CSotD: Ars Paciscor Longa, Vita Brevis
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The Art of the Deal takes a long time, but life is short and so while the lawsuits are filed and the surrenders on both sides happen, we’ll stay out of the political fray. And just as in this Daddy’s Home, I’ve got the information I need to complete my taxes, so, having written both my Senators, breaking out the calculator might be good use of my time.
I won’t bother to cheat on them, either, because 2024 didn’t make it worth the bother, though if the hiring freeze hangs in and the buyouts have any impact, this might be an excellent year to try.
The IRS is short-staffed to begin with and Dear Leader’s freeze came along just as they were on the verge of their annual hiring, so I don’t know who’s going to be available to examine your returns, while, if you want help filling things out, you’re going to sit on hold even longer this season.
Asking the IRS for help is already like that old joke about the kid who says, “I worked out my arithmetic problem three times. Here are my three answers.” If you get audited, you have to hope the auditor is of the same opinion as whoever you spoke to on the help line.
Enough politics. Onward!
This Baby Blues made me stop a moment, but I don’t think my kids ever met anyone I dated before their mom, though she met several of my ex-GFs and seemed to survive whatever challenge that posed.
“Several” is not a tribute to my magnetism but something of the opposite: I was perpetually in love with interesting women, but they came and went with such frequency that I don’t know that any of them would inspire much jealousy.
IMHO, we need more comic strips about divorced couples.
Bill Hinds and Jeff Millar tried it with Second Chances, which somehow didn’t catch on, though Kate and Nick continue as occasional characters in Tank McNamara.
Jerry Bittle had some success with Shirley & Son, which continues on GoComics Classics but was cut short by Jerry’s untimely death just as Shirley was venturing back into the post-divorce dating scene, which had great promise.
Anyway, my boys met my post-divorce GFs as well as their mother’s BFs and had mixed reactions, but then so did we. I liked the fellow she married because he was brilliant and talented, which I took as evidence of her consistent taste.
Different sort of stepparent in the current cycle of Heaven Help Us, which has wended its way through Genesis and is getting into Exodus. If you want a more graphically intense version of Genesis that cleaves closely to the original, I’d recommend R. Crumb’s version of the story, but I’m having an awfully good time following this graphically loose and pleasantly impious series.
It’s an excellent example of how satire and parody work better in the hands of someone who truly knows and understands the original source material.
As demonstrated in this New Yorker
Juxtaposition of the Day
Emily Bernstein — The New Yorker
Bernstein’s piece is based on the widespread notion that cavemen were morons blundering along until their brains developed, and the fact that she has a man speaking contradicts the high likelihood that women would not only be in charge of the food, but, more to the point, that they had a very solid knowledge of not only what was edible and what wasn’t but some sense of what had medical benefits.
By contrast, Santino’s cartoon is funnier, because it pokes fun at the reader, not only demonstrating that not all “Renaissance Men” were geniuses, but that, at the time, they didn’t think of their era as the “Renaissance” anyway. The idea of some random cheese vendor thinking of himself as a genius dwelling in the Renaissance is laughable, but the joke is on those who look upon history so foolishly.
One hallmark of the New Yorker joke is that the best ones are aimed inward, and for years they used this 1978 Lee Lorenz cartoon in TV ads for the magazine.
That element of self-mockery is true of all humor, but narrowly-targeted self-mockery is a conscious choice in that magazine, which is why not everyone finds their cartoons funny. Either it isn’t aimed at them, or they can’t take the burn.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
“Staring at your phone” gags are a dime a dozen, but Betty is in a story arc that brings it up to an absurd extreme, which works for me, while Frazz ties it into a particular abomination, which not only brings into question why people bother getting dogs but, with a slight alteration, could raise the same question about why they bother having children.
Being fully in the present moment is the greatest gift you can give to each situation. — Baba Ram Dass
Now let’s go from the doggedly sublime to the ridiculous:
In They Can Talk, Jimmy Craig bases his jokes on translating animal behavior into English, generally with the bathos of pointing out how how plain their motives are. It’s letting the hot air out of the way people tend to endow animals with complex emotions and thought processes.
However, I know why dogs do this. There was a time, ages ago, when Zeus wished to impart something important to the dogs of the world, so he summoned a dog to Olympus and gave him a scroll with the message.
The dog ran back down the mountain, but came to a rapid river and didn’t know how to cross it without soaking the scroll and washing away the ink. So he rolled it tighter and stowed it under his tail, then leapt into the river to swim across. Alas, he was swept downstream by the current and disappeared forever.
But the dogs hold out hope of finding him one day, and so each time they meet a strange dog, they look for the scroll.
(I’ve often wondered how seriously the Greeks and Romans took their myths, including this one. But then I’ve often marveled at how seriously some of us take ours.)
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