CSotD: Cycles
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Tom Tomorrow holds forth on the new, social-media driven news cycle.
Parts of this cartoon are excellent, parts are very much open for criticism.
For one thing, I think he needs some new clip art to indicate hipsters, because the folks in that initial panel wouldn't know Snapchat from Snoop Dogg, and, if they know about something, it has already penetrated pretty deeply into the news cycle.
Using middleaged men as your icon for the straight media is dubious-but-acceptable. I see a lot of young women reporting on whatever is hip, but I'm willing to accept some symbolic shorthand here and there.
But the jacket-and-tie and Jackie-perm people? They won't know about it until it's been on Dancing With The Stars.
Which, by the way, is including Ryan Lochte in the cast of its next season. I suppose the terms of Brock Turner's probation make his appearing there problematic.
You are what you watch.
Anyway, I'm also adding cartoonists to the mix of information recyclers, and they don't all look like Ozzie Nelson and Fred Rutherford, either.
I'm often astonished at how long it takes even altie-cartoonists to pick up a social trend. The syndicated comic strip writers have a lead-time excuse, but the others don't.
As I go through the large number of cartoons I see every day, I'm surprised too often at someone commenting on a train that left the station long ago.
Tom Tomorrow generally does a pretty good job of staying on top of trends, but there's still something kind of meta about this.
Hashtag-I-Hate-This-New-Thing
I generally put Dustin's dad in with the clueless old guys who not only don't get it now, but won't notice it until it's on Dancing With The Stars. On this one, though, however reluctantly, I'm with him.
First of all, the chip cards pretty much negate a major ad campaign of a few years ago where everything was flying like a Busby Berkley routine until some old-fashioned, unhip jerk tried to pay with cash.
Yeah, that's over. Now the hip guy brings it all to a grinding halt with his damn chip card.
One advantage of living in a semirural backwater is that, while we're all getting cards with chips in them, our stores aren't all up to speed on accepting them.
I can still swipe my debit card for most purchases, and the place where I use the chip is at the pharmacy counter, where I use a credit card to keep the potentially-deductible expenses isolated.
Fortunately, the pharmacist is a young woman who thinks I'm funny and so we laugh through my frustrations with the card and I've been able to figure it out without a lot of pressure from impatient clerks or from people behind me.
But it does occur to me that, aside from being slower than swiping, the supposed improvement in security is a little bit of a head-scratcher.
Yes, I know, I know, there are all sorts of technical whatevers, but here's what I'm seeing: If you try to use my debit card at a store or ATM, you have to know my PIN. You can steal it, and maybe it's easy to steal it, but you still have to have it.
If you get your hands on my chip card you don't. Stick it in, pull it out, good to go.
Well, I suppose that doesn't happen very often, no.
I've recently had my card info stolen, and the bank contacted me immediately because the charges, though not outrageously high, were showing up in a town I never visit, about 200 miles from here.
This was with PINs, not chips. But the chip isn't going to help me buy things on line any more securely, then, is it?
It is a puzzlement. Meanwhile, I'd rather swipe, but, then, I'm an acknowledged old fart.
The question is whether "old fart" ranks below "hipster doofus."
Jury's out.
Empty Nest Alert
Between Friends is well along in a major crisis, as Susan's daughter heads off to college, or, as they say up there, "university."
Kim went through this recently, so she's a good person to talk to, but the storyline is different, in large part because of how much Susan's identity revolves around her family, as well as the fact that Emma was adopted.
Still, different families clearly see this in different ways: My roommate's parents showed up with the packed car and were around for two days, buying us carpets and drapes for the room.
My family took me to the airport and wished me well.
In the planning stages, Emma was excited about college, as she should be, and not entirely aware of her mother's clinging. I'm interested in the revelation today that she's texting and is perhaps a little homesick.
We had nothing keeping us from calling home, but most of the dorms didn't have phones in the rooms and you'd have to stand in the hallway and wait your turn on the payphone to call home and tell Mommy and Daddy you missed them with everyone in the hall listening in.
You could write a letter and I think there was some sort of once-a-week expectation that I may have lived up to for a month or so, but I was too much wrapped up in my new life to spend a lot of time mooning over the old one.
But here's something that struck me last week: Canadian Thanksgiving is way too early in the cycle.
"We won't have seen you for months"?
Unclench, Susan. It's "weeks." About four.
Assuming school starts about September 1, there's a huge difference between coming home October 10, which, being a Monday, means coming home October 7 or 8, and coming home November 24.
Goodness gracious she'll have barely broken in her new toothbrush by Canadian Thanksgiving.
You've got a ways to go yet, Susan.
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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