Ouch. I reasoned a snowfall cartoon would be appropriate for many of you today. Here, it’s cold rain and mud. I enjoy drawing snow scenes. I think most cartoonists do. If you go strictly by the funny pages, you’d think that the U.S. is one big Sweden. For one thing, snow is versatile. It can be beautifully rendered; what is prettier than virgin snow? Or, it can be quickly and economically rendered. One can even get away with depicting snow by drawing… nothing! Plus, snow evokes response: it’s lovely, it’s special, it’s uncomfortable, it’s messy. But most of all, cartoonists think, “It’s January. Great! I can do a snow cartoon.”
176 responses to “The Snows of Janis an’ Arlo”
This looks like the kind of place you folks in the snow zone need: http://www.thewarmingstore.com/ice-cleats.html
The difference in definition that I grew up with was largely based on intent. A conniption fit was likely justified either due to someone’s mistake or misbehavior. A hissy fit was more likely an unwarranted explosion due to hatefulness or spite.
Jackie, I’d say a conniption fit may be necessary with your most recent group of former employees.
PS–
Old Faithful isn’t being so. Current prediction says: “There is currently no prediction for Old Faithful Geyser. The next prediction will be made when it is possible to do so.”
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Just what goes into “predicting” an OF eruption? I’d never really thought about it, but if I had, I’d have assumed it was just basically timing the interval between them.
I wondered the same thing… here is what the NPS Old Faithful Visitor’s Center says:
THE BEST GUESS
A geyser is never early or late and a prediction is simply a good guess of when an eruption might occur. In most cases, predictions are based on information and observations of previous intervals and the length, size, and characteristics of past eruptions.
PREDICTING OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER
There is a direct relationship between the duration of Old Faithful’s eruption and the length of time before it erupts again. During a short eruption, less water and heat are used, so both are restored in a shorter time. During longer eruptions, the opposite happens—more water and heat are spent, which means more time is needed for these ingredients to rebuild.
It is not possible to predict more than one eruption in advance with any accuracy. The time of the next eruption is predicted by using the duration of the current eruption. The eruption’s length is timed from when the water comes out and stays out of the geyser’s cone for at least five seconds until the last appearance of water at the eruption’s end. The longer the eruption lasts, the longer it will be until the next eruption.
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/ofvec/exhibits/eruption/prediction/index.htm
My guess is that there is no prediction because no one “official” is watching the eruptions.
On the current AccuGuesser radar, it appears that some less-than-liquid precip may be falling on the road to Debbe’s house.
Jean dear, a quick “Hi, y’all!” would be nice, just to let us know you are OK. 🙂
Thanks, David. “Our tax dollars at work…or not, as the case may be”, I suppose.
Also, props to Our Humble Author for posting a Sunday cartoon that does not appear in the online archives. 🙂
Ghost, are you sure that quote isn’t from Richard Pryor? Perhaps I’m wrong. For those (Debbe?) suffering a hand injury you may want to research synovial fluid. I speak from personal experience and the bad news is that it will most likely require surgery, Please let me know if you want further explanation. As has been noted previously I try to avoid long posts so I will explain what happened with my mother later.
You were right. Maybe he stole it from Robin Williams.
Between 6:30 am and noon today our temp had dropped 20 degrees, from 62 to 42. We were supposed to have winds last night of 73 mph but we never did in my area. Winds of 45 mph are predicted for tonight and a temp of 25 tomorrow night. Snow? We don’t need no steenking snow.
Consensus seems to be it’s Robin Williams’s quote. I almost got it right; it’s “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you are making too much money.” (Richard Pryor, of course, is better known for setting himself on fire.)
I ran across another one of Robin’s quotes while researching the first one: “See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.”
One of those quotes I could speak to but not the other. (Hint: It’s not the one about cocaine.)
I have a HS friend of the female persuasion…in fact, several. This particular one lives alone near Chesapeake Bay at a place told to expect 2+ feet of white stuff. I inquired as to her in-house supplies in case of being snowed in with/without a power loss. She replied that she thought she had enough supplies but was concerned about being a half-mile from any road which gets plowed. She’s on a cul-de-sac apparently at the very bottom of the list of places plows ought visit. Even her considerable driveway will be a problem – she does it herself, by shovel, as she has no snow blower. My gosh – she’s older than I, and I admit concern. Not a lot I can do from a thousand miles away, however. She has 1 or 2 kids within driving distance, if they can drive, as well as friends. Hope they help out.
I will be watching the Newseum site to see how much snow said friend gets, as well as the place of my first employment in the Blue Ridge area. With the considerable hills there, so much snow [est. at over 2 feet] will be neither safe nor funny.
The worse snows I remember were in Allegany mountains when I went to school there. The drifts got so deep they dug tunnels and we had snow roofs overhead. I always wondered if they buried us in a collapse if they’d dig us out if our names weren’t Ford or Sinclair? My best friends father was lt. Governor and we figured that didn’t count for much, especially since her last name was Cohen.
Any progress on the medical front, Jackie? Not idle curiosity or prying into your personal business, just concern, which I suspect you know.
I’ve not lived my entire life in the Deep South, and in fact enough of it has been lived elsewhere that I deem I’ve fulfilled my personal snow quota.
Today I got a “zero balance” statement from one of my credit card companies. Why do they do that, anyway? To remind you that you have their card and should use it? Little does this one realize I’ve shredded every card I’ve gotten from them for years since when, back in the days before almost instantaneous on-line payments were possible, they charged me some ridiculous fee for a snail-mail check payment they claimed was received one day after the due date.
Anyhow, they thoughtfully included my current FICO score, but that raised the same question I always have when driving near an airport and see a “Caution – Low Flying Aircraft” sign…it’s undoubtedly important information, but what am I supposed to do about it?
Much more useful, to me, was the sales circular I got from Cabela’s. Now if I just needed another jacket or pair of boots…which I don’t, dang it. My house shoes are getting worn, though, and they have, I’m not making this up, boot-style house shoes. Tactical House Slippers!
David et al. That site,
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/ofvec/exhibits/eruption/prediction/index.htm
is a nice bit of science writing for laypeople, a major love and endeavor of mine. I thinks it’s a good use of taxpayers’ money [e.g., better than continuing to mint one-cent pieces, and making military eqpt. the military specifically doesn’t want].
For money, I only did it via lecture-writing and subsequent lecturing. Motivated students thought I did well, and maybe I even motivated some previously unmotivated ones. My one book I essentially did for free; I get 6% royalties, which have never covered my initial expenses, but I didn’t expect them to. My current efforts: here, emails, some of my newspaper columns, are all done for free. It’s not all philanthropic; I obviously love doing it. Peace, emb
Just curious, has anyone else picked up on the pun in the title for today’s retro strip?
Got photos sent via text from my ex in Tennessee. They got their snow early, today. Forecast said 3 plus inches overnight tonight. But it started in early morning and county was out plowing roads before noon. Glad it wasn’t here as we don’t really have the equipment to do much about it.
Mark: Someone mentioned it in a post above. I’d missed it. I’ve seen them from a distance, in Kenya. Kilimanjaro in one world famous sight I’m grateful to have seen, especially under the particular circumstances. Safari, ’87, mostly mammalogists + signif. others, incl. Elaine.
A former BSU biology student, now a botany prof. at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, climbed all the way to the top a few yr. ago [in a guided group, of course]. Takes a few days.
In Nairobi, bought a contour map of Kenya + Tanzania. Measured from where the contour lines bunch at the base, the footprint of that mt. is the size of Rhode Island. Peace,
Ghost, I know you are concerned and I love you for it. I just realized today was Friday and he was in Tulsa, I left message in Tahlequah and lord knows where my file is? I should have called Tulsa.
My cardiologist was the super star chest cracker in Tulsa, heading up almost every heart hospital there. He moved to Tahlequah in a financial deal with hospital and the Tulsa office is maintained but only until the old patients die off. He goes there twice a month. I’m in the old patients because I was young at first surgery.
He is good. My neck is swollen and hot but not as bad as yesterday. He did say I could resume walking, my water aerobics, exercise and almost anything I did, except no high impact or heavy weights. You’d have to feel good to resume and I don’t.
Our town is lonely, people aren’t around and about, I went by grocery to buy a dozen roses for myself and to offer to help them do flowers if they get swamped at no charge, just to lend a hand free. Makes me feel better to do something. They had hired a new helper, a teen, who had no training. I could teach her enough in a few hours but no one will let me of course. The teen was crying none stop softly.
EMB,
No disrespect from me about the Park Service website. I thought it did a great job, too. My reading of Ghost’s comment meant that the lack of ‘official’ observation was an example of our tax dollars at work. There was certainly still ‘someone’ there, because they were working the camera.
It was, David. Meaning if someone had been assigned to fulfill a certain duty, it should have been so, as it was on our dime. I wasn’t expressing any opinion about the site.
Jackie: I know your community is suffering, but that’s a sign that it is a community.
Sorry your cardiologist got rustled, but that’s the way it is in the med biz these days. At least he still works in his old office part time. Usually existing patients are faced with the choice of travelling to keep their physician or having to get established with another one. Which is also why one should try to be seen only by docs younger than one’s self*, thereby probably not having to worry about them retiring before one dies.
*Well, not if you’re a child, of course. There aren’t many four-year-old pediatricians out there.
Especially for Old Bear:
Ghostly Observation #37: A fool and his money can throw one hell of a party.
I eat at my friend’s Chinese restaurant a lot. It is easy, they know I don’t ear fried, noodles, rice, fattening foods. They always cook fresh vegetables and have shrimp, vegetarian dishes for me, fresh fruit, send Dickens a small chicken treat or steak. I love them, we speak little in common. My money helps them, they work hard and struggle.
Lately I have been striking up conversations with women, meet some unusual ones. Tonight it was most interesting, this one seemed to be in favor of overthrowing our government and at the .east was prepared to survive as a prepper. I suspect she might be homeless. Didn’t agree with everything but she was not delusional and could speak well, talked about testifying at Congressional hearings, being interviewed for nespapers, magazines, not easily faked. She was OPPOSED to the out sourcing of jobs taking employme to foreign countries, an issue I agreed with. Many points she talked about were valid but I cannot oppose our government, I served it as best and fairly as I could, to the taxpayers not the bureaucracy or politicians.
Not a conversation I expected with dinner. I excused myself genuinely needing to get somewhere before the sidewalks rolled up at 5 p.m. went to counter and paid mine and her bill and left a 20% tip because many don’t tip at all because it’s a buffet. That made me feel a little better about yesterdaysevents, even if I felt she was radical because I wanted her to know there were a few decent people left in America. It doesn’t seem so at times.