CSotD: Schadenfreudian Slips and other unregulated humor
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I had an odd response to yesterday’s Non Sequitur (AMS) yesterday, or possibly the brilliant inspiration for some kind of dystopian speculative fiction.
I suspect the Venn diagram of people who believe in crypto and people who distrust the government has a rather large intersection, given that the appeal of Bitcoins and such appears to be that they are regulated by the hive and not by the authorities. (Which is why they figure in some major criminal enterprises, but never mind that.)
What if the next Civil War were fought not geographically, between North and South, but between two layers, one that operated in the traditional, straight world and one that existed mostly in the minds of its followers?
The tension in the story would be that, while last time around, it was pretty clear that slaveholders were both villains and holdouts of a dying culture, you couldn’t be certain this time if the Pod People were misfits or the wave of the future.
Only now it turns out the whole crypto thing is falling apart, which undermines the notion of two equals facing off.
To be fair, it’s not totally collapsing. It’s just having another of its periodical plunges into despair, which also happens on the stock market from time to time.
Which isn’t an endorsement of either, mind you, but I was amused/appalled by the point made in that article and alluded to in the hed for that graph, which is that a number of people are now calling for regulators to step in.
Hey, you pays your cryptocoins and you takes your chances.
It was the fella who said “Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!” who wound up taking a boot in the family jewels, plus they were living in Hole-In-The-Wall, a refuge for people who don’t like rules.
Beanie Babies don’t seem to have turned out to have been such a hot investment, either. Maybe we should appoint a Secretary of Stuffies to regulate them.
Though the great thing about an unregulated system is that you can ask any price you want, and buyers will simply have to choose between the one for 99 cents and the one for $25,000.
Then, as Clyde points out in Candorville (WPWG), when all those sharp dealers get to the Pearly Gates, all they gotta do is say “My Bad, Jesus!” and they’re forgiven.
He’s wrong, though.
Roman Catholics have to confess, or, at least, make an Act of Contrition, and, if they’re lying on the pavement clutching their chests, they don’t even have to say the whole thing. But it has to be sincere, and that could be an issue.
For others, all you need do is to accept the Lord, which should include living a godly life going forward, but, oh, my goodness, we’ve sure seen the perversion of that concept, and not only by Clyde’s aforementioned collection of grifters.
There’s a fairly large contingent who seem to believe that Jesus died for our sins, so we can commit as many as we want.
They’d better hope the Afterlife is unregulated, but, from what the man told us, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Brewster Rockit, Space Guy – Tribune)
Tim Rickard had to add “all day” to that punchline, to establish that Pam doesn’t just have a phone but spends too much time on it. It balances the gag, but Thompson gets a clearer shot with the idea that there’s a time and place, and then turns it into a semiprofound lesson on life and its inequities.
I laughed at them both.
And we’re back at the Regulations issue, because Pam favors governmental intervention, while cell phone rules in schools are a tangled mess. There used to be, and probably still are, schools that require kids to park their phones in their lockers, but the counter argument is that parents may need to get hold of them.
Of course, if they “need” to get hold of them, they should call the office. If they just “want” to get hold of them, well, they could leave a text message on the phone in their locker or they could just deal with it. I don’t want to get into the whole walking to school barefoot through the snowdrifts thing, but, come on, people.
In any case, sauce for the goose is sauce for the goslings.
And, BTW, I highly suspect that the same people screaming that schools shouldn’t have regulations — about masks or phones — are the same ones complaining about kids growing up without any rules.
Funny old world.
Man Overboard takes advantage of the lack of regulation in webcomics to create a time factor in a graphic format. I guess you could do this in a syndicated Sunday strip, but not without fielding a flood of phone calls from backshops wondering what you left out, and then the editors would be swamped by concerned readers.
Which I guess is simply to say that it’s nice being independent so you can throw stuff out there and not worry about who gets it and who doesn’t.
Jan Harold Brunvand, high priest of tracking urban legends, couldn’t track down the original quote, but, basically, some folks will get it and some won’t and fretting over it is the difference between art-art and commercial art.
Meanwhile, the gag sent me rummaging around to find this Clay Bennett (CTFP) goodie that ran the morning after Obama won re-election in 2012.
It’s essentially the same gag, only the king gets his revenge right away and this guy had to wait four years.
Finally, today, the Argyle Sweater (AMS) brings up my ambivalence about The First Amendment and a regulated press.
I am in favor of a free press, even if it means some stupid son of a bitch will repeatedly disrupt press conferences with provocative, wise-ass questions that would get a high school student sent to the principal’s office.
Still, I’d support a rule that any reporter who uses the heartlessly, cluelessly presumptuous cliché “worst nightmare” would be sacked immediately.
And by “sacked” I don’t mean “fired” but actually tied up in a weighted gunny sack and dropped in the river.
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