CSotD: Laughing While We Await More Bad News

There are several major news stories going on, but they happened late in the week, so, since only a few American editorial cartoonists post on weekends, we’ll have to wait until Monday or perhaps even Tuesday for commentary on them.

In the meantime, here’s a serious funny piece from First Dog on the Moon, and then we’ll do funny funny stuff.

For us, much of what First Dog is talking about is the Gulf Stream, and climate experts have warned about this for years. As ice caps melt, fresh water could not just “disrupt” but essentially end the Gulf Stream, which warms Europe so that nations on a latitude with Canada’s prairie provinces have climates like the USA’s mid-southern states.

It would be good to lay in some French wine before that happens. There may be other impacts as well, but, as First Dog suggests, personal measures are not apt to forestall it for much, nor are we apt to see the statewide cooperation in moving away from major use of fossil fuels that could buy us time.

So let’s look at some humorous things while we wait.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow Europe freezes.

There’s nothing groundbreaking in making sport of grammar sticklers, as Rhymes With Orange (KFS) euphemistically terms them, but there’s also no reason to let up on these humorless pedants.

Grammar does matter, sometimes. I hate the ignorance of the difference between “might have” and “may have,” because the former is speculating against fact while the latter is guessing about what did happen. It’s similar to why Tevye sings “If I were a rich man,” which is wishful, rather than “If I was a rich man,” which suggests he has amnesia.

But most of what the grammar nazis complain about is either a shift in a living language or, worse, an example of humorous usage that their literal minds cannot grasp.

Though Betty (AMS) has just spent a week contemplating usage so hyperbolic as to be absurd:

The arc starts here and is worth reading, but today’s episode caps it well: They’ve somehow come across the one person in the universe who actually laughs out loud over on-line humor.

I’ve chuckled out loud over passages in Jane Austen and in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, and they’re both still extremely funny in some wickedly cruel ways. But even then, I didn’t scribble COL in the margins.

LOL and ROTFLMAO are polite, not literal, somewhat like “How nice to see you!”

And, yes, I still cling to the fading notion that “literal” means “literal.” But I no longer expect anyone else to use it that way.

Insisting that “may have” is different from “might have” is quite enough. Adding more simply waters down necessary objections and turns everything into childish quibbles.

Arlo and Janis (AMS) offers a quibble, but it’s the kind of quibble that absolutely sticks in the mind and spoils a classic tune, adding a heapin’ helpin’ of “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Being the sort of person I am, it sent me first to find out if there is a Reno, California (There doesn’t seem to be) and second to see if Reno, Nevada, is close enough to the dotted line that you could stand in California and shoot someone in Reno, which is highly doubtful but would raise an interesting question of where the crime occurred.

As it happens, El Paso came up on my music in the car yesterday. It struck me that back in the Olden Days, Marty Robbins could kill that handsome young stranger in Texas and simply flee to New Mexico, which reminded me of Bonnie and Clyde (not the real ones; Warren and Faye) robbing a bank in one state and crossing the state line to safety in another.

Which made me wonder if all the states’ rights advocates would like to go back to that system? There are more than 500 banks in Texas, and those state borders sure look open to me.

Though Rabbits Against Magic (AMS) suggests you’d have to hit the sweet spot, after they’ve declared their autonomy but before the razor wire goes up.

Juxtaposition of the Day

Mr. Boffo

Daddy’s Home — Creators

I learned to cook by hanging around the kitchen talking to my folks while Mom made dinner, and my kids learned by hanging around the kitchen while I cooked. Not only did this pass on a valuable lifeskill, but it added up to a lot of good conversation between the generations.

Oh well. I guess we don’t need either. At least, we’d better not.

Though, as Mike Stokoe points out, parents today are being very careful not to let their kids overdo all that on-line business. It is a matter of both preserving family unity and saving kids from frying their brains.

Too late. Joy of Tech took advantage of Valentine’s Day to give us a look at Romance in the Computer Age.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Roz Chast

Matt Percival

Roz gets me and I feel vindicated. The self-check lines in our stores are longer than the attended checkout lines, but they move faster, mostly because people who use them often only have a half dozen items, but also because the people who think exact change is a virtue or who insist on balancing their checkbook in line are busy tying up the attended lines.

I did see one of the self-check clerks explaining the whole system to a guy the other day. I was torn between admiring him for finally giving it a try and wondering if this happened every time he came to the store.

Meanwhile, I have completely gone to Kindle for books and I’ve been reading newspapers and magazines on-line for about 20 years, but I’ll admit that the cat sitting on the newspapers in Percival’s cartoon is likely more comfortable.

I’m not unreasonable.

Ben (MWAM) points out something I noticed a little while ago, which is that, while the cereal boxes are still the same height and width as before, they’re losing depth at such a rate that, if they get any skinnier, they’re going to have to start inserting the Cheerios sideways with tweezers.

It’s not just groceries. Patty Duke’s father has bad news for this couple …