CSotD: Knowing is half the battle
Skip to comments
Arctic Circle got Tuesday off to an intelligent start, and I don't know if that skewed my appreciation of the comics that followed or not, Comics Kingdom being my first start and Arctic Circle being alphabetically near the top of that page, though I've done a little bit of customizing on the order.
In any case, she's right: Humans have long had a compulsion to say "I was here!" that goes back to those ancient hand paintings.
Though I suppose it may go back further, since my dog also has a compulsion to say "I was here!" which can make a simple walk around the block take a while.
Perhaps we began painting walls when our scent receptors began to evolve down to a dull roar and we started focusing on other matters.
The more I read about dogs' ability to process odors, the more I think that being a dog must be like being on acid all the time, and that we wouldn't have invented wheels or fire if that were true of humans.
Though, granted, we might have invented wheels of fire.
However it happened, though, Alex Hallatt's peek through the mists of time and motivation provided a laff that required a little thoughtful background.
And perhaps my self-consciousness was tee-ed up by Friend of the Blog Brian Fies's recent storm of selfies from a trip he and his wife took to Amsterdam and up the Rhine, which were each so similar to their backgrounds that Facebook friends began to comment but didn't see the nefarious visual plot he had in mind until he published this account on his blog.
You also have to have a little grounding in both current news and what I guess you could call historical pop-culture to appreciate today's Matt.
Of course, if you live in Great Britain — or Pretty Good Britain or whatever it's called these days — where his work runs, you'd know that Brexit has brought up the question of Gibraltar's complex history and Spain's claims of sovereignty.
But he doesn't actually say that the cartoon is set in Gibraltar, having enough respect for his readers to expect them to make the connection, what with the news and the sea in the background and the pay-binoculars.
And you also have to be aware of the legend which states that Gibraltar will remain British as long as the Barbary Apes remain there, by which they mean the macaques, which are actually nasty-tempered monkeys and not nasty-tempered apes, but the more interesting part is that, while the apes or monkeys or whatever they are have been there for an eon or so, the British have only been there since the 18th century, which makes the "legend" sound more like a "slogan."
There's an older one about the ravens at the Tower of London, which says the Crown and Britain itself will fall if the ravens leave, which is why, back in the 17th century, they clipped the ravens' wings and put them in cages.
Meanwhile, they keep the apes from departing Gibraltar by feeding them and making it illegal to kill them.
Most of the Commonwealth has undergone some variation of one policy or the other.
Ah well. It's hard work maintaining an empire.
And then today's Looks Good On Paper cites a bizarre fact that probably skated across your newsfeed a couple of weeks ago, and you'll have no idea what is going on here unless you happened to click on it.
Tardigrades, or "water bears," are microscopic little beasties that can survive total drought, or being frozen solid or, as Dan Collins' cartoon notes, being shot into space, because of an odd genetic protein in their system, which is different from the special type of sugar found in wood frogs that allows them to be frozen solid in winter and emerge unscathed in the spring.
Tardigrades can survive conditions that would wipe wood frogs off the face of the earth.
And as long as the tardigrades survive, there will be jokes that go right over the heads of the audience.
It's a gag I wouldn't have understood except that I look for odd science stories each week to pass on to my young readers, but, then again, it wouldn't have risen to the top of Google News if people hadn't been clicking on it, so Dan Collins and I weren't the only people who knew about tardigrades or water bears or whathaveyou.
Speaking of my young readers — and writers — I sent a 12-year-old to review "Boss Baby" on the theory that we needed a movie review and, while it looked really stupid, wotthehell.
And that I'm not in the 8-to-14 demographic of the publication.
So here's his review, and, while the whole thing is well-done, I'll save you the click by providing his lede:
There are two types of good movies in this world: Those that have a well thought-out plot, incredible acting, and beautiful cinematography; and those that include fat babies in suits.
Proving that not all humor needs to be intelligent and, I would suggest, that the fact that "Boss Baby" topped "Beauty and the Beast" at the box office this past weekend is not a sign of the apocalypse.
Speaking of silly humor …
There are two types of BeeGees songs in this world:
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.
Comments 1
Comments are closed.