CSotD: While we wait for the dust to settle
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The news over the past 48 hours or so is such that any commentary available at the moment is likely to seem at least short-sighted as details emerge.
Fortunately, over on the non-political side, there are a few sorely needed distractions.
For instance:
It's county fair season, and, at Rhymes with Orange, Hilary Price salutes County Fair Fare.
For several years, I staffed a booth at a county fair and I learned a valuable lesson: Bring your own lunch; Do not indulge in the grease and sugar being offered at the fair until the last day.
You cannot sit there for the better part of a week choffing down that stuff and survive.
Also, when someone volunteers to sit the booth with you for a few hours, require them to eat somewhere else, because they will invariably drip grease on something irreplaceable in the exhibit.
It's ironic (or at least contradictory) that the actual exhibits which make a county fair a county fair are agricultural in nature and theoretically very healthy –homemade jams and jellies, prize pumpkins and squashes and the pampered, hand-raised cows, goats, chickens, ducks and so forth in the 4-H building — while outside all sorts of cardio-diabetic disaster is being hawked.
Of course, they also have huge displays in which tractor dealers and auto dealers show their newest and finest, while the biggest crowd is for the demolition derby.
And the booth for the sheriff's department is not far from the carnival games.
Maybe the whole thing is just an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
I mentioned the Farmington Fair the other day and I never worked that one, except in the sense of dropping by as editor of the local paper, which involved a little photography and reporting and a lot of pressing-the-flesh with various local exhibitors.
But it was also where I had the best food experience because I was under social obligations to my local columnists who reported news from their towns.
One roped me into being one of the judges for the pie contest, and I want to tell you, the top dozen pies at a county fair are well-worth judging.
Another volunteered at her church's booth, whose big fundraiser each year was lobster rolls. And if farm wives and their daughters and granddaughters do a fine job of baking pies from scratch, multi-generational native Mainers also know how to put together a lobster roll.
Rough work, that local journalism.
Speaking of working in journalism, today's Dustin gives me at least the collywobbles if not full-fledged PTSD.
I used to put together the honor roll listings for the paper, and I learned early on not to bother calling the guidance office to confirm anything, because they were simply merging improbable spellings from a spreadsheet and so, yes, that was correct.
I'm not talking about invented names or ethnic names.
Or changes in how we view names: Helping to push a name previously reserved for strip-tease artists and golden retrievers into the mainstream is simply a case of culture evolution.
Moreover, it's simply a fact of life that Catherines and Katherines will have to specify which they are, while, if Jon cares about spelling, he can go by Jonathan.
But it's a whole other thing to saddle your kid — and 99% of the time, let the social scientists ponder this, it's your daughter and not your son — with a mainstream name that you have decided should be spelled "creatively."
For whatever reason you decided this was a good idea, you need to accept the obvious outcome, and, when the local editor gets it wrong, you are not allowed to call the paper and yell at him.
Though, apparently, you are, or, at least, one of you was.
I will never forget the prolonged, vindictive rant, though I can't remember the kid's name.
All I remember was that it was a very standard name, the spelling of which looked like it had been devised by a dyslexic Celt.
And going back to the topic of summer, Maria Scrivan and I have a slight (as in, major) parting of the ways over today's Half Full because one of the things I miss least about working in an office is summer and the sound of flip-flops going past my desk.
Trying to impose dress standards in the office is a major minefield, though I did work one place where the publisher put out a directive saying that "Casual Friday" should not be mistaken for an invitation to come in looking like you were about to change the oil in your truck. She phrased it more diplomatically than that.
But, rather than ban anything outright, perhaps you could put a few rosin boxes near doorways and request that people who show up for work in beachware dust their feet to reduce the schlurping of sweat on rubber soles.
Not to be confused, of course. No objection to that sound.
Okay, a little bit of politics, but I can't pass up today's Bad Reporter.
I always enjoy something or other in the feature, but the format requires Don Asmussen to come up with three really good topical gags in order to knock it over the wall, and that's a tough assignment.
Which he accomplishes fairly often.
Today, however, I can't even pick a favorite among the three.
And then to top off a good day on the funny pages, xkcd steps away from the usual math and science for something so utterly ridiculous that I can only applaud, and dedicate today's Moment of Zen to her.
Gnome Ann, you can tell everybody, this is your song:
(okay, I'm donne now)
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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