Another balloon-free classic featuring teenage angst from 1999. Sometimes, when you’re a cartoonist, you just have to laugh. Laugh ruefully, I mean. This cartoon reminds me of another I drew a few years back. Arlo is working a crossword puzzle and is groping for a four-letter word that means Hawaiian folk dance. Through four panels, he’s stumped, and oblivious to Janis gyrating in the background, similar to Arlo in the second panel above. After the cartoon appears in newspapers, I get a snippy email from someone who writes, “I don’t know what that woman in the background is supposed to be doing, but it sure isn’t the hula.” As Steve Martin might have said at one time, “Well, excuuuuse me!” What is about comic strips that make some people so serious?
153 responses to “Comforting Thought”
You’re welcome, Jean! Although I of course have no idea why that cartoon made me think of you. 😉
I see Jimmy is revisiting the real-book vs. e-book discussion today. Whether or not I like it, I feel sure that printed books will one day be curiosities available only at estate sales and antique stores. Things do change, seemingly faster than ever these days.
Case in point: I read an article a couple of days ago about five jobs that are in imminent danger of disappearing. Four of them (Postal Service Worker; News Analyst, Reporter, Correspondent; Travel Agent; and File Clerk) are endangered primarily because of the ubiquitousness of personal computers and other e-devices with Internet access.
And I read that article from the Internet on my iPad rather than in a newspaper, so…
Four?
If they want to take my [real] books they’ll have to pry them out of my dead hands. Love you, Arlo.
Like it or not, Mindy, we have to adapt to changing times. Hey, maybe my future “e-career” could be “Internet-based snarky comic strip critic”. Samples:
“Poorly Drawn Lines”: Poorly conceived humor.
“Angry Little Girls”: ?!
“Eric the Circle”: Circular logic.
“Bound and Gagged”: Should be.
“Moderately Confused”: Moderately confusing.
What do you think?
Note: I actually like some of the above listed cartoons, but one cannot be an “Internet-based snarky comic strip critic” without being “snarky”, can one?
Debbe 😉 Working or playing this weekend, hon?
If the crystal ball we are using proves accurate, upwards of half of todays job classifications will vanish in the next quarter century. This era will be not unsimilar to the twentieth century which saw massive evolutionary job changes.
Just remember, what I don’t know fills a thimble and what I know easily is balanced on a pin point.
Re:eBooks. Many,many older books are not available for the lack of somebody to put them in computer-readable form, Half the bookks on Amazon are not available for the Kindle.
Ghost, thanks for the link to Mary Lou’s tattoo. I don’t mind them if I can’t see them. But I would never date anyone with a tattoo. Not that I date any more anyway. Not since I was twenty.
Lily, I have a friend who jokes (I think) that he would never date any woman who has more tattoos than she does teeth. My standard is a bit higher than that. BTW, I have no tattoos, visible or otherwise. 🙂
Just as intriguing to me is the thought that Janis may have gotten a butterfly tatt of her own.
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2010/07/01#.U0lZ6WdOX5A
Lily, I agree that there are many books I would like to read that are not available in e-format. But many are. See this link:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Lilyblack, try this link and see if any of the books you are looking for are here: https://openlibrary.org/
And as for the disappearing travel agent, that is caused by the airlines mostly, being unwilling to pay a commission to someone who does not work for them. That started in the mid-1990’s as the airlines first cut back commissions, then stopped them altogether.
Boy, the Dark Side is really out in force on the GoComics A&J. “Luddites!” “Technology snobs!”
Ghost, I don’t see “A Friend of Caesar” or “Life on a Medieval Barony” there :p
Same, Mark. Thanks to you both! :cheers:
I crossed over the line in the sand and entered the world of the Dark Side where idiocy reigns and intellect seems to be stifled by the smell of ammonia. Is there an open season on Poo Poo Heads? If so, I know a certain game preserve than needs thinning.
OK, Lily, now you’re just showing off. 😀
Would the Dark Side “heads” mentioned above be considered to be technological teraflops?
Debbe 😉
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/2700129280/h544AE06A/
@ Spiritus Ascensorem VI on
Maybe… *whistles*
^°^°^°^°^ went around the mountain to the GoComics town, those town folks are strange. Staying here on my side of the mountain. Never planning a trip to the dark valley of FaceBook, hear tell all kinds of evil lurks down there.
Actually, the discourse over on The Dark Side today is somewhat more thoughtful and civil than usual.
Someone there mentioned that a disadvantage of an e-reader would be the loss of all of one’s e-books in the event of an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) event. Oddly, I am currently reading (on my Kindle) a novel about the aftermath of an attack carried out primarily by the detonation of an EMP device high over the US, taking down the electric power grid and rendering most electronic devices and most vehicles non-operative. If such a thing should occur, not being able to use my Kindle would be the least of my worries.
Lillyblack, I have three tats, but in order for somebody to see them it would take at least 24 hours of preparation and the assistance of a medical professional because they’re all 50 cm “up.”
Lily, tell me again why you haven’t been posting much until recently. 🙂 Seems to me like you’re fitting right in.
And please, please don’t ask sideburns “Up where?”
Twilight Zone-Burgess Meredith is the only survivor and breaks his glasses. That would be me.
Even worse, Jerry, would be to be younger than Meredith…and to realize your prescription was changing. The disaster wouldn’t be as swift and there would be time to suffer knowing it was coming. Shelly just called, laughing, and said she was having a pokie party. I’m sure she meant a toga party.
Like I said, Ghost, I have been visiting the blog for over a year and posted occasionally but everything seemed so, um, intense that I was intimidated. That’s why I complained, and I see the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” 🙂