CSotD: Just me complaining again
Skip to comments
The first, which applies to a couple of people, is that I suspect some cartoonists have switched from pen-and-ink to tablets.
Actually, I know that several have made the switch, but what I have come to suspect recently is that some have done so perhaps on cheaper tablets or … I dunno … don't have the right settings, but, in either case, they're so enamored of the new process that they aren't looking very closely at the final product, which, instead of replicating the smooth, fine line of pen or brush, looks like the cartoon was done in charcoal.
It's not a good look. Maybe they're the type who post online but never go online, so they don't see how bad their cartoons look. Well, don't count on your editors to tell you.
And speaking of editors who don't raise hell about quality, my second point is that I've finally given up on a particular cartoonist whose newspaper has so larded its website with pop-ups and popovers and clickbait and general garbage that I can't find his latest cartoon anymore.
If someone like me, who has a vested interest in seeking out your work, is giving up, how does anyone expect casual readers to persist in rummaging through this heap?
Fortunately, he's got a Facebook page. I would suggest that cartoonists whose newspapers make their work impossible to find do likewise.
And now, on with the show:
An old familiar song
Retail put me in mind of a landlord I had back in Boulder nearly a half century ago, who lived in another state and, each month when we'd send him the rent check, would write back and say he was planning a visit to Colorado and might stop by. Which never happened.
Which would have been okay — I've nothing against unintrusive landlords — except when then-wife was graduating from CU and we were preparing to move to Indiana for my senior year, we couldn't get him to even designate a trusted friend in Boulder to come do a walk-through for damage. About three weeks after our move, I finally called him to ask about our not-insubstantial damage deposit, whereupon he gave me a tirade about how we had left the place.
We'd stripped and waxed the kitchen floor, cleaned the oven, whited over some kick marks on a wall near a desk and generally gone above and beyond, but he declared the place "a n-word hole" and swore he'd spent the entire deposit to make it right. I said that, even if it were that bad, it wouldn't cost $300 to clean it up to which he said, "Do you know what help costs?" to which I replied "I've been 'help' and I know what bastards like you pay" and hung up.
But no hard feelings.
I even sent him many little gifts over the next several years, mostly in the form of bill-me-later subscriptions to magazines, but, also, if you want to know anything about things that begin with the letter "A," he's the man to ask because he owns the first volume of several encyclopedias.
Which is how you turn a memory that might have made me angry into one that makes me laff.
By the way, when I worked in newspapers, we really did get visits from vice-presidents.
Trust me: It's worse when they show up.
And then there's this
Betty covers a topic that makes me sad, because I have reluctantly stopped contributing to some causes I care about.
I used to be an NPR supporter, but they've raised their minimum contribution and made it abundantly clear that they want you to pledge monthly amounts rather than lump sums.
Given the precarious finances of a freelance writer, I do well to pledge a monthly amount to my landlord and my auto insurance company. I'd happily give what I can each year, but they don't seem interested. Tant pis.
As for other organizations, as Betty demonstrates, they want more, and I can't afford to write them a big enough check to cover the mailing costs of the repeated entreaties they send once you're on their sucker donor list.
Several years ago — I'm thinking six or seven — one prominent organization offered a bumpersticker for a $10 donation, which seemed okay to me. They have pestered me regularly ever since, and they never did send me the damn bumpersticker.
And I joined another well-established, worthy national group by paying my yearly dues, only to get a letter three weeks later asking me to renew my membership. And they have stuffed my mailbox ever since.
It's not that I doubt the righteousness of the widow's mite, but I'm reluctant to waste my talents.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Bizarro)
Granted, Barney and Clyde has always had a mission of social commentary with a focus on corporate greed, and, while being this directly political is a departure for Bizarro, vegetarian Dan Piraro has often pointed a sharp pen at omnivores.
Still, this pair still stood out in a sea of apolitical gags today, and I think we're closing in on a situation where silence implies consent and that, as a popular meme suggests, "If you ever wondered what you'd have done in the 1930s, now's your chance to find out."
I don't think every cartoonist is positioned to be as overtly political as these, but perhaps the saggy pants gags and drawings of apologetic wives in frazzled clothing clutching disembodied steering wheels should be put aside once in a while for ruminations on topics with a little more heft.
Besides …
As Steve Sack demonstrates, the editorial cartoonists can be funnier these days than some of the people working over in the funnies section.
It's funny because there aren't very many rich people who worry about this sort of thing.
But we're working to make sure they remain a minority.
Plus ça change
plus c'est la même chose
(Watch Your Head, which I used to illustrate this 2006 story)
Comments 4
Comments are closed.