CSotD: Upon Further Review

My situation with Arlo and Janis (AMS) isn’t so much that I needed to choose some particular strips from the current arc but, rather, how I needed to pick the right moment to sound the alert to what’s looking like a major shift. It looks, for sure, like it’s time now.

I was pleased to see them bring Gene and Mary Lou back into the flow, since it had been quite a while since we’d heard from the kids. Well, we sure got an update: They’ve closed the diner and begun catering instead, and they want Arlo and Janis to join them, which not only means going to work but moving down to the seashore.

It’s not simply a change, but a salute to Jimmy Johnson for recognizing a need to freshen things up before it became an issue. I’ve been enjoying the strip as is, but this is a good move. I sure wish more strippers would step back and examine their work, because there are several who could use freshening a whole lot more than A&J did.

Meanwhile, Janis is right: You overthink and overplan and it won’t happen at all. Gotta yank the Band-Aid.

Elsewhere among thoughtful strips, Frazz (AMS) explores the burgeoning world of dubious quotations.

I’ll confess to occasionally mis-remembering things, and I don’t have to confess it, because Constant Readers caught me attributing a story to Samuel Colt the other day that properly belonged to Eli Whitney (both of whom were gunmakers, though Whitney is more remembered for the cotton gin). But the fault wasn’t that I remembered it wrong; the problem was that I didn’t take the time to confirm it.

As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Or possibly Josh Billings or maybe it was Will Rogers. If you look at the Quote Investigator, you’ll find that it’s pretty much an untraceable bit of folk wisdom. But nobody ever does.

Another quick resource is Wikiquote, but then you have to have a clue as to who you think said it. However, they do list “attributed” quotes, which are things everyone incorrectly thinks the person said. Wikiquote is a lot of fun to poke around in; Quote Investigator digs deeper for more complete explanations.

When in doubt, try “As someone once said …”

Can’t go wrong with that one.

On a related note, Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra teamed on this New Yorker cartoon which is either a funny joke or a deep thought, depending on where you’re at when you come across it.

That is, it’s arrogant to assume you speak for God, and ignorant to think that God wrote in English rather than in Greek or Latin or Aramaic or whatever. Biblical scholars devote hours to arguing over precise translations and then have to admit that part of the matter is which fragment of which copy of which edition of which source you are translating from.

Well, they don’t have to admit that, but they should.

Anyway, the zen solution is that whatever accent you have is correct. And the pragmatic response to that is the people come to church to get authoritative answers, not koans.

More’s the pity.

Some of us can find deep meaning anywhere, and I laughed at this Jonesy cartoon but then fell into a reverie. There’s a lot to think about in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, beginning with it being a clash between the goddess-based Minoan culture and the patriarchal Greek culture.

Which I didn’t realize a few decades ago, when I promised teachers a serialized story on the familiar topic, only to discover, as I began researching, that Theseus was not simply a dubious hero but an out-and-out first-class jerk.

So instead of writing a swords-and-sandals action story, I got together with Rinacat, one of my favorite artists, to tell a toxic-dating story about a sweet-talking, manipulative bully who charms poor Ariadne into helping him and then, having promised to marry her, maroons her instead on a desert island.

I still think Jonesy’s cartoon is a hoot, but it’s hard not to point out that a lot of women end up with unwanted souvenirs as a result of discovering the real monster at the center of that maze, and it ain’t the Minotaur.

Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?

I don’t know if this Lola (AMS) is more pleasant or not, and I suspect it largely depends on your relationship to music. I went to a concert in 1969 that was supposed to feature the Byrds, but, even at that date, most of the Byrds had flown and I don’t who was appearing under their name.

I still don’t, because they cancelled and Dr. John filled in for them, right in the middle of his gris-gris period and it was awesome. But I digress.

Point is that musicians quarrel over which Yardbirds lineup is the “real” one but god knows there are lesser musicians stepping into lesser bands and the concerts still sell out because there’s a sizeable audience more invested in nostalgia than in the music itself.

Anyway, it is county fair time and I’m hoping to get fully back on my feet in time for Tunbridge, but I’ll be going to watch the horse pulling, not the tribute bands.

Changing Times

“Dress shoes” seems like an anachronistic concept in this Grand Avenue (AMS), though I suppose those little kids who put on little jackets and little ties and slick down their hair for church once a week own a pair.

But even back in the late 80s when my dad died, we had to stop on the way out of town to buy a pair of leather shoes for one of my boys because he didn’t own a pair. He did well to have a sport coat that still fit him.

And this Real Life Adventures (AMS) gag made me laugh because I have a PO box and, now that most freelance clients pay by direct deposit, it’s mostly a repository for advertisements. I don’t even get bills there like this fellow does, and I very very rarely get anything that qualifies as personal mail.

The real laff is that I’m still paying rent on a PO box. Force of habit, I guess.