CSotD: Holiday Humor
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Presidents’ Day invariably involves snow in this part of the country, and, yes, finding a stick is finding a treasure.
I have varying memories of the day:
The Great Ice Storm of 1998 occurred just after New Years, but an after-effect of that disaster was that because schools in Northern New York were closed for a week, they canceled the Presidents’ Day break. However, a lot of people had planned to head for Florida and the airlines refused to refund their tickets.
I was out of the newsroom by then, but hadn’t lost my Consumer Reporter chops, so aided our coverage by calling airlines and insisting on talking to someone who could decide a major disaster called for a reasonable decision. I spent most of the day listening to hold music, but I came away with either refunds or the right to reschedule from every major airline. It sure felt good to be out there again, counting coup on the bad guys.
But Maine, 2006, was a different story. I was back to reporting/editing then and went to cover a major house fire. It was a “y’all come,” with mutual aid from everywhere, but I figured, it being vacation week, the volunteers would be in Florida and those trucks would be desperately under-crewed. To my surprise, the place swarmed with firefighters, because in Maine, that week-long break was for snowmobiling, skiing and enjoying the season.
If you complain about the snow and ice there, the droll Yankee response is “Wall, ya live in Maine.”
I’m glad Caulfield linked the first robin with thinking of Spring rather than its arrival, but Jef Mallett is a Michigander and knows that robins spend their first few weeks up north eating over-wintered fruit from the bushes rather then seeking worms in frozen, snow-laden ground.
As to how they know when to move, this article isn’t specific on that, but it says they’re arriving earlier and staying later because of climate change. I guess Dear Leader needs to send them an Executive Order telling them climate change no longer exists. Y’know, from one birdbrain to another.
There are many reasons to distrust AI, but here’s another. I don’t believe lovers should put their business in the street, because their friends invariably come up with really bad suggestions and solutions. Birds of a feather flock together, so if you’re foolish enough to ask, you’re likely asking other fools.
But now you can foolishly ask a computer program for advice, proving that GIGO remains a basic foundational truth. And don’t blame AI, because PEBCAK is also an eternal verity.
Betty and Bub, on the other hand, seem to have a pretty good grip on modern technology, which is to say they’re smart enough to understand what’s going on, and respond as normal people do.
Much of the appeal of this strip is its normalcy, as an intelligent, well-grounded family makes its way through a world that often seems neither intelligent nor well-grounded.
The Daddy of Daddy’s home is something of a Chester Riley/Dagwood Bumstead type, but I’m with him on this one, except I hope Elliot has been forewarned. The fact that they apparently know his password suggests that his outrage is a little performative, but, yes, it is a bit like peeking into a diary.
When I was working with young reporters, most of our communication was by email, since they were in Colorado and I was working remotely from New Hampshire. A lot of new kids didn’t have email, given that they ranged from eight to 13, and when I went there for training workshops, I’d tell them, and their folks, that they needed to let their folks know their passwords and that erasing your history was an admission of guilt.
BTW, “folks” is an excellent word to use with kids, since they aren’t all living with “parents.”
And another BTW: I’m so old I can remember advising grown-ups to put the computer in the living room so they could be aware of what their kids were up to. That advice didn’t last.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The theme here is that times change and media sometimes changes with it and sometimes drives the changes.
Bliss suggests the disappearance of cowboys as kids’ role models. Granted, the cowboys immortalized by Ned Buntline and dime novels, movies and TV shows in the last century were a fiction, but Star Wars isn’t a documentary, either.
My sister channeled Dale Evans, but one of the issues we ran into, having one TV, was that there was something she and I wanted to watch that was opposite Hoppy, which our big brother insisted on.
And I had a coffeehouse friend in college who did everything right-handed except play guitar, because he was so devoted to Gene Autry that he’d mirrored him while he watched him play.
I think I had better taste in heroes.
As for the Other Coast, nature shows in olden times featured predators who never scored a kill. You’d sometimes see a pride of lions eating something, but you’d never see how they acquired it. That’s not as dishonest as Disney and those stupid lemmings, but you can’t claim to be documenting nature if you don’t include the Circle of Life.
They’re gonna figure it out at some point, unless you homeschool your vegan kids, forbid them to watch television and never take them to the grocery store.
Then, when you peek into their diaries or phones, you’ll find the little rebels are scarfing down hot dogs on the sly.
A Valentine’s Day leftover. I love when Spud has an insight, and this one is a doozy, because he’s not wrong except that the girls you attract with money are not the ones you should want.
There’s a tradition in folk music of the Gypsy Rover who turns out to be a disguised prince and was pretending to be poor to attract the right sort of woman. But not every song ends with that twist, as this poor deluded farmer’s daughter learns, though Andy Irvine’s intro suggests she was right about the wrong man.
Either way, be careful out there.
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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