CSotD: Insight, foresight and hindsight in the Kingdom of the Blind
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It's the most earwormy time of the year and I'm with Mamet on this one. And avoiding the stuff on radio isn't enough: If you go into a store, you're sure to be there when they break off something relatively pleasant and drop some piece of horrible smarmy glurge on you that will persist until you get back to where you can try to blast it out with your own music.
Which is like attempting to discipline the cat: As soon as you think you've made your point, it comes right back as if nothing had happened.
I suppose I shouldn't do this to either of us, but the one that penetrated my brain at the grocery store last night at least reminded me of a series of jokes that ran around back in the late 60s, "Honest Album Titles."
I can only remember two of them:
"Claudine Longet Whispers Your Favorite Songs"
"Jose Feliciano Ruins Your Favorite Songs"
I won't mention what particular piece of audio holiday horror brought this to mind. I think I'll just comfort myself with knowing that at least I'm Christian and am being tortured within my own culture.
Because I know this crap is omnipresent enough to stick in the heads of people who don't even celebrate the holiday.
Sorry.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Ben)
Slightly different takes on the same theme: The ability to peek that has been afforded by on-line shopping or, as Janis realizes, on-line browsing.
I wonder how widespread compulsive peeking really is, compared to how often it comes up in comic strips?
I remember shaking boxes or feeling along the wrapping paper once they were under the tree, but it never occurred to me to poke around closets and attics earlier.
That is, had I stumbled across the cache, I'd have looked, but searching it out wasn't a "thing."
Maybe comic strips didn't promote the idea back then. Or maybe a different generation arose in which it was — is — a true feature.
In any case, the real trick would be to get into the email account of the gift-giver to find the confirmation messages, since, as Janis has discovered and the boys should also understand, you don't get definitive answers from just finding out where a person has been looking.
But here's my own little Merry Christmas gift: I broke down and bought a new laptop, because I have come to distrust this one and wanted to get the tax-deductible purchase in before the end of the year.
So I looked at Staples and BJ's and Best Buy and Newegg and finally began to zero in on a particular model, which had a list price of $999 but was available brand-new at Newegg for $699.
Not being a complete fool, however, I wanted to know if there was a reason for that major markdown, so went online to read the reviews, which meant browsing Amazon among other sources.
Now Amazon is chasing me around the Internet, reminding me that they have the laptop I've already bought from Newegg, and they'll only charge me $829, not $999.
Remind me again, guys. It's good for my ego.
Sourcing the piece
This brilliant cartoon has appeared in my feed several times, but only (finally!) this morning with attribution: Norwegian cartoonist Christian Bloom.
It requires no commentary, but it certainly deserves a byline.
And that site is worth poking around on.
Related Juxtaposition
A pair of cartoons more specifically targeted and thus more open to commentary and interpretation.
Toles compares the spinal atrophy of the Republican Party to the infamous moment when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a meeting with Adolf Hitler, waving an agreement that guaranteed "peace for our time," an agreement that held up for about a year before World War II exploded across the globe.
As universal a historic moment as this should be, however, I wonder how many people today would catch the reference? Those who lived through it are not so numerous anymore, and there is a huge difference between remembering such a moment and knowing about it through cultural literacy.
Of which we do not appear to possess an oversupply anyway.
As for Lebanese cartoonist Hassan Bliebel's assessment of the fall of Aleppo, it brings to mind a time back in the mid-80s when I was looking for something in the microfilm of newspapers from a half-century earlier and was coming across news accounts of the Japanese invasion of China, and kept thinking, "How could they not have seen what was coming?"
Well, now we have a chance to experience that moment of potential foresight, and Bliebel's cartoon is, I think, far more specific in asking that particular question than is Toles', which only hints at the overall dangers of giving in.
I'm also reminded of a conversation I had with my mother about life during World War II, in which she remarked, "You have to remember, back then we didn't know who was going to win."
(See Christian Bloom's panel, above.)
Less toxic history
The King Features archivist offers a selection of pages showing the evolution of the comics page, starting with Hearst's first forays in 1906 and bringing it up to 1964, which should be nostalgia and not history, dagnabbit, but, then, so should Neville Chamberlain.
This page is from 1914 and I chose it because it contains a selection of familiar titles — Polly and Her Pals, Abie the Agent, Krazy Kat — that you may have heard of but not have actually seen very often.
It's very much worth going back to see the other pages, too. They all expand into nice, big, readable size (better than here) with a mere click of the mouse, and the commentary is also worth the trip.
Here's your moment of "How could we possibly have known?"
(October 31, 1941)
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