Bryan had an interesting comment on the sketches I posted earlier this week. He suggested the characters be developed into a Sunday-only serial strip. This intrigued me, because it brought back a memory from when I’d read the comics as a kid. In The Atlanta Journal, we’d see “Buz Sawyer” in the funnies Monday through Saturday. Buz had been a Navy pilot during the war years, but he was a civilian adventurer and corporate mercenary by the time I came along. His was a swashbuckling serial strip, expertly produced by Roy Crane, and I loved it. However, on Sunday, in the large color format, the strip was about the man who’d flown with him as a gunner in the Pacific; his name was Roscoe Sweeney, a bellicose sidekick who’d been providing comic relief since their flying days. By the 50s, Roscoe lived on his orange grove in north Florida, with his younger sister. The Sunday strip was titled “Buz Sawyer, Featuring His Pal Roscoe Sweeney,” but each week would be a self-contained comic happening within the Sweeney household. It was a sit-com premise that might seem a tame life for such an old war horse, but combat veterans like him literally were everywhere in those days. Domesticity and normalcy were in big demand, and I suppose this was Crane’s version. Anyway, I always enjoyed Roscoe Sweeney, and I’m happy to be reminded of him.
Wither Thou Goest
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 ...
109 responses to “Wither Thou Goest”
Wondered the same thing Charlotte, it has been empty streets in Village all day, and no, I had no trouble getting on at any time myself. I was just lurking and catching up on reading both the comics and the contents.
So that I contribute something, I enjoyed the veterinarian arc a lot and the makeup one as well, and I can relate to Janis’ angst in the flower patch, despite what Ghost said. I think many women do feel that way, even those of us trying to water the wilted blossoms and perk them up and get a little more life out of them!
For what it is worth, I managed to lose eleven more pounds in last six weeks without much effort and without starvation. At this rate, I see the possibility of reaching my goal weight sometime in this life time! Restocked pantry and fridge with a plethora of fresh vegs and fruits, freezer with a lot of shrimp and fish, chicken, no excuse for eating anything I shouldn’t, so long as I cook it.
Had a mesquite grilled pork chop and steamed sugar snap peas, corn on cob and grilled peppers for lunch. Of course I had slept through breakfast and missed it entirely! Temps here in Oklahoma are in upper 100’s, like 105-109 actual temperatures. Gardening only possible if I get up at day light and maybe in the dark? There are cucumbers and tomatoes out there, so I think I will entertain myself sorting seeds for a fall garden. In the air conditioning!
Love Jackie
Wonderful to hear from you, Jackie! (Looks like you and I are the only ones in the Village right now. Strange!) Congratulations on losing that much weight — you are doing splendidly. So you made it back home at last. I have been wondering if you were doing your Sail Oklahoma event, and it appears you are. Good wishes for your plans. Are you going to get a Chinese translator so that no communication problems happen with the Chinese restaurant people?
I have to say, I have never felt “spent” or “useless” so I am indeed a very fortunate woman. My life has been happy and rewarding.
Welcome back, Jackie.
Love, Charlotte
I suppose that it’s the last vacation weekend for many people although I’ve been under the impression that not many of us have school kids. BTW, Frank Gifford died.
Checking in. My best friend’s aunt passed away earlier this week, and I’ve been with my “adopted” family when not at work. Home now, and woefully neglected kitty is in my lap, catching up on snuggles and sleep. Been a frustrating and emotionally draining few weeks. Night all.
Mindy: Sorry about your friend’s aunt. The hurts of those we love are also ours. Hugs…
Have spent most of the day resting. VERY busy week and now I am paying for it with an almost-migraine. Anticipating being full of vim and vigor tomorrow.
My former colleagues go back to work tomorrow and school starts for the kids a week later. I’ve been looking forward to sleeping late on those days and gloating a little but guess I’m suffering a little karma for that – have to get up early tomorrow for jury duty.
I’ve noticed a lack of comments during the day for the past few weekends. Maybe the gang is getting out and enjoying non-electronic activities.
I’ve been involved with electronic activities rather than not: installed Windows 10 this afternoon under the guidance of my son. There’s no way I’d’ve tried that without backup, lest I got to a point at which I was told to do thus-and-so, only for me to find that I had no idea what thus-and so was!
It did take about 75 minutes overall, as expected. So, I began it before we ate and let it do its thing while we were doing our collective thing of eating. Good idea to plan another activity for the time if/when you get Windows 10.
I am getting messages that Norton needs to be reinstalled, and I cannot get to my comcast email, for whatever reason. It is possible to get onto their site and check in, but the email page just never pops up. Those are the only glitches noticed, although it may take a longer-than-usual time for any given page to load, for the first several times one goes there…so says my son.
I’ve been working my “you know what” off this weekend. Yesterday, my son and I finished the trim work in the family room for the laminated floors. It looks pretty good. Then today I bought bushes and mulch for the front of the house. That meant weeding, laying down the barrier and putting down the mulch. I ended up with 18 bags, so that meant two trips to the store. It was not as hot as it has been but I still sweated up a bunch.
Just sitting here relaxing waiting to head to bed…
Charlotte: We were all at church, of course. Well, some of us. BUMC starts at 1030, on the dot [says emb as he walks down the aisle to his front pew while pastor* is giving instructions for a Sun. 30 Aug baptism]. After church, out w/ friends to an eatery emb has avoided as pretentious + mediocre for over 5 yrs. Assured by others that it is better, I went. No change, to my mind.
Then, 3+ hr. nap, and fix supper. Freezer soup, July ’15 version, scrumptious. Now doing evening cptr. routine. Not much to report: memorial gathering at funeral home noon yesterday. No ceremony. Friend’s husband’s uncle. Friend, a few other hospital employees and volunteers, a few others I knew, but most = relatives + others from the next co. east. The more pleasant, architecturally, of the two local mortuaries.
*New guy is great, most of us seem to think, incl. his lay sidekick, a good friend. We’ve had significant turnover troubles past several yrs.
Peace, emb
Debbe 😉 Surprised your husband and BIL have not discovered “Bikinis and Boardwalks” on The Travel Channel. The average bikini there covers 50-75% less than the pixilated areas on “Pixilated and Afraid” (I did the math), and every one I’ve seen is worn by a lady with a body that does it justice. Lots of justice.
Hi, Jackie. Never know where you are these days. Eleven pounds in six weeks is a near perfect rate of loss…keeps up the good work. In a related matter, I unexpectedly encountered a full length mirror yesterday and instantly had two thoughts…”OMG, who’s that!?” and “And why is he wearing clown pants?” Gonna hafta break down and buy some new cargo pants for the weekends.
Illegitimi non carborundum, Lady Mindy.
Hi Ghost, I almost never know where I am either. That makes several of us! No, I am home, spent yesterday and today going through a multi-foot high desktop and chair full of mail, most of it ended in trash, the stack to do something about is small. Then unpacked and put away my suitcases of clothes, something I never do either in a timely way. Next trip I am down to the bikini bottom, tee shirt and toothbrush and purse in one hand.
I miss hearing what people are cooking! I had half a grilled chicken breast, sauteed garlic, red peppers, yellow squash, baby portobello mushrooms, green onions and spinach, saved half for another meal. Having honeydew for dessert with lime squeezed. I think color and pretty as well as taste affects your success. Duh! Imagine, what they tell you to do is true!
All that fantastic produce up in Olympic Peninsula made me want to cook and no where to do so.
Fabulous, organic and produced mainly by old hippies. That is where old hippies and old VW buses go to die. I enriched the co-op daily. And it was really good stuff. They had five kinds of figs in the produce, a dozen types of plucots, all kinds of berries and the deli people could really cook, whole grain breads, healthy soups daily, just amazing.
Tomorrow is expensive dental work day with a root canal, post and replacement tooth to start with. Need to be able to eat to stay healthy and teeth are essential.
Love, Jackie
Ghost, on a related subject, I have started noticing the sizes of other, smaller people and asking how much they weigh? The issue is they are heavier than I was before I began gaining all the weight and I CANNOT imagine what I will look like if I make it back to that size? I think, Wow, what a tiny, skinny person and then I realize I must have been even tinier and skinnier and I just cannot believe it.
When do you ever begin to believe? When you walk by the mirror and see the clown pants?
Love, Jackie
Dearest Ghost, in this hot weather, aren’t you wearing shorts? (There are cargo shorts, aren’t there?) Guys I know look good in them.
My lovely daughter Alice came down from Vermont to visit Friday and Saturday; it was so nice having her here. It was sunny and not overly hot; she did a lot of pruning and trimming in the back yard, and pulled out LOTS of Woodbine, or Virginia Creeper, from the shrubbery. I got to watch and only say what I wanted to go or to stay. We were treated to many bird songs. Nancy will stop in and pick up the heaps of trimmings to give to her goats. Alice says she enjoys battling the unwanted plants.
I bet Ghost would look fabulous in shorts, cargo or plain. Jackie, I love hearing about what people are eating, too. What you’ve been getting up in the Olympic Peninsula makes me swoon with envy. I went to a small local restaurant with some of the family on Saturday; I very seldom go out to eat, so it’s a treat. Liver and onions was my choice and it was very good.
Charlotte, I wore shorts (and pretty short ones) when I was doing aerobics (and looked damn good in them, too 🙂 ), but for some reason I’ve never been partial to them, even when I was growing up.
Jackie, coincidentally, our topic in WW yesterday was body image, and how it can both hurt and help you in your quest to lose weight. Many in the class admitted that they never saw themselves as gaining weight when they were, and conversely their weight losses take a good while to register with them visually. But yes, you do reach a point when it dawns on you that, “Hey, I don’t look half bad.” My “clown pants” moment is a good example of that, as was the time during my aerobics days when our boss took us on a Florida trip in their motor home, and another guy and I rode our Goldwings. One of the office girls took a picture of me, semi-profile, as I stood beside my bike at a fuel stop, and showed it to me later. Denim stretch jeans, polo shirt, flat belly, muscular arms and legs…looked at it and thought, “Damn, you look good, Ghost.” That’s the image I’m working toward now. So pick an image of yourself from a time when you were pleased with the way you looked (and it doesn’t to be a bikini…or less…body image) and strive for that.
Fixed lunch for my Mom today…grilled beef patties with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce; diced fresh squash, zucchini and sweet onion, sautéed in EVOO with sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and dried basil; and homemade potato salad made with Yukon Gold potatoes. I’ve been making lots of stops at my neighborhood veggie stand lately.
Debbe 😉 I’ve never been involved in this kind of battle, of course. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo
Jackie: You actually ask women how much they weigh? Oh, my… You must like to live dangerously!
Oooooh, your mother’s lunch sounds good. She is a fortunate woman, dearest Ghost!
Even in your hot, humid climate you wear long pants? Isn’t it uncomfortable?
Gal, I’ve noticed in WW classes that many women will say what they weighed when they started, but what they weight now, not so much. 🙂 I heard one young school teacher say, rather wistfully, in class yesterday, “I used to be adorable; here I was at 19,” as she showed a phone pic to the lady next to her.
As we were leaving, I smiled at her and said, “You’re still adorable.” I think I made a new friend.
Not really, Charlotte. I’ve just always worm long pants and am used to them. Of course, I admit to being slightly OCD about my attire. For instance, I’ll only wear a long-sleeved dress shirt with a tie, never a short-sleeved one.
Gal, being shy and not forward has never been my style. Yes, I do ask women that but the ones I am asking are darned small and skinny and I have a pretty good idea anyway, but I ask. The reason is that I have a terrible body image, even when I am so skinny my chest bones stick out.
So, what I am doing is kind of reassuring myself “Hey, you don’t have to weigh 110 pounds because that skinny emaciated girl you are looking at and thinking she looks too thin actually weighs 117 pounds.” Interestingly, some of the ones I think look skinny or emaciated actually weigh more than the goal weight my doctors and I have set. So, it is reverse psychology on myself, I am not trying to do that again but settle for a healthier weight and body shape I think?
Ghost, I have reached the point I don’t think I look too bad (as long as I have clothes on!) but still aren’t at the liking myself naked point! But the skinny jeans and tee shirts aren’t bad now.
Glamorous life, not! I am doing laundry and have to go yank some out of dryer and fold it.
Love, Jackie
Good morning Villagers……
Ian ‘dropped’ in for a little bit yesterday. I think he has an interview with a construction company. I asked him if he knew what next Sunday was….he gave me this blank look, then it hit him. Said he’ be back next Sunday and would spend more time with me. He looked happy.
Jerry, I really do get u[ around 4ish in the morning, do some reading on BCN, read the comics and come here and read all about it. (I save the best for last.) By the time I post, it will show 4ish, but it really is 5ish…so I don’t know what time I’m on…slow time, fast time, need time. By the way, that was brilliant, wasn’t it. hahahahahaha
Called my sister Brenda yesterday as I knew she and her husband were on their way home from Davenport, Iowa. They took their ‘baby’ to live their as she got a job at a high school as an athletic sports trainer…..she is cute and stand only 5ft 2in. So she lost her baby too, only mine is just an hour away.
Skittles worked hard on making me laugh yesterday…everything from showing me a castrating rubber thingy jingy to (this caught me off guard as I was cleaning up an egg mess on my mylar belt), I heard the front door close, and so nonchalantly he said “this is what I use to eat my meals with”. I turned around and there was this big, three prong fork…I laughed so hard, just was not expecting to see that.
Glad to see you’re back home Jackie.
Hugs Mindy…….
Happy Monday to all
Jerry, my computer clock says it is 5:32…..
GR 😉 one must ‘exercise’ caution in not overdoing whatever your were overdoing 🙂
So today I have to be logical….am I going to keep squirrelly Shirley or not….she is slipping back into her old habits sooooo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh3Kk5tZSmo
here is another pic of the mountain climbing “Mike the cat”
http://cheezburger.com/8545819904/cute-cats-news-this-adventurous-cat-has-climbed-mountains
Mike, the cat, is tethered to his owner……for some reason, I find this fascinating that he could get his cat to go mountain climbing with him.