CSotD: Halloween’een
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There's nothing Halloweenish in today's Pajama Diaries, but I'm going to lead with it because it made me wonder how many children's books were inspired by writers contemplating their junk drawers?
Jill worries that one of those keys might unlock the secrets of a long-lost relative, but the locks on those old trunks, as with the locks on modern suitcases, are mostly to keep them from falling open in transit and, if you want to see what's inside, a screwdriver or a sharp rap will usually do the trick.
Though I will admit to hanging onto a key for several years because it would unlock the drawers of the metal office desk I got when a company my then-wife was working for folded. It was a great desk — one of those gun-metal gray indestructible types, and, no, a screwdriver or a sharp rap wasn't going to defeat that lock on the central drawer that could close up the whole thing.
It didn't occur to me for a long time that the drawers wouldn't lock unless you used the key, so it wasn't going to happen by accident.
Anyway, if you've read more than three children's books in the past quarter century, you know that old random keys are portals to the past or to other dimensions or to something or other.
Which is why you should never throw them out.
And why you should be perusing your junk drawer instead of sitting at your computer working.
Because you need inspiration for your next best-selling kids' book, and it's in there somewhere.
The WBitching Hour
And if the temptation to waste time is a pitfall of working at home, Mother Goose & Grimm offers a Halloween-themed reminder of why it is so good for the spirit to not be working in an office.
I spent several years in an open workspace where I was one of two men and the other was a salesman who only stopped by to drop off his orders and refill his briefcase. It made me party to a lot of conversations that I found appalling but nobody else seemed to.
The recent focus on "lockerroom talk" reminds us that there are guys who sit around speculating about women they will never get close to, but the feedback has been that it's an outdated thing and that such blowhards and fools were never respected or much believed even before it became an issue.
But this thing of running down your husband to other women is a head-scratcher, and, while not everyone in the office joined in, I've never heard it condemned.
I don't know many guys who would sit around talking to a roomful of other men about their wives' shortcomings, though probably less to spare her reputation than to avoid admitting he had screwed up in marrying her.
It is a puzzlement.
Juxtaposition of the Holiday
Politics creeps from the editorial section to the funny pages, with Rick Stromoski not trying for subtlety, and Darrin Bell opening a conversation, both speculating about Trump supporters.
It's probably too late to change anyone's mind, and perhaps it doesn't matter whether you go straight to the attack or mix in a measure of compassion, at least in terms of changing the outcome of the presidential race.
But the fact that Trump has so bungled his odds of winning doesn't alter the fact that he has brought a lot of discontent to the surface and November 8 isn't going to bury it again.
What may happen over the next week-plus is that people will be encouraged or discouraged from voting at all, which will impact the down-ballot candidates, and that isn't going to come from thoughtful pieces like this analysis of Trump voters, because, let me say it for the third day in a row, nobody is listening to anything beyond the headlines.
But maybe they'll read the funnies and be inspired to make their voices heard.
Though this panel from today's Lockhorns reminds me of how surprised I was in the late '80s, when I moved to a town largely dependant on a paper mill and found no resistance to plastic bags at the grocery stores.
Granted, the mill in our town was a tissue mill, but there was a kraft paper mill not an hour south of us, and you'd expect union members to have a bit of solidarity within the industry anyway.
We could have had paper bags made from locally grown trees, if anyone had made a fuss about it, but they didn't, and a large part of the Trump phenomenon is that people have just noticed an entire camel sharing their tent, when they only intended to let him stick his nose under the flap.
As for addressing their resulting discontent, the fact that Trump seems to think that the North American Free Trade Agreement includes the entire world, not just, say, parts of North America, and that it was negotiated entirely by Bill Clinton, and not started and largely sheparded through by George HW Bush, doesn't matter any more than the fact that, having been turned into a newt, John Cleese got better.
Burn the witch!
Anyway, here's your solution:
As Sofie Louise Dam and Andy Warner suggest in their intro to this fascinating examination of micronations at the Nib, moving to Canada is not your only post-election option.
Ridiculous notions being no more impractical, and considerably more entertaining, than most of what else is being floated out there.
And finally
Sean Kleefeld resurrected this odd interview with the Nancy who, much against her intentions, inspired Ernie Bushmiller.
It's not particularly relevant to anything we've discussed today, but, then, when did the words "Nancy" and "relevant" ever appear together anyway?
It'll stick with you.
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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