Sheldon (independent) pretty well sums up the hazards of knowing what’s going on in the world, and the last two or three days have been astonishingly toxic and depressing.
I woke up this morning and found my newsfeeds full of people trying to decide how they should respond to the president and his wife testing positive for Covid: Whether to celebrate the schadenfreude or behave decently, and it makes you wonder how we got to that place, y’know?
But before that, I had stumbled across the news that Kimberley Guilfoyle is apparently even more weird than she seemed at the GOP convention and that the wife of the guy who brags about making it okay to say “Merry Christmas” is introducing a new phrase for the holiday, and I had already been thinking of parallels between Trump losing the support of Scott Adams and when LBJ lost Cronkite, except that Adams backweaseled and the Cronkite thing apparently never quite happened either.
But, mostly, you can’t spend three and a half years nattering on about what it really means to be a Christian and then ignore 1 John 4:20 when you’re put to the test.
Never mind. We’ll think about that tomorrow. Let’s have some Friday Funnies:
I think it’s still okay to hate heartless robots who fire people by the book, and today’s Alex (Telegraph) has a terrific set-up where we think for a moment that these guys actually care before they spring the punchline.
I had a friend at a major newspaper called into HR, who cut off her phone and email as she walked into the room, then frog-marched her out without even letting her fill the traditional cardboard box — she had to have (former) co-workers bring her the personal effects of a 20-some year-long career.
I don’t know how much money she’d made for them, but the two of us used to go to state and national conventions and do a how-to on fundraising, and she was certainly a net-positive. Imagine how she’d have been treated if she were costing them money!
I guess we’re not at the funny part of today’s posting yet, but Alex made me laff.
Kind of like the time I was at an AAEC convention and a cartoonist and I were swapping hospital stories and cracking up. Someone else came up and asked what was so funny and we turned to him and said, “Cancer.”
Some humor is a lot funnier from the inside.
This Bizarro (KFS), on the other hand, is packed with great, universal touches, starting with the overall concept of being driven home by a crash-test dummy who will do a better job of it than you in your current state, and then Wayno presenting us with what a ventriloquist’s dummy looks like when he’s wasted. Even his bowtie is wilted.
Plus the living in a suitcase thing.
Whether it’s Wayno’s dailies or Dan Piraro’s Sunday pieces, the graphics in Bizarro are as good as the gags, but, even for them, this is masterful work.
Tasteful Juxtaposition of the Day
Having a cat — even comicdom’s most authentic cat — instead of a dog puts some doubt on the idea of bringing home leftovers, even though the “doggy bag” concept is an accepted fraud by everyone involved.
But Jimmy Johnson must have worked in a restaurant, because this reminds me of a pizza/sandwich/grill place I worked where you could watch us cook, except if Sebastian the busboy let us know someone had left half a pizza. Then the whole front end emptied out into the back, and “FOOM!” is only a slight exaggeration.
And xkcd provides the homey sincere label we’d all like to see, though I think we’re currently in a cycle where Mom — currently “Grandma” — was a pretty good cook.
There was a point, mostly in post-WWII America, where Mom cooked with a can opener or by peeling back the foil, but, for us Boomers, while few of us ever really went back to the Earth, quite a lot of us went back to the stove.
At one middle-schoolish point, both my boys begged me to let them have Franco-American or Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, so I said they could each get two cans of their choice. We came home and they eagerly heated up whatever they’d bought and three months later, I donated the other two cans to a food drive.
Not sure being a better cook than Chef Boy-Ar-Dee exactly establishes bragging rights, but I’ll take what I get.
Juxtaposition of Quibbles
(Mother Goose and Grimm – KFS)
Taking a couple of cartoonists to the woodshed.
Since Lemont is established as a language pedant, you’d think he’d know that marines did, indeed, begin as the shipboard soldiers their name suggests, and landing on beaches from naval vessels remains a primary part of their mission.
And I don’t understand the updated joke in MGG, but I remember the original:
Doctor: Mrs. Jones, I have some good news!
Patient: That’s ‘Miss Jones.’
Doctor: Oh, Miss Jones, I have some bad news.
Not sure anyone much under 40 would even get that, but we thought it was funny.
We also ate Spaghetti-Os.
To drag ourselves back into the 21st Century, Between Friends (KFS) offers this contemporary scene. My policy is that, if they don’t simply let me click and unsubscribe, I mark them as spam, though that doesn’t work with my old university because they keep sending me emails from other alums, other clubs, other sources.
If Jimmy Hoffa had gone to college, the feds could simply ask his alumni association where he’d disappeared to.
Finally, a reminder from Non Sequitur (AMS) that not only is the stock market not the economy, but it isn’t even rational.
Most people don’t own stock, and most of the ones who do only “own” it because it’s embedded in their 401k’s.
And if you disagree, it’s probably because you’re a Capricorn.
Anyway, avoid the news today, eh?
Screw stock tips. Take a tip from the Tremeloes instead and just go back to bed.
With a friend.
Yeah, there’s that whole “love the neighbor” thing. Tough to do when your neighbors are Trump supporters, and some of them pretty hostile at that. Jesus was a better man than I, so for his sake, I’ll try not to rub Trump getting the virus in their faces. The only thing that worries me is that if he survives, and recovers quickly, he’ll use it as an excuse to further downplay the virus. This could just make things worse.
Mike, while I’ll admit I don’t understand the joke in the original (something to do with the difference between having a husband and not having one, I presume), it seems to me that the joke MG&G is making is that there is in fact a Ms. Moose who will be receiving good news, but the doctor mixed her up with Ms. Goose. (We’ll ignore that the medical information of two separate patients should never be on the same clipboard in the first place…)
Nicholas — that’s the premise, but what’s the joke? Moose cows don’t grow antlers and “no winter ticks” would be good news for either of them.
Don’t really understand what you’re getting at about antlers and ticks, but I’ll lay it out as I see it:
Doctor is carrying a clipboard with good test results for Ms. Moose, and separately bad test results for Ms. Goose.
Doctor comes out and sees Ms. Goose, but due to the similarity of the names of the two patients on his clipboard accidentally refers to what he has written down for Ms. Moose when greeting her.
Ms. Goose corrects him about her name.
Doctor rereads his clipboard and realizes his mistake, then corrects his greeting with respect to the correct patient information for Ms. Goose.
It’s not a hollerer, but I didn’t think it was all that convoluted of a joke either. Maybe you’re just getting tripped up on the similarity in setup to the joke you remember?
Ah you know what, I think I get the confusion now. The joke isn’t that the doctor is reinterpreting her test results based on a correction of her species, it’s that he’s confused her for a different patient with a similar name who he does indeed have good news for, while separately he has bad news for her.
I assume that in the original joke, the punchline is that the doctor is reinterpreting what the results mean for Miss Jones based on the correction that she is not actually married?
In the first panel the doctor has 2 clipboards and is reading from the one in his left hand. In the next 2 panels he is reading from the one in his right hand.
As for the original version of the joke, it was funny when being pregnant and unmarried carried a social stigma and would be bad news to an unmarried woman.
Exactimundo.
Loved your Hoffa joke.
I never left the stove. My mother cooked almost all our meals. Eating frozen dinners or spaghettios was rare.
And lets face it, they mostly taste like crap.
While I eat meat again now, ( was vehetarian for 23 yrs,) most of it is pasture raised.
And I don’t eat much of it. Long ago gave up the fake meats, because I couldn’t pronounce most of the ingredients. But I’m no saint either. While I try to eat mostly healthy, there is always a time or place for indulging in a little junk food.
Look, up in the sky! Is it an obese bird? Is it an airplane with bad hair? No, it’s SUPERSPREADER!
Backweaseled is a great word. A new one for me.
I like the comic strips that you shared with us.
Trump saying he has the virus could be a ploy or ruse. He almost never tells the truth unless by accident.
Mark, under normal circumstances, with a normal President, I’d say you were crazy. But, this isn’t normal. The more I think of it, checking himself into Walter Reed would be the perfect way to fake illness as a distraction from his abysmal debate performance. That’s his M.O., after all. It wouldn’t be the first time Trump has abused the power of his office, either. All the medical personel at Bethesda are Navy, so they are directly under his control. He can order them to lie, and they’ll do it. If anyone refuses, or leaks information, they’ll be pounding rocks at Leavenworth. I’m not saying this is the case, necessarily, but it is a possibility. Seriously, what HASN’T he done to get re-elected?
Phil—
The only thing keeping me from thinking that he’s making it all up is the fact that quarantine = at least 2 weeks without rallies. Those crap fests are the only means of getting his jollies that he has left and I doubt he’d give them up that easily.
Good point, Mary. Trump doesn’t have a problem with infecting his supporters, if the doctors at Bethesda are being honest about the timeline. Leave if to Trump to out-do the conspiracy theories!