CSotD: Friday Funnies — Overthinking Everything
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I don’t know if this Francis counts as “funny,” but it’s certainly apt.
I have often noted, in discussing the increasing crudity and cruelty of our entertainment choices, that these medieval street shows pandered to the worst instincts of the mob, but that it didn’t matter, because the mob didn’t vote or otherwise have a say in governing, and was simply, in good times, a way to get the harvest in, and, in bad times, expendable flesh to be sent to the front lines.
Francis reminds us that it could be more, that the forgotten are not without hopes and dreams and good intentions.
Kind of makes you wonder if benign neglect were not a better thing than malign exploitation.
Sowing and reaping and building cathedrals was a good system of full employment.
I blame Pope Urban II, the inventor of Crusades.
The College of Cardinals should have chosen Pope Rural.
And other scriptural references
Frazz creator Jef Mallett knows all about this stuff, so it’s good to hear it from a triathlete consumer of liquids.
Legendary Boston cartoonist Francis Dahl described Manhattan clam chowder as “vegetable soup with a clam dragged through it,” but at least it was vegetable soup.
I’m not sure they even bother to drag the fruit through those hydration drinks, which puts a spin on Revelations 3:16: “Because thou art bland, and neither truly flavored nor plain water, I shall spue thee out of my mouth.”
Our little girl is growing up
Maybe I missed it, but Heart has gone from a little kid to a potential young lady. I think this is the first mention of middle school, and maybe it was a gradual change …
… but here’s the strip from a year ago, and she was obviously still a little kid then.
In recent years, Mark Tatulli has put more effort, I think, into “Lio” than “Heart of the City,” but, then again, he’s also launched some very successful middle-school graphic novels.
Heart is a personal favorite and I’m glad to see her get a bit of a remake. It’s not that the kid stuff was getting old, but I think middle school will provide new material and new perspectives.
Good on ya, Mark.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Alex)
There was a time when I was completely up to date on what was going on in Ulster, but those days are well past.
First Theresa May put the Democratic Unionist Party — Ian Paisley’s old anti-Irish-Catholic political party — in her coalition, and then Brexit began fiddling with border security in what used to be called “bandit country,” and now, scant days after the Twelfth of July, golfers are apparently quarreling over what to call a tournament clearly held in Ireland but not in Eire.
I give up.
I remember asking a cousin who lived in the aforementioned bandit country how to describe what I’d always learned as “The British Isles.” His response was “That one is Britain, and this one is Ireland.”
In any case, it’s good to see that Alex and Clive are not politically inclined but simply in search of a way to get the company to pay for them to go watch sports.
Whatever might divide us, we’re on the one road when it comes to ripping off the boss.
Speaking of sports
Baby Blues riffs on right field as being the default place for inept players, but it’s more a reflection on coaches who pay attention only to their stars.
I spent a lot of time in right field as a lad, but finally discovered, on my own, that my problem was lack of depth perception, which wasn’t helped by adding to the amount of territory I had to cover.
Turned out I was a pretty decent third baseman, since most of the balls that go to third will at least hit you if they don’t go into your glove. Anything to your right is foul, anything to your left is the shortstop’s.
And coaches constantly told me to choke up, which put less of the bat over the strike zone. Once I starting holding the bat down at the button, I began to get on base with some regularity.
I was never a terribly good baseball player, but my experience in the sport made me a much better youth soccer coach.
Ten parts per trillion
This Non Sequitur is a pretty harmless gag, but it got me to overthinking and I don’t recall any of my dogs ever lifting leg on a man.
And, BTW, when a woman says, “Oh, he must smell my dog!” there are all sorts of appropriate responses, but “Or maybe you’re ovulating” is not one of them.
Best response is to simply smile and yank the mutt away before he embarrasses you both.
Though if dogs can be trained to detect cancer, you’d think there would be a market among devout Catholics for Rhythm Method Assistance Dogs.
“Sorry, honey: Rover says ‘not tonight.'”
#MeNeither
Yet another misadventure in Maeve’s love life over at Between Friends, and it’s been not just cracking me up but sending me into reveries of a half-century ago.
I dated a brilliant, absolutely gorgeous freshman who was the little sister of a brilliant, absolutely gorgeous woman who had graduated the year before, which touched off campus talk of “Holy cow, have you seen S____’s little sister? She’s even cuter than S____!”
But we went out for several weeks and, like Maeve, nothing happened.
Not “not enough,” not “not what I wanted.”
Nothing.
Zero.
She was good company, but so were my male friends. So I moved on, but about a decade later, ran into her college roommate through work.
Turned out it wasn’t me, that she just didn’t connect with anyone on that level, at least not in college.
But she went on to become a brilliant, absolutely gorgeous attorney and then she did connect and get married, so …
… so I still don’t get it, but it’s just possible that my getting it was never the point.
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