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CSotD: Comics relief

Either Jeremy’s Mom in this Zits (KFS) has a lot more faith in bipartisanship than I do or she has no idea what coffeeshops pay.

That’s the last I’ll say about last night’s speech: I’m glad Biden called for a raise in the minimum wage but never mind that the Mocked Turtle was staring straight ahead and Ted Cruz was falling asleep, because alleged Democrat Joe Manchin looked like he was taking notes on what to oppose next.

Maybe Jeremy’s folks have put aside enough money for his college years that he won’t need to worry about pocket money and working for minimum will simply be character-building.

I had a GF post-divorce who went to Smith on their scholarship program for older students. It’s generous, but they still needed to feed themselves and so most took lousy jobs and tried not to let it interfere with their studies.

One of her housemates, however, was an RN and when her wallet was empty, she’d just go down to the local hospital and work a few per diem shifts. I think that’s the solution to college costs: Wait until you’re in your 40s and have a marketable skill as backup.

But, yeah, pouring coffee is a good alternative, if your folks have put aside some six-figure sum for you.

 

Okay, one more thing about the speech: People on Twitter and Facebook are noting that, even when Biden spoke of cutting childhood poverty in half, the Republicans sat on their hands.

It makes me wonder where they’ve been the last two or three administrations.

Their naive recriminations frustrate me and angries up my blood and Wiley is right in this Non Sequitur (AMS): Paradise should be a place without cell phones and social media.

 

Besides, as Buckets (AMS) notes, our access to instant information is making us stupid and helpless.

Spelling isn’t critical. I don’t have auto anything turned on, because it’s more annoying than helpful, but I do get misspelled words underlined in red and sometimes it’s comical how I struggle to find my error before giving up and looking the word up on Google to see what I’m getting wrong.

Then again, whether I write that I’m hesitant or hesitent shouldn’t keep you from understanding what I meant.

And if you judge what I say by how I spell it instead of by its logic, that’s on you.

Besides, most people who complain about poor grammar can’t define it. Spelling ain’t grammar nor is pedantry a sign of wisdom.

Phone numbers are a little more relevant, since, if you are in trouble and it involves having lost your phone or let it go dead, it’s hard to summon help from someone else’s phone.

So don’t do either of those things.

But the map thing bothers me. Losing the ability to find your way from A to B gets into some serious dependency on artificial intelligence, and we’ve got a large segment of the population that couldn’t read maps to begin with.

Y’oughta know where the hell you are. That’s kind of basic.

 

And here’s another way our collective laziness is becoming an issue. This Speed Bump (Creators) is a good example of gallows humor, because it’s funny but in a very dark, amusing-ourselves-to-death way.

The issue of plastic finding its way into the oceans is complex in some ways but basically boils down to (A) how much we use and (B) how little it weighs.

The weight thing matters in part because it floats. If it sank, it might provide artificial reefs, though I suppose it would leak something toxic into the water. But, before we get to that point, if it were heavier it wouldn’t go sailing off and blowing off into the water in the first place.

For instance, if it were glass.

SJWs with nothing else to fret over are now complaining about discarded masks on the ground, blaming evil people who — horrors! — just don’t care.

Nonsense. The type of people who wear masks aren’t litterbugs.

But masks are so light that they can fall out of your pocket or out of an open car door without you noticing.

Soft drink bottles are also more prone to scattering themselves than being deliberately tossed on the ground.

We were told plastic could be recycled and then recently we were told, well, not really, and now the soft drink people are saying that they have magical plastic that really can be recycled.

They don’t say what percentage of those magic bottles they expect to get back or what percentage of overall plastic waste it represents and I don’t think I can buy enough doormats or Adidas shoes to overcome this fact:

Glass worked better. Returnable, refillable glass bottles.

But the fact that it works doesn’t outweigh the degree to which no business wants to deal with it.

And we don’t insist.

 

This classic Pogo — the original as seen at the Billy Ireland — gets shared every Earth Day and wouldn’t it be nice to get to a point where it was quaint instead of relevant?

 

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant

There’s another dime I owe Roz Chast, but, yes, there has been some delightfully pointless funny stuff recently.

Then again, if it’s pointless, it isn’t funny. Stop me before I start finding sad meaning in this Willy and Ethel strip.

Which is a joke itself, because, in the online world of constant grievances, there’s always someone to point out the sorrow behind a brilliant piece of dark humor and insist that it isn’t funny.

Sure, okay, sorry.

But notice the way Joe Martin has Ethel give us the side glance in that second panel.

It’s more deadly than anything Alice Kramden ever said to her husband. Ethel is way past that point.

That’s funny.

 

Ditto with this Pros and Cons (KFS). The more interaction you’ve had with cons, the funnier this is, but also the not-funnier it is.

He’s playing Willie’s game. Every con does. Sometimes it’s fate, sometimes it’s someone else’s fault.

Guess whose fault it never is.

 

Okay, good. Here’s a Reality Check (AMS) that, thank god, is in no way a reality check.

And here’s the earworm that goes with it:

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Comments 7

  1. Mike Beede

    I don’t think Jeremy is hurting for funds—Walt is an orthodontist. Other than “radiologist,” that’s sort of the poster-profession for “ridiculously-overcompensated.” I don’t include CXO in that because I don’t see them actually doing anything valuable … more in the line of “parasite.”

    And in a nitpick, “people who complain about grammar but can’t define it” is kind of an apples-and-pineapples comparison. It’s like saying “people that complain about ungraceful dancers can’t even describe the equations of mechanics and the dynamics of complex control systems.” Grammar is like pornography: everybody’s got one and no one wants to … um … well, anyway, you get where I’m coming from, right?

    As an extra credit assignment, diagram that last sentence. As usual, thanks for the blog. If I can only find this much to dispute, it must be pretty fab.

  2. Mike Peterson  (admin)

    Oh, let’s beat the metaphor into the ground:

    Complaining about dancers’ performances should not include blaming poor choreography when you mean substandard mechanics. The choreographer is not responsible for whether the dancer holds a pose or raises a leg to a pleasing angle. And “blocking” is a separate thing which has to do with how actors move in a scene without reference to music or dancing.

    Grammar has to do with structure and syntax. It has nothing do with mistaking “it’s” for “its” or using a semi-made-up word like “irregardless” or saying “literally” when you mean “figuratively.”

    And applying strict structural rules to such a mongrel language is a fool’s errand anyway.

    Yoda has poor grammar. But since he’s 900 years old, god only knows how old his poor grammar is.

  3. Fred King

    I have to disagree with your stance on spelling. Spelling is part of the presentation. To trot out another metaphor, let’s say I spend a couple of hours making Coquilles St.-Jacques and then I serve it in a chipped dog dish. It tastes wonderful, but you’re eating out of a dog dish–the one you saw me using to feed the dog earlier in the day. I washed it, but I don’t think you’re going to accept another invitation for dinner at my house quite as eagerly the next time. An occasional typo (in an ad: “Stop By Toady!”), fine. But if something is riddled with them, I start to wonder.

    As for the map thing, if I go off the trail even a little bit, I tend to get lost. Always have, even before GPS. I also have trouble with left and right. I have nothing but admiration and envy for people who can find there way easily, but I for one welcome our direction-giving overlords.

  4. Mike Peterson  (admin)

    I was feeling chastened until your second paragraph, where you wrote “there” instead of “their.”

    I’m afraid they’re simply is no their there.

    *Note to grammar purists: This is “humor.”

    **Note to orthographic purists: The period goes inside the quotation marks for newspaper writers as a relic of the days of moveable type.

    ***Note to everyone else: The person in charge of the llamas has been sacked.

  5. Solon Manney

    I am extremely fond of Pogo. I recall W. Kelly’s taking on the “klucks” (Klansmen).

    I just purchased a tablet, as my eyebones are no longer young, and can now see your icon. Is that the Deacon?

  6. Fred King

    Regarding my use of “there”: bugger. I’m going to blame autocorrect and the first rule of proofreading: Love is blind—NEVER proofread your own work.

  7. Mike Peterson  (admin)

    A vestige of the olden days on rec.arts.comics.strips, Solon, where “The Deacon” became my nickname.

    As we all know — though as the online world continuously ignores — you are not allowed to choose your own nickname, but I thought that one was pretty good.

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