CSotD: Things that don’t require an explanation
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The symmetry between yesterday and today's headlines and content is purely unplanned. The best things in life are.
Now here we are, with comics like Speed Bump, which really cracked me up but doesn't inspire any particular commentary.
Except to note that you used to be able to buy this gag that looked like a book, only when you opened it, it would give you a tingly zap. But, at about 11 or 12, my little friends who were starting to work on cars could make similar gag items that would just about put you through the wall into the next room.
I think "tingly zap" is one reason why there are so few of those gag shops left. "Tingly zap" didn't make it, and there are legal repercussions involved in selling "Jesus! What the hell were you thinking?" sorts of gag items.
And, on the topic of disappearing retail categories, it's not easy to mount much of a rant to today's Brevity, because it got more of an appreciative nod than an actual laff.
We only have one small enclosed mall here and I don't think anyone is building them anymore, and that's got to have an impact not just on gag shops but also on the calendar industry, because they used to set up their kiosks about this time of year with calendars not only of comics, as Dan Thompson has shown here, but of various dog breeds and horses and lighthouses, though,if you didn't need to be organized until mid-January, you could wait and get a calendar for about a buck.
(Was gonna double-down on Dan's plug, but GoComics seems intent on proving the point. Try this link instead.)
Now that enclosed malls are no longer a thing, you won't stumble over those spinner racks today the way you would have a decade ago, and, if you need a 2017 wall calendar, I guess you'll have to go to a Hallmark shop or a chain bookstore now.
Or New South Wales. My vote would be New South Wales.
On a less trivial note
Jen Sorensen makes the point that continues to elude a lot of people who post on Facebook, whom I hope do not actually represent real voters.
This, too, elicits little commentary. I'm not going to sit here and explain the Supreme Court because I have a dog and I can explain it to him instead and it will be an equally good use of my time. Either you already get it or you never will, and, either way, why bother?
Though it did occur to me the other day that there's a difference between "representative democracy," in which we elect people whose judgment we trust, and "direct democracy" in which we make the decisions ourselves.
Having just been through a couple of surgeries, I'm all about selecting people who know what the hell they're doing rather than assuming I can handle it on my own. And I feel the same way about my car.
But I'm probably fighting a losing battle in the political arena and Sorensen has it correct: The great majority will choose between the candidates based on godknowswhat and we'll all have to live with the results.
We had a chain bookstore here until a few months ago. It wasn't a very good bookstore — mostly best-sellers and teddy bears and coffee — but it was a bookstore.
It's gone now, and they're putting in its place one of those craft shops that sells cheap fooferal to make cheesy things that people will thank you for and then put in the attic as soon as you're gone.
That's not a rant, just an observation.
And then
David Rowe on the upcoming debate, which is apparently being conducted on the basis not of policy but of turning the audience into a freak show like the Annual White House Concubines Dinner.
Which I would point out Hillary has attended many times, though I can't remember exactly when inviting guests who insult your intelligence and sense of decency became a "thing." (Oh, wait … yes, I can. And it just barely predated her time in the White House.)
But there's a difference between being a preppy wiseass at a dinner for preppy wiseasses and actively trying to undermine something that matters.
I also recall that, during the Anita Hill hearings, a young professor who had worked with her was forced to testify on her behalf while the head of his tenure committee sat front and center wearing a pro-Thomas button.
This sort of gamesmanship is beneath contempt, but what else is new?
Rowe's cartoon is tasteless, but completely appropriate.
And so anyway …
Have a great Sunday. Spend some time with the kids.
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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