Recent Comments

1. about 6 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “Maybe. It’s possible somebody flagged it and the moderators deleted it, too. The reason I mentioned it is because it might have given @old_geek’s comment more context about who “they” referred to.”

   If that’s the case then the management of this restaurant (to extend the metaphor) has 86’d that comment. The handful of times I’ve observed that happen, the managers and staff take a dim view indeed of other patrons who are attempting to continue the disturbance.

   “Do you think asking to expand the scope of the conversation to “left-wing rage” is off-topic?”

   I think so. Talking about bad behavior in one context doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be discussed in all contexts, unless the person talking about the behavior is explicitly saying that this behavior only occurs in that context. It might also be interesting to discuss whether behavior that is bad in one context might be appropriate in a different context, and what the key to that difference is. But simply saying “Someone else did something similar somewhere else!” is irrelevant at best and whataboutery at worst.

2. about 8 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

   Perhaps. And if the story were told from her perspective I suspect we would get the same impression of her.

   At any rate, I wish they’d stop wasting time on this dead end. When she’s not in the day’s strip I have all I can do to remember she’s still around.

3. about 8 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I once described myself as “disoriented in the Orient” when I needed to travel several miles along a major road in Seoul and couldn’t remember whether to turn left or right onto it.

4. about 10 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Rat’s walking left to right across the desk in the first two panels, is nowhere to be seen in the third, and in the fourth has returned to his starting point on the left edge of the desk. It’s disorienting.

5. about 10 hours ago on Peanuts

   Gotta love people who can keep up both sides of a conversation singlehandedly.

6. about 10 hours ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Even when I was six I’m sure that “under the bed covers” would have been the first place I looked for a missing stuffed animal. Maybe the second.

7. about 10 hours ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Raising Calvin builds character.

8. about 10 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

   The first of my childhood friends who married did so when she and I were nineteen. There was a baby involved. I was not invited to the wedding and would not have accepted if I had been because I believed deep down to the marrow that she was making the mistake of a lifetime, that she’d have been much better off making a go of it as a single mother. Because she was a kind and generous soul, my adamance on this point somehow did not result in ruining our friendship. And a few years later her husband came out of nowhere and helped me through a tight spot. Just thinking of it now fills me with gratitude and humility. Alas, I haven’t seen either of them in fifteen years now, thanks mostly to an alienation caused by the disgraceful behavior of someone I did think very highly of in those days. I guess you never know.

   Another friend of ours followed not long after. I didn’t get an invite to that one either, though our relationship was much less fraught and I could have attended and been happy for him in good conscience. I really don’t mind, he may well have been trying to keep things small.

   Come to think of it I’ve been passed over for wedding invitations many times in my life. It would be very hypocritical of me to complain, because my being invited to a wedding, or worse still attending one, always fills me with crankiness at the ostentation of it all. Just the other day I got a save the date from a cousin and realized that the last time I can clearly remember speaking with her, Clinton was in office. Yet she’s invited me to fly across country on a holiday weekend. She should have saved herself a stamp.

9. about 11 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

   Same difference.

10. about 11 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

    I thought it was Brian till the last panel.