CSotD: Friday Frivolities

This Far Side sure seemed funny in 1984, but that was 40 years ago and times change. Also, it’s based on a janitor’s innocent error, not on the irresponsible, egotistical jackassery of editors and reporters.

It came immediately to mind yesterday when two jurors dropped off the Trump trial because of having been effectively doxxed by irresponsible, egotistical jackasses in the media who chose to reveal all but the actual names and addresses of those who had made the cut.

I’d love to blame Jesse Watters for his part, but there were non-Trumpers who also published way too much information, and one should never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

A competent journalist can tell you everything you need to know without harming innocent bystanders, and I’m reminded of a photographer I knew who worked for a New Orleans paper. A car had gone off the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge and it took a few days to get a crane there to haul it back out.

He was sent to cover it, with explicit orders to get a shot of the car with the driver’s body. However, he told me, while he got some great distance photos of the car dangling from the crane, something went wrong with his camera when he got up close.

Alas, his poor, disappointed editor didn’t get a close-up of the long-submerged dead body.

Sometimes shit doesn’t happen.

Sometimes it doesn’t happen on purpose, but that sort of heroic insubordination is hard to prove.

The NYTimes could have told us that the 12 jurors chosen consisted of seven men and five women and included educators, engineers, retired people and attorneys, but that wasn’t enough and I’m not wasting a gift-pass on this irresponsible piece in which they add another puzzle to Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections.

Can you solve it before someone else gets to them first?

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Speaking of past things, this 2022 piece popped up on my Facebook memories yesterday, which was the anniversary of the first Superman cover, which more-or-less coincided that year with Ukraine’s sinking of Russia’s Black Seas flagship, Moscva.

It was a long time ago, before Congress opened up its Russia bureau and Biden began advising Zelensky not to counterattack outside his own borders.

Damn, that wasn’t more pleasant, was it? Let’s try again.

First Dog on the Moon offers the cheerful news that the 12P/Pons-Brooks comet is probably not going to blast us all into cosmic dust, which is encouraging, though he does offer a number of examples of times we’ve managed to make our lives miserable without astronomical assistance, which is not encouraging.

He even throws in a few times when we’ve only made our lives appear to be miserable, which goes to show you that even the good times are bad, soon as you get to me, baby.

Juxtaposition of the Bummer

Mannequin on the Moon — AMS

Jimmy Craig

I’ve reached a point in life where I often look back, and while I remember the good times with a smile, it seems that the near-misses — what Boothby and Guerra call the cameos — carry even more of a nostalgic glow. Possibly because I didn’t screw those up so much as not quite make the connection in the first place.

I’m a firm believer that, if you like where you’re at, you ought not to despise the road that brought you there.

I got in touch with an almost-lover some 30 years later, and we had a great conversation. We probably could have made it work, but some timing intervened such that we parted with mutual regret.

But 30 years later, we were each living our dreams. It’s hard to say what might have happened if we’d been able to stay together, but it’s easy to point out the great things that wouldn’t have.

So a sigh and best wishes and onward.

Not to be confused with the many bullets dodged, which brings us to Jimmy Craig’s cartoon. I’m thrilled that he set it on the seats of a bus, because I was only one of many people who riffed on the Graduate during its recent 65th anniversary.

The wait-a-minute aspect of the movie’s ending is that as Ben and Elaine flee her wedding and head off to the future in the back of a city bus, they have no idea where they’re going or what’s going to happen next, and neither do we and, truth be told, he’s no wiser than he was sitting in his scuba gear at the bottom of the swimming pool.

But jumping-jesus-on-a-pogo-stick, at least they were trying.

I’d rather crash and burn than waste my life sitting on the runway reading the freaking manual.

In this Cornered (AMS), Mike Baldwin explains how cowardice and chasing goals other people tell you that you want ends up.

True in romance, true in the workplace.

When I was editing young writers, I tried to wean them away from celebrity interviews that consisted of “Follow your dreams.” If some actor or athlete or author tells you to follow your dreams, your next question is to ask them for an example of a way they did that. Otherwise, it’s a garbage cliche.

Specific to this cartoon, your goal in life should be to be present for your kids, even if you appear to be absent working three jobs. If you’ve raised them right they will eventually wise up and give you credit not for the pony you bought them but for the effort you made.

Which, if you didn’t, all the ponies in the world won’t compensate for.

Case in point:

The praise and memories continue to pour in for the late Trina Robbins, and I particularly like this one from Keith Knight because it’s a tribute to her openness and honesty.

He remembers how much she cared, not because she showered him with praise but because she didn’t, and that, coming from her, was higher praise indeed.

Her coat, as Joni said, may have been secondhand, though Keef, meeting her much later, remarks on her sharp fashion sense. The two are not incompatible.

And her heart, as everyone says, was first class, top grade all the way.

Which is why, and how, she’s remembered.