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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Use only as needed

Published: July 21, 2011 1 minute 14 comments

Pc7pixel
PC & Pixel is featured today based on a very simple rule: You don't get points for a cartoon that I have to stare at while I figure it out. But you get megapoints if I bust up laughing when I finally recognize the gag.

Now I'm reluctant to comment directly because maybe you're going … "Okay, I've got the staring at it part down. When does the laughter begin?"

I wouldn't want to rob you of that moment, so, instead, I'll repeat an anecdote about swagger sticks, those things like riding crops that officers in the British tradition carry.

Jackwdi They've never had much of a toehold in the US military but came into vogue in the Marine Corps after WWII and remained popular until 1959, when General David Shoup became commandant and issued a pointed and now famous directive on his priorities for the Corps, noted for his remarks on uniforms and equipment and specifically swagger sticks:

Non-combat type uniform changes now being processed will be the last such changes considered for some time unless directed by higher authority. Anything relating to the uniform of the Marine which better meets his needs in combat will be given high priority action.

In general I feel that a clean, neat, well-fitted uniform with the Marine Corps emblem is tops. There is no need for gimmicks and gadgets.

With respect to equipment we should emphasize simplicity, ruggedness and ease of maintenance. And in design and gadgetry the characteristics we demand should be a pattern of the necessary rather than the ideal. We shall continue to strive to obtain in a timely manner the best possible combat equipment

There is one item of equipment about which I have a definite opinion. It is the swagger stick. It shall remain an optional item of interference. If you feel the need of it, carry it.

Suddenly, there were not a lot of officers in the Corps who felt they needed to carry a small stick under their arm in order to let their subordinates know who was in charge.

 

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Comments 14

  1. I still don’t get it, I looked at it at gocomics.com this morning and here. Still scratching my head.

  2. Since your Facebook post invites discussion in the comments, I’ll bite: It’s the certificate or diploma on the wall. You walk across the drawbridge into the castle through the great hall into the throne room and bow to the guy sitting on the throne wearing a crown–who still somehow feels it’s necessary to hang a piece of paper vouching for his bona fides. I like it because it could read as either vanity (“Well, I do have a degree, you know”) or insecurity (“Look, I really am the king, see?”).
    Reminds me of my favorite moment from the very worst Star Trek movie (5). The Enterprise crew finds a powerful being claiming to be God who demands to be taken to their starship. Amid the flashing lights and thundering proclamations, Kirk raises his hand and asks, “Excuse me. What does God need with a starship?” What does a king need with a sheepskin? What could it possibly say?
    I hope that’s it. If not, I’ve just made a terrible fool of myself.

  3. Dr.Fies is correct, and hence the discussion of Marine officers who (don’t actually) need to carry swagger sticks.
    Brian isn’t really a doctor, but it makes him seem more important when you refer to him as Dr. Fies.

  4. Please. Dr. Fies is my father.

  5. And here I thought I “got it” because the supplicant is standing there with what I thought was a newspaper in his hand so the monarch would not forget who has the real power in the situation. I didn’t even see the diploma – who looks at those things???

  6. Nobody does, Ronnie.
    When I was teaching at City College of San Francisco mumble-years ago, I had two of my actual diplomas on the wall of my little office. One day I added a framed “Genius of the Hour” certificate I had won in a call-in radio contest a few years before, intending to take it down as soon as someone noticed.
    It stayed there for more than a year, at which point I took not only it but also the diplomas down and replaced them with family photos.

  7. I have pondered the Latin ones in my dentist’s office. I work on the Roman numerals to see if he was in one of my cousins’ college classes. Hard to guess his age and those numerals baffle me when sideways and my eyes are squinting.

  8. I shared an office with a woman who put her Michigan State diploma up on the wall, so I bought a frame and stuck my Notre Dame diploma up there just to annoy her. I think if either of the people who had handed out those documents could have foreseen that they would end up in the sales bullpen of a small-market TV station, they might have used disappearing ink.

  9. And anyway, people who barely squeak through their college years by maintaining a C/D+ average can end up with a diploma on a wall somewhere. I’d be more impressed if they threw their grades up there. I don’t even know where my diploma is.
    I did chuckle a little at the cartoon, but not a lot. It wouldn’t have been my choice for comic of the day, but then your commentary is always insightful and mostly funny, so it doesn’t matter to me what you choose.
    With or without a diploma, you can still consider me your CSOTD groupie!

  10. Funny thing about diplomas and grades, Mary: when I graduated from high school in Upstate NY in the ’60s, we were given two diplomas. One was the standard kind, suitable for framing. The other, more useful one was a wallet-sized laminated card. One side of the card was a miniature version of the standard diploma, but the other had our final letter grades in all courses we had taken from sophomore through senior years, scores on all Regents’ exams we had taken, and our g.p.a. rank in the class.
    I still have the little one; I have no idea what happened to the big one.

  11. Apparently, my disdain for people who cite their credentials as proof of their quality is more of a personal quirk than a universally shared value. Ah well.
    I had a conversation with an assistant editor once about Mensa, in which I took the stance that there was nothing wrong in qualifying for Mensa but something kind of not-okay about feeling the need to actually join, and certainly about having the need to tell people that you were a member.
    She felt it was perfectly fine, but I contended that there was something amiss with your ego if you felt compelled to tell people how smart you were rather than assuming they’d figure it out.
    Within days of this conversation, there was some shoot-up — It might have been the one at the Holocaust Museum, but something similar in any case — and one of the few things that emerged about the shooter was … you guessed it.
    “As soon as I saw that, I knew you were going to bring it up,” she said, shaking her head.
    And then there was the time my son came home from third grade talking about mythology. “It’s strange that the Greeks and Romans came up with so many of the same stories,” he said, and I replied that the Romans actually were Greeks in many ways, that Rome was settled by the Greeks.
    “That’s not what my teacher said,” he replied. “They lived far apart and didn’t know about each other.”
    “Actually, they had ships and sailed all around the Mediterranean,” I said. “The Greeks settled Rome. I studied this stuff in college.”
    “Yes,” he responded, “but Mrs. Den Dass has a master’s degree. You’ve only got a bachelor’s.”
    I’m not saying these conversations prove anything. But the fact that they stick in my mind certainly does.

  12. “And anyway, people who barely squeak through their college years by maintaining a C/D+ average can end up with a diploma on a wall somewhere.”
    As the OB/GYN in our Friday lunch group remarked the other day: What do you call someone who graduated last in his class in medical school? Doctor.
    And Mike: what that second conversation proves is that your third-grader was eligible for a diploma in chain-pulling.

  14. The US Army doesn’t allow drill sergeants (not drill instructors) to use swagger sticks. However, drill sergeants may carry any piece of US Army equipment they wish; you’d be surprised how many carry a rifle cleaning rod.

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