CSotD: Saturday Short Takes
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Bob Englehart captures my current feelings about the Florida school shootings, and it's a mix of shame and anger.
Shame because we should care and I do care, and so I feel a little guilty when I turn off the TV because I'm tired of the coverage and wish they'd talk about Meuller's indictments or something else.
And anger because they should.
This is porn, and particularly so if you remember that "pornography" literally means "the writing of whores." There's no news value in endlessly restreaming the same statements and the same interviews. There may be ratings values; as someone said in the comments the other day, people tune in and want the latest update.
But when there isn't a latest update, let it come at three minutes after the hour and be done at eight. I miss Headline News where they kept to a particular clock and, in 30 minutes, you had a full sweep of what was going on in the world.
Instead, we've got wall-to-wall coverage, currently fixated on blaming the FBI for our not having a more locked-down police state.
Pardon me if I cover some other stories:
We're at that point, here in the Northeast, when we start to feel we've had enough, and today's Non Sequitur comes at just the right moment to rub it in. The strip had its 26th birthday yesterday, and it still gets a consistent chuckle and more LOLs than most strips, which is in part due to Wiley's refusal to tie it down to any particular thing, hence the name.
He picked up the inspiration for his recurring Flo's Diner strips after moving from California to Maine, but has since retreated to Georgia, and I'd say "with his tail between his legs" but perhaps he froze it off.
Winter does make Spring that much more glorious, but I'll admit that this sounds like the kid who hits himself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when he stops.
Speaking of things that happened yesterday, Watson gives a shout-out to the Chinese New Year, and it is indeed the year of the dog. Fortunately, unlike Watson, mine does not appear to have noticed.
Though I'm not sure what difference it could possibly make, given that he is latest in a long chain of dogs who have, like children in a large family, each been given more privileges and fewer restrictions than the one before.
Juxtaposition of the Half Century
(Bill Mauldin, 1967)
Steve Sack points out the foolishness of Session's war on marijuana, or his war on states that defy the federal ban on the stuff.
I've run this old Mauldin cartoon a couple of times, but maybe Jeff didn't see it. Or maybe he hasn't heard that apocryphal Einstein quote about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Or maybe he's just a damn fool.
Anyway, in quotes someone really did say, the wisdom of Nelson Algren's rules has grown upon me over the years:
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
Back about when that Mauldin cartoon appeared, I knew a fellow named Doc with whom I did not play cards but from whom I did purchase marijuana.
Doc was a dealer, not a pusher, a distinction noted in the Hoyt Axton song with the memorable lyric "God damn the pusher man," which is sexist, because the only pusher I knew was a woman named Sherry who used 14-year-old kids to run smack for her, since they were harder to bust.
Decent people didn't like Sherry.
But Doc was a good guy, and, to tell the truth, I never asked Doc for heroin and don't know if he'd have refused, though I suspect if the money was right, he'd have scared some up. Possibly from Sherry.
Point being that, as depicted by Mauldin, I'd have never known even Doc, much less Sherry, if I'd been buying my weed at the store.
And, as Sack suggests, Ol' Beauregard would do well to focus on the people who are killing folks, not the ones who are making them giggle.
Stupid Ideas Don't Die. They Evolve.
I was looking to see if there had been a caption to that Mauldin cartoon and, while I was poking around in Sept 1967, I came across this.
Which led me to poke around until I came up with this:
For the record, kids, we didn't do it.
It was a stupid idea that would have cost a ton of money and wouldn't have worked.
In fact, it makes you wonder what kind of an idiot would even propose such a thing.
Timing is Everything
Today's Lockhorns would have rated a laff, but Bunny Hoest and John Reiner put it together weeks ago and had no way of knowing it would take a political spin by arriving along with this bit of arrogant, asinine stupidity:
That's the future President of the United States with a past Playmate of the Year, which would be just fine if he had been a single gentleman rather than the married father of a very young child, or if they were not standing quite so close and wearing the kind of shit-eating grins that say, "You bet we're doing it."
My response to the photo was that tom-catting around is bad enough, but you should at least have the decency to keep it on the down-low, and that posing for this picture shows an utter lack, not just of class, but of decency.
And that any woman who hooks up with this guy has totally violated Algren's Third Rule.
Including poor FLOTUS, who should get a lawyer to review that pre-nup, though I assume there's a clause about custody, because she can't be staying for the money
Another wise saying:
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure."
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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