A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

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Sea Fever

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
I’m not much of a sketcher. I don’t have a lot of doodles or rough drafts lying around my office. So, what is all this junk lying around? But that’s another topic. I attribute this mainly to being a writer first and a graphic artist second. All my life I’ve had a knack for drawing, but it turned out to be a secondary talent. I marvel at the manic impulse to doodle that possesses so many of my cartooning peers. I wish I were more like that. However, every now and then, I turn out a sketch for the sake of warming up, or improving my chops, or—rarest of all—because I feel like drawing something. Anyway, I drew this one last week; I think it was a subliminal desire to be at the beach. I thought I would share it with you.

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290 responses to “Sea Fever”

  1. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    “I layer clothes when cold and remove them when hot.” Thinking Denise must make beach and desert holidays more delightful than winter )ski trips. 😉

  2. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Apparently, Janis wouldn’t “feel good naked”.

    Also, I wonder if Arlo didn’t mean “pertness” (lively; sprightly; in good health), rather than “perky” (jaunty; cheerful). I find females who are “pert” to always be a good thing, while those who are overly “perky”…not so much at times.

  3. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Old Bear, here’s a tworfer, Edward Gorey’s animated intro to Mystery, and Vincent Price as the host. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKxJ6a0epUc

  4. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    sandcastler ™, in relation to your comment yesterday, and emb’s reply: Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

    Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

  5. emb Avatar
    emb

    I’m guessing Arlo meant perky as with young bre asts vs. older. Seems to me [I recall a model’s name but am not sure it’s right and I don’t want to get sued] once said this is my last for Playboy because I’m no longer as perky as I once was. She was still pretty good.

    For any girls dreading becoming less perky in this sense, it still works as long as you have nerve endings there and your hubby is attentive. They last at least until 80 [+ some months]. Lunchtime.

    Peace, emb

  6. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, another quote from Heinlein, from I Will Fear No Evil: Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive—and unpredictable.

  7. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    I favor perky.

    Mark’s post leaves me feeling….. Communism, like its Democratic, Labor, Independent, or Republican breathern can contain members of varying zeal. With hardliners leaning towards the conservative spectrum, reformists being most open to revision.

  8. TruckerRon Avatar

    sandcastler™, I agree with that assessment of Communist hardliners only if you mean they resist change no matter the results of existing positions. American conservatives are different in that they select positions based on what has worked in the past and are slow to adopt new ones until they are proven to work.

  9. Denise in Michigan Avatar
    Denise in Michigan

    Mark, I recall reading that Gorey’s original animation for “Masterpiece Theater” was several minutes longer. The opening subsequently aired was only a portion of that. I’d love to see it in it’s totality, wouldn’t you?

    sand, the places I usually travel rarely get above 70, so I don’t have the chance to strip far down too often. Although come to think of it, since I don’t much like feeling hot, I probably strip down at lower temps than other folks. 😉

    Ghost, I have heard “perky” used before in that context; perhaps it’s a colloquialism.

  10. TruckerRon Avatar

    I often heard “pert and perky” as a description back in Memphis, but here in Utah I’ve only heard myself say it.

  11. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    I don’t think I was EVER perky! Maybe at age 8 or 9? Short trip, I forgot the laptop and my cell phone!

    Denise, you’d probably be OK traveling with my friend John, sounds like you pack to his specs. I don’t so don’t know how I can finesse the enormous wardrobe of clothes? When I fly next I am going to limit to one small suitcase. Perhaps I will just buy when I arrive? I actually shipped my dirty clothes home from last trip, that didn’t work too well cost wise!

    Love, Jackie

  12. Sideburns Avatar

    TruckerRon, Jerry Pournelle once created a two-dimensional graph to describe political positions that’s far, far more informative than today’s right/left “spectrum.” One axis described how much a political movement depended on emotion to sway people verses logic. (As examples, compare National Socialism with Libertarianism.) The other axis shows how much it’s in favor of or against change for its own sake, with revolutionaries and reactionaries at opposite ends.

  13. TruckerRon Avatar

    That would be useful, Sideburns. Got a link for it?

    I’m more familiar with the graphs that have an axis for liberty vs control and one for left vs right.

  14. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Test

  15. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Can’t imagine why the word “Test” will post, but a short message with no link will not. It’s that same @&#% “reject” message I got a couple of weeks ago. (And the most salacious word in it was “pert”.)

    Perhaps I’ll try my tablet.

  16. Steve from Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    Thanks for the kind words. I normally try not to get too anxious about my kids, but because I lost my Mom in an accident, occasionally I do. When I heard my daughter’s voice, I said a prayer that Lord would keep her safe. That was when I started talking with her, so I guess that was the answer to my prayer.

    5 yrs ago I posted this song to You Tube. It was my first one. Somehow it has gotten 53K views

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWzLjd_Avuk

  17. Sideburns Avatar

    Sorry, TruckerRon, I don’t. I think that it was part of his dissertation for one of his two PhDs. You could always email him and ask. I know that he reads all of his own email and answers when appropriate.

  18. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    Two Ph.D.s? I found him having only one, in political science. Not many people earn two doctorates – especially Ph.D.s – but some do. If memory serves, the late Cardinal George of Chicago had a Ph.D. and a S.T.D. (doctor of sacred theology) as well as two master’s degrees and a bachelor’s.
    Some notable persons gather honorary doctorates by the dozen, but that’s a different story.

  19. Sideburns Avatar

    Yes: Poly Sci and Psych. Back in the ’60s, he worked for NASA, helping train the first astronauts, including testing their reactions under difficult conditions, such as high temperatures, and how they handled distractions when they were doing complex tasks, such as controlling the equipment they’d be using in the space capsules.

    He once came up behind John Glenn during one of those exercises and, without warning, dropped a big box of scrap metal on the floor. Glenn’s heart rate almost jumped through the roof, but he didn’t miss a beat, except to say, “I’ll get you for that, Pournelle!” What, if anything, happened later, Jerry doesn’t say. (He also claims responsibility for the attempt to see what a cat does in zero G by putting one in the cockpit of a jet and having it make a power dive and filming the cat.)

    He also has a Masters in Statistical Inference, but when he asked the CRU for their raw data, to look it over himself and see if their conclusions were justified, they refused his request on the grounds that he wasn’t qualified to understand it. Presumably, they weren’t aware of his degree, and he didn’t bother to pursue the matter any further.

  20. emb Avatar
    emb

    GR6: Maybe your short post was deemed too political. I believe I sent one in this morning that never appeared. It was more specific than Mark’s 1:06 post above, but no more controversial. If I’d realized it might be objectionable, I’d have cc’d. it. Or maybe I sent it off into cyberspace somehow. It was further musings re fas cism. Peace, emb

  21. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    c ex-p, thanks for explaining that meaning of S.T.D. Working for a hospital, that acronym has an entirely different meaning, and one I am sure the person in question would not want attached to him!

  22. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    1955: bachelor’s in psychology; 1958: master’s in psychology; 1964: Ph.D. in political science.
    The above comes from the Wikipedia listing for Jerry Pournelle as found on google.com. If there is more, tell us.

  23. Jackie monies Avatar
    Jackie monies

    In lovely and aromatic Wichita Kansas. What IS that smell?

  24. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, here’s a hint: Arlo put it on his plants.

  25. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    TruckerRon, here is the chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart