CSotD: I Like Dumb Jokes (and I cannot lie)
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The Argyle Sweater wins the "most thought required for a really stupid joke" award.
There should be a term for the combination of how much time it takes to get a joke and how dumb it is, sort of …
speed:velocity::funny:(new term)
The problem is figuring out how to apply it. Some people probably got this right away and others will stare at it forever, so it would be more to the point if we could find a way of quantifying the relative values of "He who laughs last."
If you got it right away, you probably didn't laugh. If you didn't get it at all, you surely didn't laugh. If, like me, you said, "What the hell?" and stared at it and then got it, you laughed, but mostly at yourself for being so slow on the pick up.
Which is the value of dumb jokes, and, as noted the other day, why some people hate puns and shaggy dog stories.
And, by the way, why it's good to be able to read the crowd before doing magic tricks in a barroom. You need to be able to predict audience response to being made to feel dumb.
In this case, Scott Hilburn counts on you connecting where the foot is with, well, with the fact that the counter guy had better hurry up with that order, because the guy on the far right has an incontinence problem.
Golden Rule Days
My young reporters out in Colorado are all back in school now; local kids will follow shortly, but I think others are holding out until after Labor Day. Given Red and Rover's indeterminate 60s setting, I think it's safe for him to take the last bit of summer at his leisure.
Summer vacation is a touchy subject, because kids do slip academically during their 10-week time off and we certainly aren't using them to get in the harvest very many places.
I had a friend who taught for a time in a year-round school and reported that the retention part was great, but it was rough on teachers because those little two-week breaks meant there was never a time when you weren't either catching up on grades or doing lesson plans for the next session.
We also have a lot of summer tourist businesses that rely on students and teachers being available to work and families being available to frolic.
Or, at least, we did before Disney and Universal Studios conspired with the airlines to make vacationing the bailiwick of megacorps.
I don't know the school calendar in Wisconsin, but Edison Lee and his buddies are back, and today's gave me a flashback not so much to Pine Sol and floor wax as to the stuff they used to sprinkle on puke, which looked like sawdust but had its own smell.
I can't quite recapture it in my sensory memory, but I recall that it was unique and that, like those tree-hanger thingies, it wasn't much of an improvement over what it was supposed to be covering up.
I also recall that kids seemed to puke a lot in school.
There's probably a good dissertation in that phenomenon.
As the World Turns
Kids may be lucky if school hasn't started yet. Mr. Fitz reminds us that education needs to fit on a spread sheet or it doesn't count.
Some schools won't face the issue of whether non-science teachers should inspire awe, because they're simply closing down for the day.
The decision makes sense if you aren't too smart about it: Because they dismiss during the eclipse, they won't be able to guarantee that the kids won't look up at the Sun. Granted.
But they could simply stay in session longer.
However, if they simply close, they abdicate all responsibility they give parents the freedom to enjoy the eclipse with their children.
Because private industry will likely declare a holiday, too.
Brewster Rockit is not the only strip to suggest that people are more obsessed with their phones than with the universe, but others have simply said that people won't look up. The matter of eclipse selfies is diffo.
I didn't bother getting glasses, because the eclipse here is only going to be about 61%, which is, of course, a better argument for having them, but I went through an 86% totality in 1979, so there's a bit of ho-hum at this location.
However, I'm not entirely without curiosity and wonder, and my plan for observing the eclipse is, in fact, to put my phone on "selfie" mode and look at it that way. It'll likely be a much better image than I'd get with a pinhole camera.
WAITAMINNIT: Unless you shield your phone so that only the lens is exposed to the Sun, there will be a reflection on the screen. And not only will that reflection blot out the image, but it will be the equivalent of looking at the eclipse in a mirror. Not a good idea. Rig a hood. Or buy the damn glasses.)
I went to the local science shop but they couldn't get eclipse glasses.
I suggested they'd probably be able to get some tomorrow at a pretty good discount, but, you know, there's gonna be another one in seven years that will be better for this location, so buying up surplus stock is not a totally stupid idea.
I'm thinking I might wait a few days and see if I can get a good price on some high-end eclipse specs. And then figure out when I can reserve a campsite just about 50 miles north of here.
Meanwhile, at 61%, I'll just check it out on selfie-cam. (I'm rigging a sun shield with a piece of card stock)
Total eclipse of the format:
Tom Falco notes that we're no longer simply bitching when we say that they're printing the comics the size of postage stamps.
I don't believe "comics sell newspapers," but they are certainly one of several features that sell newspapers.
But it's not like holy water: You can't just sprinkle a few drops in like this and expect them to work. (Even holy water isn't like holy water, y'damn fools.)
Corporate isn't even trying anymore. Newspapers are just a stock-swapping scheme and whoever gets out last loses.
Today's inescapable earworm, enhanced for your pleasure:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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