CSotD: In Lieu of Politics

The political scene is incredibly toxic, with Ron DeSantis and his merry band of supremacists creating an astonishing false reality with which to program the next generation.

However, both George Wallace and Dr. MacLeod have jumped on this outrageous lie. I’ve got nothing to add except to thank them: We need decent people to speak up.

But there is a strong alliance working against decency and honesty. Charles Barkley had the nerve to defend LGBTQ+ people and so is being swarmed by the hatemongers.

Don’t you let nobody turn you ’round.

However, there are other things happening in the world, and David Rowe salutes the Women’s World Cup, which is in the Antipodes. (The Yanks are coming Friday night, 8:30 EDT.)

I love the Beautiful Game, but the problem with it is that you have to actually watch. You can’t just have it on while you do other stuff, because, while obviously the scoring plays matter, so do the plays that don’t score and the flow of the game in between.

Even the moments when the flow doesn’t flow can be entertaining.

When a dog plays with a soccer ball, they pick it up by sinking their fangs into it. And, as noted in They Can Talk, dogs can wreak even more destruction on a pair of good leather shoes.

Now that I’m retired, Suzi thinks that every putting on of shoes foretells an adventure, even if it’s just a car ride to the store and back. But back when I was working and had a pair of ridgebacks, they knew what mattered and what didn’t.

It wasn’t which shoes, though I wore loafers to work and sneakers for walks.

But if I showered before I dressed, it wasn’t because we were going to the park, and so then they’d simply watch from the couch.

Tim Campbell has clearly been to a county fair or two.

In my days as an educational services provider I sat a booth at a few county fairs, and I’ll echo Campbell’s take on the food, which is nearly all deep fried, though the Farmington Fair in Maine included some excellent lobster rolls.

I only dropped in on that fair as editor of the local paper, which meant I had to buy a lobster roll because the church booth selling them included one of my “little old lady columnists” who covered local towns, while another of them got me a gig as a judge in the pie-baking competition. It may be good to be king, but it ain’t bad to be editor!

Elsewhere, however, I learned from my first five-day stint in the booth: Bring your own lunch until the last day, and then you can enjoy the deep-fried everything and pay for it on your day off.

A little more politics, this from Barney & Clyde (Counterpoint). Now that the pandemic is over, the bigwigs are trying to get their workers to stop working from home.

Part of it, certainly, is the urge to watch them work. Productivity was not a problem with people working from home, but where does that leave supervisors, eh?

At one paper where I worked, they announced plans to put in security cameras for our safety, to which we responded “pull the other one.”

Not only did the cameras never happen, but they sold the building, which leads to the other reason to stop the Work From Home movement: Persuading businesses that they need to have offices.

This becomes political, because the Bulwark’s Jonathan Last writes about Donald Trump’s financial woes as a major investor in urban office buildings, but the piece discusses the plight of that industry generally, and if your appetite for schadenfreude includes watching rich guys flail, you’ll want to read all about it.

For my part, I’ve known some good guys in commercial real estate, but I encountered plenty who prepared me for Donald Trump. He may call it “the Art of the Deal” but it’s a cut-throat game without any rules and there’s a point at which that stuff can catch up with you.

This iconic scene from King Vidor’s “The Crowd” is not only important in cinematic history, but relevant to this discussion because, while all the hapless drones had to come to the office in 1928, filling desks didn’t protect the captains of industry from what happened in 1929.

Time wounds all heels.

Coming attractions

Just as I was thinking that we hadn’t heard from Gene and Mary Lou in a while, Arlo and Janis (AMS) are about to give us an update.

I like the realism of having Gene grow up and leave the nest, and just because we haven’t seen them, that doesn’t mean that the kids haven’t been living their lives and going through changes.

While over at Between Friends (KFS), Maeve has just been through an extended arc (begins here) in which she talked to her ex about her latest failed relationship and then, by happenstance, got to witness a dysfunctional relationship that hit way too close to home.

As I’ve said before, I feel bad for Maeve’s inability to connect, but, on the other hand, it is a major part of her character and I don’t know what Sandra Bell-Lundy would do with her if Maeve ever got her act together.

Perhaps we’ll find out. Or not. But I’m sure it will be interesting.

Both strips are examples of good storytelling.

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Jonesy)

(Brevity — AMS)

As Napoleon or Thomas Paine or somebody said, it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and, having praised the sublime writing in two strips, I got a laugh out of two ridiculous panels that landed in my browser on the same day.

Both cartoonists have a genuine flair for the silly, but the gags are distinctive enough that, despite their identical settings and linked concepts, I didn’t have the sense of “Didn’t I just see this?” which often accompanies Juxtapositions.

Though I think maybe Jonesy’s pig should take Dan Thompson’s pig out for a drink.

Gotta disagree with the cat in Macanudo (KFS), as well as with whoever decreed that wooden swings must be replaced with safe rubber slings that make bailing out harder and less momentarily exuberant.

(Illustration by Charles Robinson)

Enthusiasm, after all, is the point of flying.