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CSotD: Sunday comics section
Mr. Boffo reminds me of when I got a New Yorker subscription for donating to my NPR station. I enjoyed flipping through and watching the cartoons, but although the articles were well written and interesting, I couldn’t skim through them until another issue came along.
It was like a sort of literary form of the sorcerer’s apprentice: half-read and unread issues piled up, and after a while it felt more like duty than pleasure. When it was time to renew, I didn’t.
I don’t have much to say, and I still hit the base with their cartoons regularlyeven if the selection since the departure of Bob Mankoff is a little less to my taste. I saw Mankoff at Bennington shortly after he leftas well as a wide selection of New Yorker cartoons from his time at the helm of the publisher, and you might find this link worth clicking.
Although it will actually add to your reading for the day.
existential comics takes on JK Rowling, whose transphobic statements have alienated a number of Harry Potter fans.
On some level, the art must remain separate from the artist and you must, for example, be able to appreciate Byron’s poetry without being distracted by his reprehensible personalitywhich is not reflected in his work.
In contrast, Woody Allen manhattan is practically an admission about his sexual fascination with very young women, which turns a wonderfully photographed movie into a gruesome 90-minute grimace, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying Annie Hall.
Unless it is.
And looking at Harry Potter, I don’t see any evidence of transphobia there, but I know a few little girls who were little boys, and while your mileage may vary, my question for Rowling would be why couldn’t she just keep his big mouth shut.
Existential Comics illustrates the point well by showing Dumbledore upset by a problem that only exists in his mind, akin to blowing up a very atypical situation in the form of a swimmer who only got halfway through the water. university in a major crisis. It’s equally stupid and unfair, given that my young friends realized their dysphoria long before puberty and it was neither a passing fad nor a light-hearted decision.
Regardless of what people who would rather blather than listen may think.
I hope that, when they are my age, they will come back to the lynchings of that time and have a hard time explaining it to young people of that time.
Speaking of being my age – and lightening the conversation considerably – Betty (AMS) reminds me of visiting my mother around the time of her 80th birthday. We were cooking dinner when she moved something on the counter and we heard the clink of a coin falling.
She looked down and saw it was a penny, then shrugged and said it should stay there until something more valuable came to it. She just turned 98 the other day, and now it’s me adjusting to a life without touching my toes and leaving pennies on the floor.
Among friends (KFS) takes me a step further, because Susan had coffee with her old boss and decided to carry on.
When my father was 50, he decided he had had enough of the steel industry and became a labor negotiator for a major school board, putting his industrial background into education, which was much more important to him. And while he took on what could have been a “bad guy” position, he got along very well with the various unions in the neighborhood.
It’s never too late to change, and make no mistake: the days of 40 years and a gold watch are over.
If you want gratitude, adopt a dog.
juxtaposition of the day
Pooch Cafe didn’t faze me, as I’m used to the idea that most people today live in cities and look in horror at the prospect of sleeping on the floor in the presence of animals.
It’s kind of a compromise, since most of us country people are pretty sure that going to town will result in mugging or worse, although I will say it’s much easier to finding a city dweller who has been attacked is like finding a peasant who has been attacked by a bear.
However, while I ignored the litany of complaints about mosquitoes, dirt and rain, etc., the Flying McCoys took pastorophobia to a whole new level.
I have great memories of fishing with my dad and my kids have great memories of fishing with me. We didn’t always bring home dinner, or even a snack, but we had plenty of time to talk between discarding the cubs and putting the hook back on.
If dating your dad is traumatic, don’t blame the fish.
In fact, when Jan Eliot was semi-retired and wrap it stone soup archives, she asked me if I wanted an original, and I knew exactly which one I wanted. This piece from 2012 now hangs above my desk:
You never know what’s going to stick, and while you can’t avoid the occasional clinker, it’s well worth the effort to equip your kids with as many fond memories as possible. What’s great about this tape is that Alix has more memories than her mom and aunt expect, and the aquarium guide doesn’t realize the depths they came from.
Maybe Alix doesn’t know where her knowledge comes from either, but there’s a level to which she remembers, even imperfectly, that her father loved her and did things with her.
And, by the way, if you prefer to see nature through the windshield of a car, foliage season is approaching, and here is an interactive map of the people of the Smoky Mountains to help plan a trip.
There’s not much yet, but it’s early.
Here is the prediction for Columbus Day, which is usually good in the northern forestafter which many tourist places closed for the winter.
In the meantime, it’s still warm enough to do some kayaking with Dad, as seen in this Canadian film: