CSotD: Weekend Mixed Bag
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I’m mixing political cartoons with humor today, and starting with a question: Does anybody really care about this issue anymore?
Clay Jones isn’t the only left-of-center cartoonist to bring it up, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone right-of-center whining about the whole “Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays” kerfuffle. I suppose maybe I have just done that good a job of curating my social media, but so much other nonsense leaks in that, if this still matters to anyone, I think I’d have seen at least a few examples.
It’s not like we’re running out of stupid things to bitch about.
For instance, I got a laugh out of Paul Berge’s latest, in very small part because it always reminds me of the Smothers Brothers exchange, “I went to that Russian ballet” “Bolshoi.” “No, really!”
I can’t remember whether it was something they got on the air or something they didn’t. I was in college when the show was on, so I rarely saw it, which takes us back to an era when 19-year-olds were out living their lives instead of being plugged in to whatever.
Anyway, our esteemed outgoing Governor Sununu just withdrew his nomination for New Hampshire’s state librarian because she wouldn’t go along with book banning, the Republican-dominated executive council explaining that parents shouldn’t worry about what their children might see. Creeping homophobic fascism being something good, I gather.
Berge brings up the point that if you’re going to throw out every piece of creativity conceived by LGBTQ+ people, you won’t have a whole lot of anything left over.
He targets Putin, but just as my immediate response was Sununu, there is no shortage of uptight phobic types out there, and while they aren’t all in favor of actual censorship, there’s plenty of repression.
There are people on the left who want you to hate T.S. Eliot because he was a great poet but a lousy husband, and ditto with Fitzgerald, to which I would add that Byron was “mad, bad and dangerous to know” but I wasn’t planning to marry any of them, only to read their stuff.
I had a GF whose farm-country mother used to remark that there is a lid for every pot, and having read Brenda Maddox’s biography of Nora Barnacle Joyce, I’d say it’s true and if Nora could not only put up with James Joyce but apparently enjoy his sexual quirks and inspire his brilliant work, I’d be happy to have any of my children or grandchildren find such happiness in their personal lives.
Possibly not quite the same, but wotthehell, there are worse things to learn than the joys of yes I said yes I will Yes.
While on a considerably more mundane level, Dave Granlund offers a complaint about the prices at Starbucks. We’ve got a Starbucks in town and another under construction and an independent coffee place where people go to be at a coffee place and I’ll admit I don’t get it, but I guess it costs $$$ to be hip.
I remember when Dunkin Donuts had the best coffee, and I don’t think they’ve changed but that everyone else passed them on quality. Even McDonald’s coffee is at least as good. The best daily cuppa I used to get was at a truck stop in Maine where they’d put Post-It notes on the vacuum pots that told when they’d been refilled.
Starbucks baristas are on strike, so if you want some overpriced coffee, you may have to cross a picket line to get it.
However, I make pretty good coffee at home, and, as Maimonides or possibly Nietzsche said, “It’s hip to be square.”
Jeremy Banx appears to have figured out the whole crypto system, or at least how it’s likely to play out for anyone who isn’t already a gazillionaire.
The crypto bros were building a scam aimed at letting them convert their crypto into gold, but now Fed Chairman Powell says there are no plans for the government to hold pretend money and the bros are very displeased.
Trump, who has (conflicts of) interests in the stuff, is on record as not planning to fire Powell, but he’s also on record as planning to lower grocery prices and anybody who trusts his word probably believes in crypto, too. It’s kind of a sealed system.
I would suggest a compromise in which the Fed would invest in baseball cards and Beanie Babies.
Daddy’s Home (Creators) offers this reflection on what it takes to trigger my ADHD’s hyperfocus, though not all people with ADHD have that superpower and, instead, fall apart under deadline pressure.
However you respond, it’s my opinion that any teacher who assigns homework over the holiday break is a sadist and a control freak and should not be allowed near children.
I’m firmly against giving rightwing faux-Christians control over our public educational system, but I would let them dictate against ruining the religious observance of our Lord’s birth with academic demands. And while atheists and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and others sometimes object to having Christianity crammed down their throats, I’ll bet their children would go along with that proposal.
Back in my day, the college semester for some perverse reason ended in January, with finals just after the holiday break, which meant we had to bring all our books home so we could pretend we were going to study over the vacation, and I think that’s why they began putting wheels on suitcases.
Dagnabbit.
Santa changes to Satan in today’s Loose Parts (AMS). I don’t so much mind the profiteering rats at Adobe changing their software from “for sale” to “for lease,” but I greatly object to Microsoft conspiring with them such that my old CS4 Photoshop disk won’t load onto a Windows 11 computer.
And that Adobe can insert spyware into your older machine to threaten you for having your previously purchased software still up and running.
I’m not so sure Blazek isn’t simply a prophet. Lionel Trains is celebrating their 125th anniversary this year and they’re toasting out front while the company’s stockholders are probably planning to make sure the next generation of toy trains doesn’t work so well.
I used to go to Miniature Village as a kid, but it’s gone now. Sic transit gloria transit.
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