Comic for Thursday, Nov 11, 2004

Posted: 9:00 am, Thursday, November 11, 2004

Bit of a fluke on the right border of the panels, sorry. If I thought it detracted terribly, I'd do something about it, but, well, I don't.

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone. Armistice Day to the Old Timers, and I forget what the hell my Canadian friend called it the other day... We'll pretend she called it Tuke Day, eh?

I'm feeling good today, desipte the fact it's about eight degrees in my office. I think they sit around wondering how to make this place more unbearable.

I'm going to try and make it a while without getting overtly political today. I know exactly where this is going to fail, but I have a lot of stuff to talk about between now and then.

Mikey wrote me yesterday about an aspect of my rant. At one point, I claimed that I would be psyched and consider myself immensely successful if someday people wore t-shirts that I had made. Mikey pointed out that he had perhaps eight shirts bearing designs of mine, several of which still get worn. I think eight may be a bit high, but Mikey's right - I, evidently being one of the only Alumni Dawgs of any marginal artistic talent, drew the t-shirts for dorm events back in our ND days. The one of lasting impact seems to have been The Wake '97 shirt, although I did a few others. I had a really cool design cooked up for the Wake '99, that got shot down, and I did not exactly bear myself professionally in the wake of that (pun not intended). That was more or less the end of me drawing stuff for the dorm, too. Oh well. I'm kind of surprised I haven't had Ron or Pete wear an Alumni original yet. Huh.

2.0 espied someone on the subway yesterday reading American Gentrifier, and was horrified. After some investigation, we determined that it was a mock cover for a satire mag, but, God, is that funny.

We watched Supersize Me for 2.0's documentary film of the week the other night. I've read Fast Food Nation and My Year of Meats, and had read about stuff where the guy's liver started to shut down, so I knew what to expect, but, man, this was still shocking. (Both of those books are excellent, by the way.) One of the DVD extras was the greatest thing I've ever seen. He puts a Big Mac, a Filet O' Fish, some other crap, some McD's fries, a burger from a deli in the East Village, and fries from the same place, all in their own glass jars, to see what rate they degrade at. It took a while for the Big Mac to start going, but eventually, everything gets moldy and hideous - the real food from a greasy spoon in the East Village goes first, of course - except for the McDonald's French fries. After 12 weeks, they looked brand new. Not a speck of mold. Holy shit! By the way, there's a nifty Pac-Man game on the Supersize Me site.

Now for something completely random - for some reason, early Bob Dylan has been very soothing to me ever since the election (still not into the political bit, this doesn't really count), and I've come to the realization that my favorite Bob Dylan album is no longer either Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited. For some reason, I am completely and totally enamoured with his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. It's got some proto-rap spoken ramblings on it, like Talkin' World War III Blues and I Shall Be Free, which are OK. It's got one of his most popular songs ever on it, Blowin' In the Wind. It also has the undeniable classics Girl From the North Country, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Masters of War, and Don't Think Twice It's Alright. And my new second-favorite Dylan song, Bob Dylan's Dream, with lyrics so sad and beautiful that they're kind of staggering when sung in his not-yet world-weary voice. Also, the lyrics are comprehendible, unlike those of my favorite Dylan song, Desolation Row.

Sesame Street turned 35 yesterday, and can now run for president. Read the last paragraph. One more reason to hate the government, they manage to befoul Sesame Street. God, those bastards can ruin anything. Speaking of torturing Iraqis (click the link, if you think I'm just doing random nonsequitors), I can't think of anyone I'd rather have as Attorney General than the guy who wrote the memo saying 'torture the bastids!' and who represented Enron in an earlier station in life. I guess Satan wasn't available to replace Ashcroft, who, according to that article, is from the same town as Footloose.

Yeah, so, that's where the captain turned off the No Politics sign.

bullfrog