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

Est. 1985

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Subtle Distinction

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
Sorry to have been gone so long! I have been working on other projects. I guess there’s just no way to avoid the “remember when” factor on this site, try as I might. Today’s classic A&J is yet another example of swift cultural change. First, “casual Friday” was introduced, when white-collar workers were allowed to dress down from coats and ties and the equivalent ladies’ apparel. Today there are coats and ties still out there, but the daily norm for what remains of the white-collar work force is distinctly casual. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Hey, I’m a cartoonist! I can work in my underwear if I want, although I never do. Well, not in just my underwear. You know, I get asked that question a lot, which I think is kind of weird.

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233 responses to “Subtle Distinction”

  1. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    I may be gone til Monday

    Play nice

  2. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Good morning Villagers….

    Old Bear….happy trails, and we will, or I’ll get out my whip and chains 🙂 (think I just heard GR’s blood pressure go up 😉 )

    My baby sister’s birthday is Christmas Day…so, on her 50th birthday eve I called her up and said “you know, last year this time you were 48, and tomorrow you’ll be 50! Caught her off guard for a little bit then the expletive came out…..we both laughed.

    Speaking of big $50 words, I was wondering yesterday, why do we read left to right?

    And it’s good to see some of the lurkers posting….this is good.

    Happy Caturday

  3. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    GR 😉 and when I do get to feeling better, it’ll be more than…….

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSR6ZzjDZ94

  4. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    Even this cat has a $50 word…..

    http://cheezburger.com/8581753088

  5. Debbe Avatar
    Debbe

    that didn’t work…..above the pic, it asked “can ghosts use can openers”

  6. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    It is a “Gig em!” Saturday. Enough said on that. Y’all have a fine day.

  7. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    I’ll second Roy Clark. A very talented musician. Another guy that folks might not know of is John Michael Talbot. I have met John on several occasions and as a former banjo picker, rock musician and now Christian musical artist, he is very talented. One year he had Tony Melendez open for him and Tony was born without arms. He played for John Paul II years ago in a very moving rendition. JPII was so moved he walked from his chair to hug Tony. Tony may be the greatest Toe picker in the world.

  8. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Steve, thanks for introducing Tony Melendez. It makes my typing a whole lot easier.

  9. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Debbe 😉 Oooou! Whip and chains! 🙂

    “Whip & Chains” would be a great name for a rock band. Just imagine what their costumes would look like. 😉

    BTW, Trucker, exactly how does one italicize in a blog entry? I’ve never found a way to italicize within the blog, and if I italicize in my word processor, it gets converted to a non-italicized font when I paste it into the comments section.

  10. TruckerRon Avatar

    GR6, you just have to use a tiny bit of HTML coding. Let’s see what happens if I insert an “X” instead of the correct “i” for italics or “b” for bold:

    to turn it on and to turn it off…

    And should that not display or do something weird, what I typed was a “less than”, the “X”, then a “greater than” to turn it on and to turn it off I used a “less than”, a “/” and an “X” followed by a “greater than”.

  11. TruckerRon Avatar

    The fact that the code didn’t show makes me wonder how WordPress handles math expressions. Let’s try one:

    5 < x x > 6

  12. TruckerRon Avatar

    What displayed was not what I typed in!

  13. TruckerRon Avatar

    Does anyone know the HTML for “what’s between this bit of code and its corresponding end bit is a literal string to be displayed”?

  14. Morphy Avatar
    Morphy

    An explanation …

    Morphy is an historical chess player that I had a temporary fascination about a while back. I had been teaching my son the game, and while learning things for myself to share with him I stumbled across the concept of a Morphy Number. It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but for chess enthusiasts. He was a Civil War Era version of Bobby Fischer, but without the anti-semitism. I borrowed a good man’s name to use as a handle when full disclosure is not required — nor prudent. That choice is not related to the rest of the message either by coincidence of theme or time.

    When Marje made her passive invitation, the wording she chose brought a smile to my face, but failed to entice. Ghost made a more direct request that, for me, broke the ice. And I unfortunately decided to be that weird guy who makes an innocent joke, but fails to cough first to be acknowledged. I thought the relative age of the audience would be familiar with Gracie Allen, her charachter’s dim-bulb interpretation of George Burn’s invitation to “Say ‘Goodnight’, Gracie.”, her response, and why that was funny. Admittedly, a joke that works better on radio than in print.

    It has been explained to me IRL that Morphy may bring to mind in others the concepts of morphine, heroin, opium, and Morpheus. Putting people immediately on edge and blocking the humor, which may already be too obscure. I am sorry, and hope I’ve demonstrated that I understand the multiple levels of apology required. Please know this is sincere.

    I’ve now gone on so long as to be one of Jerry’s elephants, the very reason why I choose to lurk. I enjoy the sense of community that I am allowed to observe; but I lack the balance between brevity and clarity. I learned to speak in a time where you could develop an idea without interuption as long as you gave the same in response, and to write in the one-way manner because a response was a two week round-trip and your reader may need a reminder where the coversation left off. Skills that were fostered by professors impressed by reading their own words reflected, and not attenuated by .mil-speak and the enforced brevity found there. Please know that I will continue to enjoy, but that when I choose to post in the future the nom-de-plume will change.

  15. Morphy Avatar
    Morphy

    … From embarrassment, not ill intent.

  16. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
    Ruth Anne in Winter Park

    Debbe: Here’s a tune for you by one of our favorite local musicians. Not the clearest recording, unfortunately, so I’ll tell you it’s a song about her friend’s chickens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKEK0v6yyK0

  17. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Morphy: I took your nom de plume to be a humorous take on the name of one of The Seven Dwarfs…Sleepy. Which made me smile. But that may be more a reflection of my thought processes than yours. In any case, if you choose to use it again in the future, it will still work for me.

    Also, back in our Golden Age (well, one of them), when Just Plain Mindy Walked The Village, there was a period of time when the catch phrase “Say goodnight, Mindy” was frequently used.

  18. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I wonder what happened to my pseudo-niece, Virgin Mindy. Currently busy working on her Master’s thesis, perhaps? Or perhaps events may have overtaken the accurateness of her nom de plume.

  19. Morphy Avatar
    Morphy

    Thanks for the outreach, Ghost. As a handshake, I suggest for your entertainment terminallance.com . I never served, would not think to represent I had, but thoroughly enjoy the humor and outlook breed in our services. That’s a very wide ranging subject. I’ve enjoyed your referrals to military news items and thought you may enjoy this. Some of its humor is why I said outreach instead of the possibly suggestive reach-out, … or around.

    I think JPMindy predates me, but I recognize your occasional reference to her, and the fun you shared.

  20. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Thanks for the link, Sleepy…I mean, Morphy. I agree that military humor is in a class of its own. (When our troops were staged in Saudi Arabia, prior to the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, an unwary TV journalist asked an enlisted infantryman how they were spending their time pending the invasion of Kuwait. “Just Kuwaiting,” the trooper deadpanned.)

    You may also enjoy duffelblog.com (sample tongue-in-cheek article headlines: “Drone Pilot Traumatizes Kids At Local Career Day” and “Panic, Chaos During Air Force-Wide Facebook Outage”), which is sort of the .mil version of The Onion (sample tongue-in-cheek article headline: “Groundbreaking Study Finds Gratification Can Be Deliberately Postponed”).

    Note: duffelblog.com is NSFW…at least if you are the kind of person who reads InterWebNet stuff out loud at work in a really loud voice.

  21. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Wow, according to terminallance.com, I’ll be able to have a free breakfast at IHOP; a free lunch at Hooters; and a free dinner at Olive Garden on Veterans Day this year. At last, I can justify giving four years of my life to the service of my country. 🙂

  22. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Wow, Morphy. You haven’t bumped into Denise by any chase? Her prose is more lyrical, but you are very readable. Back to FSU and Clemson.