CSotD: Saturday Short Takes
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Soup to Nutz has grown considerably in the last few years. From a kind of standard "kids picking on each other" gag strip, Rick Stromoski has brought it into a strip where dumb kids say unintentionally smart things.
Today's strip is a good example, because I'm all in favor of NASA exploration.
Not only is it cool, but it's a way of advancing technology that can benefit everyone: Tang is not the only thing that has come out of NASA and most people under 40 probably don't know about Tang anyway.
The gag today is that — Steven Hawking not withstanding — the notion of colonising space so that we can quite literally abandon the creeping meatball of Earth is silly.
However, it's even sillier to divert resources away from the environment, which is what is happening in Washington.
We can both work to save the planet and work to explore other planets, but, good lord, if you feel you have to choose one over the other, a reasonably bright six-year-old could solve your dilemma.
Or even a comically not-so-bright one.
(BTW, I don't know if Stromoski lifted his running "changing portraits" gag from the Major Major scene in Mike Nichols' film of Catch-22, but it's a good one.)
Rina Piccolo has had this "casting call" story arc going for a while over at Tina's Groove, which, as stated, is celebrating a decade-and-a-half.
Today she busts out the pens to demonstrate that her simple style is a choice and that she's got some awfully good artistic chops.
My favorite part is that she gives Nancy a little more of a Tina-style hairdo, on accounta this isn't just a matter of tracing.
And while we're on the topic of Canadian women cartoonists, I've also enjoyed the ongoing arc at Between Friends, in which Danny has come home from college and is de-cluttering his room, to the dismay of his mother who likes the overall idea but can't handle the actual choices or, really, the idea that he's tearing down the shrine to his own childhood.
My kids never had to deal with that, thanks to their mother and I each being kind of peripatetic: She remarried and moved overseas, I bolted from the Rockies to the East Coast and then bopped around from place-to-place there. They got the grab-it-or-lose-it message pretty early on.
However, my stuff stayed in my room at my folks until I was in my mid-20s and then I dug it out mostly because I wanted the furniture, some of which I still have. I also have some of the stuff, but not all of it, since, like Danny, I wasn't clear on why it hadn't been tossed years before.
Today's Cornered is notable chiefly because it addresses one of the most important questions America faces today: What's the deal with mattresses?
Mattress shops are all over the place, often between the rent-to-own place and the pay-day loan store and, given the cheesy signs they use to promote themselves, that's probably a good place for them.
They're also all over TV and radio, with assurances that, once I find the right setting for my side of the bed and the right setting for my mate's side of the bed, life will be bliss.
I thought the concepts of "bliss," "bed" and "mate" relied on not staying on your own side of the mattress, but maybe that's just me.
In any case, when they advertise $1,000 off on a new mattress, I can't help but think they must be proposing to give me $750 to take the thing home.
And speaking of cheesy promises, Tom Toles reflects on the double-entry of $2 trillion in Trump's budget proposal, which is either proof of his dishonesty or proof of his incompetence but, either way, may explain how he has managed to go bankrupt so often.
The classic question "Is he a fool or is he a knave?" wears thin when the results are the issue, and whether this proposed budget is purposely dishonest or simply the result of dogma overcoming logic doesn't much matter.
It's like a drunk-driving fatality: If the driver at fault has had five previous DWI arrests, we can be outraged that he was still on the road. If it was a non-drinker who had a couple of drinks at an office party, we can be more forgiving.
But it doesn't matter a whole lot to the family of four he plowed into, does it?
I think a system that lets someone drive after five DWIs is at least partially at fault and I want to see how Congress deals with this heartless fantasy.
Speaking of Frauds
A word about Berke Breathed's bogus lawyer letter, as seen here yesterday.
I've seen enough C&D letters — even gotten one or two — over seemingly trivial matters that, particularly in light of Dear Leader's reputation for intimidation, it seemed perfectly credible.
Saying that there is a blue whale in Lake Superior is a prank, because, upon reflection, the animal couldn't live in fresh, krill-free water, nor would it have gotten through the Welland Canal. Silly, harmless, and shame on anyone who falls for it.
However, saying zebra mussels have fouled the water intake for Duluth and that everyone should drink bottled water is simply a lie, because zebra mussels are a serious problem in the Great Lakes and so, while the claim is not true, it's credible.
And, if you sell bottled water, it's not simply a lie but a contemptible fraud.
It's as bogus as promising to create a wonderful new comic strip and having a lot of papers sign up and kick other cartoonists off their pages and then deciding you don't want to make comic strips anymore after all.
Twice for chrissake.
Go peddle your T-shirts down by the mattress store, pal.
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