Most of today’s political cartoons are impeachment commentary which I just did yesterday and which will keep until tomorrow and so, since I have to go get my eyes dilated and inspected and don’t have time for deep thinking, let’s just pretend it’s Friday and hit the funnies.
People talk about how awful the live-shooter drills in schools are, and, yes, but that’s only part of Jeremy’s day in this Zits, and I’m more concerned with the constant surveillance.
Kids are supposed to be learning how to live in a free society but they’re being taught to accept a police state, a process which, as I’ve said before, began when they were toddlers and we took their fingerprints and gave them a lollipop and told them now they were safe from mythological stranger danger.
Which was silly because, when they started kindergarten, nobody ran their prints through a national data base to see if they’d been kidnapped by the people pretending to be their parents.
However, for the next 13 years, we search their lockers without due cause and we have cameras everywhere to make sure they behave as they should.
But it’s okay because they salute the flag each morning, pledging allegiance to a nation with liberty and justice for all.
And I note from the social media comments about the impeachment that, whatever benefits our educational system offers, it doesn’t include teaching them much about that Constitution thingie.
Anyway, this strip reminded me of a winter morning junior year when I took off my coat as I came in the building, which made the packet of Old Golds in my shirt pocket rise up about an inch and a half.
The principal was standing in the hall and, as I walked past him, he gestured towards my pocket with a look of “Come on, Mike. Don’t make me start enforcing stuff this early.”
I tucked them back in and life went on.
Granted, when the son of the elementary principal and I got caught lighting up in the boys’ room senior year, we did draw a pair of three-day suspensions.
Even a free society has a few rules, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it.
If you’re not watching Retail fade into the sunset, you’re missing some good stuff.
It sucks that the strip is ending, but so does working at Grumbel’s and you can find out why in Norm Feuti’s book “Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook,” which he brought out about a year after the strip launched.
It’s a piercing, accurate takedown of the industry with genuine advice illustrated by Retail strips, but when I gave a copy to my son, he got part way through and asked me why in god’s name he would want to read it since he had already lived it.
That’s the sign of a brilliant book and I heartily recommend it.
Meanwhile, today’s conversation makes me want to jump into the frame and remind Cooper that nobody has even seen Stuart and there won’t be a face-to-face anyway, but that he will always be able to walk past that unleased hole at the dying mall and revel in the fact that he’s still around.
And I hope he and Val have a great future together, because it will never, ever feel romantic to say “We’ll always have Grumbels.”
Meanwhile, over at the bank in London, which Alex has left because he’s now a member of Parliament, poor Clive continues to slave away, melding his working life and his personal life into a perfect pit of misery, fearing that he’ll be fired instead of hoping for it.
I’ve been fired twice and, in both cases, staying around would have been even worse.
Mind you, the second time, the place only stayed in business for a couple more weeks, so I took it more as being given a prime seat in the lifeboat.
Maybe Clive should volunteer to explore the glories of the new branch in Frankfurt, once Brexit finally hits. It’s only 400 miles, but putting the channel and a couple of countries between himself and his ex and his boss might just brighten things up a bit.
Though, of course, if he thought that way, he wouldn’t be Clive. The world is full of Clives and bad management depends on their inability to see the exits.
While over in Candorville, Lemont is being offered another turn in the newspaper barrel, and if my son found Norm Feuti’s depiction of retail work painful, I’m not sure I’ll find this story arc all that funny myself.
The real joke being that, if I were offered stock options in a lemonade stand or stock options in a newspaper, I’d choose the one run by a six-year-old rather than the one run by crooks.
One place I worked offered us stock at 30% off market rate, but we had to hold it for a year before we were vested. There was a guy there who’d been around for 25 years or so who used to ride us for selling out at the end of the year and using the money to pay down our credit cards or whatever.
“You have to keep that stock!” he’d declare. “That’s your retirement!”
When I finally bailed, the stock was selling at $40 a share. A decade later, it’s trading at $1.18 a share.
As noted before, it’s the Clives whose blind loyalty keeps these people in business.
Speaking of having the sense to GTFO
I’ve been disappointed in the continuing British cartoons mocking and scourging the Duke and Duchess of Saxony. It almost seems as if they are trying to prove the point that Harry and Meghan are right to pull up stakes and choose happiness.
Pia Guerra is an American-born Canadian, which gives her perspective without congenital loyalty to the crown, and she’s certainly got this imaginary magazine cover right.
There will always be an England, I suppose, but there apparently is someone over there with a heart and a sense of perspective: