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

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Truly Fascinating

By Jimmy Johnson

Today’s classic A&J is from October, 2001, and the second in a five-day series. The first, I hope you will recall, appeared here yesterday. Let’s conduct a little experiment! Follow this link to the GoComics archives where you will see the third installment. Also, you’ll be able to navigate to the remaining cartoons in this sequence. Plus, you’ll be able to comment and do all the other fun things you can do at GoComics. Just don’t ask me what they are. By the way, if you do visit the archives, you can click on the blue “Comics” tab on the upper left, and it will take you directly to the current A&J comic strip.

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44 responses to “Truly Fascinating”

  1. Wisconsin Dan Avatar
    Wisconsin Dan

    Hey Jimmy, the link to the archives works fine. Though I’d rather hang around here for your insights on the strip. Keep up the good fight on the web site!

    Cheers

    1. Jimmy Johnson Avatar

      The blog will remain! Think of this as something extra.

  2. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Ahhh…so we shouldn’t expect to see Cartoon #3, Cartoon #4, and Cartoon #5 here in the friendly pages of A&J: The Blog? Got it.

    1. Jimmy Johnson Avatar

      Well, there’ll be an old cartoon here. I am going to go into it in greater detail later, but it’s true: this is the coming reality. Believe me, I’d much rather be in 1,000 newspapers, but the income provided from GoComics could make a big difference in the quality of catfood I can buy in my old age. For the cats, of course.

  3. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    “Faking it.” Heh.

  4. Pop Avatar
    Pop

    I like the GoComics link at the top, but for heaven’s sake make it smaller. A&J is the focus.

  5. emb Avatar
    emb

    Went to Gocomics for the old stories sequence, and actually recalled them [I don’t always]. They are a hoot! In part, because I remember, often with some discomfort, Dad’s repetitious [and sometimes contradictory] stories, and am reminded that I do it too. I’ve done it here. Dad died at 80; I’m 90, + 4 days, so maybe deserve some slack.
    And no, despite several b’day cards to the contrary, I’m not “90 years young”. E.g., I’ve learned a new rule: If you’ve been somewhere for 20 min. or more, go to the head before you leave. Another: when rising from a chair, lean forward so that your CG is directly over your feet before launching upward. Etc.
    Peace,

    1. Jimmy Johnson Avatar

      Happy Birthday, emb! We’re glad you’re with us! I mean, you know… here on the Web site. And otherwise.

  6. TruckerRon Avatar

    From early this morning:
    My biggest computer complaint of late is Windows 10’s insistence on doing background updates when I log in each morning (it’s a shared computer with other proctors and instructors). Why can’t Windows allow me to tell it when to update? Or complete updates while no one is logged in? To walk into the testing center in the morning, log in, and then have the computer be incredibly slow for several minutes (up to 20 so far) before I can take control of the students’ workstations is ridiculous.

      1. TruckerRon Avatar

        The problem with their advice there is no one’s logged in during the night and on weekends and holidays the computers are all turned off. The Windows updates wait for me to log in each morning then start stealing CPU cycles until they’re done. Also, I’m not an administrator on that shared computer.

    1. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
      Ruth Anne in Winter Park

      Yes, it’s possible to manage updates, but first you’ll probably need to “manage” the folks who control the network that the computers are connected to.

      1. TruckerRon Avatar

        And that’s not me. IT has problems enough trying to keep the students’ workstations from updating and being unusable when that first class walks in for tests each morning. We try to “freeze” them so everything works until the IT group approves the changes because much of the software we use for testing are not commercial, off-the-shelf programs with huge teams of programmers to keep up with what Microsoft is doing. We update them as a group… and the students are sometimes guilty of trying to sneak in stuff that can carry malware, so when we restart a computer it reloads the current official disk image and is reliable.

        1. Mark in TTown Avatar
          Mark in TTown

          That’s similar to the problem my employer has. Due to the switch to electronic medical records, things have gotten very complicated. Because of the different requirements of each department they all need different things from the software. So we have multiple programs which don’t “play well with others”. Some things they had planned to use had to be passed over because they weren’t compatible with other systems. So a software update for us is like Forrest’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get when you mix all these together.

    2. Sideburns Avatar

      Trust me, Ron, there are “helpful” programs in some versions of Linux which will do exactly the same thing if you let them, but they’re generally easier to control than Windows Update, because once you disable automatic updates, they stay disabled.

  7. Jon Avatar

    This is so on target that I may have to buy a print. I tell people all the time that my wife (of 53 years) has lost her sense of humor. I tell her the same jokes I told her in our early years and she doesn’t laugh anymore. So what has changed? Obviously, not the joke. What else is there?

  8. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    The key to this is that Arlo continues to tell the same story. If he were a liar, it would be hard to keep track.

    We have a men’s group at our church that meets once a month on Saturday morning. We had one older gentleman, Sam, that I had known for years who would tell the same story nearly ALL the time. It took everything to keep from laughing inappropriately. Unfortunately he had a nasty fall about 18 months ago and passed away about a month later. A few months later as we were talking, I suddenly realized that if Sam were with us, that he would interject with the story. So I started to tell it and immediately everyone realized what I was doing and started to laugh (a couple of the new guys were looking at us funny). But then we stopped laughing and looked at the other guys and suggested that we pause a moment of prayer for our good friend.

  9. Charlotte in NH Avatar
    Charlotte in NH

    A good story and very pleasing, Steve from R O . You speak to the better side of our lives. I like your stories a lot; you are a talented teller of tales.

    1. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

      Thank you very much Charlotte. I appreciate that. I tell people that most of my stories have the added benefit of being true! lol

  10. joe d Avatar
    joe d

    Hope that all shes been faking

  11. Rick Avatar
    Rick

    Joe d, my thought exactly.

  12. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    I really identify with today’s strip. When the 22nd falls on a Friday, it brings me back to that day. The next closest was in 2013 on the 50th anniversary.

  13.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Thanks for your strip today. November 22, 1963 is burned into the memory of all
    of us older folks. Enjoy your talents every strip.

  14. Lost in A**2 Avatar
    Lost in A**2

    I don’t usually reveal personal details, but I turned seven that day.

  15. Geo Avatar
    Geo

    My problem with “follow this link” is after going there… I keep clicking the next day, next day, next day, next day………and an hour has passed.

  16. Harmon Avatar
    Harmon

    Added the archive to my GC view list. Doubles my daily dose of AJ on GC.

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