CSotD: Saturday Miscellany
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One of our local towns has quit collecting recyclables because of a price increase by the trash hauler, but Herbert points out a level of futility that overshadows the practice anyway, particularly in cardboard and paper, which are ruined by grease or moisture.
This not only means that pizza boxes (and her hamburger clamshell) are not recyclable, but, for no-sort collectors, it only takes one fool’s half-full beer bottle to ruin a load of paper and cardboard. In the town I mentioned, I used to see uncovered bins of cardboard sitting out in the rain, waiting to be collected. And discarded.
Fast-food places are, as she says, an exercise in frustration, because those bins are subject to knuckleheads who don’t make the effort seen in her cartoon, and they’re a mini-version of the larger issue.
The Philippines used to buy recyclable plastic from the US but stopped a few years ago because the shipments were invariably full of additional garbage, including used disposable diapers. Sorting it out was bad enough, but they were paying by the ton, which made the deal untenable.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I put my cans and bottles out for the no-sort hauler, but take cardboard to the recycling center myself.
And I pretend to believe that the plastic really does get re-used, because I kind of theorize that probably some of it maybe does.
Price & Piccolo ran this one at just the right time in the Northern Hemisphere, because spring is when we clean out our cars, and the additional service they suggest would be very welcome and probably more efficient than those vacuum hoses at the carwash, which are very good at sucking up loose change but miss a whole lot more.
And nothing gets out dog hair except steamcleaning, which is expensive. Love me, love my dog, don’t wear contrasting colors.
This is intended as an Elton John gag, but I took it on a wider scale, because I’ve worn glasses since the third grade, then switched from plastic Buddy Holly glasses to John Lennon wire-rims nearly 60 years ago, in college.
I was not only hip, but delighted at the extension of my peripheral vision, which increased again when aviators became stylish.
Which makes the current fashion of massive goggles — or, as my friend Charles would say, ggogles — a mystery to me. For years, cheesy costumers have used oversized glasses to signify that a character in a sitcom is an insufferable egghead, so perhaps there are people who wear those enormous colorful specs to proclaim “Hey! I’m really smart!”
But there are better ways to demonstrate intelligence, and most of them won’t saddle you with the perspective of peering through a pair of toilet paper rolls.
Gol dang it.
A salute to the Mastroianni brothers for demonstrating knowledge of what a snapping turtle actually looks like.
Most turtle gags in comics seem based on the theory that they carry their shells around like a suit of armor that they can take off at night and that has space for stuff inside. They’re also generally shown as round and easy-going. This one has the nasty overbite and rumpled army helmet look of a snapper.
I fostered a snapper hatchling named Howard (Canadian content!) until he got to be hockey-puck size and stopped swearing at me. Once he began to behave decently, he became a danger to himself so I released him in a remote place where he wouldn’t approach humans or even encounter many.
I kinda miss the little psychopath.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’d have laughed at these separately, but having them both pop up in my feed on the same day added a sense kind of like the Rodrigues cartoon (which I can’t find) in which a ventriloquist notices that the soles of his dummy’s shoes are worn out.
Maybe spending too many hours every day drawing people gets to you after awhile, because I sense a little job-related fantasy in these.
I also see some frustration here, though mine and not Blazek’s.
A few years ago, we petitioned for, and achieved, a leash-free zone somewhat bigger than a football field, but now a neighboring town is arguing over setting up one of their own.
The problem is, they’ve got one proposal for a large, credible site and another for a place so small that it would basically be a dog bathroom. It’s going to come down to who the town board wants to placate, the dog lovers or the dog haters, and if I were advising the former, I’d suggest they bring these guys to the next meeting.
I did write a letter to the board suggesting that a solution that doesn’t work just encourages non-compliance, but I rather doubt common sense is going to play much of a role in the final decision.
I suspect that maybe Jeff Corriveau’s property taxes have gone up.
We’ve been hassling over taxes here in New Hampshire, both in our town and statewide, and the only rocket ponies involved are that the Republican-dominated state government is eliminating income caps for private school vouchers that defund public schools.
Beyond that, we struggle to finance the basics of public life in a state without sales or income taxes by, instead, having high property taxes, expensive automobile licensing and, yes, gummint liquor stores along the Interstate.
Live free or die.
We have an active Meals-on-Wheels program locally, and I know some of the drivers, who get satisfaction from helping people who need it and who, along with letter carriers, also serve as a daily check on the welfare of older people who live alone.
At least for the moment. The feds propose cutting funding for the program on the Scrooge theory that “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Though Ben is set in Montreal, where feeding those who need food has somehow remained a priority.
Ah well. Harry Bliss lives a few miles south of me and provides regular reminders that we dwell amongst beauty. We don’t bark and we don’t bite, though we do chase squirrels.
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