CSotD: Marooned on an Accessible Island
Skip to comments
Ivan Ehlers captures my mood as I watch the nation’s dialogue degenerate into what seems like a contest to see who can screw things up more: Protesters who increasingly seem like rebels without a plan or politicians determined to turn molehills into active volcanos.
I feel like a spectator, unable to either reason with the players or slap the stupid out of them, in what may be the final act of this farce and this country.
And the dark laugh in this cartoon is that the world has become so dynamically interconnected that there’s no place to flee to.
In the days of the boat people following the Vietnam War, I made friends with a former senior diplomat from Cambodia, who explained his nation’s shifting alliances by saying there were no truly non-aligned nations, that everybody had to choose an ally/sponsor among China, the USSR or America. He explained that America was the farthest away, which made them the best choice.
Distances, however, don’t matter anymore, and there are no good choices unless you decide to go Robinson Crusoe and spend your days on some remote island. Tristan da Cunha looks good, neighboring Inaccessible Island looks even better.
Never mind. Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.
Not everyone wants to play out their days somewhere remote, and this F-Minus (AMS) is sadly true.
When my elder son finished his apprentice training in the Navy with high marks, thus earning a prime choice of assignments, his classmates said, “You’re lucky! You won’t have to go overseas!” which puzzled him since he assumed people joined the Navy with just that in mind.
But, sure enough, whenever his ship put in at a port-of-call, many of his shipmates would quickly find a Burger King or similar place nearby, while he would head for a local restaurant and tell the waiter “Bring me what you would order for yourself.”
I gather there’s a lot of culinary isolationism amongst American tourists as well, which makes it equally puzzling that they bother leaving home at all.
There is, near as I can tell, no Burger King on Tristan da Cunha, and certainly not on Inaccessible Island.
Speaking of what’s for dinner, today’s Lockhorns (AMS) jibes with a conversation I had yesterday about grocery shopping, and specifically about wives who send their husbands to shop.
My opinion is that the cook should do the shopping, and during my married-with-children years, I cooked nearly all the meals and did nearly all the shopping.
But I’d see men with lists, the horselaugh being that many of them would wander back and forth throughout the store because they were getting the items in the order they were on the list rather than in the order they were in the aisles.
Once cell phones entered things, it got worse. Though I’ve never seen anyone livestreaming their shopping like Leroy, I certainly see them on the phone checking in with headquarters to make sure they get what they’d been sent for.
Things are getting better: I see a lot of young men not only shopping sensibly these days but often with toddlers in the cart. I’m guessing these guys also do a fair share of the cooking, and they may even be able to tell which is the washer and which is the dryer.
Ben (MWAM) has been doing a story arc about his son-in-law turning 40, which he — and, obviously, his kids — see as nearly the end of the line.
I hope that’s an outdated concept, or at least that he’ll realize things aren’t so bad, because my 40s were my favorite decade: I had a terrific girlfriend, a job I liked and the vigor to still enjoy life. My boys, contrary to his, were nearly grown and thus capable of mowing the lawn or shoveling snow.
I’d do my 40s over again in a heartbeat.
Speaking of outdated concepts, the Flying McCoys (AMS) left me scratching my head not because I don’t get the joke, which I like, but because I wonder if I even own a pair of cufflinks anymore.
Mind you, this guy is intended to be a stuffed shirt, or I should say, a stuffed bespoke shirt, because it’s been a very long time since I bought a shirt with French cuffs.
You used to have to go to England to find bespoke shirts, because over here we had custom-made shirts instead. “Bespoke” is one of those Britishisms that has snuck into our language. It’s the same as “custom-made” but costs 30% more.
I suspect that “bespoke” is considered a silly word even in England. Language is, as Humpty Dumpty said, a matter of who is to be master, and, to use another Britishism, I’m leaving “bespoke” to the “toffs.”
Along with their cufflinks.
Frazz (AMS) raises the question of what dogs eat and why they eat it.
A more interesting question is what dogs won’t eat, aside from pills. A lot of dogs refuse to see veggies as food, others chow down on them eagerly, and I’ve had a couple of dogs who wouldn’t touch chicken giblets, which is puzzling given the ghastly things they find to eat outside.
Gary Larson raised the boredom issue years ago, and my theory is that, given that they have an extra smell-detector in their mouth and can sense one part in a gazillion, they must be more or less tripping continuously, even when they don’t have their heads out the car window shotgunning smells.
It’s possible that, while dog food seems bland to us, it’s fabulous stuff if you can detect the wonders it contains, as the little girl suggests.
It’s also possible that dogs are tripping hard enough that they don’t realize it’s the same thing they had yesterday, which somewhat fits Frazz’s hypothesis.
It being Saturday, deAn offers a more concise interview than you’ll hear this morning on Morning Edition, which goes particularly artsy-fartsy on Saturdays.
I could picture this as a Monty Python or Beyond the Fringe skit, but there’s an advantage in graphic humor in that you can get in and get out quickly without belaboring the gag.
Then again, there is delight in a mock interview stretched to absurd lengths, particularly if it concerns things that a dog might eat but that I would not.
Comments 12
Comments are closed.