Here’s an old A&J Sunday from the more recent past, 2004. I’ll get back to the truly older material soon, as I’ve really enjoyed going through it with you, but I don’t have much time today. In case you’re wondering, the newer material is stored digitally and much easier to access. The older cartoons must be scanned and edited anew, by me.
Confront Zone
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 ...
57 responses to “Confront Zone”
Will scan for originals. 🙂
Oh. I love this one! Now I have to confess, I don’t take back the dead plants either but you should HEAR the stories on internet gardening sites by those who do.
Guaranteed plants are seldom guaranteed.
Love, Jackie
Ha! There was a point were it seemed every other sirloin or tenderloin that I got from the local grocery store was butchered from a red cutter (they didn’t bleed the carcass properly at the slaughterhouse), which end up tasting like liver. I got so fed up, I finally tried to return one, completely cooked. It took like 30 minutes of back and forth, my getting increasingly angry, and a call to the store manager to get my $8. I’m sure I was the talk of the dinner table at that customer service lady’s house. After 3 returns and a talk with the “meat guy”, it improved dramatically. I probably cost some guy his throat slitting job somewhere, and he has no idea why.
Hm, never had the problem. But, then, we don’t buy plants often, the last being a female pomegranate to date our big male pom. We did get a few fruits off that lady this year. The fig tree is huge, which is a shame cause nobody here likes figs. Every year I ask my Sunday School if anybody likes figs and a few of them will admit it and they get bunches. My friend the front office manager has a plum tree that she has the same problem with. Our Bosc pear tree is yielding fruit and we eat some, can the rest. It is just a young tree so not much. My art teacher gave away green peppers two weeks ago, which I cut up and froze. The traditional zucchini over-production doesn’t apply to us cause we only have two plants and we eat it all.
During the 1930’s depression era, my grandmother ran a canning kitchen for the area farm wives and workers and never overcame that mentality. We gardened and canned for survivalist standards.
According to Ghost, that may come in handy knowing soon!
It came in handy when I ran upscale bake sales to raise money for things like historic preservation or fund raising for church building. And it has produced some fine eating as well for some people.
Normally I don’t reminisce about “walking two miles in the snow each way” to catch the bus to school. But I grew up and lived and currently live in areas of poverty. That does not mean the people are not to be respected or admired.
Yes, I have had lots of wealth and advantages off and on in between. But we should never forget!
Love, Jackie Monies
There is the generation of those who lived through the depression era and then there is the generation (to which I belong) that constantly heard about the depression from our parents and lived the same lifestyle of denial. “Hey, only half a spoonful of sugar on your cereal. Do you think we are made of money?”
Tom, you are so right! I often felt like we were still living it! Which we kind of did.
My step dad made great wealth through cautious investing and some insider information. Yet I came to visit once, house totally dark, he was watching a black and white t.v. by an oil lamp. Took us in to show us his $9 utility bill.
Love, Jackie
It’s kind of a joke with my generation. Whenever we waste something like half-burned candles or plastic tableware, we would always get from our grandparents, “If you had lived through the Depression…” you would have burned those candle stubs (or washed off that plastic-ware and put it away) and been *GLAD* to get it. My grandfather was the worst. When I would throw away an empty jar of peanut butter, he would fish it out of the trash and point to the pb still clinging to the sides. “A soldier at Stalingrad could have lived a full day on what you throw away.” (Yeah, I get my WWII buffness from him). My father thought it was funny and would imitate him later, and so did other kids’ parents, I guess, cause when we start off on that “old person voice” ( like Margaret Hamilton in Wizard of Oz) ““If you had lived through the Depression…” everybody always laughs.
This strip is one of my favorites, it’s in my work screen saver rotation. My wife will return things I would never dream of. Arlo, just drive around and hand her money when you get back or buy a replacement
What if people like the survivalists are right? I am not one, nor do I hoard weapons and ammunition like some I know probably, but today’s climate of terrorists and radicalizations is scary.
How long would any of us survive? I once did a column along those lines and boats, half tongue in cheek, called “Could You Get Off the Island?” It was about how todays’ boat building skills would hardly enable anyone to make a raft because we all rely on power tools, epoxy and fiberglass even on wooden boats.
During the Cold War and nuclear fears we all talked about the same thing, only survivalists then built bomb shelters and stocked them. I remember that vividly.
My home gardening is a fun thing and we enjoy anything I manage to grow. Very small scale and not organic but sorta organic.
Meat, now that’s another pet peeve of mine. I will not buy meat from most big chain grocers because I want to know my butcher personally and have them know my name too. And they know I can cut it too, if need be, which I can of course.
Love, Jackie
RE: emb 3:32 yesterday, reminds me Bill Cosby telling how as a kid he tried mixing some grape jelly with his acne cream. . today to get past the flesh color problem of band-aids they make them with cartoon characters and stuff on them
Jackie, I’m not a “prepper” or a “survivalist”, but I do think it prudent to be prepared to survive less-than-optimal-but-still-survivable conditions. Many who lived in New Orleans and points east when Katrina made landfall learned how things can turn out when one has to depend on someone else to come pull one’s chestnuts out of the water. (Hint: It didn’t turn out too well for many of them.) And for those who would argue “that was then, this is now”, I eagerly await their evidence that the USG and its alphabet agencies are any more prepared, competent or “carrying” now than then.
In a time when we could be thoroughly screwed as a civilization if the Ebola virus mutates into an airborne stain, I am not encouraged by the number of people in this country who have not only never heard of the Ebola virus, but who would probably say the worst possible disaster they can imagine is for FaceBook or Twitter to be down for more than 24 hours.
The genius of today’s retro strip is that Arlo is being forced to fight Janis’ battle; one that she won’t wage, but has no compunction about sending her husband to do. I have been in his position more than a few times over 38 years of marriage.
The flipside, of course, is that (to my personal knowledge), husbands never send their spouses to fight those battles. I shrug and say, “throw it out and don’t go back to that store.” Why is it that women do this to the men they love?
No problem on returns here. I don’t go to the store, I didn’t buy it, I don’t return it. The only time I will go to the store is to go to Lowes with her so she can use my Veteran’s discount. If I go to the grocery store it is only with her for a few items. I have panic attacks in stores, especially Stuff Mart, so I don’t go shopping. If we go to the store she WILL be within arms reach, no question. If she disappears I go to the truck and won’t come back in.
The worse disasters I have had to survive are a couple of hurricanes and flooding, nothing to compare to Katrina, and a couple of ice storms that got water, electricity, roads, trees and houses that trees fell on. Those were as bad as hurricanes. I have not had to survive from tornado but I know a lot of people who have. I do not think we should take our creature comforts for granted, they can disappear so easily.
We in Oklahoma are close to the results of terrorism as we are today in the current news. So are a few other cities/states but s a whole our country is blessed with relative tranquility.
Living off and on in a third world nation, and yes, Venezuela is third world, albeit a rich third world, I learned that freedom is worth treasuring. Couple of revolutions I was there for, bombing of pipelines and killing of oil field workers.
Thank a veteran if you like your freedom is a good quote.
Love, Jackie
We have 500 gallons of water stored in an old cistern, food for a month in canned and dried stuff, a gasoline generator (with the gas stored in my disused Toyota Corolla), lots of medications and a lot of guns and ammo. They may get me, but they’ll remember me
Pestilence arrives without warning and fears not your guns ammo.
Jackie, I depend utterly and completely on functioning society and technology. I have taught my daughters to garden, to preserve, and other related functions. I depend on dialysis to provide some functions of my non-working kidneys. Without society and technology (POWER, WATER, SUPPLIES) I will live for as long as two weeks, but could be killed earlier by an electrolyte imbalance or congestive heart failure. I hear the drawn-out version, where the accumulated cellular wastes eventually poison the body is not the best way to go. There’s no worry about a zombie apocalypse from me!
I have enough food and ammo to go a couple of months, but I wouldn’t make it that long. As soon as I run out of morphine I will be useless inside of 2 days. If no end is sight I’m probably going to find a way out. I’ve forgotten a dose and was in a bad way in a few hours. I’m allergic to pain and I”m afraid to have the surgeries for fear of the bill I can’t pay.
I have been walking twice daily for the last 3-4 yrs. I usually walk at least 3 to 3.5 miles in all kinds of weather. I think that recent events made this afternoon’s walk .
As I mentioned late on the prior thread, my sister-in-law received a Liver transplant overnight. I knew that she was going in for surgery, before I went to bed, but it had not happened. Due to the severe virus that has attacked my colon, my diet has been very limited and I have had to get up in middle of the night. Last night I got up at 12:45 and saw a message from my niece that my SIL had gone into surgery.
So I slept like a baby the rest of the night, waking up every hour on the hour. At 5:30 came the report that the Liver was replaced and functioning and that a kidney will be transplanted on Thursday. I was feeling OK much of the day, but that last walk really started to drag. I see my Dr. on Thursday but I am guessing that he will tell me that the virus must run its course and be careful what I eat. However my health issues pale in comparison to that of my brother and his wife.
God Bless all Organ Donors and their families.
God bless your sister and may she regain her health, Steve
I second that thought, Steve.
Apparently Pestilence would have very little to fear from the White House’s Secret Service detail, either.
Thank you Lily and Ghost. Kind of hoping that the kidney transplant will happen at a scheduled time on Thursday. I guess there is up to a 72 hr between harvest and transplantation possible.
Why do transplants, emergency surgeries and babies all happen during the midnight hours?
GR6, I think the White House incident shows the shortcomings of any security plan. I spent time in the government’s service feeling out secure sites. The usual finding was security goes soft over time.
For a change in subject and relevant to todays retro strip, I REALLY need to get myself down to Lowe’s garden shop and see if that manager still wants to semi-give me all his dogwood trees and rose bushes. There might be other stuff he’d like someone to haul away also.
One very good reason I never complain about dead trees, I often get them well on their way to that state!
However—— my $1 hostas are in excellent condition, so if we get them put in some dirt may do well. The 50 cents rudbeckia
“White Swan” and “Pow Wow” and other perennials which normally sell for $6-8 each are looking good too.
When seeds for a particular plant are $6-8 for 5-10 seeds, you know you have a hot new varietal usually.
I wish Janis could talk. She and I would probably get along really well. She’d love finding bargains, she thinks big too.
Love, Jackie