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

Est. 1985

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Two Rights Make a Wrong

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
Here’s a workaday A&J from early 1994. I’ve always looked back upon my earlier drawing as unformed, developmental and sometimes just plain bad. This particular strip has nothing out of the ordinary to commend it: six talking heads, the middle panels just a close up of Arlo. However, I can’t help noticing it does have a certain cartoonish quality which is a good thing that is sometimes missing in the modern A&J. Arlo looks like a cartoon character. As for the argument he is making, it is one I have used myself—sometimes on myself—with results often the same.

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48 responses to “Two Rights Make a Wrong”

  1. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    I forgot to set my alarm yesterday, but woke up early anyway. As I was in the bathroom I heard my wife’s alarm go off, which she quickly hit snooze. However my alarm usually goes off 15 seconds later but it did not. When I explained this to my wife, she just shook her head and called me Sheldon Cooper.

    She had to get up early this morning, but my alarm went off at the scheduled time, We are creatures of habit.

  2. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Ah, so today is a flashback to explain why Janis is schmoozing with Vince about her marriage?

  3. Jeff in Ann Arbor Avatar
    Jeff in Ann Arbor

    A rare continuity error in today’s strip. One frame one, Arlo is in stocking feet; in three, a moment later, he is wearing shoes! Reminds me of the Bill Mauldin comic of the carousing soldiers Willie and Joe. They have their arms on one another’s shoulders and are carrying bottles, and there are five hands for the two.

  4. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Or is there a continuity error? There is actually a simple and logical explanation to explain the difference between what Arlo is wearing on his feet in panels one and panel three. Can you guess what it is?

  5. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    Me thinkth Arlo singed his stockings.

    And 80 goes into 26 only 0.325 times.

  6. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    Happy Birthday, eMb!

    Arlo and Janis’ conversation about the shampoo is eerily reminiscent of several Husband and I have had. 🙂

    Debbe, on the surface Animaniacs is a kids’ cartoon, but some of the jokes are definitely for the adults watching.

  7. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    There is a simple explanation for Arlo’s brown feet which still look like socks. Blame it on the colorists!

  8. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Ghost, there are a lot of Jack Daniels cake recipes on the net. The commercial ones we sold were baked in Bundt pan shapes, there was a large and a small size, like fruitcakes. We also had a rum cake and a Kahlua I think but for life of me I can’t remember because the Jack Daniels was the one I remember as it sold best.

    They baked the entire cake and then poured the bottle of whiskey into the baked cake, which absorbed it, plus it still oozed alcohol when you chewed it! Or swallowed?

    I looked on net and found similar but not exact same cake?

    Thinking about Bro Dave Gardner, who was young then too, and his routine about carrying a rose to Jack Daniels’ grave. Saw him, thought this was unique, had no idea about Jack Daniels. Never liked drinking much. But I remembered it.

    So saw an ad in New Yorker magazine for Lynchburg and the distillery, thought about Bro Dave and the grave story. So I drive from New Orleans to Lynchburg, TN with my mama and infant daughter in tow. This was before tourism hit them, long before.

    They were gracious, toured us around distillery, couldn’t believe I saw a print ad and drove there. Got home and they mailed me a signed copper plate etching of “Mrs. Bobo’s Boarding House”. And I think that is where the cake recipe originated?

    We used to serve Lynchburg Lemonade to customers for free, it got to where adults wouldn’t let a child taste anything we sold without asking if it had alcohol in it!

    Love, Jackie

  9. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Not so sure about it being the colorist’s fault, Jackie. If you’ll look closely at his left foot in panel 3, you’ll see it has a ribbed sole and the outlines of his toes are not visible as they are in panel 1. I think it’s a shoe. My theory still accounts for that.

    I’ve been through Lynchburg several times, although not recently. I love ambling around the courthouse square and exploring the little stores for JD and other memorabilia. The local folks are always nice.

    An old Cold War-era joke of Bro. Dave’s was his answer to the question, where is the best place to be if a nuclear bomb goes off. “Any place,” he said, “where you can ask, ‘What was that?'”

  10. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    You are right, as always, Ghost. I had to blow up the cartoon to a larger size to even see the ribbing on bottom of the brown shoes. Geez, this is getting bad! First I couldn’t see the Mac Davis credit on bottom of yesterday, then couldn’t see the feet in today’s strip until you pointed it out!

    But, good thing is I learned you can use the magnifying glass to make the GoComics strips bigger and I have been having fits trying to read the dialog over on yahoo’s comic page. And forget the real newspapers. Yes, the strips are smaller or harder to read print or something!

    Not that I am getting bad vision or anything?

    Love, Jackie

  11. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    First time I have been able to read Doonesbury since they started with the reruns. Blew them up and great detail! He got better really fast.

  12. Ruth Anne in Winter Park Avatar
    Ruth Anne in Winter Park

    Could they be brown slipper socks?

  13. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    One last comment on Charles Manson’s alleged upcoming nuptials: His 26-year-old blushing (?) bride-to-be says she moved from Illinois to California seven years ago to be near him because she was initially attracted to him by his stand on environmental issues. Words fail me.

    For the prurient-minded out there (you know who you are), Manson is not entitled to “conjugal visits” and will not be eligible for parole again until 2027.

  14. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Could be, Ruth Anne, but I think they look much different in panels 1 and 3, even discounting the colors. (Form-fitting in 1, not so much in 3.)

  15. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Thank you, Ghost, for that tidbit which is why I was hoping he had been neutered. Now if they will just make sure they keep a Plexiglas barrier between her and him and make sure she isn’t carrying a specimen jar out in her purse.

    Talk about spawn of Satan!

    What happened to prisoners, especially mass murderers, giving up all rights?

    Love, Jackie

  16. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I had somewhat that same thought, Jackie, although it revolved more around some prison social worker or bureaucrat deciding he or she or both were “entitled” to procreate and requiring the State of California to pay for an artificial insemination procedure.

    Cue the music from “The Boys from Brazil”.

  17. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I seem to recall a cartoon in which Janis was the ember-victim, and she reacted by jumping up and yanking half her clothes off. I’m fairly sure I will remember that on longer than I will today’s. 😉

  18. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, can’t find anything about AccuWeather channel either. I use Weather Underground via the internet to check on what’s happening.

    Here is a link for their page on Oklahoma, don’t know which city is nearest you so I’m posting the whole state. http://www.wunderground.com/q/US/Oklahoma

  19. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, saw this and for some reason thought of you. http://cheezburger.com/8377552896

  20. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Since I keep telling you all I have dated three mass murders from “good families” I thought I would link to the ancestral family home of one of them. http://www.stantonhall.com/stanton-hall.php

    He lived with his grandparents, as did I- my grandparents owned a plantation nearby his. After we were adults he fell in love with a married woman, apparently killed her husband first, then her and her roommate before committing suicide.

    He was good looking, charming, intelligent but totally messed up by the time I knew him even as college/high school students. The archetypical alcoholic Southern boy. Why the heck did I know so many of them? Patterned on William Faulkner characters!!!!

    Had he lived I would still favor the death penalty.

    Love, Jackie

  21. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    Glad to see all moved on in the Village. I’ve spent my day playing system engineer on the home network, should have taken more EE classes. 😉

  22. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Entertained myself for awhile reading the trial records and appeals decisions on my second murderer from good family “date”. Seems he was an alcoholic and mentally ill too. I was wrong though, he only killed his father in law and shot his ex-wife (who I also knew) and mother in law without killing them.

    This would not be interesting were it not that his father is among the most famous coaches ever and in all the halls of fame. He coached Olympic champions, world record holders and went on coaching even after this scandal and tragedy.

    I thought of Ghost when I read the testimony of police officer who asked him why he had a knife in the back of his pants when arrested at murder scene. “Sometimes a gun doesn’t work.”

    Love, Jackie

  23. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    Well. The Internet threw away my comments. How rude. Quick recap – It’s cold. Debbie is crazier and braver than I for her line of work. Everyone stay toasty and safe tonight.

  24. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    Mindy, another three cat night in Houston. Forecast low near freezing point, unusally chilly for November.

  25. Blinky the Wonder Wombat Avatar
    Blinky the Wonder Wombat

    GR6-

    Perhaps you don’t remember as well as you think- I believe it wasn’t an ember but a lizard scurrying out of the wood pile that caused Janis to shed her pants.