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

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Variations on a Theme

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
I continue today with old A&J Sunday strips you won’t see anywhere but here, although I think maybe this particular strip has been shown before at arloandjanis.com. I’m not sure. This one is from 1993 and was drawn shortly after the first meeting at the seashore between son Gene and Mary Lou. No one suspected, least of all myself, how momentous that little storyline would prove.

Arlo and Janis has a lot of followers in the upper Midwest. I want to remind you that the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning gets underway today in Wisconsin. You might want to check it out if you do, indeed, live in the area. In the past, I would have posted a link for you, but unless there is something specific I want to show you it’s so much easier for everyone if I simply encourage you to “Google it.” You know what to do. If you do make it to the festival, tell ’em Arlo and Janis sent you.

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211 responses to “Variations on a Theme”

  1. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    I am still eating bland foods as the attack last week on my lower GI was quite severe. I had a bad experience with food poisoning years ago, so I have always ordered my steaks cooked through. Try to stay away from prime rib altogether.

  2. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Autoimmune diseases do not respond well to high red meat diets, causes an increase in inflammation for some reason. So, I cook a lot of fowl, lean pork, fish. My husband who loves red meats and beef says he did not climb out of the primeval slime to live on green veggies and ground up bark and chaff

    I have a hard time selling healthy! He gets around this now by eating hamburgers and red pasta sauces in town after he exercises. Since he was all skin and bones, I say fine, he’s eating!

    When we were way up north in Montana, Wyoming, even down in Nebraska in ranching country, we’d go into local restaurants in the towns we visited (not chains) and often there was ONLY beef on the menu, maybe potatoes. Not a vegetable nor poultry or fish to be had. Even I was a little stunned.

    “How do you want your steak, m’am? And will that be fried or baked potatoes?”

    Love, Jackie

  3. Lilyblack Avatar

    You don’t know our diet patients, Jackie. They want to lose weight but they don’t want to eat less and exercise. I have been offered bribes to put weight less than that on the scale on the chart. You have to be very firm with them. I hear that weight watchers has some techniques for shaming less than stellar performers, like making them hold a plastic pig during the meetings. I wouldn’t know. We used to have a woman who was a tad on the chubby side – maybe fifteen pounds overweight, tops – working here. The weight management patients used to asked for her to weigh them “and not one of those skinny nurses” (for my coworkers are as trim as I – or trimmer). She had quite a temper and would fuss at them if they said something like that to her. “What do you mean I’m the fat one?” 😀

  4. sideburns Avatar

    Jackie, as one diabetic to another, I hope you’ve gotten more insulin and strips. Now that I’m not a lab rat any more, and have gone back to nighttime Glargine only, my numbers have been, for the most part, much better.

    As far as fries go, I’ve read that in parts of Europe, Remoulade is very popular; in Belgium, they mix in curry powder. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m planning to RSN. I do know, from personal experience that a simple remoulade goes well on grilled salmon, and I bet it would be great on a roast beef sandwich.

  5. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Lily, Lily- you’ve got the wrong weight loss shaming group. Weight Watchers is very politically correct and decorous to their members. It is TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) that had the shaming Pig and the Piggy Song and I am not sure even they do that anymore. I had so many charm bracelet charms from TOPS that had I fallen in a swimming pool I would have been weighted down like a Mafia victim!

    And should you want Biblical faith and prayer with your weight loss, there are faith based groups, 12 Step Programs, any number of alternatives.

    As a young teenager I had life threatening asthma which resulted in a dramatic weight loss as I could not eat literally for coughing.
    About then I discovered that “If you don’t eat, you will be skinny and popular”. I have since then been a worse yoyo dieter than Oprah Winfrey, often on same diet as her and at same time and I don’t even watch her shows!

    Anorectics are to be pitied, just like those who are obese. It is all a food disorder no matter how you cut the steak/cake/pie/cookie/rice cake! Body obsessions go two ways in the fun house mirrors.

    Love, Jackie Monies

  6. Charlotte in NH Avatar
    Charlotte in NH

    Because I was out of the house most of the day, only now, after 8 pm, am I seeing today’s remarks. And what insightful posts they are, good to hear from Jackie and from Lily. Hard to top their wisdom on food, dieting, and humor!

    As for putting stuff on french fried potatoes, I seldom eat them now, BUT it seems unnecessary to put anything on, at all. The frying makes them yummy and pretty fattening, too; adding sugary ketchup or fatty tartar sauce, or sour cream, is adding more calories.

  7. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Yeah, I was gonna say, Weight Watchers is into peer support and positive re-enforcement. It’s hard for me to believe any serious weight-loss program would use shamming methods. To me, far too many commercial diet plans seem to be based on magical thinking.

  8. Lilyblack Avatar

    Thanks, Charlotte 😀

    Jackie, our weight loss program patients have tried all sorts of things. I hear their tales of woe often enough. For now they are happy enough to come in and get praised or fussed at by our friendly staff 😛 We have some great success stories, too. Just too many whiners “I can’t lose weight no matter what!” Yeah, you can. I have heard often enough from The Boss Of My Life: “A pound of fat is 3200 Kcalories. If you eat 100 Kcalories less than you usually do per day, you will lose a pound a month.” and I helpfully add, after she has left the room, “You should hear her when I get below weight. It’s worse. And you can still eat what you do per day and walk three miles a day, you will lose three pounds a month!” They stop their cars when they see me running. “Can I run along with you?” “Sure, come ahead.” But they never do 🙁

  9. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    The comedy of malfunction continues. 5AM start time tomorrow, will vent later. Night!

  10. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Interesting article, Loon, but at first blush it just strikes me as a combination positive-thinking/placebo effect. If I had “lucky” t-shirt, I don’t think wearing it when I step on the scale would make me weigh less.

    Munchkin, how often do your weight-loss patients weigh in?

  11. Lilyblack Avatar

    Ghost: Once a month, required, or they are out. And aren’t we peons glad to see them go!

  12. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    Personal research has revealed that the quality of French fries varies a lot. Using some kind of sauce – be it ketchup or melted chocolate – covers a multitude of those variances. Agreed, though, decent fries with a little salt can stand on their own.

    Another sauce – for lack of a better word – I enjoy is chunky blue cheese salad dressing on potato salad in place of the more usual mayo (or similar). It does have to be quality dressing and not the more dilute stuff; the chunks are a bonus. It ought not surprise anyone that I buy Danish blue by the 6 or 7 pound wheel from a firm in Ohio. Even with considerable shipping/packing charges it’s a lot cheaper than what I have to pay in a grocery. If I can find an excuse to buy more stuff simultaneously, the shipping/packing charges are more spread out over the larger order and the goods become cheaper.

  13. Lilyblack Avatar

    Okay, I was nodding off, adn my foster parents told me I have to go to bed. So I am sitting here in my nightie while they turn my bedclothes down. Neeshka seems okay with it all. Good night and I will talk to you all tomoorow. Zzz

  14. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Woke up again. I have odd sleeping disorders too, to go with the assorted autoimmune diseases!

    Lily, I just don’t think the medical profession is quite your call from God! You are sorely pained by your patients and not empathetic at all. Ghost is right, Weight Watchers does offer positive support and understanding. I say this not because I own stock since I failed to buy that Mississippi-Alabama franchise back when I could!

    I know you keep saying your boss is a surgeon, so are you all doing banding or bypass surgery for the obese? I ask because a friend of mine in Houston sort of invented that particular franchise and kept an entire smaller hospital financially solvent by bringing in literally thousands of desperate obese patients that he operated on there from all over world.

    When my daughter became anorexic and lost down to size 0 and we were buying children’s clothes and I could make a skirt for her from 1/2 a yard of fabric, a wonderful compassionate psychologist in Houston saved her life, got her to quit exercising hours per day and measuring her food intake by teaspoons.

    Food disorders are serious issues and so are human souls. The outer shell is just what is holding it together.

    Love, Jackie

  15. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Back to food sauces, serious chowing time. I like some of the new dipping sauces they serve now with things like fried green beans. Had a good one the other day which seemed to be a horseradish mix more like a salad dressing mixture. I bet I would like the blue cheese one because it is impossible to have too much blue bacterial growth probably. I love Canadian cheeses as they don’t seem to pasteurize them to death like we do.

    Gorgonzola is fantastic and I would probably eat cardboard dipped in a sauce/dressing of that.

    I know other people remember the 1950’s and 60’s when all you got for salad in a steakhouse was iceberg lettuce wedge with some blue cheese thrown on top. I actually had a good one the other day, even lettuce was good, it was worth it for the excess of blue cheese, bacon and then they finished it with an awesome blue cheese dressing over all that!

    Sorry Lily, you will get fat reading this!

    Love, Jackie Monies

  16. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Ghost, if you had a “lucky” t-shirt you could wear it under your shirt/suit like Superman and save the effects of its’ magic for something more fun than stepping on a scale! I bet Arlo would wear one too.

    Love, Jackie

  17. sideburns Avatar

    Jackie, the blue in blue cheese isn’t bacteria, it’s a form of penicillin mold. Not, of course, the same variety that they make the antibiotic from, but a relative.

  18. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    sideburns, it MUST be good for us then! We can consider all that blue cheese medicinal and therapeutic. And yes, I got my insulin picked up. I have great endo doc now from Mayo Clinic but now practicing in Tulsa, so I have to watch the dramatic dropping now and look like a pin cushion or a drug user I think. Medicare people think I must be dealing in test strips and don’t like it.

    How many cheese heads read A and J? I bet Arlo loves cheese. I know they were eating goat cheese back in August and it was dripping off the toast points!

    A triple crème blue veined molded French cheese is my idea of divine decadence.

    Love, Jackie

  19. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    Part of my security system involves a motion sensor. I must deactivate it from inside my bedroom before venturing out in the morning. Guess what I forgot to do? I am wide awake now. Won’t be doing THAT again.

  20. Crab in Grapeland Avatar
    Crab in Grapeland

    You did show it once before. It touches something in those of us who are official geezers (80) so you can run that one as many times as you feel appropriate.

  21. Lilyblack Avatar

    Good morning, all. Jackie, I love most of my patients, but weight control patients are like drug addicts, they try and get close to you to take advantage. Role reversal, bullying, and Munchhausen-like behavior are routine. You have to be very firm with them. I get humor out of them as I try to out of all my patients. Gallows-humor is very common among health-care professionals from nurses-aides all the way up to professors. Medical humor is full of derogatory terms for annoying patients: trolls, gomers, etc. I know that patients expect us to be Nurse Cherry Ames and get all involved with our patients, but people who do that don’t last. They burn out. Clinical detachment and a sense of humor are essential. With really sick people you just shut up and work, but 99% of our patients just aren’t that sick.

  22. Lilyblack Avatar

    Oh, and, no, The Boss Of My Life refuses to do banding. She sends those patients elsewhere. Our weight control patients aren’t that obese.

  23. sideburns Avatar

    If you want a great cheese, try to find a goat’s-milk brie. Yum, especially if it’s had enough time to get ripe!