CSotD: A Sunday Short Stack
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Real Life Adventures indeed. The only thing more dreaded than an all-hands meeting these days is that age-old perennial one: An invitation to coffee in a public place.
Of course, that latter situation is sometimes a relief. I've sipped from the fatal cup of joe twice and, in both cases, I kind of knew it was coming and, in both cases, being on the street was better than where I'd been for the weeks leading up to it.
In one of those cases, I'd already had a frank conversation with the boss that changed the question from "if" to "when," and so the cup of coffee was more of an announcement of "now" and a fairly pleasant conversation about paperwork and procedures. He asked me if I needed time to clean out my desk and I said I'd already gathered the stuff in one drawer, thanks, except for a couple of things on the desktop itself.
A couple of weeks later, he had the Big Meeting with everyone else where he announced that they didn't need to come back the next day because there wasn't going to be one.
The big surprise was that anybody was surprised, but, yeah, there's always that guy who was expecting pancakes.
I've had times, too, where I saw where things were headed and managed to engineer an escape, including at least one where they were purposely making my life miserable in hopes I'd leave.
I understand that, in some countries, that's called "constructive dismissal" and you can collect unemployment, but we're an exceptional nation in oh, so many ways, and crapping on our workers is certainly one of them.
All I can say is that journalism is one strange profession, because, these days, if you run across someone you knew a few years ago in the business, it's perfectly reasonable to ask, "So, are you still working?"
Speaking of exceptional …
Given the number of editorial cartoons about Syria and Putin and Obama being strewn from either side of the aisle, it should be no surprise that one of them would be neither tone-deaf or lame. Mike Luckovich made me laugh with this response to Putin's head-scratcher of an op-ed.
The surprise is that not a single pancake has been served up by anyone else on this topic. Yeesh.
Between those who are apparently mad that war has possibly been averted — either because they wanted to see more people killed or because they wanted to excoriate the government for doing it — and those who are acting as if there's no chance it has been because they can't seem to turn their creative oil-tanker in a new direction, scouring the editorial cartoons is about as depressing as going to mandatory meetings.
But, yeah, this one made me laff. I like pancakes.
Strange compliment of the day
I was struck by the first panel of Retail today, not by some exquisite piece of artwork but just the opposite: The bland flatness of the drywall barrier over the not-ready-yet department store that will soon grace the mall.
A major part of what has always made the strip work so well is that Norm Feuti put a couple of decades of research into life in the mall and is an expert on corporate life in the retail sector. I'd say that he survived with his sense of humor intact, but there's a level of bite to the laughs in this strip that suggest that the ol' sense of humor might have gotten a bit frayed in the process.
Which is a large part of the appeal. Only someone who has worked in the trade would make Marla being promoted to store manager a bit of bad luck.
In this case, well, sometimes a new company will do a whole festive mural to get the shoppers excited about their coming, but, far more often, you get this, and exactly this.
I probably shouldn't hand out compliments for simply getting it right, but there aren't that many times you see someone resist the urge to be creative.
Getting it right is creative, strange as that seems.
Wish they could all be like this
I've said before that I grew up in the woods and the Sunday Mark Trail was an important part of my media diet because it was so often relevant to my own life. (The free on-line version, for no discernible reason I can think of, chops off the top three panels. Yet another reason to spend three cents a day on a DailyInk subscription!)
I really don't understand the disconnect between the goofy six-day stories and the wonderful Sunday spreads. It's really two different comics.
I was once called into an elementary school where the third graders were each going to be asked to do a one-page cartoon biography of a local inventor, and I recommended the Sunday Mark Trail as a template, and provided four or five examples for them.
I was invited back for the grand unveiling of their work, and the kids had each used the small panels to narrate events in the inventors' lives, and then the big final panel as the explanation of his work and its impact. It's an excellent template for exposition.
Today's struck me in particular for two reasons: One is that I love those pale, fragile little Indian pipes. There are certainly more colorful things in the forest, but there's something particularly exquisite in their ghostly, delicate translucence that I find fascinating, and while it's a pleasing surprise to happen across a jack-in-the-pulpit or lady's slipper or other rare specimen, I always feel like I've stepped into an art gallery or a cathedral when I see Indian pipes.
The other factor is that I bought my first half-peck of fresh apples at the orchard yesterday, and the day before that, I saw my first V of geese heading down the river valley. This is the time of year when I start hoping for one of those autumns where all the leaves turn at once and stay bright and on the trees for at least 10 days.
"The country is the place for children, and if not the country, a city small enough so that one can get out into the country." – Theodore Roosevelt
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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