CSotD: Comic Sands & Other Delights
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Ben (MWAM) raises the issue of comic sands, albeit imperfectly. Assuming he dug holes deep enough so only the boys’ shoulders and heads were out, and only wide enough to fit them exactly, they could indeed be stuck.
However, comic strips often feature people buried lying down who are then unable to get out from under the sand. This is what differentiates comic sands from the sands you find on beaches or in dunes or — in Michigan — both.
Today is National Chop Suey Day, marked here in Day By Dave (AMS). Whamond is cryptic in how he draws the dish, no doubt hoping to avoid offending Chinese-Americans and New England-Americans by choosing between the kind of chop suey that makes sense and the kind that makes no sense.
When I began editing a paper in Maine, I was struck by the number of notices we got from groups hosting a chop suey dinner. I soon learned that what they were serving was what I grew up calling “Hungarian Goulash,” which it isn’t either.
Then again, Chinese chop suey is only tangentially Chinese. Those two Wikipedia links will tell you more than you wanted to know about either dish.
And if you don’t like either kind of chop suey, Rhymes with Orange (KFS) reminds us to be grateful you weren’t victimized by having purchased a farm share that included a bunch of veggies you wouldn’t have wanted in such quantity or perhaps at all.
Unless, of course, you were.
A good helping of kale might assist Sherman and Megan through the parental crisis unfolding in this week’s Sherman’s Lagoon (AMS). And let me point out here that while I don’t much like kale, I am a big fan of collards and I like mustard greens, too.
However, greasy greens require ham hocks, which I don’t think can be faked by the fake meat people.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Fadi Abou Hassan — Cartoon Movement
I understand that Hassan is suggesting that kids waste time on Tik Tok or whatever instead of reading books, and I’d be willing to concede that, unlike Betty and Alex, they aren’t reading books on Kindles.
But Crabgrass bridges that with a storyline about Kevin, a noted slacker, becoming involved in reading a fantasy novel to the surprise of Miles, who reads a lot.
I likely got a false view of young folks in my years editing a youth-written publication, because obviously I was seeing far more kids like Miles than like Kevin.
But the other side of that is that there are more ways to absorb information than by reading, and while videos and podcasts are not my medium, they’re of great interest to a lot of people, particularly young people, who are not inveterate readers.
You can’t assume that the kid popping from one Tik Tok to another is watching car crashes and food fights. Many of them are absorbing science, history and politics.
Just as you can’t assume that a person with a book is reading Tolstoy or Barbara Tuchman. They may be wallowing in Belva Plain or Tom Clancy.
Here’s a solution: Have a conversation with a kid sometime.
(I was about to write “talk to a kid” but they get enough of that.)
I know I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating and Ellis Rosen’s cartoon provides an excuse.
I dropped out of college for a year to write and, when I returned, ran into one of my professors, who was impressed that I’d finished the first draft of a novel. He said he really wanted to write a book when he retired.
Then he retired and promptly died.
My novel wasn’t very good, but at least I don’t have “someday” hanging over my head.
The joke in Pablo Helguera’s cartoon is that there actually are a few canvases on the wall of this gallery. Not sure there should be.
One alternative to getting anything done is to become an entrepreneur, and if you really want to stay blocked, being busy is one of the best ways to do it.
There was a popular bit of graffiti that went, “Don’t just do something. Stand there.”
That’s not necessarily an invitation to meditate, but as Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
I don’t like final panels apologizing for a pun, but I don’t know a good punchline for this Rabbits Against Magic, because what he says is more true than funny.
One of my alternatives to sitting down and writing was to get an MFA in writing. There are two benefits in getting an MFA, one of which is to meet people who can help you find a publisher, and the other is to learn to write the kind of extruded pap that publishers will buy and book clubs will praise.
It’s not that they teach you to write badly. They teach you to write like you’re expected to write.
But what they mostly teach you is how to become a person who teaches writers how to become people who teach writers. Yes, it’s a kind of pyramid scheme.
A college friend got an MFA in acting at a prestigious program and went on to do commercials, then TV, then Broadway, then movies. I asked her if they ever had reunions of her class and she said no because she was the only one who stuck with it and became an actor.
Which I suspect she’d have done anyway.
Speaking of extruded prose, today’s Speed Bump (Creators) coincides with some things I’ve been noticing and bemoaning. I’m an excellent bemoaner.
I’m smelling the stench of artificial intelligence in a lot of places. l can’t prove it each time, but Coverly’s notion of “artificial empathy” nails down the feeling.
It was bad enough that, before AI, Bing was summarizing what most people think rather than providing what experts know about a topic.
Now Google is topping its listings with a dose of AI drivel, and the plot summaries at IMDB are starting to read as if they were written in a different language by someone who barely understood the movie, then badly translated by a machine.
We’re entering an era of mandatory mediocrity. Once again, SNL has produced not comedy but prophecy:
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