Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Sunday follies

Skip to comments

Mike Peterson Published: November 8, 2015 1 minute 2 comments

There are times that Africartoons serves up things that are crystal clear globally, and times it's so local that I don't have a clue what they're on about. That's a good thing, because if "All politics is local," then solid commentary should also be.

But this Dr. Jack and Curtis cartoon sent me over to Google News for a couple of reasons:

For one, with the TPP agreement starting to draw more attention, any discussion of trade agreements is of interest, and, having covered the initial Free Trade Agreement with Canada 20 years ago, I got to see how quickly that ideal arrangement between friends fell into quarrels over stumpage fees and potash.

The other is that food issues attract pseudoscience true believers, such that you get postings about how "Monsanto has been banned" when perhaps they mean a particular product made by that huge company, and sometimes even that is incomplete, unverified reporting on a response from a country that simply has a "wait and see" attitude.

So I found this and this and this, and it still isn't entirely unclear what's going on, but it's more a stumpage fees and potash issue than an OMG-Monsanto freakout.

Which is to say, it's a real thing and there's something there.

And my initial sympathy is with a small nation trying to avoid importing avian flu, but I'm not clear on exactly what restrictions are being imposed.

And my secondary sympathy, as in the potash and stumpage fee matters, tends to be with the less powerful partner rather than with the one who is kneeling on his chest.

Much of which seems reflected in this cartoon.

So I don't know exactly what's going on, but I do have this question:

If there's no such thing as a free lunch, is there such a thing as free trade?

Juxtaposition of the 94 years

(Prickly City, Nov 8, 2015)

(Dorman H. Smith, Aug 27, 1924)

Note that, back when media was still somewhat limited, it only took one pillow.

Note, too, that, back then, you didn't have to employ the muffling device until six weeks before the election.

Trivia note: Coolidge won that 1924 contest, and his was the first inauguration to be broadcast over the radio, March 4, 1925, (back when the term "lame duck" still had actual meaning and political significance.)

That link includes an audio file of portions of his speech, which no doubt are clearer there than they would have been to the "radio bugs" who picked it up at home.

Assuming they had removed the pillow. 

"What's not fine is rarely is the question asked, are, is our children learning?"

Mark Anderson generally confines his humor to corporate boardrooms, pets and relationships, so this bit of political commentary knocked me over as much for its unexpectedness as for its dead-on humor.

It suggests another Juxtaposition-Separated-By-Decades, though, in this case, only four or five:

As Anderson suggests, however, if science can be a matter of opinion, why not arithmetic?

Well, there's always this liberal PC bullshit response, of course.

Mind you, though, the conservatives may be on to something here: If every view of reality is equally valid and should be given equal weight, that would help make our children's scores rise, wouldn't it? 

Especially if the proponents of this way of thinking get to do the scoring. Maybe the bubblesheets could even be laid out like butterfly ballots.

Are you going to be in my dream tonight?

Boulet reflects on bedtime in a longer piece that is, like nearly everything he does, worth your clicking here and reading.

I can relate to everything he says, right down to the fact that I got up in the middle of the night last week, switched on the computer and checked a deadline. There was no reason to believe that it would change in the next six hours, but there was considerable reason to believe that I wasn't going to be able to sleep until I knew the answer.

Boulet being a mere 40 years old, I have an advantage, in that at least some of the people before whom I have embarrassed myself are now dead.

However, the fact that women live longer than men means that there are still plenty of women in the world pondering that time they went out with a guy for pizza and he said something stupid.

I think. 

True Story: One of the first dates I had after my divorce came when I turned in an advance piece on a "Shakespeare in the Park" play to a features editor who was cute and single, and I managed to stammer out the suggestion that we take in the play that weekend.

Turned out that, while she was good company in the three-minute exchanges during which she offered me work and then accepted it, two hours together was something completely different.

And the worst part was that she didn't seem to be having a bad time at all. And why should she? I was witty, I was charming, I even brought grapes, cheese and splits of Chardonnay to eat on the grass while we waited for the play to begin.

Of course she was having a good time. She was having a great time. She even said so, ferchrissake.

But I didn't ask her out again, which made her absolutely hate me, as well she should.

I didn't get any more assignments from her, which I chalked up to an embarrassing, well-earned lesson in mixing business with pleasure.

And then 30 years later, she turned up in a different, major client's office and I thought, man, I hope that horrible episode isn't going to screw up another source of freelance work.

But I thought, well, better to go talk to her than run into her in an elevator at the wrong moment, so I went over to her office.

Either we'd laugh it off or I'd apologize or … or something.

Turned out the answer was "Or something."

She didn't have the slightest goddam idea who I was.