It’s a frightening world out there. As Mike Lester (AMS) predicts, Disney plans to groom our children, indoctrinating them to begin dying their skin with walnut juice and learning a second language.
The notion that Disney films might feature non-magical Negroes and Hispanics who do not snooze under saguaros is clearly the sign of End Times, and what can a white boy do?
Well, he could ignore the bigots and just read some funny cartoons.
Thank god for alternatives!
If the response to foolish hatred is foolish foolishness, you can’t do much better than this Carpe Diem (KFS), which is ridiculous to begin with and then becomes sillier the more you think about it, given that life in a sub is pretty miserable for anyone much over 5’10” and giraffes are about 18 feet tall.
The more you ponder it, the more ridiculous it becomes, but, in this case, in a good way.
Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, I can’t be the only editor who both laughed and sighed over this Bizarro (KFS), having corrected “rouge” to “rogue” more times than I think I should have had to, and nearly as often as I had to change “defiantly” to “definitely.”
Calculators have diminished our ability to do simple arithmetic, mapping apps have cost us our ability to find our way around, phones have robbed us of our ability to remember phone numbers and now autocorrect is turning us into a nation of illiterates.
Dagnabbit.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’ve got this retirement thing figured out: There’s a day the post office is closed, a day it closes at noon and a day you can’t get a haircut or Chinese food.
And, since I don’t need haircuts anymore, one of those is irrelevant.
Beyond that, the days don’t matter, because naps can happen not only on any day, but on every day.
I’m not really that old, mind you, but I watched “Little Big Man” and “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and they groomed me into becoming an aged, wrinkled Black Indian.
Pardon My Planet (KFS) is a sign of changing times, and a reminder of the days when guys carried pocket knives starting when they were about eight years old.
At that age, you used it to sharpen sticks into spears for games in the woods, and to play “stretch,” a game where you stood face to face with your opponent, throwing your knife into the dirt. If it stuck, he had to stretch his foot out to meet it. Whoever fell over first lost.
As an adult, it went on your keychain and was used to open packages and bottles and to tighten screws.
For me, it ended with Columbine, because I was in and out of schools all day long and had to keep remembering to leave my pocket knife in the car so it wouldn’t set off the metal detectors.
That’s a matter of our society becoming less, not more, civilized.
Specific to this cartoon, I did once invite someone to a Shakespeare In The Park production of “The Tempest,” except that she had to work right up to half an hour before curtain. So I got there before she could and staked out a spot on the sward (which is from whence you watch Shakespeares in the Park) and brought along some fruit, cheese and two splits of white wine.
And a pocket knife for the brie. What was I gonna do — tear it apart with my hands?
We are not peasants. At least, I’m not.
Speaking of peasants, and people who behave like them, F-Minus (AMS) makes a point about the homogenization of world culture.
You would think that the affordability of world travel would have turned people into citizens of the world, but there were 847 McDonalds in Russia before the war, and there are Ugly Americans who go all around the world hoping to find one. It’s like playing a game of lava, being careful not to step on anything unfamiliar and challenging.
There are, however, places you should go to eat, even in these United States, most famously New Orleans, but smaller places like Chimayo, as well.
Although, as Tony Carrillo suggests, you’d better get there soon, before they’ve all gone corporate.
Amy Kurzweil plays with a marketing fact I assume you’ve noticed, which is that liquor stores keep the pricey stuff at eye level and then proceed downward to the cheap stuff.
I’m not exactly a reverse-snob, but I’m skeptical about the notion that small-batch whiskey is better than a major brand. Maybe it’s small batch because it isn’t very good, and maybe that’s because the big fellas have learned a lot over the decades while you’re just starting out.
I do know, however, that a lot of the California wines on that Mid-20s to Early 30s shelf are at least as good as the French wines on the 40ish shelf.
But I’ve also had Scotch from that top shelf and, yeah, it’s worth the price, though you should also buy something cheaper for your second glass, since you won’t appreciate the quality at that point.
Meanwhile, those of us on fixed incomes have entered our budgetary second childhoods and are back to the “Just Turned 21” shelf.
I can laugh at this Betty (AMS).
I’m single.
This Mother Goose and Grimm (KFS) suggests that Mike Peters must spend a fair amount of time at the dog park, and presumably a good one. That is, not a fenced canine bathroom, but a place where dogs have enough space to chase a ball.
Our park is about a mile of mixed open field, brush, woods and picnic grounds along the Connecticut River, and, though only about 1,000 feet are technically off-leash, they leave us alone because the dog walkers do a lot of low-level maintenance and our presence discourages drug dealers and suchlike.
But, yes, recent rescues stay on leash until bonding and recall are established, and the joke here is that, if you can’t manage to teach them either of those things, you need to make that leash permanent.
Fits the dogs I’ve met.
Fits the kids I’ve met.
Now let’s see your kid do this: