As if to inflame a simmering controversey in the comments of a few days back, Paul Gilligan offers Poncho a choice of super powers and he picks one that would of course place him in the Alternate Comestible Universe, a series that Marvel will be launching next month.
It consists of 12 variant editions released every week at only $12.95 a copy, each of which totally contradicts the characters and storylines in their (Yuck! Who cares?) regular comics.
But he can't be "Poncho" when he's exhibiting his superpower, though these days, Superwhatevers no longer have secret identities and everybody pretty much knows who they are.
So how about "Weiner Dog"?
I know, he's not a dachsund. But his power is that he controls weiners.
No, wait: I'm not sure we want to market a character to 11-year-old boys whose super power is that he can control weiners.
And, if he did claim to be able to control weiners, James Comey would have to come out of retirement, confiscate his laptop and make a secret report to Congress.
However, if we call him "Hot Dog," the name is appropriate, but the Archie people would sue.
Plus it lacks that dark, impressive aura of ominous faux-obscurity you get when you arm the aforementioned 11-year-old boy with his first thesaurus.
"Frankenhund."
There ya go.
And it's pronounced "FRAHNken-hooond."
And while we're being critical
This isn't a cartoon; it's a Time magazine cover, but it touched off a quick flurry on social media about who stole what cartoon from whom.
Which I thought was kind of strange, since I have passed over about a dozen and a half White-House-into-Kremlin cartoons over the past several months, on the basis that it's okay for several cartoonists to have the same idea on the same day but not three weeks apart.
Or, in this case, six months apart.
Still, it's a pretty good graphic depiction of what's going on.
So, at what point does the obvious become the inescapable?
I could ponder this at length, but there's no need, because Michael Cavna has already done so and has some good reflections on the topic.
Go read that.
Meanwhile, back in the non-alternative universe
Today's Rudy Park doesn't just touch on a pet peeve of mine, but barges right in and punches it squarely in the schnozzola.
First thing first: It's not totally gender-based. Along with all the Oscar Madisons of this world, there are plenty of Felix Ungers. And not all women thrive on order, either.
In addition to tours that focused on how the daily paper is produced, I used to also offer "career-based" tours in which we'd go through the building highlighting the different skill sets and personality types for the various jobs at a newspaper, one of the few industries in which the product is both manufactured and retailed from a single location.
When I'd come to the business department, I'd ask the kids if they were able to do their homework on their lap on an unmade bed, or had to clean their room and straighten their desk in order to concentrate, because the latter "everything in order" personality is critical to work as a bookkeeper or accountant.
The people there got a little tired of my schtick, but one day I popped my head in and said, "Somebody here drive a grey Plymouth?" and one of them said she did and I said, "Your lights are on."
And then I said, "Want to know how I knew it was somebody here? The interior is spotlessly clean, and the Kleenex box is perfectly centered on the back deck."
They laughed, but not all that heartily.
But that car sure as hell didn't belong to a reporter, who tend more towards the "giant rolling purse" model.
There's nothing "wrong" or "right" about a need for order, but there is, as Sadie notes, something very wrong with thinking it's all about you and that people who don't share your need are doing it out of disrespect for you.
It's not even that they don't care. They simply don't see it.
Granted, they should acknowledge that you care, and make some effort to indulge your need for order, if only in the form of helping out with a Saturday morning clean-up.
But they're not required to enable your OCD on a continuous basis, nor are they required to drop whatever they are doing the moment you have a sudden fit of need-to-clean.
The bottom line is this: The same joyous fellow who said "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" also wrote:
The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities. I exact more from myself, and less from others. Go thou and do likewise!
Commencing now
Rhymes With Orange continues the theme, though in this case it is not simply trying to get someone to put the livingroom into your personal version of order but trying to get a large crowd of somebodies to do so with their entire lives.
Also in a continuation of the previous section, my then-wife and I were so compatible in temperament that, in 1971, we skipped her graduation ceremony from Colorado University and drove to Indiana and then, a year later, skipped my graduation from ND in order to move back to Colorado. Bless her heart.
So anyway, I was driving home from a lobster run to Maine yesterday and came upon a long, slow-moving line of cars coming the other way, which I realized was people leaving UNH's graduation.
For a frightening moment, I thought I'd get stuck in a similar, but far, far longer westbound line once I hit Durham on my way into the heart of the state.
But, of course, I didn't, because in-state tuition is so high that nobody who lives here goes to the state flagship.
As I was contemplating all that, this song came on my player.
It's better and far more honest than any commencement speech:
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