faulty information from the IRS helpline and are audited, they don’t care who told you to do it that way.
More adult humor
Reply All brings a nostalgia rush of another sort, because I was on a Business Education Partnership Committee which used to meet regularly at the United Way building for about an hour, the last 20 minutes of which were spent deciding when we’d meet again.
Finally, someone said, “I’m not coming to any more meetings about having meetings” and thank god he was the manager of the community’s largest employer because none of the rest of us would have dared say it, but we were all thinking it.
I seem to recall we helped coordinate a Job Shadow Day and don’t get me started on what happens when you require high school kids to find a local business and go hang out there for a day whether they’re motivated or not.
Come to think of it, “nostalgia rush” and “triggering flashback” are probably not the same thing.
Dog is my co-pilot
Jan Eliot stopped creating daily Stone Soups a couple of years ago and now only does Sundays, so is qualified to comment on semi-retirement, particularly since she’s probably found something else to suck up more time than the job ever did.
It’s nice to work in an office where a clock tells you to go home, but, once you hit managerial status, that’s over. Better you should work at home with a dog, who will pester you away from your desk.
There was a study showing that dog owners are happier than cat owners, though it didn’t make the claim that, if a grumpy, antisocial person obtained a dog, he would turn into John Denver.
I suspect that the opposite is true, that certain types of people want to have dogs and certain types want cats, but researchers dasn’t phrase their findings that way or there’d be hell to pay.
Cat owners being experts in feeling micro-aggressed, either by nature or as the result of living with a cat.
Inevitable: Death, Taxes and This
After every election, journalists agree that we need to knock off the “horse race coverage.” After which, as xkcd observes, we start right up again.
So, here’s your Election Night coverage in advance:
Friend of ours was debating whether to get a dog or an exercise bike in an effort to get in shape. She chose the dog because the bike wouldn’t bark at her. Loved the way she put that.