CSotD: Friday Funnies plus detective work
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King Features wasn’t able to locate today’s “King of the Royal Mounted,” but a quick archival search brought it up at the Press-Democrat of Santa Rosa, not to be confused with Santa Rosita where detective work involves looking for buried treasure under a big W.
So here it is and it turns out to be a fairly critical plot turn, given that this fellow Beard murdered another bearded man in hopes of putting King off so he could escape with the jewels he left behind and that I think King has just found.
EEEWOW! indeed.
There’s a man goin’ ’round taking change
Mysterious detective work of a different kind surrounds Bado’s news that Counterpoint, which has been a free service, is now going to be a paid subscription.
The mystery is how come he knows and I didn’t, since I’m a Counterpoint subscriber, but I’ve taken the liberty of screen-shooting the press release he posted on his blog:
My Counterpoint email often comes a few days after I’ve seen the cartoons elsewhere, so I assume they need to stagger their distribution. Fair enough, but read on.
Now, $4.90 a month offer is roughly what I give my NPR station and a local news aggregator, and I’ll go for that, now that I know about it. (Here’s the link, BTW)
But the 30% savings offer ends April 3, which is relatively soon, particularly if you happen to be at the far end of the distribution system, and even moreso if you’re at the far end of the distribution system, locked down and self-quarantined and twiddling your thumbs without a regular paycheck.
Converting existing subscribers seems critical, because $70 a year gets into the price range where you’d have to think about it, even in good times.
I’d suggest they back that deadline off a little.
I like Counterpoint, though its inception prompted some thoughts about how much anybody wants to hear opposing views, much less pay to hear them. It’s a challenge.
That’s before we get to the whole “Information wants to be free” concept.
I want this project to succeed, but I guess I can’t help feeling a bit like this radio bug did back in the 1920s, when the debate began over whether to tax radios or allow advertising, and simply tuning in for free was off the table.
Still, Jack Benny wasn’t going to work for free and there’s no reason cartoonists should, either.
On to the Friday Funnies:
Today’s Non Sequitur taps an obsession of my father’s, who didn’t have a lot of obsessions but went nuts when people started talking about messing with their withholding to get a bigger tax refund.
I think he’d have been okay if people spoke of it as like a Christmas Club, though he’d have still counseled them to put that extra few bucks a week into something interest bearing.
Though most savings these days are interest free anyway. The days when you could get five percent interest and a toaster are well past (This ad is from 1971, aka, “The Good Old Days,” before Neil Bush & Friends screwed up the Savings and Loan industry).
Okay, okay: No politics on Friday Funnies.
But let’s stay in the past …
In Vintage Thimble Theater, Popeye has succeeded in finding his father, though Olive isn’t so fond of Poopdeck Pappy. Note that, in the second strip, Pappy is thinking of a baby and the year 1895, which would make Popeye 41.
No point in wasting youth upon the young.
It’s been an eventful few weeks in the strip, since this follows the arc that introduced Eugene the Jeep, who helped navigate them all towards ol’ Pap, and another reason that handing Comics Kingdom $20 a year is worthwhile.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m on record as not liking, or even much wanting, my smartphone, and I have an Amazon Fire which I use for reading at night or on plane flights, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I only have to recharge my phone every few days.
Then again, I have a set of wires at my bedside and, back in the days when wireless phones held a charge far shorter than today, I simply plugged my phone in when I went to bed. You can still do that.
Folks like Leroy who are constantly in search of plugs seem an awful lot like the folks who purposely lie on their W-2s so they can give Uncle Sam an even bigger interest-free loan.
Which is to say, if your phone and your wallet are both tapped dry too often, it’s likely what the tech folks call a PEBCAK error.
Rising to points of personal privilege
Baby Blues taps a particular reason I’m content to be single.
(Very old joke: He could marry anyone he pleased. Problem is, he never pleased anyone.)
I may be more sensitive to artificial smells and flavors than normal — I can’t stand coffee that was ground in a mill that also ground flavored beans, for instance.
So I was delighted when Darryl’s initial response was “Pew!” because that’s mine when I walk into a room with artificial odors.
Women are more sensitive to smell, which doesn’t explain why they like crappy dime store artificial perfumery, but it is how you can tell whether soft porn was written by a man or a woman: A woman writer includes smell in love scenes.
And speaking of soft porn, a guy who lives amid “Mountain Wildflower Bouquet” better enjoy being whipped, on accounta he is.
And on a point of more personal privilege, this Mr. Boffo gave me flashbacks of being a food prep guy in a faux Mexican restaurant.
I tripped on the doorsill of the walk-in cooler, causing a pint or two of the guacamole I had just made to slop over onto the concrete floor.
When I went to get a mop, my boss stopped me and proceeded to scoop the guac off the floor with his hands and replace it in the bowl.
Bon apetit.
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