CSotD: Feels Like a Sunday in Some Way
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I’ve been stuck in airports and wanted to know what was going on, but I didn’t think everything in the world needed to go on hold until I was in the air. I also didn’t need to hear “They’re still stuck,” when it was pretty obvious.
But since apparently nothing else happened in the entire world over the past 48 hours or so, we’ll look at funnies instead of politics.
There was finally a bit of new news this morning, because California is riding the wild surf and while I had to scroll down beyond all the excitement to find an explanation, it turns out the gigantic waves are a hello from El Niño and probably not the first weather-related bit of chaos we’ll experience over the next few months.
So a Fortuitous Timing Award to B.C. for this morning’s cartoon.
Pickles sent me scrambling to the Googles this morning, because I had no idea book clubs still existed. As near as I can tell, the Literary Guild folded in September and the Book of the Month Club persists. I did belong at one point, a period after college but before I realized I was getting more books by accident than intentionally.
I also realized that I lived within walking distance of the best bookshop in the USA, Chinook, where they not only had a great selection but a staff that knew what was there, including Claudia, a legendary young woman to whom, I swear, you could say, “I forget the title, but it was gray” and she’d immediately know what book you meant and where it was shelved. Though if you were looking for something more artsy/poetic, you’d ask Mark.
They don’t make bookstores like that anymore.
They make them like this.
Speaking of ch-ch-ch-changes, here’s a positive one: Apparently Maine is predicting a preservation of field hockey, as more girls are taking up the sport, which was a staple of girls’ sports when they didn’t have the chance to play a whole lot of others, or had modified rules to tamp them down into something more ladylike.
I realize I’m dating myself. A couple of generations of women have reached adulthood with scars from the sports they played and played hard. But in 1972, as we awaited the birth of our first child, I kind of hoped for a boy, not out of chauvinism but because, if it were a girl, I’d have to hit the ramparts on her behalf over and over and over, including getting her into sports.
Two years later, someone else did, and by the time my son began playing youth soccer, he had plenty of female teammates. My stepdaughter played on a women’s hockey team her freshman year in college, and younger son met his wife on their college fencing team, which was not a way to meet the opposite sex when his grandmother fenced for Radcliffe in the 1940s.
I’m glad there’s still room for field hockey on that increasingly crowded, joyous platform.
I don’t often disagree with Lalo Alcaraz, but today’s La Cucuracha surprised me. I’m not in the “ban Thanksgiving” club, though I insist that all societies have harvest festivals, and there was nothing remarkable about that one.
And I think it’s ironic that it was mythologized in order to attract and welcome immigrants, given how we are currently beating and forcing them into concentration camps. But I like the holiday itself, as long as it doesn’t include construction-paper headdresses.
On the other hand, I’ve very much opposed to teaching American history as “The virus that spread from Plymouth Rock,” because even Anglo colonization began more than a decade earlier in Virginia, and by 1620, that fellow with the cart would not only be bringing tacos but news of a bloody rebellion in New Spain, which would be followed in 1680 by a major revolt among the Pueblans, neither of which were in my history textbooks.
St. Augustine was settled in 1565, Santa Fe in 1598. But you’d never know it if all you learned was about the virus that spread from Plymouth Rock.
Let’s lighten up and switch from history to science: Dogs mark; bitches dump. That’s not an immutable law; my current female marks as incessantly as any male I ever had, and, like the boys, she never seems to run out of ammo.
But my previous female was a dumper, which meant that she burned yellow patches into the lawn, because she’d empty her bladder in one spot and that amount of concentrated nitrogen is not recommended for lawn care.
Willy has the best solution for cat owners who feel that cats naturally belong outside. I’ve seen people walking cats on leashes, which is certainly better for the songbirds and I would assume such people don’t stand next to a child’s sandbox gazing off in another direction.
I’ll bet they’d happily adopt Willy’s solution.
Here’s some more lawn care advice. I’ve never had enough of a slug problem to have tried the beer trick, but I suppose if you used non-alcoholic beer, it might still attract them without getting them drunk, though maybe you’d have to follow the advice in the third panel before that would work.
On the other hand, if your problem is not slugs but snails, I’d recommend putting out a saucer of dry, white wine with garlic and melted butter.
I’m not sure the bladder capacity of a werepuppy, but the likely solution there is to roll up all your carpets and put them in the attic until he’s older. They’re actually very gentle. The biting problem is the people who own them, so remember to praise him for doing it right; don’t punish him for doing it wrong.
Raised properly, a werepuppy can grow up to be an ideal father, especially if he moves his family to a small house in a rural setting.
Though some issues may remain.
I suspect Bravo was thinking of chatbots and so forth, but, speaking of “I should warn you,” there’s the making of a novel here even in real life, because few people sound the warnings and even fewer listen.
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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