Pearls Before Swine (AMS) reflects my own mood after today’s morning dip into Facebook and Twitter, which I take in part to make sure the world hasn’t ended but also because a lot of cartoons appear there before they show up on official sites.
Though yesterday I had a pleasant conversation with a Gen-Z woman who told me she only uses her phone as a phone and a camera, which was encouraging.
I suspect, mind you, that the main reason is that, when she’s outdoors, she’s usually cross-country skiing or energetically hiking up some mountain, which certainly isn’t my reason.
But at least she’s not letting herself be overwhelmed by the screamers at the ticket booth who, as Rat notes, are now all over the Internets.
Perhaps we shouldn’t blame social media for all our ills. Wiley Miller resurrected this 21-year-old Non Sequitur (AMS) the other day. We weren’t nearly so glued to our phones in 2000, but that’s not to say we weren’t parties to some ongoing toxicity.
Let’s lighten things up with some jokes about dog pee.
Juxtaposition of the Day
For some reason, my female puppy — 10 months old — lifts one leg on things she finds interesting, just as a male would. That’s good, because it’s generally the females who burn yellow spots in your lawn, not because their urine is more acidic but because they tend to dump it all in one place.
The boys spread the joy, though when a tree or stop sign or, yes, fire plug becomes popular, any grass it sits in will eventually be burnt.
Also on the canine beat, Adam@Home (AMS) has been running a story arc that hits close to home, because the aforementioned puppy is a Danish Swedish Farm Dog replacing a series of Rhodesian Ridgebacks that goes back to 1986.
Which is to say that her predecessors weighed an average of 105 pounds and she weighs 20, so the handouts have had to be scaled back significantly.
Also on the learning curve, I now have to use my car’s windows-lock button because she stands on the armrests to see out and was opening the windows.
My ridgebacks never did that.
Circling back to the lawn care issue, it looks like Arlo & Janis (UFS) could be kicking off an interesting change.
I don’t worry about such things, because my landlord lives in the 75% of the house that doesn’t include my little apartment, but I’m sympathetic to Janis’s sensation of running out of gas. It’s not that you “can’t” do it so much as it starts to take up time you want to spend on other things.
Perhaps they’ll talk it over and let the idea drop, but this is a strip perfectly willing to move its characters along in life. And while it would cut off some familiar gags, Arlo vs. the HOA could readily fill those gaps.
One more dog joke, though it isn’t one. Pooch Cafe (AMS) has been taking a dip in the primordial soup this week, and this one pinged something I’ve been thinking about.
Baby sister once worked at a restaurant where the piece de resistance was the “high pour,” in which your server would balance your coffeecup on her toe, raise the pot up and pour the coffee six feet right into the cup.
Very impressive, but it took about half an hour to master. I have been harboring similar suspicions about the artistry required to draw pictures on lattes and stout.
It’s related to the way people go nuts over the fiddle solo in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The song is covered by some pretty lousy bar bands, so how masterful can it be?
In the words of Bob Dylan, “Applause is kind of bullshit.”
Speaking of unearned kudos, over in xkcd, they’re honoring the perceptive people who spot what NASA couldn’t.
Which you might say would be funnier in a world where barstool geniuses weren’t also second-guessing epidemiologists, but that just makes me laugh harder.
Caulfield truly is a genius, but an unformed one, and it’s fun to see Frazz (AMS) and even Mrs. Olson call him on it.
Kids that age do love Shel Silverstein, and I have no problem with that part, because, while Silverstein was no T.S. Eliot, at least he employed meter and end rhyme and, if most of his poems were playful, he respected the format.
Elsewhere in purported literature, a thoughtful, touching 100-word essay may be good philosophy, but breaking it up into short lines does not turn it into a poem.
Frost famously compared blank verse to playing tennis with the net down, but I’d extend the metaphor to say that the occasional bit of forced meter is like the shot that hits the top of the net and then rolls over for the point.
Speaking of pants, and elastic waistbands, Sandra Bell Lundy — assuming she has some sort of normal lead time — stumbled into a hot topic with this Between Friends (KFS).
I’ve just seen an article in the Washington Post, and then saw it mirrored on NPR last night, and it seems Gen Z has been mocking Millennials over their skinny jeans, and joyfully bringing back into vogue the comfortable pants their elders derided as “mom jeans.”
And the Millennials are piiiiiiissed.
I never understood the pleasure of cramming yourself into denim sausage casings, but, hey, I’m a Boomer. Millennials have been pissed at me for a long time.
Fight nicely, kids. Try not to get blood stains on the ceiling.
In other fashion news, Pardon My Planet (KFS) echoes a back-and-forth in soccer, where goalkeepers are allowed to provide their own jerseys.
One school of thought is that dark colors let you move in the goal mouth more stealthily, while the other is that bright colors make shooters unconsciously target you, making saves easier.
Here, Batman embraces both theories.
Finally, it wasn’t Jim Meddick’s intent, but this Monty (AMS) made me realize why anti-vaxxers are so militant about not getting shots.
They’re tired of hearing “It’s just a little prick.”
Odd that some of the anti-vaxxers are “just little…: too.
As smart as Caulfield is, I’m sure he’s aware of Silverstein’s career as a “Playboy” cartoonist.