Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Saturday Short-Takes

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Mike Peterson Published: February 6, 2016 1 minute 2 comments

Deflocked touches on a new lesson I've just had. 

As mentioned before, I'm currently at the Colorado Chapter of the International Reading Association conference in Denver, which is a massive event drawing teachers from well beyond Colorado itself.

Among the benefits of hanging out with teachers this year is the discovery that there are now cell phones for very young children that can only call four pre-programmed numbers. They're referred to as "Call Home" phones and it makes a lot of sense until you stop to wonder why or how or how often a five or six year old kid would be in a position where they had to make the call. 

I do remember one of my little sisters, at 5 or 6, getting separated from the family at Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City back around 1960.

I also remember seeing her come back, high over the crowd, riding on the shoulders of a police officer. Had cell phones been around then, had she known her parents' phone numbers (toddlers having been taught that ever since phones were invented), he could have called us on his phone. But it all worked out anyway, didn't it?

Yes, it did.

Anyway, one kindergarten teacher said she learned of Call Home phones when her own cell went off in the middle of class and it was a parent asking about something her kid had just phoned her to complain about.

We've always had helicopter parents.

But now their kids can call in air strikes.

Juxtaposition of the Day #1, which isn't funny

(Nick Anderson)

(John Cole)

A pair of Flint water cartoons caught my eye and raised some questions. 

Well, really only one question, but it comes in a few parts.

As noted here before, we've sure heard from people who seem convinced that, if the poor, marginally employed, unemployed people in Flint were white, their complaints would have been heard and acted upon swiftly.

That is, I've heard a lot of people say "If they weren't black …" but I haven't heard "If they weren't poor …"

I'm not letting Gov. Snyder or any other selfish, sociopathic anarchists off the hook, mind you, but they seem to be doing a pretty good job nationally of harnessing the anger of poor, marginally employed, unemployed white people who feel ignored.

I wish a larger percentage of the people who actually give a damn about a just society would be more vocally inclusive on the topic of who is being served and who is not.

And, looking at Anderson's cartoon, I'd like to see the Venn diagram of those who are furious over Flint's crisis and those who, for the past several years, have been insisting that "Tap water is just as good as bottled water."

Because, as I understand it, those rich folks in the cartoon are about to ingest all sorts of lead and heavy metal and assorted toxins, on accounta there's no difference between tap water and bottled water. 

Which brings us to John Cole's piece, because I'm not simply being an anti-environmental wiseass on this topic.

I have long argued that testing water at the city's head-end is simply not adequate. And apparently, the State of Pennsylvania has agreed with me, since these figures, as noted in the Scranton Times-Tribune, are from 2014.

It doesn't matter how pure and clean the water is at the treatment plant if it doesn't stay that way until it comes out of individual taps at the other end of the system.

So, are other states doing this testing?

And why am I hearing so many voices (righteously, yes) shouting for Snyder's scalp, but not hearing them demanding local testing throughout the nation, either of water at the tap rather than the head-end, or of children's blood levels?

Is this happening at local levels, under the radar? Or is it just not happening?

And the second part of the question, as raised in Cole's cartoon, is "So, if you knew this …"

Seems to me that Flint is only the most obvious example of a society that doesn't give a damn, and that the people who claim that tap water is just as good as bottled need to mobilize to make their claim accurate.

And not just in Flint.

At which point their arguments against bottled water will have a little less whiff of Marie Antoinette.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2, the one that is funny:

(Monty, which began here)

(Sherman's Lagoon, which began here)

On a lighter note (and lead is, indeed, a heavy topic), here are two perfectly ridiculous story arcs that began this week and are developing into a level of silliness you should latch onto and follow to the end. 

I don't know where either of them is going, but, given their mutual history of ridiculosity, I can confidently guarantee the ride will be worth it.

Forsooth, because they couldst not pay for five

It's hard to speak of silly, ridiculous cartoons very long before Willie 'n Ethel comes up. I like Willie's dependable logic here, but it also sets me to wondering how the starving artists and writers of that earlier era managed to whine about their situation.

I would say "before Facebook was invented" but I guess Willie would say, "If they couldn't afford to pay for Internet."

Either way, I suppose they'd walk through the streets, shouting "Ask not that I shouldst create for free! Doth not the blacksmith, and the cooper, and, yea, even he who haulest away the dead, demand recompense for their efforts? And yet all do ask for free art and free writing, as if our efforts were, yea, of no value!"

I'm sure they existed, though perhaps they only recited their tales of woe in the coffeehouses.

However, we've only heard of the ones who put their time and effort into more productive channels, however embittering the process.