CSotD: Technical Problems plus simple cluelessness
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Let's begin with either a tip or a complaint: An increasing number of web sites, for reasons I cannot fathom, heap up a bunch of old material at their top, either on a deep "Showcase" banner or, in the case of Facebook, in the form of a collage of old pics.
The result is that you greet visitors with an array of stuff that they've already seen.
Seems quite a gamble to assume that their response will be "I think I'll scroll down and see if there's anything new here." Especially if you don't update every day.
I'd put my money on their response being: "Seen it" followed by Ctrl-W and on to something they haven't seen.
Put your new material on top. Why should I even have to suggest this?
And while I'm complaining about technology, here's a salute to technical genius Darrin Bell.
It's not the gag — though I like both the crossover and the way it applies to their particular relationship — but the fact that Bell appears to be about the only current cartoonist who understands that tin-can telephones don't work unless the string between them is taut.
I would say that it's due to the decline of Scouting or the decision by comic book publishers to turn away from kids and market to kid-like adults.
But I remember both Boy's Life project suggestions and the filler pages in comics telling you how to make tin-can telephones.
I guess nobody does that anymore, which means that nobody under 60 — except, apparently, Darrin Bell — knows how the damn things work.
It's the tree-falling-in-the-forest thing: If cartoonists draw kids with slack-string tin-can phones, but readers don't know what they are anyway, does noise need to travel through them?
And, while I'm on the overall topic of "Things Anybody Should Know," cartoonists need to print this out and post it over their drawing boards:
Okay, rant mode mostly off.
Okay, rant mode not off.
I won't repeat the entire "empty coffepot rant" again, not simply because I just ranted it last week, but because Existential Comics does it so much better.
Go read the rest. And, while any nitwit should know that lobsters don't turn red until you cook them and it doesn't take much more worldly experience to know that tin-can telephones only work if the string is taut, you barely have to even know who Machiavelli was to get a good laff out of this.
Though I'll give extra credit if the little bonus gag on the left makes you giggle.
Or I'll take off a letter grade.
Haven't decided yet.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Whether or not it is apparent from my writing lately, rationing my Facebook exposure has had very positive results on my overall mood and worldview.
As Between Friends suggests, Facebook can be a bit like getting a dozen or more of those insufferably chipper Christmas newsletters every day.
As for Adult Children, the trick isn't to have the job where you can play around on Facebook so much as it is to have the desk where it's not apparent what you are up to.
But ferchrissake you also need to have the sense to cover your tracks.
One of my rookie reporters at the last paper where I worked would leave the newsroom without closing out her Facebook page. I was less upset about how she spent her time than I was over the insult to my intelligence.
Or to hers.
Maybe both.
Back in the day, we had to get caught coming out of a movie theater or down at the laundromat during work hours. Now you can slack off without having to leave the building.
Which reminds me of a rare time when editors came to an intelligent national agreement on something, which was that, Slats Grobnik not withstanding, man-on-the-street interviews should not always, perhaps not ever, be man-in-the-bar interviews.
Which leads to …
I like Keith Knight's piece on the Women's March, but I'm starting to see pushback by rightwingers who seem mostly to illustrate talk-radio lunacy rather than actually research, ponder and create anything on their own.
Not sure listening to Limbaugh for half an hour and drawing what he said really counts as commentary or even cartooning. I think it's more like hanging out at the bar when you should be working.
Their "commentary" — such as it is — is not in the least political and makes no point except that they don't freaking get it on any level, and labeling it as "misogyny" barely scratches the surface.
It's not even "shame on them." It's "WTF?"
They are like that uncle who embarrasses you not because he's so hateful but because he is so utterly, painfully clueless.
At which point my earlier reference to Slats Grobnik pinged a memory of a column I wrote a quarter of a century ago and that I wish were no longer relevant but … well, here it is.
And I stand by every single word in it:
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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