There is one good thing about being comic-strip characters: if you’re tired of that icky brown sofa, you easily can change it into an icky green sofa. If you don’t like that, you just change it back. The sofa in A&J, which practically is a character actor in its own right, is an almost identical copy of a sofa I owned in 1984, when I was developing the strip. It was easy to draw, which was a big plus in those days, and it was low, ideal for 360-degree viewing. However, I did not do a lot of complicated camera angles in those days. I drew mostly in profile, which required the least skill, and that included the sofa, for years depicted mostly as a square. As I said, it was easy to draw. Occasionally, I still will draw the sofa from profile, usually with Arlo’s head popping out of the top as he’s watching TV, but when you see that these days you can be sure I was pressed for time.
The Remote Present
By Jimmy Johnson
Recent Posts
Ghost of Christmas Past
This holiday Arlo & Janis comic strip from 2022 is similar in concept to the new strip that ran yesterday. I thought the latter ...
Spearhead
I have produced a number of comic strips related to Veteran’s Day. Especially in latter years, I have tried to emphasize the universal experience ...
Dark Passage
Remember: it’s that weekend. The return to standard time can be a bit of a shock in the late afternoon, but I rather enjoy ...
What’s old is old, again
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a web site, but there are similarities. Everything needs to be just right, or ...
Back to the ol’ drawing board
I don’t have a lot of time this morning. I wasn’t going to post anything, but I’m tired of looking at that old photograph ...
Thursday’s Child
On Sunday, I teased you with the suggestion there are more changes coming here. There are. They will appear soon, and I think you’ll ...
79 responses to “The Remote Present”
Dunno, Mark. A couple of the guys I served with would have probably made me opt for working with trained monkeys, if I’d had the choice. The monkeys probably figure doing bird patrols for the Army is preferable to working in plants making products for US big box stores.
I can’t say I am particularly sorry to see August come to an end…it’s not my favorite month. It’s the month of the loss of my father and other family members; the month of the loss of my house; the month of Camille and Katrina; the month of the only two real medical problems I’ve ever had; even the month I lost a good job because of the economy, once-upon-a-time.
August, thou art a heartless…well, you know the rest of that.
Well, I survived dentist and will have the best teeth I have ever had in my life. Some of them are still mine I believe, none are removable and all are paid for. Three things to be grateful for.
Wait until I get those knees replaced! Actually all the exercise has enabled me to do whatever I want now but I am facing all my demons. Love Jackie
When the kids were younger we could not find the time to make the bread ever week, but only from time to time. Kids ate it so fast it would have been pretty hard to keep up.
Since the kids have left, my wife and sometime I will make bread on a pretty regular basis. I love the smell and love kneading the bread to take out my frustrations. As we have been going through the house getting rid of things and one of them was the bread machine. My wife’s co-worker was looking for one, so she just gave it to her.
My ex and I both used our bread machine. We would go to S**’s and buy a large bag of bread flour. Then we would premeasure the dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar) into loaf quantities and seal this in zipper storage bags. When we wanted bread, we only had to put the liquid ingredients and the yeast into the machine and add one bag of mix. Start machine and go crazy over the smells.
About bread which I no longer bake but once did. I went through brioche, French bread, quick breads, slow breads, bread machines, non-bread machine do it by hand. Fresh brioche is probably my favorite although Jewish Challa bread comes in highly. The advent of better breads beyond the gooey white bread of the South that I grew up with made me switch to buying it and not baking.
Plus now I know my weakness and my primary weakness is a loaf of fresh baked bread. I love my homemade whole wheat walnut raisin bread and will eat an entire loaf by myself. And I will not keep losing weight or fit into skinny jeans again. And I just filled the top of a floor to ceiling wardrobe with skinny jeans!
Lordy, I forgot about Hawaiian bread, hot out of an oven and eaten fresh on a beach in the sand, ripping it apart with your hands! Now that is a tropical sensation hard to repeat in Oklahoma. Love, Jackie
So, the Dark Side has idiotic sexual innuendos, whereas we of the Village can convey smell, sensations and eroticism with a loaf of baking bread.
Well, I have a good imagination!
Jackie, you can do Challah or Brioche with a breadmaker. Let the breadmaker do the kneading and rising, then braid the dough, brush with egg (for Challah) and bake on a baking sheet. Don’t remember about the Brioche exactly, but wife had to teach me to braid the dough strips for the Challah. Good, best when hot. Bet I couldn’t do it now, years out of practice.
Jackie I thought ripping the bread apart with your bare hands and the wonderful smell of fresh baked bread IS sex…
See, those guys over on TDS are wannabees. The Village knows what life really is. Hot bread and bare hands eaten on white sand in a string bikini or less. Or anywhere else you’d like to eat it, like the kitchen table.
I am really bad. Just had a drippy quesadilla made with leftover mushrooms, filet steak, some leftover kidney beans whole and pico, all melted in canola oil spray and real Mexican cheese, fresh avocado from fridge. Actually very healthy, the Adventure Dog got part of the steak too, there wasn’t much to begin with.
Love, Jackie
I said above “the guys I served with”, because at that time AF regs apparently didn’t permit females in my career field, I guess because we were subject to short-notice, world-wide deployment including into combat zones. (Of course, things are different now.) Just didn’t want anyone to think I was being sexist, and to prove it I’ll say that (1) females can be every bit as capable of doing bone-headed things as males at times, and (2) I would have been more than happy to have had them serve beside me.
Speaking of deployments, I have a retired SMSgt friend who was deployed overseas a number of times in his career. Once, his detachment got on a transport plane in the States and flew for a long time. When they got off the plane, a briefing officer told them they were at “an undisclosed location to perform a mission for an undisclosed period of time”. My friend looked across the sand desert at the three large pyramids in the distance, and thought, “Well, OK then.”
Dinner tonight will be, I suppose, leftovers from the lunch I fixed my Mom yesterday…boneless, skinless chicken breasts, marinated in home-made teriyaki marinade and grilled; rice pilaf; and green salad. The latest is that some are dissing green salads for “lack of nutrition”, since most of the ingredients are 80%-90% water. So?
That may have been lunch I ate, guys, my hours get messed up. Y’all have shamed me into doing my laundry and then cleaning kitchen!
Nothing wrong with green salads, I am sorting lettuce and greens seeds on the desk and listening to Willie Nelson and Cheryl Crowe duets, having moved on to another genre.
Buy trendy greens seeds which often don’t do anything but make me feel virtuous for planting them. Like purple brocolli, green cauliflower, pak choy, mizuna, red mustards and white turnips and black Russian Kale. No guarantee they ever produce produce.
Love, Jackie
GR6, sounds like you SSM was at the Juliet site in the Australian outback. Those three “pyramids” were the comic energy collectors.
Comic or cosmic?
Comic! Who would believe there are pyramids in the outback? Some “brilliant” intelligence type thought the Soviets would either never notice or that think their satellite had drifted in orbit. Very comic.
sandcastler ™ and Ghost, ever work in an elephant cage? AKA Wullenweber Array.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FRD-10#/media/File:Overview_of_Facility_314,_view_facing_northwest_-_U.S._Naval_Base,_Pearl_Harbor,_Naval_Radio_Station,_AF-FRD-10_Circularly_Disposed_Antenna_Array,_Wahiawa,_Honolulu_County,_HI_HABS_HI-522-B-1.tif
One of my duty stations.
sand, the mind-altering drugs the government is delivering via “chemtrails” were undoubtedly supposed to make everyone overlook the pyramids. Unless, of course, that’s a false flag operation to conceal some other and even more nefarious plot, and they were actually supposed to be seen. Meanwhile, be assured that black helicopters are covertly spraying an LSD/fluoride amalgam into the entire country’s water supply, guaranteeing an endless supply of useful idiots with superb dentition to smile at and applaud the Galactic Overlords when they arrive to take charge of the USG, which will then be charged with the confiscation of all that is good and right in our Republic.
Damn, maybe I’m spending too much time on Teh InterWebnet.
You’re spending too much time doing something! I am listening to Chet Atkins and Friends while opening seed packages.
However, I have begun to read Terry Pratchett on the genre of science fiction, fantasy and other subjects that was recommended by our resident Village librarian (thank you) and I think some of us have fervid imaginations as well.
Some of us write better than others too. Who is the administrator of the Village Orphanage?
Love, Jackie
http://www.al.com/news/montgomery/index.ssf/2015/08/lsd-laced_smarties_discovered.html#incart_river
Am I the only one who sees irony in putting a drug which makes you stupid on a candy called Smarties?
Cap’n, beam me to the bridge.
Watching and listening to the great Chet Atkins, the ultimate guitar man, when suddenly I heard a Ray Stevens song I had never heard. Would Jesus Wear A Rolex?”.
So, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76ohvqwsNkk
Chet Atkins wrote this for Ray Stevens to record! Amazing sense of humor. I loved to go to his concerts, Chet Atkins, not Ray Stevens. I saw Ray Stevens in night clubs back in the 1960’s, never in concert.
Debbe 😉 Playlist Two, Song the Third – As someone once remarked, “Mick Jagger can’t get no satisfaction? Yeah, right.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoxRFOr_sQ0
Jackie: Who is the administrator of the Village Orphanage?
I’ve been wondering that too, Jackie.
Whoever it is they are clever and good. Or so I think. Someone with imagination. It isn’t me!
Jackie, you are too modest. You have a vivid imagination and a super-duper writing style.
I’m not the mystery orphanage person, either.