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Profit of Doom!


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We’re more than 20 years down the road since this 1993 A&J appeared, and a lot of people still are waiting to find out what they’re going to be doing. Now, I’m going to waste a large portion of your day. We’ve been talking about Web sites. Search “wayback machine archives” and type “arloandjanis.com” in the search field. Find your way back to dozens upon dozens of old A&J Web sites, including the old FrontPage sites, some of which were pretty awesome if I say so myself. So, let’s not worry today about the future.

Jimmy Johnson

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109 responses to “Profit of Doom!”

  2. I mentioned yesterday how much I enjoyed Jimmy’s earlier blogs. I think that his email got pretty full from a bunch of us writing him. I don’t do it as much as I did back then, but when I got a response from him, it was pretty cool. JJ was a “friend” before there was Facebook!

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  3. Some of the photos on the old A&J site from late 2005 are still painful to look at. On the bright side, some of the entries reminded me of something I didn’t learn about until later…The Hurricane Cartoon Auction Jimmy held to raise recovery funds. (I must have been distracted at the time…something about a demolished house, probably.)

    I meant to email a message of appreciation to him when I found out about it, something I cannot now remember if I did or not. If not, belatedly, “Thank you, Jimmy.”

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  6. JJ, don’t say this often enough, thank you for a daily sanity moment. Just survived a lunch meeting that makes web page design look like a stroll through Gory Park. It is through your artistic and writing skills, plus the Village folks, that I have not yet been committed to the John Nash sanitarium.

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  9. Huzzahs for the recent comics that are not to be found on GoComics. I have always enjoyed ancient history. 🙂

    And yes, I emailed Our Bard back in the day and got a very gracious response as well, but that was a Long, Long Time Ago. How long was it? We were both on AmericaOnline.

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  10. @ Steve from Royal Oak, Mi & JJ

    My copy of the drawing is framed and hanging in the room we call the office. We were happy to help out and send a blanket.

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  11. I tried the “wayback machine archives” thing and got nowhere. How is this done, step-by-step? Yes, I entered the A&J site into the search area….

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  12. cxp, if you get the page that has a calendar, find a year you want to look at. click on the year at the top of the page, look for days in the monthly calendar that are highlighted. Those are the saved links. Click on the date and then pick your link. For some reason the images aren’t coming up on the 1998 saves for me.

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  14. I went to Google and searched for ‘wayback machine archives’ and got this link.

    http://archive.org/web/

    I enter the above and there’s a search box there and that’s where you put

    arlonandjanis.com

    When the results come back, there’s a bar at the top that’s a slider for the dates.
    Kind of tricky in a way.

    I have a large list of direct links for the old 2004-2006 time frame. Think
    I’ll stick to them.

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  15. Here is snippet from an A&J.com with the old blog on February 23 2006:

    I saw Arlo last night. It was a rare treat. He came onstage at the Opelika Center for the Performing Arts and by way of introduction said, “I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I thought I’d been just about everywhere, but they found a place I hadn’t.” Then, he and his band, The Massacree, proceeded to mesmerize with two and a half hours of music, 20 minutes of it taken up with his trademark song “Alice’s Restaurant.”

    Arlo and The Massacree closed the regular show with his father Woody’s most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land,” including the seldom-heard final stanza:
    Nobody living can ever stop me
    As I go walking
    That freedom highway.
    Nobody living can make me turn back.
    This land was made for you and me

    Which brings us to the question, was Arlo the cartoon character named after Arlo Guthrie? Only indirectly. Maybe. When I was in college, I had a friend named Pat Wingo, who had long, kinky hair resembling the young Arlo Guthrie, who was just becoming well known at that time. Pat’s nickname among our crowd was “Arlo,” because of his hair. Years later, casting about for an arresting name to give a cartoon character, I recalled the name Arlo. Exactly which synapses in my brain produced the suggestion is open to interpretation. Of course, “Janis” seemed a good match for “Arlo.”

    That’s not to say I’m not an earnest fan of Woody Guthrie and his dedicated, talented and funny son Arlo. I am.

    I’m running dreadfully late today. For now, I’m going to leave you with only today’s newspaper cartoon. (02/23/2006)

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  17. Tom in Glendora, but as Ghost said above, the old comments are available on the wayback saved links. And Jimmy’s commentaries with the retro strip of the day.

    Lot of screen names from 2011 that no longer appear. Wish they would come back, the more the merrier! Most times anyway. Noticed a debbie posting in these 2011 dates. Is that the same debbe who posts now?

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  18. No, Mark, “debbie” was not the same as “Debbe”. debbie was a hospital medical transcriptionist who was a great fan of Jimmy and A&J, and a regular commenter on the blog for two or three years. (She was, I believe, the first to propose an “Arlo and Janis Get-Together”.) Apparently she had some issues in her personal life that lead her to stop commenting. After she had been absent for a while, she directed one comment to me, but that was quite some time ago. The last thing I recall seeing from her was an email to Jimmy on the occasion of Gene’s wedding. I’ve directed an occasional comment to her, but I’ve never had a response.

    I still miss her.

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  19. Mark:

    Yes, emb was happy to read that item, rather touched actually. 27 years! Birds are generally long lived for their size. Many dicky birds live that long in captivity, and I expect eagles can live 40 years or more. But, in the wild, that’s an achievement. I bucked the URL to a couple of my blind-copy groups.

    Thanks, emb

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  20. Taking a random look at some of the old comments has just reinforced my feeling that this blog has *always* been a fun, friendly and informative place. In fact, here’s a comment from six years ago that I happened across:

    “For my money, this is the best blog on the ’net…informative, humorous, sometimes silly, but always civil.

    “‘For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.’ – Robert A. Heinlein”

    And no, that wasn’t one of my comments.

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  21. emb, you are welcome. I remembered you as having a real interest in birds. So I thought you would like the story of the 27-year-old eagle. She certainly looked alert and in good condition in the pictures which accompanied the story.

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  31. Good morning Villagers..

    GR 😉 I remember debbie, it was before I started posting. You were always giving her a hard time on sundresses and bathing suits if I remember right 🙂 Oh, I liked that song, never heard of him….will have to listen to his other Christmas songs.

    Mark, it was Floyd’s “Time”, off their “Dark Side of the Moon”….have it playing now. Don’t know why it didn’t paste…I wanted to play it loud to drown out the feuding brothers in the living room last night….that’s why Santa is bring me Boze earplugs….soon….payday.

    Yesterday, I ran into the convenience store and Miss Sunshine (that’s what I call her, she calls me ‘Beautiful’) and she had rescued a poor kitten and brought it into the store. She’s gray and loving….I so want to bring her home, which leads me to this:

    http://cheezburger.com/8392848384

    I just can’t, have too many cats now….5 inside, and one outside. My husband is betting I’ll be bring her home tonight.

    ya’ll have a blessed day

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  33. Steve, glad you enjoyed Arlo’s concert….would love to see him in concert….saw on TV him singing Alices Restuarant, and he went beyond the 20 minute song…adlibbing a lot

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  39. Wayback archives don’t work either in Chrome or Internet Explorer on my work computer. When I click on the timeline for 2011 or before, I get the message:

    “Wayback Machine doesn’t have that page archived.”

    I just tried it on my smart phone and it worked. So maybe it will work on my personal computer at home. Still, I wish we did not have to use the wayback machine.

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  43. Steve, I believe Symply Fargone has maintained email communication with Mindy and John since they virtually disappeared from the Village (although Mindy has apparently made a couple of on-the-fly comments since then), but I’m not sure how much he is at liberty to say about their absence.

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  45. Debbe said: “You were always giving (debbi) a hard time on sundresses and bathing suits* if I remember right.”

    * She had retired her bikinis; I urged her to reconsider.

    Yeah, well, I guess some other things haven’t changed over the years, either. 🙂

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  48. “…almost made the broadcast round of American Idol…” I’m trying to imagine how that would look on my résumé. 🙂

    Of course, using that on a résumé for a TV job might reinforce some people’s belief that television news is more akin to entertainment than it is to reporting.

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  50. The video about ND was OK (not Oklahoma), and it probably doubled my knowledge of the state, which previously consisted of knowing the only guy in my college class who was from ND and having seen the Coen brothers’ outstanding film “Fargo”, which was actually set in Minnesota. (Go figure.)

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  51. My exposure to ND was mostly through running loads of La-Z-Boy furniture from an assembly plant in north Utah to a furniture distributor in Bismarck. From there I’d almost always get a load of mixed furniture to deliver to a chain of furniture stores in ND and MT.

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  52. Thanks to “Brigid” on her mausersandmuffins blog…

    Murphy’s Laws (updated):

    If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished.

    If it happens, it must be possible.

    If it jams – force it.

    If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

    If no one uses it, there’s a reason.

    If things appear to be going well, you have overlooked something.

    When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

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  53. Wayne: Neat. Actually know some of those places. Son is a member of the Dakota Conf. of the UMC, though he now has a church in Deerwood, MN. He’s been at churches in Williston [before the current boom], Lisbon, Page + 2 more, Ada + Beltrami [MN]. MN and Dakota ACs now share a bishop. His wife still works part-time by cptr. as a architect for Sanford Health Fargo. Peace, emb

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  57. We’re watching Peter Pan. I have only vague memories of watching the Mary Martin version as a child, but I’m pretty sure it did not involve staying up until 11 pm.

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  58. Ruth Anne, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, the first television broadcast of Peter Pan ran live on NBC from 8:00 – 9:30 PM EST on March 7, 1955. It was broadcast in “compatible color”.

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  59. I must have watched one of the later ones. I don’t think we had a TV then, didn’t have color until I was in high school. Pretty sure Orlando only had one local channel in 1955 and it was CBS.

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  60. Yep, our local NBC station didn’t sign on until 1956. In the early years their signal was pretty weak, a challenge to pick up without a big antenna. Thanks to my father’s ingenuity we managed with rabbit ears and a t-shaped wire configuration on the side of the house.

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  61. Peter Pan was restaged in January of 1956 and then again as a Christmas Special in 1960. “Compatible color”, which I had forgotten about, just meant the same broadcast could be watched on either a color or B&W set. I guess that was a big deal in the mid-fifties.

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  63. Before I forget, I grew up with WJDM, which went off the air so often that it became known as Wait Just a Damm Minute. I’m back and the search for the cause of his pain, nausea and weakness continues but, as I write, a solution is hopefully around the corner. Thanks for your concern. Not having seen any news for a couple of days I was all ready to describe the pleasures of the drive home, the fall colors and the enjoyment of my eclectic mix of tunes on my ipod, but I made the mistake of coming home and turning on the news. What the H. E. double hockey sticks. Speaking of fruitcakes, I love a good fruitcake and I know that my mother baked one and also made what she called an ice box fruit cake every year for a long time. My stepson’s fiancé makes a fantastic rum cake and I get one for my birthday and one for Christmas. I was beginning to figure out free range chickens but what is a free range fruitcake? Debbe, do you remember Lewis Grizzard’s line about those poor boneless chickens?

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  66. To paraphrase my airplane joke, don’t forget the brandy. BTW, I hear that if the Noles win another game they’re going to drop them out of the top 10 altogether.

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  67. Good morning Villagers…

    Running slow this morning…..and so is my computer.

    Jerry, good to see your report, and no I do not know about the boneless chicken.

    GR and Mark…..thanks for the Christmas links….will listen later.

    AND where is Jackie????? I am concerned.

    later…………….

    Steve, sorry for the confusion, sometimes I get in a hurry and read not so well.

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  68. Ugh! A long day ahead for me. An attempted robbery at the store about 2:30 this morning. Very sad attempt. Would-be thief purchased a cheap cigarillo, and when my (6’4″, 240 lb) clerk cashed out the sale, the moron reached to grab the cash in the drawer. My clerk smashed the guy’s hand in the drawer. The guy not only came away from the deal with sore fingers and no extra cash, he also didn’t get his change from his purchase. Serves him right. Time to head back, just wish I could have got a nap in before I had to be back. Hello caffeine!

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  69. Re: Friday’s Strip.
    I agree, and do that often. I do about the same thing when IRe see something that says ‘Must Read’. It usually turns out to be either bogus, or nothing to get excited about.

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  73. about store robbery four comments above – when I was 18 , working at a gas station/tiny convenience store with the hole in the window to pass stuff through, I handed the guy his two packs of cigs before getting the money and of course he just ran off. and coincidentally my boss and area supervisor were in the lot and the guy ran right by him. I hollered that the guy just ripped us off and the guy slowed down ! to look around before running again

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  74. “Snatch and runners” are sort of the bottom feeders of the criminal world. About all you can say for them is that they are usually more likely to hurt themselves than their victims.

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  75. I *love* Bob Rivers and Twisted Christmas! It’s one of my favorite Yuletide cds! Another song from it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlIs27Z5Hrk

    I will admit that while Alton’s fruit cake is good, it is expensive. As I recall, the only time I’ve made one was for the Groom’s Cake. I do remember one memorable fruitcake an aunt baked one time. She doused it in blackberry brandy. Now THAT was a good cake!

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  79. Found at my Grandmother’s house in an old, old Reader’s Digest (c. 1950 edition), this joke…

    A lady was proudly wearing her new cheongsam when she went to meet a friend. The friend did a double-take when she saw the Chinese characters on the front of the dress, and then began laughing. “Did that dress come with that monogram on it?” she asked between giggles.

    “No, I saw it on a Chinese menu and thought it looked pretty. Why?”

    “It means ‘This dish is cheap but very satisfying,’” her friend told her.

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  88. GR6, your list would have been more impressive had you used a prime number, like 23 or 29. Other than 7 and 11 primes get little respect. I think we should each adopt a prime for the holidays. 😉

    P.$. Still believe emoticons should be supported.

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  89. 13, for sad reasons.

    Just noticed an ambiguity in my post ten or so items back:

    “Son is a member of the Dakota Conf. of the UMC, though he now has a church in Deerwood, MN. He’s been at churches in Williston [before the current oil boom], Lisbon, Page + 2 more, Ada + Beltrami [MN]. MN and Dakota ACs . . .. ” What’s an AC?

    Post should read, “Son is a member of the Dakota Annual Conf. of the UMC.” An AC is an area: part of a state, a state, or two or more states, depending on geography and population. Usually, an AC meets once a year [clergy + lay officers, about 50/50], and may have its own bishop, or share one [MNAC and Dak. AC share one]. Bishops are appointed +/- for life or until they retire, but they get moved after two 4-yr terms. There is also a General Conf., which meets every 4 yrs. Don’t know if it is USA or worldwide. May be worldwide. Interests me no end, though I am concerned with some of the things they decide. Not totally authoritarian [no ‘infallibility’, or requirement that we believe in, say, the ‘immaculate conception’, but we should know that’s not the same as the ‘virgin birth’], but less democratic than, say, Presb. or Congregational. E.g., Presb., Cong., and some Luth. churches ‘call’ their pastors, and the congregation usually owns the church bldg. UM bishops appoint pastors [with advice from a local church committee], and the AC owns the church bldg.

    Recently, after the Evangelical Luth. Ch. in Amer. [ELCA] decided to accept [actively?] gay clergy, a nearby ELCA pastor and his congr. left the ELCA and joined a new synod formed for just such churches. If a UM pastor and congr. wanted to do that, they’d have to find a new bldg. Doctrine is so much fun!

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  90. John in Richmond, TX – No glass for us. Although the downtown Indy stores are supposed to get glass in the near future. Not enough money in the universe to convince me to work one of those.
    Any “high risk” items stay either in my hand or along my edge of the counter until payment is complete for any non-regular customer. Regulars know they will be ratted out and apprehended within minutes, so *most* of them know better. The ones that don’t … well, I make darn sure they know I am watching them. I train all my clerks to hold any gift or reload-able cards until the customer is ready to leave – they can’t pull a switch on what they can’t touch. You can’t stop or prevent it all, but as many here have preached, awareness cuts unwelcome surprises way down.

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  91. Lady Mindy, you have all the bad parts of my job PLUS crime prevention. Impressed.

    sand, 23 didn’t seem like enough and 29 seemed like too much work, so I averaged the two. 🙂

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  92. There’s a service station cum convenience store just off the downtown exit off I-65 at Cullman AL that I swear was designed by the same guy who did the Gitmo detention facility.

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  100. Ruth Anne, happy to be of service!

    Ghost, I have heard of people getting tattoos in Japanese or Chinese script thinking they meant “Hope”, “Courage”, or some such, only to find out it was at best something from a take out menu, or at worst an obscenity. The lesson here- don’t pi$$ off the tattoo artist. 🙂

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  104. Good Caterday Morning Villagers….

    Oh my, so many links and so little time. Will tune in later today.

    Gonna work the tail ends off of the teens today, was not happy with them last Saturday. And since ‘Skittles’ (Dakota) likes wading in the pit, he’s going down there and retrieve the empty Budweiser beer can I saw down there…..and I know he’s got something to do with putting it there.

    GR 😉 when I first saw the video title Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing “Little Drummer Boy”, I thought it odd too….but I like it. But I like both individually. Saw Bowie in concert many years ago, after his Ziggy Stardust phase.

    Came home to raw nerves yesterday…..husband and BIL were about to tie up the little two year old Kyler…..and yes, he still had the same diaper on that he arrived in and was still in his pajamas. His mom is going to have to find someone else to ‘sit’. He needs to be put in a daycare center with other kids and experienced babysitters 🙂

    ya’ll have a dry day….it’s still raining here and has been for the last 24 hours.

    Both Jackie and Miss Charlotte have been quiet….

    today’s grin: http://cheezburger.com/8393943040 not my box, but sure does look like my big boy Buddee.

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  105. Debbe 😉 Yep, who couldn’t love a Crosby/Bowie duo of a classic Christmas song? Today’s playlist entry will feature another odd song/singer combo.

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  106. I see the TV ads for “stuff-people-would-only-buy-at-Christmas-time-and-would-have-to-be-desperate-at-that” are well underway. Grandparents, I have news flash for you…buying your grandkid a “Stuffie with Seven Secret Pockets” will probably not make you the child’s BFF, especially if the child is old enough to manipulate a game controller or operate a tablet. Sorry.

    The “Bacon Bowl Maker”, however, did somewhat call out to me.

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