Midweek Short Takes

I have figured out why old guys wear suspenders and, thanks to this Baby Blues, I have an excuse to share it, if only by elimination, since hiking them up isn't an option for all of us.

Here's the scientific fact: As men get older, their asses begin to disappear.

I don't know why and I don't even know who to ask: Neil deGrasse Tyson won't find out about this for another five years or so, and skinny ol' Bill Nye, who is just getting into that age range, probably never had an ass in the first place.

But the next time you're walking behind an old guy, have a look. (Go ahead and stare, but no cat-calls, please.)

For whatever reason this happens, it leaves your waist slightly diminishing top-to-bottom with nothing sticking out upon which to anchor your pants with a belt, unless you either hike them up to a part of your belly that is not too protuberant to allow it, as in the above cartoon, or else cinch that bugger around your hips so tight that it pinches your sciatic nerve.

I've dropped about 30 pounds in the last five years and most of it came from the same place, so now I either have to (A) keep it loose and hike up my pants every ten steps or (B) tighten it up and feel like I need a hip replacement with every three steps.

I'm starting to look at suspenders, but mostly with horror. Maybe I'll see if I can pull off some comfortable irony instead.

Here are a few Samples of how ironic comfort might look. And, yes, I realize how unlikely the scenario on the right is.

At the other end of the adult-male age continuum

Keith Knight has been going pretty steadily on themes of race and justice lately, which is important, yes, but I'm glad to see him return, however briefly, to puckish takes on his personal life.

I hope he returns to this topic, not just in the short-take, gag-a-day venue of Knight Life, but here at K Chronicles, where he can discuss things at more length, because, even before he even had kids, he was a champion of good education and an enemy of stupid choices. (This is from February, 2007)

Specific to today's K Chronicle, some observations on home schooling:

1. It's nothing you can do on the side, even if you are a full-time at-home parent who expects to shoehorn it in among the other things you do. Between 9 and 3, it's your job. And probably longer than that. Plus weekends. For 52 weeks a year.

2. He's right that, in the right community, there are many resources. But the converse is true as well, and you need to scope things out ahead of time.

I worked in one market where homeschoolers were a blast: The kids were bright and inquisitive, stunningly well-prepared to learn and keyed into a network of good resources.

The next place I was, the homeschoolers were the people who now support Ben Carson, holed up in their bunkers, teaching their kids to be as ignorant, uncurious and insular as they were.

(To be clear, it's not a matter of what values you hold. Paranoia is not a "value" but a psychiatric condition.)

What's up, Doc?

A little bathos over at Rex Morgan. This is another of those strips you might have written off that maybe deserves a new look. It's not a favorite yet, but it's an enjoyable read that is picking up some warmth and depth.

The interplay here is that the Morgans just returned from a vacation at a friend's cottage, and, as June prepares to go into labor, Rex is back at the office with a new nurse who is a military vet and an organizational maven.

And pretty good at returning dreamers to earth and -- how shall I put this? -- to the job at hand.

Rex was never a comic foil in the olden days, and I laft today.

I have no idea where these arcs are headed

Sometimes, by the time I figure out an arc, it's so far along that I hesitate to recommend it. Here are three just starting up that I think are going to be worth following:

(Oct 13)

(Oct 14)

Edge City doesn't shy away from social commentary, but I'm not sure what we're socially commenting on yet.

(Oct 13)

(Oct 14)

And Edison Lee has been doing a curbside "computer repair stand" on the level of a lemonade stand for awhile, and it's been amusing enough, but it just took a promising turn for the weird.

(Oct 8)

(Oct 9)

(Oct 10)

(Oct 12)

(Oct 13)

(Oct 14)

If you aren't a Comics Kingdom subscriber, you're missing access to some terrific vintage strips, and right now -- or, rather, back in 1952 -- Buz Sawyer is headed to Iran to help the government spray a new type of insecticide on its crops.

The timing of this arc is fascinating. The Soviets had recently relinquished some Iranian territory upon which they had set up puppet governments and, in the past year, the new prime minister had nationalized the oil industry, which may be why Buz's employer is offering insecticides to a government that wouldn't welcome Frontier as a partner in the petroleum business.

And the "Yankee Go Home" motif is interesting, since the arc is sandwiched neatly between the nationalization of oil and the CIA-backed coup that would solve that little anti-Americanism issue for ever and ever.

As for insecticides, the storyline is also nestled in a time period 10 years before "Silent Spring" was published and two or three years after this ad ran in newspapers.