CSotD: Sunday Really Really Short Takes
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I mentioned recently that I'm trying to avoid TLDNR Syndrome. Today offers a chance, since a lot of cartoonists have served up strips that require little elaboration.
Much as I contend that a good strip makes you laugh because it made you think, there are ones that make you laff, which is different. They still raise a thought, but not one that requires much conversation.
F'rinstance:
I really liked today's Rhymes with Orange, but it made me think two things, neither of them particularly profound:
1. She should get these things made, preferably out of some kind of soft rubbery stuff. Not only would all those marine biology majors want them for their mortarboards, but they would also hang them from their car mirrors and bulletin boards.
2. Did all those high school kids who wanted to major in marine biology actually do it? 'Cause, damn, that would be a lot of marine biologists with $30k student loans, and, while I suspect marine biology pays better than art history, they pretty much pay the same if there aren't any openings.
Um … and that's it. But I did laff.
And f'rinstance
Edison Lee summons up a slightly more profound thought, because, while this is brilliant and cracked me up, there are a lot of Autocorrect Gags floating around Facebook and I more than suspect that most of them are bogus. Somebody either finds a word that potentially autocorrects into something funny, or imagines one which might but actually doesn't, and then sets up a sock-puppet conversation, grabs a screenshot and posts it. Or just fakes the screenshot.
Same thing happened in the '90s with mondegreens: They began as a genuine sharing of humorously misheard lyrics and then morphed into people just inventing switches and pretending they were real. People may have genuinely heard "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" and "I smell the garlic in your hair," but nobody ever really thought it was "There's a bathroom on the right."
And the real mondegreens were then buried under a pile of fakes, after which the fakes became so clearly bogus that they stopped being funny and then everybody wandered away looking for the next thing.
And now it's Autocorrect Gags.
All of which is true, but all of which is also a case of way overthinking a well-crafted strip. Cartoonists are supposed to do good rifs on pop-culture topics. Excellent example.
And I laft.
And then there's this:
Trudeau, who is still producing new Doonesburys for Sunday, segues our conversation from misheard words to words that were heard correctly but simply didn't happen.
Well played, but requiring even less commentary than a rubber squid.
And this …
A different twist on a gag that is running out of steam. Monty switches the "Don't you just hate people who talk to you on planes?" rant into a rant on people who go out of their way to avoid social contact. Built, yes, on Monty's established character as somebody nobody wants to talk to.
No, I'm not eager to initiate conversation with someone I will then be stuck next to for two hours or more.
On the other hand, I once waited until "time to shut off your devices and raise your seats" time to start talking to the woman next to me and she turned out to be an editor of children's books. Which may be why I'm doing this at the moment instead on concentrating on fulfilling the terms of a multibook contract.
I did, however, once deign to talk to a stranger and thus spent the last several hours of a Chicago-to-Denver Amtrak trip talking to a former photographer from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, who had with him a portfolio full of fascinating photos both of street scenes including several of a knife fight, and of people like Dame Alicia Markova, and fascinating stories to go with each.
Admittedly, besides his portfolio, he also had with him a quart of Haig & Haig, which would make me cozy up to just about anybody. When I got off the train, my wife wasn't sure which to lug out to the car first, my suitcase or me.
So now …
Okay, I came in under my ideal word count, but you're not dismissed.
Use the time we saved to go read the rest of a truly brilliant Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal takedown on how bad research gets into the mainstream and never, ever disappears.
It's one thing to not ever be able to unhear a mondegreen, but the persistence of false facts is the backbone of the Internet, magazines and several news networks.
And that's not funny.
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