CSotD: Friday Funnies Because Why Not?

Adam@Home provides an opportunity for me to complain about something relatively trivial and segue into something more substantive that I’ve been reluctant to bitch about.

Rob Harrell and I could quarrel about what the ends of an untied bow tie look like, but floppy is floppy. On the other hand, I think he’d agree that the colorist missed an important verbal cue in the fourth panel and shouldn’t have made the thing black.

Some comic strips are colored in-house, either by the artist or, at least in the case of Edison Lee, by the artist’s wife. But a large number are sent out for coloring, and not always to destinations where the English language is well embedded.

Thus ice cream cones declared to be strawberry are colored grape and so forth. Usually, it’s an annoyance, once in a while it kills the gag.

Lately, however, a number of strips haven’t been colored at all, but simply washed with some random tone. Sometimes one panel is colored while the others are washed.

I’m sure it’s easier to just apply a light green, light pink, light yellow wash to the whole panel instead of coloring each part of the picture, but there’s a slight problem with that:

It looks like some lazy, cheap-ass shit.

And if you’re sending those strips out to some place where the colorist gets three cents a week, double shame on you.

Anyway, whoever painted Adam’s tie black, you’re forgiven. We all make mistakes.

The rest of you need to straighten up.

If you don’t care about the strips at your end, why should anybody care about them at this one?

Now, on with the show …

 

And having condemned cheapskates, we’ll shift gears and celebrate J. Bernard Pillsbury, who will burn a dollar’s worth of gas to save a penny.

The other joke here is opening a dollar store just as Dear Leader is about to drop another load of tariffs on cheap plastic crap from China.

The crew at Barney & Clyde must have been watching the news hoping this one would hit the papers while it was still possible to sell stuff for under a dollar.

 

Meanwhile, in the “It’s funny, ’cause it’s true” category, Betty points out a phenomenon that may be funny if you’re married but sure raises hell on those of us who live alone.

I share Bub’s visual acuity but, alas, I don’t share his marital status. I can’t find a damn thing in the fridge and, moreover, I’m reaching the age where I yell at myself “Hey! You’re letting out all the cold!”

To make it worse, I’m the one who put it all in there.

 

And this Moderately Confused reminds me of a GF whom I used to annoy by saying to people that we had been married for 33 years. She was married for 20, I was married for 13. Several of them, but not all, happily.

While we’re on the topic, here’s a social tip: If someone says his beautiful daughter is turning 16 today, don’t ask how old his other daughter is.

 

Between Friends gives the beautician a break on this, because it’s not their fault if the customer brings in the photo.

But when they have stacks of the magazines themselves and giant posters all around the shop, I think it becomes their responsibility to come up with some reasonable facsimiles.

First time I went to a unisex hair place was back in 1971 and I wanted my hair cut like Rod Stewart’s, which they did.

And it would have looked like Rod’s even longer except that I opened the car window on my way home.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Nancy)

(Joy of Tech)

I’m not in disagreement with Nancy, except that I offer my advice for free, which is that the comics I run through in the morning seem funnier if I skip Facebook and Twitter until afterwards.

I want to keep up with friends and family and it’s good to catch sports scores and news breaks, but, as Ken Kesey said to Pancho Pillow, “Why should I share your bad trip?”

There are some really bad vibes there and it’s better to have the blog written and posted before, as Nancy puts it, I go shopping for things I don’t need.

On the other hand, there’s not much fun in shouting into a vacuum either, and I don’t think anyone’s going to stick with any social media where you don’t get feedback.

In fact, I’ve wished other places had “Like” buttons, where you could indicate “Yes, I saw it, I think it’s good, I’ve got nothing in particular to add.”

However, poking around to find out what is being proposed, what Facebook has been testing has apparently been a system where you can like what I post, and I’ll see that, but other people won’t.

That works for me: I want to know if people are seeing what I post, both out of personal pride and because having people read the blog is a matter of business, but I don’t need to show the numbers.

And if “Likes” become invisible and it makes more people want to comment, so much the better.

I had someone famous retweet something of mine and I was thrilled, but then I followed her and found out she pretty much retweets everything that catches her eye, which takes some of the shine off it.

I need to know I’m getting through but I don’t need other people to be keeping score.

However, I’d like to think those likes are affecting the algorithm and increasing my reach, which I suspect they still would be.

Two thoughts:

I have two Facebook accounts, one personal and one professional. This seems like it will impact my personal account — the one with the happy birthdays and inspirational postings and vacation pics — a lot more than it will the one where we share cartoons and argue politics.

The other is that reforming Facebook is like getting the airplane to cruising altitude and then discussing whether it should have parachutes, a pressurized cabin and landing gear.

Retrofitting in flight is a bitch.