CSotD: An Early Hump Day
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Neither, thanks. Given the semi-news out of Minneapolis and Washington, this seems like a good day to avoid political pontificating until we see what’s going on.
It’s not time to celebrate and it’s certainly not time to relax. In the words of the master, Yogi Berra, it’s not over ’til it’s over. And it ain’t, but we’ll know more soon, so moving Hump Day up 24 hours seems appropriate.
I’m sure Sipress’s cartoon will still be funny tomorrow and likely for quite a while thereafter, but in the meantime, it surely does offer a pointed laugh. I have no idea how future historians are going to figure out this decade.
One of my college courses included three versions of how Eusebius described Constantine’s conversion experience at the 312 AD Battle of the Milvian Bridge. The first was written early in Constantine’s career and, IIRC, was a dream before the battle. Once he had a little more power, the next version was a vision, but nowhere near the extravaganza history recorded it as after he was emperor, at which point we were told he’d seen a cross in the heavens, angels, and a voice booming “In this sign, you shall conquer!”
I sure hope more than the Official Approved History of our era survives to tell the story.
Adrian Raeside gets the Good Timing Award for this strip, which ran three days ago as everybody was collecting toilet paper and drinking water and batteries from the stores. And if he didn’t hit the exact day of the storm, he still gets points for doing a strip about Spring two months before the vernal equinox, particularly since he lives in Whistler, BC, where snow is central to the local economy.
We got over a foot of snow here, but it was very light powder and, our temps being around zero, could be swept off the car with a broom: No ice and no scraping. Of course, we’re always ready for worse, but I was appalled at the photos on Facebook of the ice storm in Mississippi, where such things are virtually unknown.
Well, there is this issue. I suspect when Spring does arrive that we’re going to find a lot of abandoned toys at the dog park, though the orange balls that dogs love so much are kind of pricey to bring out this time of year. Better to play with sticks, or each other.
Here’s a canine issue I don’t understand. My current dog isn’t tall enough to drink out of the toilet, but when I had ridgebacks, the sound of lapping from the bathroom meant an empty water bowl in the kitchen, so that was on me, not them. If I kept my part of the bargain, they’d keep theirs.
Mike Peters apparently started the “dogs drinking from the toilet” thing in cartoons, and told me that his first MG&G featuring it brought an angry phone call to an editor from a lady who complained because she thought dogs would see the cartoon and start drinking out of toilets themselves.
BTW, if it bothers you, here’s a secret solution I can pretty well guarantee: Close the lid. And, if you can’t remember to do that, get one of those fuzzy covers that makes it impossible to keep it open.
Or a shorter dog.
Nice to see Diogenes the Cynic in the comics. He invented cynicism, which comes from the Greek word kynikós, which means dog, and he did live like one, in a large barrel in the marketplace.
He’s an important figure in Stoicism, but as a root figure rather than a full-blown example. However, the cartoon captures his ascetic lifestyle, and he was even less pleasant in person than he’s depicted there.
On the other hand, the stories told of him are frequently funny as well as thought-provoking, making him an excellent subject for Existential Comics, whose invented exchange is fictional but fits the man well.
True Story: Back in the days when Paul McCartney was supposed to be dead, a group of the girls at the campus coffeehouse began playing with a Ouija board and one of them was able to summon his ghost. Which, of course, even if you believe in Ouija boards and ghosts, still posed the logical problem of Paul being alive.
But if Kay was on the planchette, so would the alleged Paul, and he repeatedly warned her to “Beware a friend with a limp.” We all laughed about it, but then one night her boyfriend came in, having been at the ER because he’d stepped on a broken beer bottle and had to be stitched up.
He shouldn’t have been on it, and it started bleeding heavily. Kay was helping him out to the car, but as he leaned on her, they slipped and she broke a bone in her foot, one of those ones that require surgery and still are never quite right again. It understandably freaked her out and she ended up dropping out of school on a psych disability.
If she was moving the planchette herself, she had some gift of prophecy, and I don’t believe in that either. But I’m not making this up.
This would be a lot funnier if I weren’t convinced that it’s likely. I need to take an afternoon sometime and delete apps from my phone, like the transit system one I had to download to get around in San Francisco for the three days I was at an AAEC convention there two years ago, plus all the bloatware that came with the phone.
Not that they’re taking up a lot of room. They just make it harder to find the few I actually want, and, as in the gag here, most of them aren’t actually needed anyway.
Could be worse. My TV has started showing my name on screen and asking me to click on commercials, and Amazon would like me to upgrade Alexa so she can chat with me.
Alexa is a servant, not a pal. I don’t want waiters to chat with me, either, and I use the self-check at the grocery store.
When I’m not at home in my barrel.
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