I’ve always thought it was interesting that the dictates of good composition favor the short man/tall man dynamic in comic strips. The idiom “Mutt and Jeff” to describe a duo where one member towers over another comes directly from the comics, of course, from the comic strip of the same name by Bud Fisher.
I took this business to the extreme in the early days of A&J, often depicting Gene as above. Of course, if I’d been a better artist (or had the newspaper space afforded Fisher and his peers) I somehow could have avoided drawing Gene cut off about chin high. This worked, though. It seemed subliminally to reinforce the half-membership children have in the adult world around them.
43 responses to “Shop early!”
Gene doesn’t say what he wanted to get Janis. Is this where Jerry the gerbil came from?
As a kid, my cousin gave me his pet hamster which I gladly accepted but without consulting with either of my parents. My mother hated the animal who she referred to as ‘The Creature’. She was relieved when it escaped its cage and drowned in the sump pump hole.
Does anyone know when Pillage Like a Viking Day falls this year? They have a Day for everything else, so surely there is one.
And remember all you wannabe Vikings out there, it’s pillage first, THEN burn.
Laughed out loud today (sympathetically, I should add) about your adventures (from yesterday) with the modem and place names, Ghost. And over other’s observations about names. And then there are the ones where the local pronunciation is not what you would expect. (San Peedro not San Paydro by Long Beach CA.)
Ghost, that sounds like the description of Black Friday.
Nancy Kirk, the local pronunciation can get you every time, no matter how much of the original language you may know, or how it’s pronounced anywhere else. I once lived in a small Alabama town named Arab. It was not pronounced like the nationality, though. It was long A-rab.
Of course it was, Mark! That’s how all a’s are pronounced in country music!
In my HS years, my sister [a year ahead of me] somehow got custody of a hamster from the bio department over a summer. Thus occurred a few times. Each was an interesting critter, enjoying curling up in one’s shirt pocket, given the chance. The males seemed friendlier than the females, for whatever reason. A negative was that the rodent, once in my pocket, often chose to relieve itself there and I found the resultant wet spot distinctly unpleasant.
Other features included incessant running on the obligatory wheel [noisy] and a tendency to escape from the cage through we-all-thought-too-small spaces.
If city names are bad – try getting your tongue around last names.
Many are not pronounced the way they are spelled. Mine is, so when a
call comes in mispronounced I say he is not here and hang up.
Speaking of A-rabs, country style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLB15kBvn_c
Jackie asks, does anyone want to take a stab at Arabi, in St. Bernard Parish, LA?
Or the Welch village Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? Of course, I suspect the Welchers are probably just messing with us.
Closer to home
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
We just called it Webster Lake
I once had a student with a short but difficult name. It turned out that the “ky” portion was pronounced as “ch” [in “chat”] and it had at least one other unusual letter combination. I understand there are places like WWII Burma’s city of Myitkyina with that “ch” sound in the middle.
curmudgeon:
One of my students was named Quadrea.
She pronounced it as “Qui-nay.” (“Qui” was pronounced as are the first letters of “quick.”)
I still think she was just screwing with everyone.
Wonder who his insurance company is?
https://www.gocomics.com/closetohome/2018/10/24
I think Janis is speaking a foreign language to Arlo.
That was a close one:
https://earthsky.org/space/small-asteroid-passed-closer-than-tv-satellites-oct2018
We recently returned from a region where the price of bras must have been very expensive, we noticed a distinct lack of them.
https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/44602224_10155692143574147_8869865253089837056_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-1.xx&oh=ed13c294747d8029a28e051643c4eb2c&oe=5C58016C I can agree with this.
I have only two opinions regarding bras in general, one negative and one positive.
The negative: pokie obscurers
The positive: cleavage enhancers
Kenya, African eagle. Will look it up. Peace.
https://explore.org/livecams/african-wildlife/african-animal-lookout-camera
Sorry,
Clicked submit but it didn’t leave. Bird is gone, & it’s now twilight in Kenya. It was an African Fish Eagle, Haliaeetus vocifer, same genus as our national emblem, but more colorful.
Peace,
SE MN, Miss. R., pelicans and Canada geese.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/mississippi-river-flyway-cam Peace,
This cam moves lots, if the operator is alert.
So does this one, same general area.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/falcon-nest-cam
All I ever learned about bras was how to undo the clasp. 😉