I drew a cartoon!
November 17th, 2010 | Uncategorized
Remember when I used to draw a cartoon every two weeks? I miss those days. Well, no, I don’t miss the constant deadline pressure. But I do miss the regular sense of having achieved something.
I’ve been working on a new graphic memoir for years now without much visible evidence to show for it. Unless you count the reams of undrawn drafts I seem to have generated—that is, written-and-laid-out drafts that don’t have any real drawings yet. I just coined that term, “undrawn draft.” It sums up the paradoxical feeling I have from working hard but having no tangible product yet.
Anyhow, all that is to say, I did a cartoon this week for the Thanksgiving issue of my local alternative weekly paper, Seven Days, and it was really great to actually put pen to paper again.
157 Responses to “I drew a cartoon!”
Way to go, we all knew you could do it 😉
I particularly loved the single evocation of “Joy” in the title — no need to show more in order to make us recall that fat, well-used volume.
Ah, yes The Joy of Cooking…
Way back when, my father used to work for Howard W. Sams (those who are sufficiently hardware-geeky may remember “Sams’ Photofacts” –my dad used to write those). In support of their technical-manual publishing, Sams had bought the general publishing-house Bobbs-Merrills, whose most famous volume was Joy of Cooking.
Once or twice a year, BM would have a remaindered/damaged books sales where books were sold to employees on what was basically a cents-per-pound basis.
Over the years it was truly amazing the number of copies of Joy of Cooking that our family –and all gift-receiving relatives/friends/casual acquaintances– accumulated…
Jouissance!
So good to see a cartoon of yours again!
I see A.B., I see moose… but where is squirrel? My caption for the cartoon? “That’s the last time I try a recipe from the Frostbite Falls Holiday Cookbook!”.
Keep the date… Tuesday, December 7th, will be when the Smallville city commission votes on adding LGBT as a protected class in the Smallville human rights ordinance. Opponents will be out in force; the last time adding LGBT to the ordinance was tried, they monopolised 2 hours of the city commission meeting claiming that us folk are diseased criminals. This time around, the opponents are claiming that no one will want to move to Smallville if they know that LGBT folk are valued and welcomed here. Yeah, I’d hate to see us lose the next Plum Island Bioweapons Lab replacement because we’re so open-minded! Anyway, I’ll be there with bells on for the pro-forces. Well, actually, I’ll be there for the pro-forces dressed like the other wimmin geologists!
Uh, wait a minute. I’ve got to start following links again. There’s a whole 7-panel cartoon in that link! And, I’m no longer sure that the main character was supposed to be A.B. herself. After all, I always thought that Mo was A.B., until I saw A.B.’s drawings of herself and realized that Mo was Mo, A.B. is A.B.
I’m still wearing my hiking boots to the city commission meeting on December 7th, though…
Backspace#4:
Thank you!!!
(I was trying to figure that out. But, sadly, my French is so close to non-existent that I was unable to make the connection. Seeing it spelled out made all the difference.)
merci!
Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat… Thanks for the cartoon!
Kate L.: Since it’s a reference to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, I guess that’s why there’s just a Bullwinkle balloon (and a Bart Simpson balloon), and no Rocky one. Don’t think there was ever a Rocky balloon, anyway?
Best of luck to “Smallville” getting LGBT protections (would think a town with Superboy in it would be open-minded 😉 ). Though I wonder how many small towns have such discrimination protections (that aren’t just those on a state or county level) nowadays. I know the small town I grew up in doesn’t have such…
What shadocat said.
Thanks for the cartoon!
I really loved Fun Home and look forward to your next graphic memoir.
Heh, thanks for the cartoon Alison. I really enjoyed it. I’m one of those people who gives no thanks for the necessity of cooking.
I know you can do it, continue doing that as long as your happy and you love what you are doing. GBU
I love the red, black and grey. It looks amazing.
I like the story too, subtle and true.
Great to see some new work again – thanks
Off to Google joissance
I mean jouissance
@10: My small town has those protections.
Awesome cartoon–you rock, AB!
It reminds me of a story I heard from my friend Debbie, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Her family often ate Thanksgiving dinner at the homes of congregation members. Debbie’s father loved really, really dry turkey, loved to soak it in lots of gravy, but only his family knew this, as he was too polite to express disappointment when hosts served moist turkeys. One year, a woman was horrified to discover she had overcooked the turkey. Debbie and her mother assured her all would be ok and tried to moisten the meat with a little cooking oil. After Debbie’s father said grace, he immediately took a bite of breast meat and said in his loud pastor’s voice, “Wow, this turkey is so DRY!!!!” Debbie will never forget the look on the cook’s face–or how long it took her and her mother to convince the woman that her father’s statement was a compliment.
@Cathy (#18)
Debbie’s father would have loved my pal Rhoda’s turkey. Her cooking technique is somewhere between overcooking and incineration. Most years, the turkey is so dry it’s like chewing on roasted Kleenex.
One year, I swear I thought the bird was cooked on the oven’s self-clean setting. This was in response to the Thanksgiving morning crisis of “Oh no, the turkey hasn’t defrosted yet!” I told her she could soak the bird in a sink filled with cold water, and run cold water over it for a couple of hours to safely thaw it out. “It’s too big for the sink,” she said. “So use the bathtub,” I answered.
Little did I know that in her ultra-kosher line of thinking, the bathtub was out of the question. Is the tub meat, dairy, or pareve? How to kasher a bathtub to soak a turkey?
She ended up leaving the turkey thawing on the kitchen counter to thaw out (hello food poisoning!), and to counter the possible health risks in that, she cooked the poor bird to its second death.
De-clique-ification note for non-Jews: Observant Jews follow very specific and detailed rules for keeping kosher. All kitchen gear is classified as meat, dairy, or pareve (pareve is neutral). There’s no mixing of meat and dairy at the same meal, the dishes and utensils for each type are kept separate, etc. There are specific techniques for rendering the dishes, cookware, utensils, appliances kosher (kashering) before they can be used, or if they get screwed up because of contact with the wrong type of food (and depending on what material they’re made of, some items can’t be kashered at all if they get screwed up, e.g. plastic).
Hence Rhoda’s consternation about soaking a turkey in the bathtub.
(… goes back to thinking about how overcooked turkey can be the common ground between a Lutheran pastor and an Orthodox Jew …)
@hoh(19): You’ve now left me thinking of all the joints and cuts of meat left to defrost on top of the washing machine (we were short on counter space) during my youth. Although it was usually done in a bowl of cold water.
AB, it’s wonderful to see a new strip again! Thanks for pointing us to this strip. Obviously we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Britain, but very similar pressure/performance anxiety is applied to Christmas dinner. As someone pointed out to me yesterday, we should count the number of (how to have the) ‘Perfect Christmas’s we hear or see before the day itself.
LOL, this reminds me of the Christmas my mother invited by brother’s then-in-laws over for dinner. We had been telling Mother for about a month that the oven was off-temp; it wouldn’t hold the temperature, sometimes going low, sometimes high. Dad told her he’d go down and purchase the required parts to fix it, and she pitched a fit. “There is nothing wrong with that oven. You two just don’t know how to cook!” Um, yeah. Dad was actually a better cook than Mother, and I was in middle school but certainly could tell there was in issue when Mother’s cooking was worse than usual. Dad was insulted enough to take her at her word and let her struggle with the oven. What she DID’NT tell us was her Christmas plans. Imagine our surprise when she told us at the last minute when it was too late to go to the appliance store and get the parts….
The result was undercooked stuffing, overcooked turkey and charcoal bricks for rolls. The only edible food consisted of items not cooked in the oven. She blamed US for not fixing the oven, a comment we quietly corrected privately later for our guests, who were well-aware of Mother’s fascinating grasp on reality. We had a Christmas dinner in July of the following year to make it up to them. Ah, good times.
@Backspace(4): Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about jouissance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jouissance
Only AB could create a strip about vegetarianism, and the temptation of turkey, and have it interpreted as a Lacanian strip on the concepts of pleasure and pain. Sydney would be proud.
Ian#22:
I think you’ve just scratched the surface:
Aside from the explicit French references, a strip that begins with “For a long time I…” and goes on to explore the connection between taste/smell and memory…
… I mean, how Proustian can you get.
…a la turkey perdu. (Or should that be Perdue?)
HoH (#19), I’m sharing that story with Debbie and my observant Jewish friends! Chewing Kleenex is such a vivid way to describe eating overcooked meat! My mother preferred meat beyond well done, and my sibs and I often reminisce about the gray roast beef and leather pork chops we endured in childhood. Funny, though, she made great turkey by essentially poaching it in a massive stovetop container, which made it juicy and fragrant (though the skin didn’t brown).
Ian (#22), thanks for the Wiki link–I had forgotten about Lacanian theory and am even more appreciative now of what a great cartoon this is.
NLC (#23)–just saw your post and the pun. I may put “les temps Perdue” on placecards to sneak onto my friends’ table this Thanksgiving.
Jouissance indeed. I’m not a fan of turkey meat (sometimes the smell of ground turkey cooking would make me come close to gagging), but I like the tradition cooking the bird for Thanksgiving. I’m definitely not affiliated with the site I’m linking to here (let alone paid by them to endorse it), but I’ve had great success in cooking the smoked turkey for Thanksgiving following this recipe (i.e., I followed the recipe easily and the turkey was mighty tasty).
Now I’ve never had deep-fried turkey, which I heard is quite delicious, but since I’m the designated cook, I’d rather not worry about having to keep a vat of boiling oil away from combusting/run into by kids.
Two words: Turkey Bacon
This cartoon is like an onion, peeling back each layer yields additional meaning, depending upon one’s cultural references and life experiences.
It’s a very American and very literary set of cultural references. Of course, the holiday in question is a very American one, but there’s enough non-USAnian influence in this cartoon that non-locals can get in on the action. (N.B. Canadians do have their own Thanksgiving, I think it’s in October, if I correctly recall my recent calendar-creation experience).
Start with the typeface for the title panel. It’s clearly a reference to the 1960s-era American edition of Rombauer’s classic cookbook. A clever bit of semiotics on AB’s part to get the reader in the time period of her memories.
See JoC American edition covers here:
http://www.cookbkjj.com/college/joy.htm
Then there’s the contrast between the word “Joy” and the apparent lack of it in AB’s tale of Thanksgivings past.
NLC points out the direct Proustian reference in the opening panel, and the deeper connection to memory, taste, and food.
Implied in many of our comments is our decryption of the steganographic message hidden in the panel texts, identified by the red color and “Joy” typeface, “Jouissance.” Backspace spelled it out for us, in case we missed it.
Ian picked up on the specific psychoanalytic meaning of the decrypted word “Jouissance” and Jacques Lacan, while others (like me) may have simply taken the French word at face value for its English equivalent “enjoyment” (and again noting the apparent contradiction between the word meaning and AB’s experience).
More cultural references…
Anthony noted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade depicted via the Bullwinkle balloon.
I noticed the multi-year time passage in the parade via the second balloon shown, Bart Simpson.
Then there are the details, such as AB san lunettes for all but the last panel, and her greying temples in the last panel to further signify the time passage.
For the geeks among us (and yes, NLC, I grew up amid stacks of my father’s Sams PhotoFacts), there is the phrase “not unlike,” a now-common litotes usually rendered as “not entirely unlike,” a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Lastly, after all that pining away for the idealized turkey, the real thing turns out to be a disappointment to AB.
That disappointment in an idealized thing pretty much sums up my life’s relationships. There’s much less tumult in my life now that I’ve been single for over a decade. I think I was more in love with the idea of love itself, than the other person. My analyst made lots of money on this, and she never once mentioned “Jouissance.” I should have gone to the library instead of therapy. Sigh.
The onion… this is why we love AB and her work, and why graphic stories from others are much less satisfying (to me, at least). It’s also why I painfully miss DTWOF in turbulent political times. The layers of meaning and contradiction Alison piled into a few seemingly benign panels of DTWOF were worthy of the best subversive samizdat in repressive regimes everywhere.
(… grabs her towel and goes back to searching for The Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything… and I don’t really believe The Answer is “42” …)
P.S. In a nod to Mo and DTWOF, Bullwinkle is dressed in a striped Mo shirt. How did I miss that?
HOH#28:
…is like an onion: How appropriate for a discussion dealing with dressing.
…”not unlike”: Do you know Thurber’s “not unmeaningless” and his discussion of the use of the triple-negative?
The cartoon’s reference to Jello reminded me of Helen Philpott’s Thanksgiving Letter To The Family 2009 in the fabulous blog of letters between two friends for over 60 years, Margaret and Helen (link below): “Cloe. I am begging you honey. None of that Jello crap. No one eats it and the garbage stinks for a week after I throw it out. You and Jello are like Palin and McCain. How many times before you learn no one wants seconds much less firsts.”
http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/thanksgiving-letter-to-the-family-2009/
@NLC (#30)
I’m not familiar with Thurber’s triple negative, please enlighten us.
@Maggie (#31)
I’d forgotten about those T-day blog posts from M&H. I’ve been friends with Rhoda for about 40 years and I still haven’t told her I don’t like her turkey.
Maybe it takes 60 years of friendship, like M&H, to say that out loud? Maybe it’s not necessary to say it at all. For me, the holidays are really about the company, not the food. Plus, I’ve been trying to live by my little Post-It reminder before opening my mouth, “Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?”
I eat in advance of her holiday meals, purely in self-defense. Rhoda does know I don’t like her vegetable cooking, she relented decades ago to having me cook the vegetables so there’s one thing that’s not overcooked at the table. And I bring the wine, she freely acknowledges she has no oenophile sensibilities.
With my recent digestive health issues, I warned her that I probably won’t be able to eat much at Thanksgiving this year, and I definitely can’t have wine. “What have you been eating lately?” she asked. “Soup. Rice. Soup and rice. Grits. Baked potatoes.” “I can make soup,” she said. “Nothing too solid,” I said, remembering the pumpkin soup experiment at one Thanksgiving which resulted in a pot of orange-colored sludge.
“How about chicken soup?”
“Yeah, that will work.”
I figured that overcooked chicken soup is probably safe; if it turns to glacé I can thin it out with hot water. Not so sure about the matzo balls.
Which reminds me… how are YOU doing one year out from your surgery? Last you told us, you were dealing with the devil-spawn from social services. Hope you’re feeling better, and have successfully navigated the paperwork morass.
(… goes back to peeling metaphoric onions …)
HoH, I post daily updates about my social services morass at FB. Short version: Things are MUCH better than a year ago and progressing.
I now have partial foodstamps, daily lunches from Meals On Wheels which I describe for a feeding frenzy of comments and tangents from all the foodies, and a free grocery shopper now also from MoW. I have qualified for city of Austin medical insurance but must go into the clinic to get my first round of care established plus scrips for essential meds and (most importantly) PT, BUT I cannot get into the clinic without either an EMS call (which they don’t want to pay for) or enough PT so I can eventually transfer to and from bed and vehicle. I do have a caseworker trying to help me though this Catch-22.
I have also, this week, been awarded attendant care (a year after I began needing it) and some time in the next month that will likely elevate my day to day existence in ways you honestly cannot imagine. Once I have that help, PT, and health care, I will theoretically be able to occasionally venture out into the world again.
Of course, if the Tea Party has its way in Texas, it may all vanish. Because I should go out and get a job, you know.
Thanks for contributing to our literary potluck, AB! I loved seeing one of your cartoons back in the paper.
Love your cartoon!
And…I have to tell you that meat is good for us.
I am a physician and I know what I’m talking about.
I hate turkey and I always have but ham goes a long way! Hmmmm, bacon is pork too and I’ve seen you folks lusting after it as well.
Thanks SO much for the cartoon, AB!!!
I miss DTWOF desperately – I keep going through my collection, in the end forever stuck with Mo in the Bush years 😛
Oh, and yes, our Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, what with an earlier harvest. Its always the second Monday.
Of course, the Christmas decorations go up the day after, so we have a hyper-buildup to Christmas too
@h_o_h #19: You have to keep “ultra-kosher” to reject the idea of soaking your food in the bathtub? I’d say that’s how you explain the difference between the words “kosher” and “Jewish.” What’s kosher might soak in a pot, what’s Jewish might soak in a bathtub.
Hi All,
Way off topic, but I’m celebrating tonight, because my one-month-old blog, Burning Down the House, just won the Westword Web Award for Best Personal Blog of 2010! Woot! This is a Big Deal.
Thanks for your nominations, support and encouragement.
Happy Turkey/Tofurkey to All!
Andi
http://www.burningdownthehouseblog.com
[Freed from spam-filter limbo. –Mentor]
HOH#32: re: “triple negative”
Nothing real profound here; this was pretty much the whole joke, i.e. an example of a weird usage.
[In your original example “not unlike”: Most of the times when I’ve heard folks use this (at least when they do so intentionally) they’ve meant it ironically. Thurber’s example, “not unmeaningless” just takes this one step further.]
Congrats Andi! Glad you’ve got some good news at last. A well-deserved award as your blog’s amazing.
Congrats Andi! Perhaps this is just the beginning of wonderful things to come! I agree with Ian, amazing blog!
Congratulations, Andi–How satisfying for your wordsmithing to be recognized!
Wow, Andi! 🙂
Back here in Smallville, it’s the best of times and the worst of times with regard to having the city commission give its final okeydokey to adding LGBT to the local human rights ordinance. Just this morning, I was at the customer service area of the local grocery store when a young woman geologist, obviously new to town, was in the process of sending something back home to Alabama. She looked just like Mo would have looked, had Mo worn glasses like A.B. does. She was getting along great with everyone, obviously feeling like she moved to the right place. I last saw her walking out of the store after completing what she came to do, her smiling face beautiful to see. I hope that we can prove her faith in Smallville to be well-place this December 7th at the city commission meeting to vote on the ordinance. It will be a close-run thing, though. The local chamber of commerce has just come out as against adding LGBT to the ordinance.
hairball (#29). A striped Mo shirt would complement any figure, but I think that AB’s drawing of Bullwinkle may have shown him wearing a traditional one-piece moose’s bathing suit!
Mazel Tov Andi!
A well-deserved award indeed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one year out, there’s a book in the making from your blog. Your essays and observations are so poignant and keenly self-aware.
(… looks forward to the movie made from your book, starring Meryl Streep …)
Thanks h_o_h, judybusy, katgirl and Ian for your congrats. Someone asked me jokingly who I’d want to play me in the movie. Now I have an answer – Meryl! But the most important question is, Who will play NELLIE? Now that’s a stumper!
Thanks everyone, for all your support. I posted the Westword review on my Facebook page, if you’d like to read it.
Sleep Well Everyone,
Andi
@Hairball #28 and NLC #39: George Orwell, in his indispensable essay “Politics and the English Language,” says, “One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.”
Wonderful illustration above! I had to leave the full strip for the moment and come back to of this page, as I was struck by the lively immediacy of line, and the sizes and placement of red, balanced by the block of soft grey-blue-green and that same subtle color’s use in smaller detail as well. And woohoo! Its use as shadow on the red turtleneck!
Jouissance!
From Collins Robert French Dictionary: jouissance NF (=volupté) pleasure, enjoyment, delight; (sensuelle) sensual pleasure; (=orgasme) orgasm, climax…
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Lacanian theory reminded me of a psychiatrist pal who was visiting from warmer climes one Thanksgiving. “Drive carefully,” I said as he was leaving. “There’s black ice on the roads.”
He turned, looked at me, and spoke: “That means you unconsciously want me to have an accident!”
Sacre dinde.
Wonderfully satisfying to get a fresh Bechdel cartoon. I’ve made it my computer desktop background.
I like the things the others mentioned, particularly the hairball of hope’s list. I also like the hand-drawn serif type. I’m sure it was a lot of trouble, but I like the effect. Oh, another possible nugget to notice is the bleeding cut in panel six: if the blood got in the food, it perhaps was the first step (slide, in my opinion, ha ha ha) back into meat-eating.
Thanks, Alison, for the cartoon.
Have a nice Thanksgiving day, everyone.
@Andi (#46)
The “who would play you in the movie” question is one my friends and I have posed (and answered) to one another over the years. Maybe we should start that game here on DTWOF?
Ok, I’ll start. General consensus (long before The Simpsons) was that Julie Kavner would play me, although occasionally someone would vote for Brenda Vaccaro. Obviously, they had the voice in mind when choosing my actor embodiment.
Next!
(… wonders if Nellie will play herself in the movie, and if Andi will have a cameo …)
hoh, apparently Matthew Broderick would play me. It appears that I’m quite similar to his character in The Producers.
I choose Kathy Bates. With sledgehammer.
Please, please, please pick Marion Cotillard to play me! Preferably in many scenes featuring a little black dress….I do own one from the late 50’s. It has a modest scoop neck, and a split skirt that makes it a little challenging to stay decently arrayed. It’s cotten with embossing all over. Sorry to go on about it, but it’s one of my favorite pieces of clothing. You’d never mistake me for a female geologist!
Now, Maggie, who would be the target of the sledgehammer, I wonder!
Ah, AB. The flight from the flightless, the turning away from turkey — ton amour avicole, amour involuntaire, / honteux comme glouton d’une soeur pour son frere. Hmm. Needs work.
My brother, the feral one, was called on yesterday to help slaughter four turkeys. The seventy-year-old who usually does the butchering at that end of the village had slipped, broken his wrist, couldn’t manage the hatchet, would Chris maybe…?
Why sure. Part of being neighbourly.
Each of them dressed out at over three stone, he reported to us all. His share: A gizzard, a heart, the caulfat from each to render and jar up for the shed now it’s cool enough out there to use as a second larder, and all eight feet. Simmering on his cooker yesterday afternoon they were, ready to be peeled and savoured.
He’s lean and healthy, and his food bills are low, and no one in the village has a bad word to say about him — but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we all dread the telephone call that will tell us he’s gone, time to hire the skip (make that skips) and clear out the cottage. Something tells me I’ll be busy that week.
Apparently I sound just like Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno) but I do not look like him at all (my students tell me that all the time though). I’m going to have to go with the younger/skinnier Nathan Fillion for looks. That may be pushing the envelope, but Maggie has seen pics, so she can cast someone closer to my looks if she would like 😉
janeane garofalo.
ksbel6, I concur with Nathan Fillion more because you have his smarts and honest charm. A great fit.
And bean — bullseye.
@ksbel6: Nathan Fillion? The guy from Castle? Yum.
@Alex K: I’m a little worried ‘cos I identify with your brother being the feral one. You’d never find me slaughtering turkeys though.
Oh, ksbel6, now I can have a voice and a face to associate with your on-line moniker! 🙂
I, myself, am of course waiting to get the call to play Janeway in the revival of Star Trek: Voyager.
Oh… for Thanksgiving; I managed to find one of those old-style turkey rolls that you pop in the oven, and I’ll make my special cranberry and tangerine relish.
@h_o_h: As I recall, Julie Kavner’s best known role pre-Simpsons was as the younger sister on Rhoda. And Rhoda is where the world was introduced to “Carlton the Doorman,” an unseen character played by the late Lorenzo Music. Carlton the Doorman’s adenoidal voice occasionally dripped into Rhoda’s apartment from one of those electric call-boxes that some apartment buildings built in the 1920s have connecting the main entrance to the units. No one has ever told me that I sound like Carlton the Doorman, I’m glad to say. However, if they ever make a movie version of the DTWOF discussion threads and you’re played by the young Julie Kavner, I want to be played by the late Lorenzo Music.
@Acilius (#61)
Kavner’s voice has been described as “honeyed gravel.” Depending on how I’ve been abusing my vocal cords, it’s not quite so gravelly, but it’s in the same general tonal family, with similar inflection.
Kavner’s vocal qualities in Forget Paris are probably most similar to mine. Definitely New York, and LOUD.
If I could choose a voice in that honey-gravelled timbre, I’d pick Lauren Bacall’s for my own. Sexy. But I don’t smoke (never have), and I think it takes years of smoking to get that type of voice (if the smoking doesn’t kill first).
Carlton the Doorman always sounded stoned to me. Very funny guy. You can be my Carlton. I won’t ask what you’ve been smoking.
(… goes back to sipping on her hot tea with lemon, hoping to clear up her voice …)
i would like to see this movie with nathan fillion, kathy bates, janeane garofalo, michael cera and julie kavner. (and whoever else i’ve inadvertantly forgotten.)
what would the plot be? how about this: a bunch of geeks who’ve met online plan an in-person meeting at, oh, the bellagio, where copious amounts of bacon and orange cake are consumed. various romantic interests are instantly sparked, but are interrupted by a surprising and shocking plot twist.
(ok, someone else pick it up here please…)
p.s. i always had the hots for valerie harper (aka rhoda) and did not really understand that scene in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (“I’m the Mary!” “No, I’m the Mary!!”) since rhoda was clearly the hotter, more interesting, more ethnically interesting of the two characters.
That sounds like lots of fun to me…just do not leave me alone in a room with Kathy Bates telling me that she’s my number one fan. That scene makes my bones ache. And you can drop Michael Cera, since Maggie approves, I choose to be Mr. Fillion.
@bean (#63)
Don’t forget Meryl Streep as Andi.
How about Daniel Radcliffe as AB? The Harry Potter androgynous look works, don’t ya think?
The Bellagio? I’m envisioning Mo in Las Vegas, kvetching. Actually, I’m remembering AB and Harvey Pekar in Las Vegas, and I imagine Mo would be a tad like Harvey. And I’d be a tad like Mo, ranting about something or another.
Entertainment… Dr. E could perform on the highwire at Circus Circus. Pam I could photograph the gathering. Kat could enthrall us with chanson. Renee could play cigarbox guitar, Acilius ukulele.
Food… don’t forget the grade B maple syrup, good bagels, and hand-sliced nova. We’ll have to invite Dr. Maddow to make cocktails, for those who imbibe. BYOBIV (Bring Your Own Bacon-Infused Vodka).
(… goes back to figuring out a plot twist for this merry band of pranksters …)
“Fan mail from some flounder?” my fave Bullwinkle line.
Hoh, I have been swooning after women with honey-graveled voices my entire life. (For instance, Lani O’Grady from Eight is Enough)
I choose Phoebe Snow to portray me in the movie. Alas, my voice does not sound Snowish nor Kavnerian. I however, do have a sister named Rhoda. hmmm, The plot might be about our paralleling universes intertwining in AB land, as we seek our Ultimate Quest: Planet Bacon, or perhaps, Planet Flounder.
@Renee (#66)
I’ve seen your video, definitely Phoebe Snow.
(… goes back to wondering who will play Aunt Soozie, R2A, Ginjoint, freyakat, cybercita, and Dr. E …)
Totally off-topic, and not to drag us away from the important task of naming our actor choices, but this info might help the techno-klutzes among us (and tonight, I definitely qualified as a techno-klutz)…
I had a tech-ooopsie tonight. Yeah, it even happens to the techies. I normally keep my beverages below the level of the keyboard or the laptop, so when they spill (notice I didn’t say if), they don’t douse the electronics. I park my tea or coffee on a low stool next to or on a shelf below the computer.
So smart of me, until I managed to knock my charging cellphone off the table right into my mug of tea. I was shuffling some papers, heard a Ker-Plunk!, and there it was, swimming in my Earl Grey.
I’ve rescued lots of drowned electronics in my time, but never my own. The phone was completely submerged, but fortunately, I don’t take milk or sugar in my tea, and I chose to forgo the lemon tonight. All that stuff is corrosive, conductive, or icky-sticky, bad news for electronics.
I grabbed the phone and quickly disconnected the charger plug and removed the battery. I opened the little dustcovers and shook out all the liquid, there wasn’t much. I wiped it off with paper towels. I used about half a can of air duster to get the innards dry without actually disassembling the phone.
It didn’t seem bad, there wasn’t visible liquid in the main display, maybe a little moisture in the secondary display (it’s a cheap flip-phone). The battery compartment was dry. So I decided to plug it in without the battery to see what would happen.
Verizon logo, that’s a good sign. I put the battery in. Verizon logo, but the phone didn’t boot up. A bunch of secret handshake keypresses, and now I was stuck at an emergency flash ROM bootblock screen, telling me it was connected to USB and awaiting a download.
“Crap!” Lots of Googling did me no good, basically they all said the phone was bricked and it was time to buy another one.
I left the phone on for a few minutes, and now the screen was flashing on and off. Remove battery. Put head in hands. Groan.
If this were my own personal phone, I would have gone on eBay to buy another used phone and dealt with it. But this is my work phone, and in the toxic environment where we have to provide our own paper clips and staples, good luck dealing with the procurement satraps to get a cellphone replacement.
Among the posts in my fruitless Google search were recommendations to bury the phone in a bag of rice for a few days to absorb moisture. “I’ve got lots of those silca gel packs laying around, I suppose I could use them,” I thought.
“What the hell, I’ll try the rice.” Of course, the Google posts I read probably assumed that one had a bag of cheap white rice in the house that was expendable. Me, I only had a pricey bag of Lundberg brown and wild rice in the refrigerator.
Putting the phone in rice reminded me of storing truffles in rice. At least you can eat the rice afterward and it tastes like truffles. Who wants to eat rice that tastes like a cellphone?
I decided to dump the rice in a bowl and nuke it for a minute to warm it up and drive off any moisture. I did the nuke-and-stir routine 2-3 times until the rice was very dry and very warm, then I put the phone in another bowl and poured the rice over it.
“It’s already broken, I can’t hurt it much more,” I thought.
I left it for an hour, then came back to check on it. I unearthed it (unriced it?), shook out the rice, and saw condensation in the main screen. I plugged in the charger cable, and damned if the phone didn’t boot right up. I did it again with the battery connected. Booted right up, but the main screen was a bit fogged with moisture.
I made a call, some of the numbers on the keypad were a little iffy, but it worked. I received a call, it worked.
I took out the battery, nuked the rice until it was good and hot, and buried the phone again. I think I’ll be repeating this for the next few hours until I head to work.
I think the reason the rice worked so quickly (hours instead of days) is because I nuked it to drive off pre-existing moisture and got the rice hot in the process.
So kiddies, remember this tale if you drop your phone in the drink. Unplug, remove battery, shake out the liquid, dry it as well as you can, spritz a bunch of canned air, then bury it in hot raw rice.
(… goes back to nuking rice… I now return the blog to its mission of finding actors to portray us in the DTWOF movie …)
@hoh: That sucks. Not that you have it working now, but that it fell in exactly the correct manner to land nicely in a mug of liquid. Glad to hear there is a good chance you have saved it.
There is actually a picture of Ginjoint on this site somewhere. She and AB took a snap at a talk of AB’s several years ago. I have no idea what she sounds like, but if her ID tag line is any indication I would guess her to be a bit graveled.
[sudo Have a happy thanksgiving all. –Mentor]
[P.S. @hoh: Does that help? –M]
@Mentor (#70)
sudo? Ah, root to the rescue. Alas, it’s not an Android phone, where a rooted user could use sudo, it’s a cheap CDMA Qualcomm-based BREW phone. And I never did get Bitpim to recognize this phone, either before or after the dunking.
My personal phone (used via eBay) is also a cheap CDMA Qualcomm-based BREW phone, but at least I’ve got it slightly hacked so I can tether my laptop and my portable 3G router.
My next personal phone will be an Android, I’m waiting for a 4G version for my carrier, so I can root and tether at high bandwidth. That’s the only reason I would pay for a brand-new phone instead of buying something used off eBay.
N.B. De-clique-ification… This is an inside joke for the few Linuxheads/Unixheads on the blog, among them ksbel6. The sudo command is how a non-privileged user gives her/himself temporary root (administrator) privileges on a *nix system to execute a command that requires god-like powers.
A phone based on Android (e.g. the Motorola Droid) is using a Linux kernel, and can be hacked to do all sorts of really neat things.
How often I’ve wished I had a sudo command I could call up in real-life.
As in sudo rm -rf /GOP
(De-clique-ification… delete all files/directories under the Republicans without prompting for confirmation.)
But Mentor has the right spirit of the season…
sudo Happy Thanksgiving y’all
[…or to the phrase this another way, the powers-that-be have decreed that you will have a Happy Thanksgiving. –Mentor]
(… goes back to greping for dinero …)
In our movie, there would have to be some serious field trips to various geological sites. Someone would invariably launch into a disquisition of Mary Anning, an amateur fossil collector of the early 1800s recently treated to Tracy Chevalier’s fine story-telling skills. Also, there would be a formidable effort to assist Maggie Jochild in a quest to seek the best Tex-Mex in Austin. It will be an Epic Journey. With time travel and everything!
Special to Ian: Nathan Fillion of Firefly. Castle’s OK, but I love me some Firefly. Also, have you ever seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along?
On gravel-voiced actors: anyone in to add Catherine Keener to this movie? I’ve loved her ever since Walking and Talking.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is indeed my favorite Fillion character. Just fantastic.
@hoh: I have a Samsung Mesmerize (just got it in early Nov) and it is oooohhhh sooooo much fun. You would absolutely love this phone.
72 Judybusy. I expect Sarah Waters will want to do the screenplay?
(hairball #62) How is your voice? Please remember that my bronchitis (or worse) began with laryngitis that snowballed out of control… something is definitely going around out here on the High Plains, and (I think) back east, as well. Just remember how under the weather Jon Stewart was when he did his epic interview with Rachel Maddow a few days ago. If you have the same thing that I’m just now getting over, you don’t want let it get out of hand like it did for me! I do, agree, however, that hot tea is very, very soothing on an irritated throat. In fact, I think that I’ve switched from being a confirmed coffee drinker to being a jasmine green tea drinker during my illness!
Hey, I just realized something… when Captain Janeway and the crew of the starship Voyager finally made it back to Earth, and Captain Janeway was promoted to Admiral Janeway (much to the consternation of many real-life Star Trek nerds who thought that Picard or Cisco should have been promoted first), she also switched from drinking coffee to drinking tea. Wow, it’s like I’m following in her footsteps! Of course, some bad things also happened when Voyager returned to Earth: the Doctor was arrested by StarFleet on charges on being an agitator for holographic rights, and Janeway herself was briefly accused of being a borg queen.
@ksbel6 (#69)
I remember that photo of Ginjoint, mostly because in my mind’s eye, I had envisioned what she looked like based on her handle. I was quite surprised to find out she’s not black. So don’t assume her voice is gravelly based on her moniker.
@Kate L (#76)
No infectious ailments in my system, at least not at the moment. This is my so-called normal speaking voice, made just a tad raspier by my digestive woes and the demands of my recent training/presenting cycle with lots of required speaking and voice fatigue.
I had no idea gravel-voiced women were such a turn-on to this crowd. Where have you been all my life?
(… goes back to warily eyeing her cup of tea …)
@hoh: Point well made. Also, the sexiest thing my gravel-voiced (smoker for a long time, but quit last January and has made it almost through the year) lady does is order a vodka martini…”I would like a vodka martini, dirty, and just whisper vermouth across the top.” It gets me every time.
Happy Thanksgiving! Remember…You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant, excepting Alice!
Sharing this on National Don’t Trust A Whitey Day (slogan from “I’m On Indian Time” at FB):
LESBIAN THANKSGIVING SONG
(sung to the tune of Over The River And Through The Woods)
by Maggie Jochild
Out of the city and into the woods
To lesbian land we go
Our truck tires have spikes
To carry the dykes
Through the mud and drifting sno-ow
Away from misogyny, commerce and mess
To wimmin’s land we press
We’ll cleanse our heads and share our beds
With thanks to Great Goddess
(#80) Oh, Maggie! I was planning on dinning on a turkey roll today, but it turned out that a local restaurant was hosting a Thanksgiving buffet so I went there. And, as I had Thanksgiving dinner, who did I see going through the buffet line than a woman with short, spiky hair wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans. I tried to catch her eye, but I don’t think she saw me. I think that we could have become… friends.
(#77) Oh, hairball!Where have you been all my life! Where has this entire group been all my life!!!
@79:***Walks into room,looks around,and starts humming Arlo Guthrie’s classic song Alice’s Restaurant.
It’s an 18 minute talking story song,in the tradition of Arlo’s famous singer/songwriter father Woody Guthrie,that tells the true story of how Arlo got arrested on Thanksgiving for littering. Arlo thus acquired a police record which got him out of the draft for the war against Viet Nam. The movie Alice’s Restaurant came out in 1969.
Many Boomers love to sing that song,’cuz it has SIGNIFICANCE for us,and it’s funny.
The new TSA screening procedures have me wishing more forlornly than ever for a return of DTWOF.
Max Axle on his way to a drag-king convention: “Yeah. Touch my junk.”
Feminista #82
“That was horrible. If you want to end the war and stuff, you’re going to have to sing louder than that!”
Arlo was in the Macy’s parade yesterday. I just caught the end. I think that he had his daughter with him.
Hairball, I’m at a loss to imagine what “really neat things” a phone can be hacked to do. I have no use for a cell phone (What would I want a phone for? Someone might CALL me!) so the idea that they have additional, unauthorized uses mystifies me.
And remember, “Alice’s Restaurant” is not the name of the restaurant, it’s just the name of the song… and that’s why we call the song “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Nice Dr E.
I may have to update my actor stand-in…
At Turkey Day dinner, I was explaining the current thread to my rental daughters and Mom, and told them I was going to be played by Julie Kavner.
“Brenda Morganstern? Are you kidding? You’re Abby!” said rental daughter #1.
“Oh yeah, definitely Abby,” chimed in daughter #2. “Even though you’re not Goth. But you wear black all the time, just like she does.”
Here’s where not owning a TV has hampered me. I have passing familiarity with what’s going on in popular culture TV, but I lack the details.
“What’s her real name?” I asked, taking mental notes.
“Pauley Perrette. She’s really really smart and knows all this stuff about everything. Her character is brilliant and eccentric, just like you.”
“Thanks [RD #2], I guess that’s actually a compliment?”
“Definitely.”
Mom added that Abby sleeps in a coffin and has lots of tatoos.
“I guess I’ll pass on the coffin part. And the tatoos.”
So there you have it. Kavner’s voice, but Perrette’s persona.
P.S. The turkey wasn’t overcooked this year. I was shocked. But the brownies were burnt. Something’s got to be overdone for this to be a true home-cooked meal.
(… goes back to munching on her granola bar …)
No gravelly voice here, but our local alt station did play “Alice’s Restaurant” yesterday. They do this every Thanksgiving, and it’s one of those little quiet traditions that always make me smile. One of the DJs for this station also plays snippets from the Thanksgiving episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati” – the one that involved the infamous turkey drop.
Somewhat ironically, Britain’s biggest turkey farmer, Bernard Matthews, died yesterday. On Thanksgiving. Talk about timing!
“Who knew turkeys can’t fly?” Ah, yes.
HoH, Abby is on NCIS. I don’t watch it but I still made the connection, and yes, it is a compliment.
Ian, please, PLEASE tell us it was an inside job by the turkeys, ‘cuz that would be epic, as the kids say these days.
Sadly Ginjoint, it wasn’t. Nor bird flu either.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has finally elbowed its way onto Canadian cable television, having just been given a license to begin operations as would any other fledgling cable network. This means that it will actually have to secure a spot with individual Canadian cable and satellite carriers. Originally, Murdoch wanted his Sun TV News in Canada to operate just like his Fox News Channel does in the U.S., meaning that anyone subscribing to basic cable in Canada would get the new Murdoch channel no matter if they wanted it or not, and that part of their basic cable subscription payment would go to Murdoch’s News Corporation even if they never watched it. The CRTC, Canada’s governing body on such matters, shot that proposal down weeks ago, though. A few years ago, Fox News Channel actually had a sort of dry run for what it wants to show its potential Canadian audience (if any, eh?). It was the same mix of marginal right-wing commentators who would be elevated to prominence simply because they are on Murdoch’s network. After all, Glenn Beck was a morning “Zoo” DJ before he landed his present gig on Fox, calling President Obama Hitler and Rockefeller Center in New York communist (no joke, he has).
As in, “‘What do you paint, when you paint a wall?’ said John D.’s grandson Nelson”?
#92 Ian: There are turkeys in England? I’m shocked,shocked I say, that that particular colonial import took a slow ship across the pond. Do you have cranberries,too?
@Feminista(95): Turkeys were brought back in the 16th century along with tobacco and potatoes. I’m told that the pilgrim fathers actually took turkeys with them from England *to* North America. Cranberry sauce has been around for a little while, since the 80s, but actual cranberries on the supermarket shelves have only appeared on shelves very recently.
Obviously in Britain we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But we do eat turkeys at Christmas. That is a late Victorian tradition, however. Previously the traditional Christmas fayre was either goose or a joint of beef.
“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired.
“I should hope I did,” replied the lad.
“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there — Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?”
“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy.
“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck.”
–Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”, Stave 5
Completely off topic and nothing to do with turkeys either, but if Hairball or anyone else likes live opera AND Jeanette Winterson, Radio 3 is currently broadcasting Don Giovanni with Jeanette speaking about it in the interval. I THINK this is available internationally through the website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w5lv4
#96 : Verrrry interesting. The things we learn on this blog!
I had heard about the Xmas goose and roast beef,though.
#88: I love the song Alice’s Restaurant. Listened to it Thursday night on You Tube.
The Guthrie singing tradition continues into the third generation. Woody and Marjorie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee is the most well-known of her siblings in folk music circles,though all of them are musicians.
Feminista, Abe has toured with his father for what seems like forever also. He plays keyboard and on occasion sings.
Re 97, A Christmas Carol was published in December 1843. Wikipedia doesn’t mention alternative editions, so I suppose the passage NLC quoted was present in the first edition. That’s obviously not the late Victorian era, but I wonder how to interpret the passage: is Scrooge buying the Cratchits a typical Christmas dinner, or an exotic luxury? If the latter, Ian may still be right that the English tradition of eating turkey at Christmas dates from the late Victorian era.
Either way, nice catch NLC.
The British Turkey Information Service says that it was Edward VII (3D), (the monarch following Queen Victoria) that actually made turkey at Christmas popular. It also says that turkey was a luxury in Britain until the advent of refrigerators in the 1950s.
This link also has examples of what’s popular in other countries. I quite like the sound of curried goat, venison or lutefisk myself.
@Ian (#103)
Lutefisk? You might like the sound of it, but I’ll bet you a pint of Guinness you won’t be able to abide the smell of it. We’ve got a Minnesota contingent here who can explain the pungent charms of lutefisk. Or perhaps just the pungency.
Italians and Spanish cultures have bacalao, but once you soak all the salt out of it and cook it, it doesn’t smell.
I think it must be the lye that makes lutefisk so gross.
Going back to cranberries… if they are a recent import to the UK, what did folks do for urinary tract and bladder infections? Common knowledge on this side of the pond is to drink lots of cranberry juice for these conditions. Cranberry juice is so high in acid, it makes for an inhospitable environment for bacteria.
Most cranberry drinks (aka cranberry juice cocktail) are no more than 15-20% cranberry juice due to the high acid level, and folks generally prefer cranberry blended with other juices and lots of sugar. But purists exist, and I’m one of them. Over the years, I developed a taste for unsweetened 100% cranberry juice. Now THAT’S tart. Pucker up, baby.
The British Turkey folks left out wide swaths of cultures in their Christmas food survey. For example, what do Jews eat for Christmas? Let me quote US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan during her recent confirmation hearings; when asked where she was at Christmas “…like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-horowitz/a-very-kagan-christmas-oy_b_633704.html
(… goes back to wishing for the fishy charms of nova …)
@Diamond (#98)
Thanks for the tip. I was listening to Susan Graham in Handel’s Xerxes today, broadcast on WQXR. I was not familiar at all with the opera, but I liked it, particularly the instruments, which sounded like period instruments.
(… goes back to wondering how anything can be off-topic around here …)
Anthony B#102: Here is an on-line copy that claims to the “text of 1843” and it mentions the turkey.
As to your question as to what the turkey was meant to indicate, I suspect it was your second choice (i.e. “an exotic luxury”). In the third chapter/stave (The Ghost of Christmas Present) the still-poor Cratchits are shown having goose for their holiday dinner.
ahem. That should be Andrew B, of course…
@NLC, Ian, Andrew
I’m not so sure about the perceived luxuriousness of the turkey.
According to the Victorian Web notes on “A Christmas Carol”:
—
Although we associate Victorian Christmas festivities with roast goose, for those who could not afford it the meatier turkey was preferable. The North American M. gallopavo had already been domesticated in Mexico, and shortly after the Spanish discovery of that country in 1518 was introduced to Europe for the table (OED XI, 480).
—
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/xmas/pva116.html
Turkey. The pragmatic choice. More meat on the bones.
Off topic: Went to see Tangled with the offspring and a friend yesterday. Great…story line was interesting, lots of good action scenes that were terrific for 3D, funny, etc. Then I started thinking, does this pass the Bechdel test? There are certainly two prominent female characters that talk to each other about more than men…but one of them has a name that is VERY difficult to catch because it is said so very few times. Instead she pretty much gets labeled the way many Disney women do…Honey, Darling, Sweety, etc.
hoh#108:
This is getting pretty far off the topic (but, as noted, what does that mean here…) but a couple final notes:
1] The original point was that, up above, some folks expressed surprise that turkey was even available “over there”. The passage from aCC was meant simply to indicated it had been around, and in common use for some time.
2] As to what the gift of the turkey “meant”, I think in the context of the story it’s reasonable to assume that Dickens intended it to represent a substantial extravagance. It would kind of defeats the purpose of Scrooge’s transformation if it were anything else.
@NLC (#110)
Actually, the last few posts have been much more ON-topic, they are at least referencing turkey. We’ve more-or-less segued back to one of the cartoon themes.
Perhaps turkey was considered both the pragmatic choice and the luxury choice, precisely because there is more meat on the bones. More to eat at the table, a real luxury.
Now to take it off-topic again… who would play you in the DTWOF movie?
(… piles on another layer of clothes before she trundles out the door for breakfast …)
O.K., HoH, I’m sure you’ve seen Christmastime for the Jews, but just in case not, there ya go. Also, I tried to think of someone I resemble re: the movie role thing, but came up empty. Sorry. And damn, NLC – that was some sweet catch there!
Robbie Coltrane in his Hagrid guise.
[HAL — Mentor]
Mentor, I just laughed so hard I started coughing. You are priceless.
@114: Great, now every time I read a mentor comment it will be done with HAL’s voice!!
I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, ksbel6.
Maggie, YOU are priceless! You made me laugh out loud.
I just watched Wall-E with a 30-something neighbor, and when the Evil Autopilot character came on with that steady, unblinking light, I said, “Hal!” Of course, she said, Huh? Sigh.
@Andi: Congrats on your blog win!
@118: Yeah, some o’these younguns don’t get all our references,but we outnumber ’em! Don’t forget that we Boomers rock!
Ms. Bechdel: So sorry to hear that you feel that you’re not producing tangible results on your new graphic memoir, but all things great and wonderful take time and as you know, an inordinate amount of patience. I’m sure that with the advent of the new year, things will fall into place and you will begin to see the fruits of your labors. We are all waiting with bated breath and burning curiosity to find out what you have in store for us !!
@Andi: I’m a 30 something (just barely, only about 10 more months) and I get the HAL references. Probably because I’m a total geek though.
@Maggie: You are hysterical. 🙂
Whenever Mentor has to snip something from the blog, he should say,”I’m sorry, but I just can’t allow you to do that.”!
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is currently speaking in the auditorium next to the campus building where my geology dept. office is. No one is at the speech protesting dreaded Obamacare, so my fears were unfounded.
Geek trivia:
HAL is just IBM with the letters turned back one.
More trivia: Arthur C. Clarke’s novel version of 2001, published in the late 60’s, starts out with the observation that there are 6 billion people in the world in 2001. I wondered at the time if that would be true, esp. since the world population in the late 60’s was more like 3.5 billion, but Clarke turned out to be accurate!
119@Feminista,
Thanks! And here’s a link to my NPR interview that aired this morning. It has pictures, too!
(Sorry Hal, uh, I mean Mentor, I don’t know how to make this url shorter…)
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kunc/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1729381/Regional/For.Boulder.Wildfire.Victims..a.Long.Recovery
KateL@124:
The quick answer here is that, yes, during most of modern history the earth’s (human) population has doubled about every 30 years.
Here’s another way to look at this:
— 30 years ago was 1980.
For those of sufficient age pick an event from that time, say Reagan’s election.
— OK, got that image in mind?
(Doesn’t seem all that long ago, right?)
— Now, look out your window, see all those folks out there?
— Consider this:
There are now twice as many people out there as there were the day Reagan was elected.
[And, yes, I understand that most of the folks reading this list probably don’t live in a locale for which the local population has necessarily doubled during that period. But you know what I mean…]
Re: predictions for the future, check out this cartoon depicting Orwell v. Huxley:
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-vs-orwell-infinite-distraction-or-government-oppression/
#121 ksbel6: Note I said *some* youngins. By the way,we used to say intellectual instead of geek,and I still prefer it. It’s hard living in a anti-intellectual society.
My kewl niece,27,understands my puns and gets many of my references.Her brother,23,is great at computer consultation,which he does in a non-patronizing manner. Both are open to learning and asking questions. I guess it runs in the family.
Cathy, great cartoon–I read Postman’s book about 20 years ago, when I was young enough for it to have an impact on my media consumption. Invaluable! As soon as I read your beginning line, “Re: predictions for the future” Postman’s book immediately leapt to mind. Thanks for sharing!
Neil Postman is the reason I still have actual chalk boards (as opposed to the supposedly better, but not really, white boards that you use markers on) and an overhead projector. I actually had a student last year ask me, “what is that thing…oh, like an LCD projector but not quite?” Not even kidding.
NLC (#126) OK, that explains world population growth between 1968 and the year 2000. But where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars!*
* – My favorite line ever from actor Avery Brooks. Brooks has played many different characters, including Captain Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space 9, but this line actually is from a millenial tv commercial that he did.
I want my underwater cities!
I don’t get the HAL reference! (And I’m old! SHould I get it?)
J.
Oh (wo)man, I am late to the party again (work, busy, wrist strain, avoiding too much keyboard), but I only got to comment #19 above (Hairball, natch) and I have tears in my eyes from laughing (“most years the turkey is so dry it’s like chewing on roasted Kleenex”). Where do all the dykely sprites get their brilliance?
I also guffawed on yer last panel, AB. So true! (not that I ever went back to meat, mind you). Love the drawing. So clever. So humble. So fun. So you. I’m giving thanks! 🙂
@jbt (#133)
HAL is HAL9000, the artificial intelligence computer run amok from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, HAL has a very distinctive voice, soothing but ultimately evil. HAL starts to malfunction, and attempts to kill the crew of the spaceship.
The line, “I’m sorry Dave, I afraid I can’t do that” occurs when HAL is trying to kill off the crew and astronaut Dave Bowman is locked outside the spaceship. HAL won’t let him back in, and utters the famous line. Bowman sneaks back in via an emergency airlock.
The astronauts try to disable HAL. The climactic scene occurs when Dave Bowman is pulling out HAL’s circuit boards one-by-one to disable HAL, and HAL’s intelligence is regressing to a child-like state, and he starts speaking his early programming history and instructions, culminating with him singing “Daisy Blue.”
Put it in your Netflix queue, it’s a great movie.
(… goes off singing, “Daisy Daisy, give me your answer blue…” …)
“Now that your ship is in Jupiter space, and the rest of your crew has been revived, the true purpose of your mission, which has been known only to your HAL 9000 computer, can be told to you.”
– Dr. Heywood Floyd’s prerecorded message to David Bowman and the crew of the Discovery, which came on-line as Bowman was completing the deactivation of HAL.
Arthur C. Clarke said later that HAL was as much a victim as villain, having been given irreconcilable programming to maintain mission secrecy at all costs, even from the outbound Discovery crew of Bowman and Frank Poole.
Love the font! It’s reminiscent of Gorey’s hand-drawn type.
@R2A
Glad you’re back and enjoyed the laugh. But the burning question here is, “Who would play you in the DTWOF movie?”
We haven’t heard from Aunt Soozie in a while, I’m thinking Bette Midler would do a credible beaver dance à la Soozie.
(… goes back to incarceration in the cube farm …)
Totally off-topic, another tale from the Cube Farm…
One of the odd things about working in a Cube Farm is seeing just how territorial folks can be about their little fabric-covered fiefdoms.
In my current workgroup, we tend to gather ourselves in nearby cubes that aren’t assigned to us when we are collaborating on a project or idea. Our nomadic cube existence is made possible because many of us are in the field part-time. It’s much easier than reserving a conference room and then having to clear out at the end of each day.
Cube-squatting ticks off the rightful inhabitants of these cubes, especially if we make a mess or disturb their computer settings. Even if we’re not squatting, it’s pretty common to sit in someone else’s cube and leave coffee stains while chatting with coworkers.
I’m also guilty of cube territoriality, but I don’t get that many interlopers. This is because I maintain my desk as a branch of the local toxic waste dump. Random bits of electronic assemblies, piles of paper, network cables, and a never-ending supply of napkins and cutlery from takeout seem to deter most folks from taking up residence in my cube.
Thus, it is the neat and fastidious folks who get uninvited guests. Slobs like me are left alone.
One of these neat freaks is Vanessa, an admin assistant. Her desk is always tidy, and when she takes time off, she has a ritual of cleaning and organizing everything, then putting up a sign warning interlopers to not mess with her stuff.
This of course, is red meat to the nomads and pranksters. We take our cue from whatever warnings Vanessa has posted on her “Keep Out” sign.
There was the sign that warned us “Don’t Touch My Stuff.” Everyone who came in the office was photographed TOUCHING her desk, including one guy who appeared to be licking it. We printed out all the photos on the color laser and festooned her cube with them. She was grossed out by the tongue, out came the Clorox disinfecting wipes to clean her desk.
Another time her sign warned, “Don’t Rearrange My Things.” Oh the fun we had with that one. We turned her cube into Reverso-Land. The computer on the left, and the phone on the right? They switched places. The file organizers? Not only did they get moved around, we reversed the order of the files in them. Finally, we photographed the papers on her cube walls and carefully reversed their places, everything that lived on the right wall migrated to the left in reverse order, the left wall papers migrated to the right in reverse order. The look on her face was priceless when she tried to figure out what we did to her cube.
Vanessa took Thanksgiving week off, and as is her ritual, she organized and cleaned everything. Her warning sign read, “I have sanitized this desk. Do not eat here.”
First, we got a bunch of disinfectants and sanitizing products from the custodial staff, and loaded her desk with them. Then we got yellow “CAUTION” tape and barricaded the doorway to her cube. Finally, we made a sign that said the FDNY Hazmat Squad had decontaminated her cube.
Friday after Thanksgiving was a slow day at work.
“You know Gary, Vanessa’s cube just doesn’t look sanitized enough to me,” I said.
“What do you have in mind?”
I showed him the big roll of plastic shrink-wrap that we use to wrap equipment on pallets for shipment. He laughed, and then we got to work.
We shrink-wrapped her chair and put a sign on it, “Sanitized by Bedbugz-R-Us.”
Then we shrink-wrapped her side chair and made a bedbug sign for it.
“You know, those chairs might disappear unless we secure them somehow,” Gary remarked.
“No problem.” I shrink-wrapped the chairs to her desk.
“Do you think the cleaning products will disappear?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay…” Now the desk was shrink-wrapped.
“We wouldn’t want to see anything fall on the floor, right?” The top of the cube was shrink-wrapped.
“Well, it would be a shame if anyone walked into that nicely sanitized cube, wouldn’t it?” We shrink-wrapped the doorway, around the walls, and across the top again for good measure.
“It’s going to take a good pair of scissors to cut through all that shrink-wrap,” Gary observed.
Of course, Vanessa’s scissors were locked in one of her desk drawers under the mountain of plastic shrink-wrap.
It was so worth it to come in early on Monday morning, just to hear Vanessa scream, “Who did this?!?!”
Made my day.
(… goes back to counting down the time to freedom …)
Holy smokes, you are worse than Jim!! One of my favorite pranks, although I haven’t done it in awhile, is to put the copier in a foreign language…like Russian if it is available. Then watch people look at the machine like they have no idea how to run it…you know it runs the same way, no matter what language it is in…so I will walk up, take their original, say something clever like, “don’t you know Russian?” put it in the feeder, ask them how many, and then start the machine. Fun stuff!
@ksbel (#140)
I totally forgot one of the Reverso-Land details… we set her computer monitor to display upside-down. Even the login banner and screensaver were upside down.
Windoze users, you can do this easily… press [CTRL][ALT] and one of the arrow keys simultaneously. The down arrow flips the display upside-down, left and right arrows flip it 90 degrees on its side, up arrow puts everything back to normal.
We used to do the language change thing on the computers of unsuspecting victims, but now those settings are locked down by IT. I never thought of messing with the copier, that’s a good idea. Of course, we’d have to find a language setting on the copier that no one can read, a little hard in an office that’s so diverse it looks like the United Nations.
One time we set the language on our boss’s computer to Turkish. Of course, that also meant the keyboard was in Turkish, and he couldn’t get whatever keys he needed to login and set the language back to English. The best part of this prank was that we had a Turkish engineer in our office, and not only did he have to fix the boss’s computer, he got blamed for it. We set him up well, he wasn’t in on the prank at all. That’s a two-for-one.
cake, I love yr drawings, just wanted to say. And welcome back, R2A. And Andi, I recommended your blog + NPR interview over at FB; hope some folks I know get as much from it as I am.
Thanks Maggie! Nice comment from h_o_h on the latest post. Thanks to all DTWOF-ers for their support, and happy almost-December!
Once more into the breach, dear friends. The anti-LGBT forces will be meeting this evening in the Moo U student union building to rev themselves up for the Smallville city commission vote next week to add LGBT to the categories mentioned in the local human rights ordinance (military service is already there, but the anti-forces say that a “choice” like being LGBT should not be. Oh, and the anti forces also say that this is all part of an LGBT agenda to take over the country, starting with Smallville). Best case outcome: the city commission votes favorable next week (and in the required second hearing vote later on), and you never see the anti-LGBT antics on YouTube. Worst case outcome: Smallville becomes famous on the internet: Hey, was that Kate L being chased around the city commission chamber by a reparative therapist?
Oh, Hairball (@139). Hysterical, but I rather hope (although I doubt) that poor Vanessa does it on purpose to get a rise out of you lot.
@139 HOH…we have the same Vanessa creature in our department, except her name is Barb. And she probably has more power than Vanessa, as no one dares to upset Barbaraland. So, how do I find out her computer password, so I can make her monitor show everything upside down???? (Conchata Ferrell would play Barb, except Barb does not have her wonderful gravel honey voice nor her gusto laugh).
Hi rambunctious rabble-rousers. Why, I would be honored if Mother Jones would play ME – she’s one of the best agitators ever known! ‘Cept, oh right, she passed quite awhile back there… So, hmmmm, who from pop-culturelandia would play R2A, a world I truly truly know not. Paula Poundstone? Geena Davis? Help me out here…
Oh, and Hairball, zoinks, you scare me, girl!!!
@Renee (#146)
You don’t have to know her password. Log in as yourself, then flip the screen and logout. It will stay flipped, including the login banner and the screensaver.
If she’s silly enough to walk away from her computer without locking it, you can quickly do the [CTRL][ALT] down-arrow and then scurry off before she knows what hit her. Unlike you logging in with your own account, this won’t leave any trace of the culprit (unless you’ve got security cameras pointed at her cube).
N.B. I’m assuming that you can log into any computer on the network, not just the one assigned to you.
(… chuckles at what havoc this knowledge will wreak at the workplaces of DTWOFers …)
@Marj (#145)
Vanessa knows that she’s going to come back to something when she takes time off, she just never knows what.
It’s not intended to be malicious at all, it’s just poking fun at her oh-so-tidy workspace and her fierce guarding thereof.
After she hacked her way through all the plastic shrink-wrap (one of the guys helped her undo all the plastic), she found a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolate we left next to her keyboard. She laughed while trying to keep a scowl on her face. “You guys… I could just kill you.”
We’re not beyond being malicious, of course. It just has to be deserved. Like the cheapskate former employee who used to consume other folks’ beverages in the refrigerator and never contributed his own. He also liked to stay in his chair and roll down the aisle to the printer, which is pretty obnoxious 20 times a day. We “fixed” his chair… we sawed off a piece of one caster, giving it a flat spot. No more rolling down the aisle for him, he had to get his lardbutt out of the chair to get his printouts.
#148: R2A: Why,Marga Gomez could play you. 🙂
Mmmm, Ferrero Rocher…
ok I’m less intimidated now, Hairball. I could’t help feeling if that stuff ever happened to me at work (me who happens to keep a very neat & tidy cube – spawn of an OCD horder, what can I say?), that I would really end up crying….
But in fun, w chocolate? why that’s a whole different matter altogether. 🙂
I feel better too.
Update to the Cube Farm tales…
You will be pleased to know that Boomerang Karma really works. Gary and I got bitten in our respective tuchases yesterday by the Great Goddess In The Sky. I’m sure at least a few of you whispered in her ear to teach us a lesson.
It all started with my desire for a cup of tea. Our water cooler has a hot water spigot, so this is normally no big deal, except when the water bottle is empty. There are a handful of us in the office who are diligent about replacing the 5-gallon (20 liter) water bottle atop the cooler, and I’m the only female who does it regularly.
If you’ve ever had to replace the water bottle, you know it is an somewhat unnerving affair, hoisting a heavy (42 lb/19kg) bottle up high, then quickly inverting it and plopping it on the cooler base, without pouring water all over the floor.
So there I was, mug in hand, and the water cooler had just enough left to make precisely 2/3 cup of tea. I wandered down the hall in search of another cooler to top off my mug.
While the tea was brewing, I went to the supply room with an office chair, grabbed a new water bottle, and wheeled it down the hall to the office.
Gary saw me coming with the bottle and said, “I’ll take care of that.”
“Great, thanks.”
I held the chair as he removed the plastic cap from the new bottle. He hoisted it up high, and as he inverted the bottle on top of the cooler, his grip slipped, the bottle entered the cooler at an angle, the cooler nearly toppled, and the bottle crashed to the floor, soaking the carpet and Gary’s shoes.
I stood the bottle upright.
“You okay?” I asked Gary.
“Yeah, my hand slipped.”
Now he was mad, and his hands were wet and slick from the water. He lifted the bottle from the floor to waist height, rested it on his knee to change grips, and lifted it overhead to invert it.
I stabilized the cooler as Gary inverted the bottle and plopped it on the cooler.
This time, his wet hands slipped as he lowered the bottle onto the cooler. It bounced, then landed on the floor upright. This caused a tsunami of water, maybe two or three liters worth, to be ejected from the bottle straight in our direction.
I watched it come at me, transfixed, unable to duck out of the way of the oncoming wave.
Ker-Splash! I got hit in the face and torso with a lot of cold water. I was drenched. Gary got hit too, and his feet were totally soaked from the first attempt. We looked at each other, dripping wet, and started to laugh.
“You think this is Boomerang Karma?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Gary replied.
Third time was the charm. Gary got the now semi-depleted water bottle on the cooler. I grabbed the roll of paper towels and dried off my face, then pulled off my sweater and rolled it with a bunch of paper towels to soak up the water.
“You know, I came to work with wet hair this morning, and nearly twelve hours later, I’m leaving with wet hair. What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked Gary.
“Hey, I’m an old man, this is the only way I get a woman wet,” Gary countered.
We laughed. Just then, I noticed Adrianne, an admin assistant, writing on the whiteboard. She had seen the whole thing.
—
Gary and [h_o_h] battled the water cooler.
The water cooler won.
—
So, you can all sleep better tonight knowing that we got our comeuppance.
(… goes back to marveling at the equilibrium of the universe …)
@hoh: This is interesting to me…our water bottles at work have a thick plastic top we take off, but then a thinner inner layer that stays on until it is properly fitted onto the dispenser. The dispenser has a nifty little point that pops through the thinner layer to let the water out. Of course, the advantage being that water is not leaving the bottle until it is in the proper place, so no weird water spilling is going to occur. I always thought scenes like the one you just described that are always occurring in sitcoms were so fake because the water would never actually spill like that…now I know that not everyone has that safety precaution in place…all those scenes just became more funny!
@ksbel6 (#155)
The water bottles from our supplier (Deer Park Spring Water) have that feature, but they require compatible water coolers. Our water coolers are no-name brand X (lowest bidder!), which lack the matching little piercing doohicky, so we have to completely remove the plastic top and risk dumping water on the floor.
At least the bottles are plastic these days, which makes them lighter and much less dangerous to handle. I remember the era of glass water bottles… the full bottle weighed about 50lb/23kg. On occasion, someone would drop one, and all 5 gallons of water and a pile of broken glass would end up on the floor.
(singing) “and we all shine on…”
Y’know, I think there’s enough material here for a hit musical. Any composers/librettists out there want to tackle “Tales from the Cube Farm”?