CSotD: Do you think I mean country matters?
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We’re going to take a little break from politics today, while I recover from having spent the past week banging my head on the desk. Like the grandfather in The Buckets (AMS), I’ve been sparring with my computer and various online entities.
Both the motherboard and hard drive on my desktop are in hospice, but I had bought a new laptop a few months ago, so all I had to do was transfer things over and then sign in with the various passwords stored on the old computer and which I can’t possibly remember anymore.
I can go back to the desktop for clues, but I do so knowing that at some point I’m going to push the button and ain’t nothin’ gonna happen anymore. I went to my local tech guy, who is quite honest and told me that for a couple of hundred dollars they could tell me it was hopeless.
So it goes. Onward.
It was a particularly nostalgic week on the funny pages, and today’s The Barn (Creators) reminded me of when we somehow had four dogs at once.
With that large a population, three of them could shrug off any indoor accidents, while our noble top dog would cringe with guilt no matter who was at fault. We knew him well enough to know he was only feeling the blame of being the senior NCO.
Since they also had the habit of stealing the kids’ crayons, I had this idea of giving each of them a different colored crayon with their dinner. The problem with that is that housebreaking requires you to be on the scene at the moment, and if we caught someone in the act, we wouldn’t need the crayons.
Other’n that, it was a cunning plan!
Grand Avenue (AMS) raises a different canine issue. We have three dog parks within reasonable range, and they’re quite different.
One is very strictly regulated. It has rules, lots of them, posted, and people eager to make up and cite additional rules. People go there to throw a ball for their dog and object if other, rowdy dogs want to join in. It’s more like a canine fitness center than a playground, so we don’t go there.
The second used to have rules, but now it doesn’t, which makes it a haven for people with untrained dogs. It’s not quite “doggie fight club” but close enough that it’s why I laughed at the cartoon. We certainly don’t go there.
The one we go to is unfenced, with the boundaries being a raised road and the Connecticut River, which are enough to keep well-disciplined dogs from wandering off. And it’s about the size of two football fields, so if two dogs don’t like each other, they just take advantage of the space and avoid confrontation.
I realize that isn’t a likely option in urban areas, but that’s one reason I don’t live in an urban area.
There are others.
Today’s Cornered (AMS) reminds me of living in Denver, where there was open space but no lack of company with whom to enjoy it. It’s far more populated today than it was a half century ago when I thought it was too crowded.
You can still get away out there, but it’s a longer drive than it used to be and you’ll still run into people.
Daniel Boone said that when you can see the smoke from your neighbor’s chimney, it’s time to move on, but, by the time Lewis & Clark stopped to visit him at the start of their journey, he was old and blind, which may have technically solved the problem but not as he had intended.
My ideal home would be the second to the last on the road. The last would be the home of the fellow who drives the town’s snowplow.
Adam@Home (AMS) offers a heartbreaker, related to the traditional “I hate camping” cartoons that celebrate city kids being forced to step outside their comfort zones, which is also related to “I hate museums” cartoons, which find humor in kids who aren’t curious.
The first time I heard the term “wild swimming” I thought it perhaps involved nudity, but it just means being in unchlorinated water not bound by concrete. And Adam’s kids aren’t the only ones who find it scary and disgusting.
I was in the Berkshires a year or two ago and so drove through Camp Lord O’ The Flies, scene of my summers in exile, and found that they have installed a swimming pool by the tennis courts.
I have no idea what was wrong with the lake on whose shores the place sits, but perhaps it was just too wild for those fresh-cheeked little kids being sent out from the city to commune with modified nature.
Or maybe WC Fields told them what fish do in there. Which, by the way, most of them don’t, though the reality is hardly more sanitized for your protection.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite Shirley & Son pieces, and I’d point out that Louis may have been naive but he wasn’t a wimp and he enjoyed camping with his dad.
I don’t know if Jonesy is a vegetarian, but here’s a thought-provoker for anybody who is omnivorous.
Back when we were all going to move out to the country and live in domes, there was a point when then-wife and I considered it, and I proposed that we include rabbits in our livestock. And she announced that she wasn’t going to eat Thumper.
Well, no. You don’t name your food, which is the traditional tragic lesson every 4-H’er learns about now, which is county fair time. If Fern hadn’t named the pig “Wilbur,” Charlotte could have spent her time weaving novels instead of pro-pig slogans.
Question is, if meat didn’t come in styrofoam trays, if everyone had to look their food in the face, would we have more vegans or fewer? Would we be more sensitized or more pragmatic?
Bearing in mind that one of the adjustments many Vietnamese refugees had to make in America was that our grocery stores sold dead chickens, which they considered disgusting.
Brewster Rockit (Tribune) envisions a future in which people will still be scared of pretty much everything that moves.
I prefer this alternative:
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