Random Stuff XXIX
I admit it: I read the newspaper for the comics more than anything else. I can go for five days on vacation without even glancing at a headline, but I get miffed when I return home to find that I've lost a crucial plot element in, say, 9 Chickweed Lane. Yet I'm also fascinated, in a bizarre, slightly morbid kind of way, by the popularity of some of the consistently, colossally unfunny comics littering the Arts & Entertainment section. For example, we have yet to see the first genuinely humorous Garfield strip since the title character evolved into his present, bipedal form-and that happened over twenty years ago. Regrettably, North America has no other national resource as limitless as Cathy Guisewite's vast reserves of jokes about dieting, clothes shopping and Mondays, perhaps the three most uniformly unfunny subjects ever conceived by the human brain. Comic strips like these are as immortal as they are banal-which proves that one theorem relating financial success with underestimating the poor taste of the American public. (Just consider this: the Qur'an placed #13 in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Top 1000 works most widely held in libraries. Garfield placed #15.)
One of the most enduring and stupidest of the enduring stupid comic strips is The Family Circus. Does anyone enjoy this cartoon besides grandmothers? This one-panel saccharine travesty has become so predictable that I've come up with a simple formula that fully parameterizes its Sunday edition. Any Sunday Family Circus may be classified into one of three categories. A Type I Family Circus features one of Billy's patented, sucrose- and ADHD-fueled romps all over the neighborhood, trekking for several miles between Points A and B some fifteen feet apart in Euclidean space, with extended pauses at every toy, in every nook and cranny, and at any other point of even remote interest, right down to the left lobe of the dog's pancreas. At the end of it all Billy delivers some lame excuse along the lines of "But I did come right over!" In a Type II Family Circus, the children are perched atop some landmark-a small hill, or a large boulder on the beach-triumphantly proclaiming "I bet we're the first people ever to climb up here," amid the spectral images of untold generations of families who had previously made the ascent, all the way back to the four cherubic Ogg children wearing mammoth-hide sun hats. Finally, a Type III Family Circus stars everybody's favorite poltergeist, Not Me, and occasionally his equally impish sister, Ida Know. There: I've saved you countless hours of excruciating tedium, as you'll never have to read the comic on Sunday ever again. The weekday version has proven more difficult to crack, with no fewer than eight partially overlapping categories.
Yesterday morning, I stopped at a traffic light most of the way to work. A minivan pulled up next to me, and a guy leaned out of the shotgun seat. "Do you know where we could find a Kohl's sporting-goods store?"
"Uh...do you have an address or a particular store in mind?"
"Oh, anywhere in Cleveland."
What was going through these people's heads? "I sure need some sporting goods right about now. Moreover, I refuse to shop at just any old sporting-goods store; only a Kohl's can possibly deliver satisfaction. I know! Let's just drive aimlessly around the greater Cleveland metro area-it's only 300 square miles, after all-and ask random people on the street, in neighborhoods that obviously lack major commercial centers, to point the way." We were at the very eastern edge of Cleveland; in fact, not in the city of Cleveland at all, but rather in Cleveland Heights (a distinction that sounds trivial, but that actually entails a 150-foot rise in elevation and a fivefold increase in property values). Admittedly, being astride a bicycle at the time, I was a better-than-average bet for knowing the location of such a business; but as it happened, I'd been riding more or less constantly downhill for twenty minutes in the opposite direction from the only sports emporium I can name in Ohio, and it isn't a Kohl's. Did it even occur to them to glance through a phone book or a Web site before they left their hotel, you know, to narrow it down to within at least a five-mile radius, and then start inquiring?
All of this flashed through my mind over the space of about five seconds. The passenger noticed my look of introspection, but mistook it for confusion. "That's K-O-H-L-S."
"Oh, yes, I know; it's just that I'm from east of town, and the nearest sporting-goods store I know of is about eight miles away."
"Okay-thanks."
I get people asking me for directions all the time around work. Bicycling must lend me an air of knowledge or authority or something. Most of the time, people want to know where they can find the patient parking for the hospital. I'm riding a bike: what gives anyone the impression that I'm such an expert on parking? Perhaps the lack of (1) three tons of metal around my body and (2) a cell phone makes me look unusually responsive to outside stimuli.
I've seen this before, and you may have, as well. I link to it here because I guffawed even more raucously on the second viewing, after my friend Thomps reminded me of it, and I wanted to keep a link handy. So off you go down memory lane, or perhaps not:
"I'm a Liberal", by Neal Gladstone
When I loaded the video in the above link, in the "Related" box off to the right there appeared a YouTube entry with a rather curious name. Intrigued, I clicked on it, and watched it until my face turned numb and a substance resembling Quakers Raisins 'n' Spice oatmeal started leaking from my ears-that is, for about ten seconds. By clicking the link below you will find out why I fear for the future of America. I must warn you that every minute watching this video will cost you about five IQ points.
Crazy mushmouthed lady delivers a message to "Sen. Barack Obama bin Laden"
Along the same lines, I found the best darn Venn diagram I ever did see. [via Pharyngula]
One of the most enduring and stupidest of the enduring stupid comic strips is The Family Circus. Does anyone enjoy this cartoon besides grandmothers? This one-panel saccharine travesty has become so predictable that I've come up with a simple formula that fully parameterizes its Sunday edition. Any Sunday Family Circus may be classified into one of three categories. A Type I Family Circus features one of Billy's patented, sucrose- and ADHD-fueled romps all over the neighborhood, trekking for several miles between Points A and B some fifteen feet apart in Euclidean space, with extended pauses at every toy, in every nook and cranny, and at any other point of even remote interest, right down to the left lobe of the dog's pancreas. At the end of it all Billy delivers some lame excuse along the lines of "But I did come right over!" In a Type II Family Circus, the children are perched atop some landmark-a small hill, or a large boulder on the beach-triumphantly proclaiming "I bet we're the first people ever to climb up here," amid the spectral images of untold generations of families who had previously made the ascent, all the way back to the four cherubic Ogg children wearing mammoth-hide sun hats. Finally, a Type III Family Circus stars everybody's favorite poltergeist, Not Me, and occasionally his equally impish sister, Ida Know. There: I've saved you countless hours of excruciating tedium, as you'll never have to read the comic on Sunday ever again. The weekday version has proven more difficult to crack, with no fewer than eight partially overlapping categories.
Yesterday morning, I stopped at a traffic light most of the way to work. A minivan pulled up next to me, and a guy leaned out of the shotgun seat. "Do you know where we could find a Kohl's sporting-goods store?"
"Uh...do you have an address or a particular store in mind?"
"Oh, anywhere in Cleveland."
What was going through these people's heads? "I sure need some sporting goods right about now. Moreover, I refuse to shop at just any old sporting-goods store; only a Kohl's can possibly deliver satisfaction. I know! Let's just drive aimlessly around the greater Cleveland metro area-it's only 300 square miles, after all-and ask random people on the street, in neighborhoods that obviously lack major commercial centers, to point the way." We were at the very eastern edge of Cleveland; in fact, not in the city of Cleveland at all, but rather in Cleveland Heights (a distinction that sounds trivial, but that actually entails a 150-foot rise in elevation and a fivefold increase in property values). Admittedly, being astride a bicycle at the time, I was a better-than-average bet for knowing the location of such a business; but as it happened, I'd been riding more or less constantly downhill for twenty minutes in the opposite direction from the only sports emporium I can name in Ohio, and it isn't a Kohl's. Did it even occur to them to glance through a phone book or a Web site before they left their hotel, you know, to narrow it down to within at least a five-mile radius, and then start inquiring?
All of this flashed through my mind over the space of about five seconds. The passenger noticed my look of introspection, but mistook it for confusion. "That's K-O-H-L-S."
"Oh, yes, I know; it's just that I'm from east of town, and the nearest sporting-goods store I know of is about eight miles away."
"Okay-thanks."
I get people asking me for directions all the time around work. Bicycling must lend me an air of knowledge or authority or something. Most of the time, people want to know where they can find the patient parking for the hospital. I'm riding a bike: what gives anyone the impression that I'm such an expert on parking? Perhaps the lack of (1) three tons of metal around my body and (2) a cell phone makes me look unusually responsive to outside stimuli.
I've seen this before, and you may have, as well. I link to it here because I guffawed even more raucously on the second viewing, after my friend Thomps reminded me of it, and I wanted to keep a link handy. So off you go down memory lane, or perhaps not:
"I'm a Liberal", by Neal Gladstone
When I loaded the video in the above link, in the "Related" box off to the right there appeared a YouTube entry with a rather curious name. Intrigued, I clicked on it, and watched it until my face turned numb and a substance resembling Quakers Raisins 'n' Spice oatmeal started leaking from my ears-that is, for about ten seconds. By clicking the link below you will find out why I fear for the future of America. I must warn you that every minute watching this video will cost you about five IQ points.
Crazy mushmouthed lady delivers a message to "Sen. Barack Obama bin Laden"
Along the same lines, I found the best darn Venn diagram I ever did see. [via Pharyngula]