Wednesday Short-short Takes

I'm going to have to keep the comments brief, because my self-imposed 1,000 word limit won't get me through everything that cracked me up or made me think this morning. Fill in the conceptual gaps in my prose as needed; not much of it will be. Imago iocosus ipsa loquitur

I decided to lead off with the silliest one that involved a story arc you might want to follow, and that would be Heart of the City, in which Heart has had the brilliant idea of coloring her hair with house paint because it's on sale and it's not as permanent as hair dye.

And, of course, Dean is playing the Ethel Mertz role, a little dubious but willing to loyally go along anyway.

You haven't missed much yet: The arc started here.

 

Next in our roundup is the silliest one that doesn't involve an arc, and I have nothing to say about today's F-Minus except, well, that sure is silly.

And that's okay. I remember several years ago, before it was mandated, when Ben & Jerry said they didn't put nutritional information on their cartons because they didn't intend their product to be nutritional.

Ditto with cartoons, and I am no wiser for having seen this but, then again, I hadn't expected to be.

 

But wiser, as in sadder-but, applies in the current Rip Kirby, in which poor Desmond has turned over his life savings to a pair of con artists who salted a worthless tract of land with uranium.

What struck me was that middle panel, because, back in 1957 when this ran, you didn't just sit down at the computer and find stuff out.

In general, I like having all this information at my fingertips, but it makes writing detective stories a little more challenging. Desmond might have Googled the couple himself before shelling out the money and then we'd have no story at all. (This comment could go much, much longer: I did a fair amount of reporting in those pre-Google days and it was a lot more challenging and fun to track things down by hand.)

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Bob Gorrell)

(Gary Varvel)

I'm starting to really like these two guys, whose takes over the past few months suggest that there are some thoughtful conservatives out there. We still disagree on a large number of specific items, but we can work through the details if we agree on the fundamentals.

Maybe a resurgence of Buckleyism will save us all, though I doubt that would do it on its own. But I'm not sure it can happen otherwise.

Quick comment on Gorrell's piece: I saw an impassioned essay explaining why white folks shouldn't wear safety pins to indicate their support for human rights. It was on HuffPost, where the writers are generally unpaid by the website and often seem eager to prove why they shouldn't be.

In this case, I'm not sure whether it's because his prose is not worth paying for, or because someone has already provided compensation. But if he is ever knighted for his prose ...

Okay, that was a cheap shot: Here's another link, topic-related but not at all funny. Go scare the crap out of yourself.

 

Juxtaposition of the Week: Thompson Twins Division

One comment I heard after the election was that now all those wise young Millennials could test the things they've been telling Boomers we should have done back when we were their age.

Mike Thompson has, not on the same day but in consecutive cartoons, suggested something of the same thing. I don't see it as "Millennial Bashing" so much as a reminder that we've been here before, so don't panic and don't despair and, particularly, don't retreat and don't go into a funk of helpless acceptance.

And please do more than sit and play your bongos in the dirt. Somebody needs to organize before all the chanting and marching means a damn thing.

That isn't "Boomer Wisdom." It's history. 

Fact is, we're not talking about "Back to the Sixties" or even "Back to the Fifties."

By the time the Boomers got involved, there was the benefit of both sympathetic Executive and Judicial branches being in place, though Congress remained a dubious ally and the state and local governments were all over the place, some murderously so.

There had also been a massive ton of organization and planning done to create a foundation.

What we need to be looking at now is the groundwork laid earlier, by suffragists in New York State who, during the First World War, raised a million -- 1 million -- signatures, by hand, on paper, door-to-door, on a petition for the vote, and, in the decade before the Second World War, the brilliant tactical preparation by giants like James Farmer and Thurgood Marshall and their earlier mentors, along with the Black Press, in setting up the Civil Rights Movement that would seemingly erupt spontaneously in the post-War years.

Dry your eyes, blow your nose, get to work.

This isn't gonna heal itself.

 

Trust me on this. Or ask around.

And I could go on about today's Baby Blues for miles, because this is a critical perceptual difference between men and women, and not only explains why women get so sentimental over quilting with scraps of old clothing, but is part of that tangle where men see vanity and women see self-image.

In any case, guys, note this related point: In addition to being emotionally attuned to clothing as memory milestones, women are also more keenly aware of odors at particular moments, which fits in with yesterday's rant about Cialis commercials where the guy doesn't need to find running water before the couple can get it on.

Trust me.

Don't waste money on books and videos and magical potions and clever toys.

Just take a freaking shower.

I promise.

It is a critical element in that thing where it's not the length of the wand but the skill of the magician.

 

Now here's your moment of zen. Or maybe mine:

 

Comments

[Mark Johnson]

Well, I would certainly agree as you would remember.
A band called Calexico did a version of Alone Again from this album, a few years ago, very nicely done
Mark J