Among my souvenirs

Today's BC brings up the least important connection of the day, but brace yourself because today is going to be a festival of personal but irrelevant commentary.

Yesterday, as we walked our dogs by the Connecticut River, fishing came up and I mentioned night fishing for bullheads, and that it involved worms, a fire, cigars and several hours of dirty jokes. Had to double back and explain that the cigars were to repel mosquitos.

Sitting in the smoke from the fire would do that, of course, but only one of you would have that privilege since smoke doesn't actually behave in real life as it does in today's cartoon.

 

 

Also on the topic of following beauty, Pickles reminds me of a time I was in the grocery store and saw an attractive young woman also shopping. She looked very familiar, but I couldn't place her and it made me curious, and I had several opportunities to ponder it, because we kept passing each other in each successive aisle.

Where on earth had I met her and why on earth couldn't I remember such a memorably pretty girl?

About four aisles along, it occurred to me who she was: I'd had a hernia repaired a few months before. She was a nurse in the recovery room.

And I suddenly, though vaguely, remembered having thought that she was pretty attractive then, too, at a moment when my ego was still under anesthesia but my id was not.

Gack!

I skipped the next aisle so we'd quit passing by each other, though PACU nurses assure me that (A) they don't pay attention to the things patients say as they're coming out of anesthesia and (B) most of it is indecipherable mumbling anyway. 

Comforting, though I suppose in my lifetime I've said equally stupid things to women who were paying attention. 

So here's a tip: The sooner you stop making a damned fool of yourself, the better the odds that you'll outlive most of the people who knew you then.

I'm currently hoping to live to be 115.

 

I have confessed before that I didn't graduate at the top of my class in college. As Shannon Sharpe put it, I graduated "magna cum thank you laudy."

So today's Sally Forth also touched that "coming out of the anesthesia" sensation because I actually lived the Student Dream.

Twice, in fact, though both times fell within the same "Why am I even here?" stage of my academic career.

In the first case, we had a visiting professor who was so uninvolved and boring that I quit going to his class.

Some weeks later, a couple of my classmates told me that our department head was wondering if I planned to show up for an exam on Optics the next day, to which I replied that I didn't have him for anything this semester.

They burst out in laughter and informed me that the boring, uninvolved professor had been sent packing long since, and that our head had taken over the course.

Interesting fact: While you can cram a lot of Newton in 24 hours, Christian Huygens didn't write with nearly so much clarity.

Fortunately, while I was filling my brain with optics, Richard Nixon was invading Cambodia and, by the time we were supposed to be disgorging our knowledge on paper, the campus had begun shutting down for the student strike.

T'is an ill wind, indeed, that blows no good and right on and vinceramos and thank you, laudy.

However, I was equally unmotivated the following autumn, when I went to the first meeting of my seminar group, skipped the second and then showed up for the third only to walk into an empty room.

They'd moved and I had no idea where the class met anymore, so I said to hell with it, dropped out and moved to Colorado. 

Now here's the thing: I've had the "Last Day of School Dream" where you can't find your locker to clean it out, and I've had "The Actor's Dream" where it's opening night, you have a major role and you have no idea what play you're supposed to be performing.

However, I have rarely actually had "The Student Dream," likely because I think, in order to trigger it, you would have to care about your grades.

I came back a year later and finished because it would be easier than spending the rest of my life explaining why I hadn't, I explained.

People say, "Since you got rich and famous, you’ve become insufferable." 
I say that’s not true: I’ve always been insufferable. 
                                              -- Shannon Sharpe

Speaking of which ...

Rob Rogers portrays our former FLOTUS, Senator and Secretary of State, who has re-entered the public sphere wondering aloud at the external factors that doomed her try at the Presidency.

I noted the other day that previous unsuccessful candidates seem to have been less public in the wake of their losses, but I also would suggest that previous post-mortems have turned the question a bit more inward, if not in actual self-doubt at least in wondering how a campaign might have otherwise been waged.

The Russia probe will certainly reveal some external factors that contributed to Trump's razor-thin victory, but let's go back to Shannon Sharpe for a moment, because, insufferable as he may be, he's got three Super Bowl rings.

Point being that, in the wake of a loss, you may grouse about the refs, you may wish the weather had been better, you may complain about a cheap shot from an opponent, but the way you eventually get those championship rings is by focusing your criticism upon yourself and taking responsibility for the outcome of the games in which you play.

“Can you do what you do better than they do what they do? 
If the Broncos can do that, they'll win.
If the Steelers do that, they'll win.”
                             -- Shannon Sharpe

 

Meanwhile, back in the Middle Ages ...

Wiley updates a legend. Read the rest here.

Comments

[Mary McNeil]

Insuffferable as Shannon Sharpe may be, but in the ESPN promos for his talk show, that "Skip" guy opposite him appears to be a real puke. Perhaps thus with Hillary.

[Ignatz]

Magna Cum Thank You Laudy.

I spent the first part of my life doing absolutely lousy in school, despite being probably the most well-read one in the class. Lord, did I find the place boring. Structured learning is not for everybody.

[David]

For GoComics, you can create a more permanent link by picking the calendar, then copying the full date link rather than the page. The Wiley link above only means something on the day you actually post.

The date link is:

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2017/06/04

[Mike Peterson]

I usually link to a specific piece when I only post a snippet, but my overall policy is to link to the cartoon site and to leave it to readers to use the calendar to navigate. (Purpose after all being to increase readership of the comic rather than to point to a specific edition.)

In this case, because it was such a short mention, I went ahead and posted to the general address rather than the specific piece. I pondered both, but it basically came down to a coin flip this time.