Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Friday Short Takes

Skip to comments

Mike Peterson Published: October 21, 2016 1 minute 4 comments

Gonna start and stop the political chitchat with this Jack Ohman piece, not so much because I like the overall concept and use of "suspense" — which I do — but because I particularly like the fact that he didn't drag out the poor Statue of Liberty, who has been getting a real workout lately, or Justice, who is Liberty's understudy and equally overused.

I said so on his Facebook page and he responded that maybe it's Columbia. I miss Columbia, the warrior goddess who represented this country before Lady Liberty was assembled in NY Harbor. 

I also miss editorial cartoonists who come up with inventive symbols and I certainly miss ones who know the history of their medium. I don't object to cartoonists who come up with interesting arguments with which I disagree, but I hate ones who don't do their homework and end up illustrating debunked partisan mythology.

Ohman just collected his Pulitzer the other night and while I have a low opinion of journalism awards in general, I'll applaud that one.

Okay, one more political-ish piece from Wiley Miller. This isn't Pulitzer-level stuff but it made me laff and I give props for that, too.

In fact, as I was putting it on the page, it made me laff again.

Meanwhile, in the non-political world, Pajama Diaries reminds me of why it's a good thing I have a dog. I wouldn't want to go back to working in an office, but working at home does tend to isolate and the fact that I was only here about six months before the newspaper I came to edit folded means I don't have a lot of three-dimensional friends, except from the park where we walk our dogs.

The dog is my coffeebreak, at least in good weather, because that moment when you get up and go get some coffee to clear your head is when I get up and grab his leash for the same reason. The coffee isn't the thing, nor is the walk around the block: It's the change, the break in the action.

But the coffee break provides human interaction, which those walks don't. Only the longer rambles at the park fill that void.

(Besides, waiting for those breaks
can get pretty boring.)

Juxtaposition of the Day

(The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee)

(Arctic Circle)

Here's a pair that challenge the Grumpy Old Fart stereotype that comes up way too often on the comics page. 

I don't think objecting to loud, intrusive bass speakers is a generational thing, though perhaps predicting a generation of deaf morons is. But there are a lot of people in the "driving around with your music on" generation who don't trick out their cars this way and so it's not old/young.

And it's not ice tea. It's apple cider. Read the sign.

The album matter is something else, and even relevant to this blog, since some mighty fine artists have done album covers and, even when we went from vinyl to CDs, we knew something was being lost. I guess that's generational in the sense that, if you were born too late, you missed out on a communal experience, but there you have it.

And I'll make up for any generational flaws by pointing you to this conversation at Comics Beat.

Sexualizing 15-year-old girls bothers me and I don't think that makes me an old fart. In fact, the middle-schoolers I work with are bothered by too much romance in their literature and I think that's just fine.

Life is short, but there's nothing wrong with letting it develop at its own pace.

Gotta run. Another of those early morning appointments. Agnes reminds me that, in addition to my dog-owning friends, I get to have lots of conversations with nurses. However, we're cutting down on that and, while I'll miss them, I think I'll get by.