CSotD: Hitting the Road Again

Well, yes, Ethel, there is that: Willie ‘n Ethel comment on my first year-and-a-half as a retired person. The pandemic was indeed a lovely ego-crutch, though, as noted here, I did just sneak out to visit family in Minnesota.

Please don’t tell my credit card.

 

Though, as Kevin Kallaugher notes, coffee break is over and it’s time to get back on our heads.

So I guess travel restrictions are back, though I note that the South Africans are touchy about anyone tying the variant to them just because they had the skill to pick up on it.

I watched the news, though, and they weren’t blaming South Africa, while the first restrictions seem to have come down on a variety of small-s south African countries where it has been picked up.

But it’s now been discovered a lot of places, and is being referred to mostly as the “new variant” or by its Greek letter. Except by the Murdoch Denialists, and they’re hopeless anyway.

Not that we can afford to ignore them, but, as Dean Swift noted, “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired,” and so people will believe that not only is Covid a fraud and a fabrication but that Donald the Daring stopped it in its tracks by developing vaccines that we all know don’t work.

And that spending $350 on quality cookware is a horror, while spending $130,000 to silence the topless dancer you schtupped while your wife was recovering from giving birth to your son is … something that simply didn’t happen.

And what about Nancy Pelosi’s refrigerator, huh?

In any case, I did get to travel between outbreaks. I flew on fully-packed airplanes from a pair of major airports and saw one unmasked couple at Logan and heard no quarrels on the topic anywhere.

This does not prove that idiots and anarchists don’t exist, because somebody is electing the Boeberts and Gosars and Gohmerts and Rand Pauls.

But I think it’s part of that phenomenon where we’re warned that 1,000 workers will walk off if told to get vaccinated but only 34 actually do.

Never mind Jonathan Swift. Mike Tyson has this one covered: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

 

Setting our sights a little further into the future, Prickly City (AMS) comments on the growing Space Tourism phenomenon, which is not yet an “industry” but may shortly become one.

Giving John Glenn another bite at the apple was cool. Sending Captain Kirk into space seemed more like an overt marketing stunt, and now the list of rich tourists is growing and it doesn’t do much for those of us who, like Ethel, have been thanking the pandemic for hiding the reason we weren’t traveling.

Ah, well. Let us eat cake.

There was a point at the dawn of aviation in which barnstormers would visit local communities, perform a few barrel-rolls and then, for a price, allow people to take a short flight. We seem to be entering that era, only the number of companies that can pop you up into near-space is limited enough that it remains awfully expensive and elite.

Still, it’s not hard to foresee a time when larger vehicles will put these trips into the hands of more people, just as airline travel became an option but still a luxury.

And then it wasn’t anymore, though you still need to have someplace to go before it becomes routine. Perhaps Walt Disney will build a resort on Mars.

Until then, people are eager to spend $5,000 on a Jet Ski so they can roar up the lake and back down the lake and I suppose popping up into near space and coming right back down holds a similar thrill.

Besides, you don’t have to venture into space. Space is willing to venture unto you, as seen in our

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Dogs of C Kennel – AMS)

 

(Brewster Rockit – AMS)

Not sure what prompted the dogs of C Kennel to discuss the potential for obliteration, thought I’ve seen a spate of cartoons in which sentient dinosaurs deny an approaching asteroid.

Or it may have been news of the NASA effort detailed in Brewster Rockit, which periodically abandons silly jokes for a semi-serious look into actual space news.

The interesting point here being that, while smashing the offending asteroid into dust is a more satisfying technique, it isn’t a terribly practical one, particularly when, as detailed here, simply giving it a shove would end the threat.

Though if that sends it off into Mars, we’d probably get complaints from them that would make neighbor-with-a-leaf-blower seem like small potatoes indeed.

 

More Down-To-Earth Issues

As the holiday shopping season begins — okay, you blew Hannukah, which starts today — Dan Piraro offers a practical selection over at Bizarro (KFS). As the clerk notes, everyone is wearing them, despite their decidedly non-slimming pattern.

It also comes in red, but how would you know where to send it?

I would, however, be a little cautious in taking advice from someone who appears to be featuring English Leather on the counter — that big wooden top being a giveaway, though I’m less certain of the other aftershave, since I remember several noxious things that came in green bottles.

I wore English Leather at about 14, until I heard two very pretty, very stylish sisters slagging the stuff and switched to something a little less potent and adolescent.

Six years later, I ran into a college classmate who was both laughing and gagging because she had just passed three guys in a hallway and scored the Sophomore Trifecta: English Leather, Canoe and Jade East.

Laughing through her tears indeed.

 

While Piraro handles the Sundays, daily Bizarros are done by Wayno, who dropped this last week.

I never ask my dog who’s a good boy, in part because she’s a good girl, but mostly because the only purpose of the question is to get the dog all ginned up and I don’t consider that a positive goal.

Or a necessary one: She gets fired up enough when she sees me putting on shoes.

She certainly is a good girl, and when she sees that, she knows we’re …