Monty’s right. Nobody’s reading the paper today, and it’s only in relatively recent years that they’ve even bothered to print on holidays, which, by the way, had a lot to do with not being able to get them delivered because the kids were at Grandma’s.
So you have your characters wish readers a happy whatever the holiday is and if the cartoon gets printed, fine, and if it doesn’t, that’s good, too.
Maybe a joke about a turkey or whathaveyou. Each holiday has its standard gags.
None of that laziness here, because unlike yesterday’s papers, we don’t disappear. So let’s dig around and see what we’ve got.
Arlo and Janis (AMS) have a step-granddaughter who is probably too old to watch the parades anymore, and I’m at the stage where I’ve only got one grandkid young enough to be watching. I’ve got a great-granddaughter in Virginia who could probably bring me up to date, but it’s been decades since I’ve known who any of these folks are.
I wonder how much the parades matter anymore? I’ve known people who went down to NYC to watch the Macy’s parade in person, but the days of three networks and competing parades on TV are long over. I’m not even sure how much my kids cared, given all the other choices they had, and they’re now in their 50s.
Back in the Day, the parades were a good way to keep tiny tots out of the kitchen, but I wasn’t very old before I found the smell of onions, celery and butter more attractive than watching Santa kick off Christmas in Detroit.
Which in turn makes me wonder how many people make stuffing from scratch anymore?
However, I do remember Ripple, though today’s Pardon My Planet (KFS) made me wonder if they still make that stuff? Apparently not, and Wikipedia reports that it was replaced by Boone’s Farm, which had the advantage of not staining your wineglasses pink.
Seeing those pink-stained glasses in the morning added to the touch of “What did I put in my body?” which you were already asking anyway.
Good segue to this Edison Lee (KFS), though I’d like to know which real-life fast food places would ask such questions.
There’s some big confab going on in South Korea to discuss the plastics problem and I wish them luck but would point out that it didn’t take a lot of pressure here to get the fast food places to quit packaging everything in foam, only now they’re giving up on cardboard soft drink glasses in favor of plastic and the straws thing seems to have lost its ooomph.
But as for what’s in the food, there are a lot of people who get very self-righteous about the horrors of fast food, which is fine if they’re living on kale and quinoa at home unless they’re stirring their quinoa with a black plastic spatula.
At this stage, I’m grateful the Ripple didn’t kill me and I’m nearly eight years past having had cancer, so I can identify with Cap’n Eddie in Non Sequitur (AMS) and just be happy — thankful, one might say — to walk past the graveyard.
Flo’s right: You oughtn’t to overthink it. “Keep on keepin’ on” is a fine philosophy.
Beats hell out of the alternative, anyway.
This being a holiday in which we celebrate some young scalawag dumping trash on a roadside in the Berkshires, this Speed Bump (Creators) takes on special significance for me.
I had a microwave stop working last week, so loaded it up and went to the dump, where I was told that they redid the permits and I had to get a new one, which required me to go back home and sign up on line with more information than if I were opening a bank account, and to scan and upload my drivers license to prove I lived in town.
I did all that and printed out the new permit and went back to the dump and the $10 fee for the microwave turned out to be $12.50 because I used my debit card as required.
The next day I got an email saying that my driver’s license only showed my mailing address and I have to go back sometime and prove my residency.
In case you ever wondered why someone would dump a load of trash on the side of the road, with or without an envelope at the bottom of the pile bearing his name.
Specific to the Speed Bump, that’s gonna be my response the next time they ask for ID.
I’m also pretty much at the same stage as this fellow in Moderately Confused (AMS), except that thank god I’m retired and out of the grip of office techies.
Some of the rules seemed arcane but probably made sense. For instance, if you laid out pages, you weren’t allowed to have personal photos on your screen because anything but plain putty would throw off the color.
I guess.
I suspect that my own color perception wasn’t sensitive enough to make it matter, but I was willing to go along.
But changing passwords every couple of months didn’t make much sense, and having arcane rules about what a password must contain made it necessary to write the thing down, which of course was forbidden.
And if you really press your office techie, he’ll admit that passwords are an outdated concept that never really worked very well anyway.
But you still have to change yours to a combination of letters, numbers and special symbols and you can’t use any that you’ve ever used before. Or that you can possibly remember.
Some good advice from Zach Rhodes, particularly if you happen to be reading this today.
We’re supposed to be getting 2 to 6 inches of snow, but the part about idiots is more relevant, since the number of people who forget how to drive on this stuff over the summer is exceeded by the number of people who will have more than one drink before driving home, and there’s substantial crossover of the two.
Be careful out there.
Wallace the Brave (AMS) also suggests you watch out for Amelia, but I wouldn’t want you to miss the fun.
Just try to keep out of her line of fire.