I intended to be here yesterday, and I would have but for technical issues. I still prefer a desktop computer for my work. It seems to me much more suited to the graphic manipulation that is much of my effort. However, the old Dell I’d been using was about 150 years old in computer years. Loading modern Web sites was excruciatingly slow and increasingly futile, and it simply was not powerful enough to run updated versions of some of the software upon which I rely. Worst of all, I couldn’t stream HD movies to run in the background while I worked! So, I purchased a new computer, the latest incarnation of the first computer I purchased back in 1994. I love it. However, the migration has not been easy, particularly getting my scanner to work properly. That’s what I was working on yesterday about this time. For now, it’s working, but it was working once before—perfectly—then my scanner vanished from my new computer’s “friends” list. So we shall see. For now, here’s Vince. We’ll talk more about him and the cartoons next time.
Character Flaw
By Jimmy Johnson
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307 responses to “Character Flaw”
As to what’s going on with 9CL, look at the banner at the top of this page. Although it’s past the date shown for the performances, if McEldowney was tied up with this play, it might have put him in a position where he couldn’t keep up with his current art.
http://www.gocomics.com/9chickweedlane/2014/11/10
He had to crowdfund his stage play? One would think the creator of “the most popular strip in America” could obtain funding for his creative work through normal channels, wouldn’t one?
Someone as purportedly brilliant as McEldowney should know that the old expression about having “too many irons in the fire” comes from blacksmithing days, meaning that if a smith put too many pieces of horseshoe iron in his furnace at once, none of them came out too hot. Perhaps we are observing the wordsmithing counterpart of that.
And Miz Charlotte, you are of course correct…the first rule of cooking bacon is “Don’t Burn the Bacon!” 🙂
It IS interesting to read some other bloggers, like Comics I Don’t Understand, although it doesn’t look like that many people do write about newspaper comic strips. I found it interesting that CIDU eliminated 9 CL from winning the Arlo award, as they said it had long ago become soft porn and was disqualified. The other one that declared it had become a soap opera strip like Mary Worth was interesting too.
I happen to agree with both.
Looked around and 10# dog was perched in a flat of pansies I put in office to try to keep them from freezing, over and over and over.
Now, about best comic strip in America, not that I am prejudiced, but I think JJ deserves that title for Arlo and Janis. His art is consistently good, extremely well animated and full of great, subtle expression. His humor is equally sophisticated and often subtle, therefore I think it passes over a lot of people’s heads.
Not to get me started but I do think so many strips are poorly/not drawn at all, almost doodling. I was reading some back strips on Calvin and Hobbes today and there is one with a forest that is truly breathtakingly drawn, no color, just woods and forest. I have realized this year that most of the strips I enjoy are old, often in reruns. It is not because I am old myself, I like to think my mind is still open and receptive, I think it is because I appreciate comic art, both in drawing and humor.
Another ranting idiot here!
Love, Jackie
I found a total of one article online ref McEldowney’s “Many Mansions” play, indicating he began working on it over 30 years ago. (A vanity production, perhaps?) The play’s FB page said, as of about a week ago, the crowdfunding drive had only raised about 35% (or < $3000) of the $8500 they said they needed to stage it. 9CL is suddenly in reruns, and Pibgorn is basically him writing puff pieces about individual panels of his previous work there. "Too many irons in the fire" still seems to me to be an operative conjecture.
I love A&J but another favorite of mine is Baby Blues. It also has a lot of “been there, done that” humor that all parents can relate to.
I haven’t looked recently but one of my friends crowd funded his first book, a humor book on sailing and adventures in a $300 boat. I think he raised MORE money than he needed and did it in a couple of weeks. Granted he does write for two national boating magazines and a large online magazine but he didn’t advertise there for money.
Seems that a major national comic writer/artist with all the books he has published wouldn’t have had trouble unless the play really is horrible. My friend raised way more than $8500 to publish his book.
Regarding 9CL – When JJ goes on vacation, Arlo and Janis tend to go into reruns too.
I figure Martine and WWII will be back next week. While I would prefer a slightly quicker pace in the current arc (season? era? saga?), I don’t put too much into it: 9CL is the daily comic equivalent of an avant-garde summer blockbuster – big on visuals, short on plot development. IF, the current day’s strip relates to the day before, cool. If not, I just roll with it. My current two favorite characters are Danny, the orange and white cat, and Juno, the kitten.
Our fearless leader is a minimalist independent film superstar (in keeping with the current analogy). I remember this retro arc well. Didn’t it run relatively soon after Arlo’s own office spouse made her appearance?
Fourteen hours and back at it again at 5am. Night!
Mindy, I worry about YOU and the hours and hours. Ralph, my loyal dirt mover is working on getting the truck load out of my drive way and into the rock walled areas, plus does what you do. He worked here until 1 today and then went to work 12 hours at the convenience store.
Next time any of us are in a convenience store we should think of this and be extra nice to the clerk(s) waiting on us. They deserve some appreciation and thanks, in my opinion.
Good night, love, Jackie
I will take your advice, Jackie, I really will. I try to be nice to store clerks all the time, and sometimes I am humbled because they are always so nice to me.
Dearest Ghost, I won’t be able to sleep tonight unless you tell me the right size for a lardoon. I’m also bothered by not knowing where Skeezix got those 300 boxes of macaroni and cheese.
A friend used to have an employee who claimed her semi-wandering boyfriend had a thing for “curb store girls”. First and only time I ever heard of that.
Many years ago, before I kicked the evil tobacco habit, I often stopped at various stores on the way home at night to buy cigarettes, and I got acquainted with the night shift employees at several stores. Without exception, they seemed to be really nice people.
Today, I would simply not walk into one of those stores after dark, despite the fact I am always armed and always maintain a high level of awareness of my surroundings. Yet almost all store employees are prohibited by their companies from carrying. They are braver than I am.
Charlotte, lardoons or lardons (either is correct) are technically cuts of pork belly, fatback, bacon or salt pork that are sliced into small strips or cubes about one centimeter (0.4 inch) wide and used to “lard” or flavor other cuts of meat. In the bacon marm recipe, I would read it as “cut the slices of bacon into half inch pieces”. (I think perhaps the writer of the recipe may have been “showing off” a bit.)
Sleep tight. 🙂
I’ll be working on the mac and cheese question.
Mindy from Indy, your description of your work as a manager at the convenience store reminds me of my time as a “site supervisor” for a regional security company. Lots of responsibility, little authority, upper management hired mostly anybody who was breathing. If they didn’t show up or did their job poorly there were hardly any consequences for them, but plenty for me. The last straw was one Halloween when I went in at 5am for my shift and did not get relieved till the 3rd shift guard arrived around midnight. When I called the roving supervisor who was supposed to take the shift when no one else could be found to relieve me on the second shift, he refused to come and claimed he didn’t have his uniform with him on duty in the security company’s main office. Last day I worked for that company.
Charlotte, that is an awful lot of mac and cheese. The only explanation I could offer is that Skeezix is one of those people who just cannot turn down a “bargain” and that he bought it from some guy selling it out if the trunk of a car parked in an alley. Now he is trying to donate all the “hot meals” he purchased.
Mike just woke me on intercom with cries for help. I thought he’d fallen again and I was fearing having to lift him. But it wasn’t a fall, so he is back in bed. Now I am awake and it can’t be too late, but I am going to have trouble getting back asleep.. Caregivers should be like Ghost, taller, more fit and athletic than I certainly am.
Forgot to answer the lardoons question but Ghost did admirably. I didn’t suspect Ghost was showing off his literacy but someone was, that is why I said I hadn’t seen that one in a long time. I used to be a big fan of Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, similar cooks and you can learn an awful lot by reading people like that. I used to read cookbooks for entertainment, like others read novels. Now I never cook much at all it seems.
I always favored fat back for lardoons as they are firmer and stiffer than bacon and bacon is danged hard to poke in a tiny slit.
It is same way you make slits to poke slivers of garlic into meats and about the same size.
The other day I described trying to poke a set of boat sails and masts into a long, skinny sail bag as trying to push a stick down a python like bag. I would describe lardoons as graphically but it wouldn’t be suitable for polite company!
Better if the lardoons are frozen, actually, makes them harder and more easily inserted.
Different cooking subject, I think I will use my favorite turkey baking method and loosen all the skin on bird and pack it with herbed butter between skin and flesh. Since the freeze froze all my herbs, they won’t be mine!
If there is another in the cooking trinity that will improve anything, it is butter. Used to cook a lot of dishes that began, “Soften/melt one stick of butter” and went on to add more!
Love, Jackie
I definitely have fallen off the butter wagon the past two days. As I confessed last night, the beer bread smelled so good right out of the oven that I just had to have a piece of it with a (small) pat of butter on it.
Then this morning, when I used the beer bread to make French toast, I figured in for a penny, in for a pound, and pan fried it in butter.
Then this afternoon, my Mom said some corn bread surely would be good with the ham and bean soup I’d made her to have for dinner, so I drug out one of my larger cast iron skillets and the Shawnee Pride yellow cornmeal mix, and voilà…cornbread to carry over to her apartment. So of course, I had to save a couple of slices of it to have later with my dinner…with another small pat of butter on it.
And if you’re wondering, yeah, the diet is shot to hell for the past two days.
Oh well, I’ll be good again until at least Christmas.
Grocery had all the Shawnee mixes at 2/88 cents, so I stocked up yesterday in Tulsa. The whole-wheat pancake mix is good too, as are the bran muffin mixes. But not 2/88 good!
The butter mixed with olive oil is pretty good too and more “good fat” I suppose.
If I can remember the case of apples I will make some for mom’s pancakes. I need to bring some into kitchen so they are visible.
And Yes, I sauté them in butter!
Love, Jackie
It’s always pleasant to daydream about cooking. Thanks to Ghost and to Jackie for the appetizing techniques of larding, and I see what you mean about the difficulty. Bacon, raw, is so limp! Salt pork, which I used to use to make chowder, is nice and firm; and freezing makes foods easier to handle.
Ghost, you’ve solved the mystery of Skeezix and the macaroni and cheese — I’m sure that’s the answer. Another mystery is how Skeezix keeps so healthy and active, at his age! But of course comic strip time is different from real time.
Yes, butter is good, but now that we’re older, best stay away from it.
I used to go to convenience stores, seems like a lifetime ago, for the evil tobacco habit and, the lottery ticket habit too — I’m glad I was able to give them both up. Now I don’t even leave the house in the evening any more.
Actually Gasoline Alley is one of the few “real time” comic strips. From Wikipedia:
Gasoline Alley is a comic strip created by Frank King and currently distributed by Tribune Media Services. First published November 24, 1918, it is the second longest running comic strip in the US (after The Katzenjammer Kids) and has received critical accolades for its influential innovations.[1] In addition to inventive color and page design concepts, King introduced real-time continuity to comic strips by showing his characters as they grew to maturity and aged over generations.[2]
The few “timeless” characters who don’t age are: Joel, Rufus, Magnus, and Melba.
Actually, I did pan fry this morning’s French toast in half butter, half olive oil. Makes me feel a little better about myself. But boy, was that French toast ever good!
Good morning Villagers…..
Wahhh….I don’t wanna go to work….it’s cold out there, 17 degrees! First thing I do when I get to work is check the temp in the hen house, walk over and turn the heat on, pick up my boots, hold them up to the heat flow and warm them up. It takes about two hours to warm the packing room up to 60 degrees. The Boss wants it turned down past 40 degrees at night…tightwad. I’ll be wearing my long johns under my jeans today.
I love my local convenience store….it’s about 2 miles from work. The manager and the afternoon young lady are very pleasant. We’re on first name basis. The afternoon girl calls me ‘Beautiful’, and I call her Sunshine.
My missing cat has been found. She goes out and comes in, so she’s an innie and outie. She had been missing the past four days. My husband was picking up the mess around the entrance to under the house, and he heard a ‘meow’. Opened the door, and there was Hampton (yes, that’s where I worked…as a head housekeeper, and where I rescued her from…the name seemed appropriate) She is a slate grey, long haired female with the most beautiful green eyes. All I could do last night was hold her to my chest with my housecoat wrapped around her…and she laid like that for at least an hour….until my white cat got jealous.
I don’t cook much, so I don’t have any recipes to share, but I enjoy reading them…the bacon marm does sound good. Maybe I’ll get my husband to try it….he has been cooking since he’s ‘retired’…..lucky me 🙂
And I do love the artwork in ‘Calvin’
Happy Caterday……
GR 😉
Important List
19. The most worthless emotion. Self-pity
A few months ago, while reading the strip ‘BC’, I clicked on the link “Dogs of C-Kennel”…..you may try this diet GR 🙂
http://www.gocomics.com/dogsofckennel/2014/11/14
I enjoy this strip, it’s about dogs in an animal shelter….drawn by the same cartoonists that draw ‘BC’
Oohh, today starts deer hunting season…and there’s trucks and headlights all up and down the gravel road…now…but, yesterday, Dakota (my weekend help) came by to pick up his check. He asked if I wanted to fire his rifle….I said no, but curiosity got to me. I went outside to check out the gun….seems it was manufactured in France in the late 30’s and was used by the French in WW11… I don’t know what kind of wood was used but it was well crafted….I held it up, scoped it, but did not fire it as I knew it had a kick to it and they would be picking me up off the ground…..the rifle weighed 8.2 pounds. Thank you for letting me share this with you all……
Computer migration is cycle of our current environment, like ploughing and harvesting were in, say, 6000 BC. I spent nearly 40 years creating this stuff, and there’s always a hitch when something new goes in. I prefer a desktop, too, because that’s what I’m used to, but I am also used to a mainframe, and all systems are as grass, which today flourishes and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. At least all these systems are starting to get a little maturity.
Good morning village. 43° down here on the southside, must mean you’ll up north are having winter.
Crab wrote: “At least all these systems are starting to get a little maturity.” Lot more transistors and cheap memory just leads to sloppy code. Kinda like people as we age, senility is merely over stuffed file cabinets.