CSotD: Welcome to Segue City
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A bit of good timing from the Dogs of C-Kennel, given that my own dog has just this week moved from the couch back to the bed. When things warm up in spring, he'll go back to sleeping solo.
Dog Lore: The dog wants to be touching you, in part (apparently) because it allows him to keep track of something that matters without being distracted. When you teach a dog to heel, part of the training is often to keep him from leaning against your leg as you walk. Previously, the taut leash allowed him to look around without losing track of where you are. Some dogs will also plant a paw on your foot if you both stop for any length of time.
In bed, this means he keeps scootching over to maintain contact, and, if your natural response is to scootch away, that would explain how you end up on the edge and he ends up in the middle.
Fortunately, my boy is very good about scootching back if I push a little, which is good, because he weighs 95 pounds and I don't think he'd go for the idea of twin beds.
Speaking of 95-pound bed partners, here's a joke about a gaffe I've (thank god) never made myself. Though I've been present when it happened.
What I find interesting about today's Pardon My Planet is that, while Vic Lee has the conversation occurring over a meal, that's not usually where the mix-up takes place.
Which comes to mind because, if she is talking about being mistaken for someone quite slim, we might be tempted to assume that the confusion was tactile, not visual, in which case this scootches right over into TMI.
I would add that being called by the name of a past lover is hardly the worst form of that mix-up.
Here's a less intrusive romantic insight: Maeve's romance proceeds apace at Between Friends, and today's got a personal chuckle at the end because it brought to mind a time out in Colorado about 30 years ago, when I asked a young lady to lunch.
As we chatted and got to know each other better, I mentioned that I was waiting to hear back about a job at a newspaper in New York, but that it was largely a matter of when they could make the hire, not if.
She was furious and demanded to know why I would ask her out if I knew I was moving away, to which I could only stammer something about wanting to go out with her.
Which was apparently not the answer she had been looking for.
You don't actually dodge bullets. They just zing by, if you're lucky. My next date was better: It lasted for seven years, of which only the first three months were spent in Colorado.
Not sure where that leaves Maeve. In real life, I'd want her to roll the dice and wish her all the best, but having Maeve happily married would be like letting Charlie Brown kick the football.
Speaking of whom …
It's the time of year when we get to endure stories about what really happened in Salem and screeds about how Halloween witches are an insult to real practitioners of an age-old religion that goes back to the ancient Celts.
Or, to be more accurate, back to a bunch of odd intellectual dabblers in the 1950s.
And as long as we're debunking seasonal mythology with truth from the 1950s, here's proof that, despite what you may have seen on television specials, it was Linus, not Charlie Brown, who cut all those eyeholes.
Which would only be trivia except that it marks two significant character shifts in the intervening years: For Charlie Brown from schlimazel to schlemiel, and for Linus from a naive little brother to a Bible-quoting philosopher.
The TV specials are not canon, dammit, and we now have a whole generation of people who will have to go to school twice as long as anyone else.
And speaking of school (if you don't follow the links, these fabulous segues won't make sense), it was nice to come across a Madame & Eve that did not require you to be following the increasingly tangled and arcane subject of South African politics.
Instead of riffing on Jacob Zuma, it riffs on Donald Trump, which isn't all that different except that he's our kleptocrat and so I've been keeping closer track of him.
In fact, I had an idea for a TV sitcom that would fall somewhere between "Mork and Mindy" and "Perfect Strangers," about a buttoned-up retired army officer who winds up having to keep track of a comical nitwit. It's called "The General and Numnutz."
In the pilot, Numnutz wants to phone a widow and the General tells him it would be a very bad idea, but Numnutz insists and the General shares something with him that one warrior could say to another warrior but that would be incredibly inappropriate for a civilian to say to anyone.
Hilarity ensues.
Speaking of Dear Leader, Matt Wuerker has an interview at Politico with Barry Blitt, best known for his frequent New Yorker covers. I have very little to say about it except that it's a meeting of two excellent editorial cartoonists and you should go read it.
And — next segue, pay attention — if you like hearing how editorial cartoonists work, stay tuned right here because I will be attending the AAEC Conference in about a week and a half and reporting from the scene each morning.
I'll even be moderating a panel with Wiley Miller, Matt Lubchansky and Keith Knight about political commentary on places other than traditional editorial pages.
And speaking of the Nib, of which Matt Lubchansky is an editor, you should go there to read Sarah Glidden's excellent piece on appreciating great art, specifically Goya's Third of May and Picasso's Guernica.
Glidden is one of the best graphic journalists working, but she tends to work in the Ernie Pyle tradition of reporting on specific people, which sometimes doesn't provide the Big Picture. In this case, however, that personal approach is exactly, precisely what is called for, and this piece will knock you over.
Now here's your moment of anti-fascist zen
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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