CSotD: Friday on the Funny Pages

Though I’m doing funny pages stuff today, I’m featuring Dave Whamond’s editorial cartoon on the basis that it’s funny, which seems to be the only way to comment on the Elongated Muskrat’s adventures anymore, as you might have noticed when his rocket blew up yesterday and a wave of schadenfreudey laughter washed over the world.

Except at CBS, which seems to be the only media outlet trying to stay on his good side.

He was successful, however, in eliminating the blue checks that verified accounts as legitimate, which unleashed a number of fakes. There was merriment over this foolish, self-destructive gambit, because few people are going to pay him for checkmarks and the chance to converse with (genuine) famous people has been a major draw for Twitter.

AOC, however, offered a serious thought amid all the laughter:

You have to wonder if Musk — who either timed the move for 4/20 as a juvenile reefer reference or to coincide with Hitler’s birthday — really bought Twitter to improve it and make a profit or to slowly shut it down.

He commented that yesterday’s rocket explosion would let SpaceX learn a lot. I wonder what he’s learning from this.

I wonder what we are.

Juxtaposition of the Day

It may seem absurd to have Cyrus firing Clive for such personal reasons, but the last time I got fired, it was because the publisher/owner liked me but his wife didn’t, and the time before that — which was 30 years earlier — it was because we got a new station manager and he and I clashed on a personal level.

In between, I managed to work for some very nice people and a few who at least were professional enough that we could get through the day respectfully. Which is how it ought to be.

But Andertoons gives me the collywobbles because success in business means rising to the point where you have to sit in on department head meetings in which we all sit around the table and discuss proposals until we agree with the boss.

My last job involved telecommuting for a client I liked personally who was 2,000 miles away and, while I did fly out there twice a year, we only had two formal meetings, both of them on-line, over the decade.

As they say, “Nice work if you can get it.”

The evil that men do lives after them; and Strange Brew (Creators) brings up the point, because once you’ve been a smoker, your doctors will always consider you a smoker. Doesn’t matter how long ago it was.

I understand that there can be damage that can show up decades later.

I would note, too, that forms asking for your marital status are equally persistent on the topic of divorce. You can choose “married,” “single” or “divorced,” but it doesn’t matter if the kids are grown and gone and the marriage 40 years in the rear view mirror: Once you’re divorced, that’s the box you have to mark.

I suppose the reasoning is the same.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

If Jean-Paul Sartre is right and Hell is other people, then it follows that Tony Carrillo would be right and Heaven would be a private spot. And having met the people who are absolutely sure they’ll be admitted, it would be okay with me if we didn’t have to hang out together.

I find comfort in the old spiritual that says “Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t goin’ there.”

I don’t know what happens next, though I figure you might as well hedge your bets and behave decently.

As for Wiley’s vision, I’m not a proponent of the Rainbow Bridge theory in which you are reunited with all your dogs, because, well, I’m not sure having a dozen dogs constantly frisking around me is my vision of eternal bliss, though I loved them each individually. It’s a little too close to Guido’s fantasy of assembling all his old lovers in 8 1/2.

But having a supply of random dogs you could play with at leisure would brighten the place up. I wonder if bad squirrels would be sent there as punishment?

Either I’ve been reading Crabgrass (AMS) long enough to get into it or the relatively new strip is hitting its stride, but this one cracked me up. Miles has been grounded for tossing a football in the house and breaking the new TV, but, as you see, has gone out the window.

His dad, Gene, has just stumbled on one of those moments in parenthood where you realize you’ve boxed yourself into a corner. Nice work, Dad!

Meanwhile, over in Daddy’s Home (Creators), Elliott reminds me of my school days. We didn’t have ADD in those days; I was just a bad, lazy kid who didn’t live up to his great potential blah blah blah.

But once I got into high school and college, where I had serious, long-term papers to write, I was saved by an oddity of ADD, which is hyperfocus, under which I could tear through what should have been a couple of weeks’ work in a frenetic all-nighter. The result wouldn’t be A work, but it would get a B or sometimes only a C, which is all you need to pass.

It’s not a foolproof thing. Some ADD people don’t experience hyperfocus and hang up at the “totally freaked out last minute panic” stage. And hyperfocus won’t compensate for being unable to maintain through a six-week marking period. It only works for term papers and finals, so my overall grades remained in the cellar.

When I see ADD kids today getting counseling and Adderall instead of punishment and nagging, I sometimes wonder if they’d be better toughing it out, since I eventually learned to harness my hyperfocus at least in writing if not housework.

But then I realize how many of my contemporaries never did, and I wish somebody had leant us all a hand.

Besides the ones we got upside the head, that is.

Under the Sea

King Features Vintage machine appears to have hung up when Buz Sawyer’s strips ended 1959 and entered 1960, and the strip has been stalled since Monday. So I dug around in Newspapers.com and this will catch you up for this week.

Presumably they’ll figure things out by next Monday.

Go get’em, Buz!