CSotD: Mostly Apolitical Holiday Short Takes
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Arlo & Janis set the mood for this morning's nearly entirely non-political posting.
I'm giving myself some practical gifts this year, like new tires, and one of them was even a holiday surprise, because I didn't expect my computer to start falling apart.
But I'm with Arlo, and I think it's Scroogey to balance your budget by pretending something you needed is a Christmas present. Which is to say that my new laptop is the Christmas present equivalent of underwear.
Besides, it's a business expense and nobody gives underwear as a gift at the office, or at least, they damn well better not do it this year.
Which reminds me: Cartoonists should note that mistletoe jokes may be timely, but they're not funny. Nobody ever kissed under the mistletoe who wouldn't have just as cheerfully kissed without it.
When I say "not funny," I don't mean "in questionable taste given current sensitivities" but, rather, "lame."
"Bear trap in the fireplace" lame.
But as long as we're recalling childhood, Piranha Club brings back a time when I was perhaps six or seven and got a practical jokes set for Christmas: Rubber chocolates and a rubber fried egg, plastic ice cubes with flies in them, a fake gum packet with a little mousetrap device that would snap your finger if you took out a piece of gum and not plastic dog poop but rubber barf, which is just as good.
A whole set of really clever gags to play on your friends.
Nobody needed to notice that genuine ice cubes are made of ice, which floats, while plastic ones don't, because the real tip-off was in how often seven year old children wander around offering people real fried eggs.
Spencer has a sense of timing that few kids his age possess in real life.
And it just occurred to me to wonder if he were named for the gift shop that carries most of the really classy things he treasures most.
And speaking of tacky plastic things, Monty is off to get a real tree.
I have nothing against artificial trees, as long as they're more convincing than rubber fried eggs.
And I just read somewhere that only 20 percent of American homes have real Christmas trees, which is one more consequence of urbanization, I suppose.
Still, I offer cartoonists a waiver for "fallen needle" cartoons because, though a familiar gag, the phenomenon is a consequence of buying a dead tree that was harvested 1200 miles away in October, which is at least a gesture towards authenticity.
And those gags are not like I-hate-fruitcake jokes, which simply show that the cartoonist was raised on Spaghetti-Os and chicken nuggets and probably thinks macaroni-and-cheese comes out of a box.
That's not funny. It's just sad.
I haven't decorated for Christmas since the nest emptied, and the last tree that I bought was for the office where I was editor and had been cut within 24 hours by a State Senator who ran a tree farm, which probably made buying it from him an ethical lapse. But I didn't kiss him, so it's all right.
That's him, exchanging Yankee drolleries with a US Senator who is without doubt the smartest, funniest person I have ever met and whom I very much wish were still in office.
Boy, would I take that Olympian-scale, much-needed Christmas present in place of tons of little fun stuff to unwrap.
Anyway, I assume Monty's tree cutting adventure will be a story arc and I plan to enjoy it since city folks tramping around in the woods are a great source of humor as long as they are unarmed and don't tramp beyond the range of their car remotes so that everyone misses dinner looking for them.
And as long as they aren't poaching our damn trees.
When they aren't stealing trees from private property, they're painting their goddam names on our rocks.
There was a family named Jodway years ago that autographed a large rock on the side of Route 3 and it's good for them they did it before the Internet, because every time I drove by it, I had this fantasy of finding out where they lived and spray-painting "Bambi" and "Thumper" and "Flower" on the side of their garage.
Hang on, I may be losing my Christmas spirit here.
Thank you, Francis and Brother Leo.
I feel better now.
Though it does occur to me that the real Francis probably has a few of them da Vinkies hanging around and it would be cool if he'd auction one or two every Christmas for charity.
Maybe I'll ask Santa for that.
Juxtaposition of the Day at Least in my Mind
(Mr. Fitz)
(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
Maybe you have to be either a thoughtful ELA teacher like David Finkle or an editor of kids' work like me to see this pair as a Juxtaposition, but we both seem to spend a lot of time trying to deprogram young writers and release them from the bonds of humorless, insight-free prescriptivists.
Fortunately, it doesn't take long for my gang to make the leap from writing what they think I want them to write to writing what they actually want to write, though they still keep laboring to find lessons in everything.
Granted, some books do have lessons, especially the ones that win medals and awards from teachers. But they're also supposed to contain some passion and joy and sometimes maybe even a Whoopee cushion or some rubber barf.
And then SMBC brings up a nonsensical "rule," because there sure as hell are degrees of uniqueness, and, while snowflakes may have slightly different crystalline structure, two feet of them are all pretty much the same on your shovel, while everything varies somewhat under an electron microscope, so either "unique" is not an absolute term or it is a meaningless one.
Which all comes down to which Margaret Hamilton you want to be.
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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