Airport Delay
Airport security can cause problems for the anxious and insecure.
Tag: cartoons (page 2 of 2)
America’s Got Talent: Amerigo
A little joke in recognition of the return to television of one of our nation’s favorite television shows, “America’s Got Talent.”
Glass Ceiling No More
Making Excuses: A Talent Quickly Mastered
Though some skills are years of training and education in the making, others come quite naturally.
Too much Weight Given to Stats
Analytics! Sounds like a substitute curse word for Shaggy of the Scooby Doo gang. Zoinks! And it’s a bit of a mystery to me why statistics seem to be overtaking common sense and the good ‘ol fashioned eyeball in governing business decisions. Consider the practice of applying metrics to talent evaluation in the world of sports (see here For example). The capabilities of athletes are being projected based on statistical research as much as on watching their highlight reels.
Social media decisions are driven by data as well. Moreover, The number of hits, friends, reTweets, etc. that a person amasses on their accounts can genuinely affect their emotional outlook on said media, on communication, on their relationships, on their life even.
I’m calling for a simple backpedal. Let’s allow statistics to help promote our decisions not determine them.
Lab Rats are of Great Benefit to Men
Rats. They have the icky factor in spades. Needless to say, these vermin are unwanted. But that is exactly why they are valuable to us humans. They have been purposed, above all other creatures, for scientific testing. They are not so much our enemies, these lab rats. They are our surrogates.
Here’s a fairly thorough article which details the history of the lab rat: http://theconversation.com/animals-in-research-rats-16634.
Check out the story and then, the next time you see one of these fine little fellows, you’ll be thanking them for how they’re helping humanity before you let out a blood-curdling scream.
Microbrew Restaurants on the Rise in America
In the early 2000s, microbrew restaurants were seldom seen outside of large U.S. cities on the East Coast, Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain state. But visits to the craft beer brewhouses of the day (Sierra Nevada in Chico, California for example) helped convince wannabe brewmasters that their dreams to open similar home-crafted beer restaurants could indeed come true.
And so an explosion happened; Word spread of the quality beers produced by a growing number of dedicated, small batch beer distributors and restauranteurs. Word also spread, in some cases, about the quality food that was being offered. Goodbye no-frills pub grub.
In recent years, more and more craft beer restaurants opened. These businesses are succeeding. Today they can be found in all major U.S. cities and in many smaller cities and towns. Craft brewery restaurants are even beginning to open in downtrodden neighborhoods and are helping to turn these neighborhoods into must-experience destinations.
Craft brewing is changing the beer industry. What once may have seemed like a fad has now even captured the attention of large-scale distributors like Budweiser who recently parodied craft beers in their television ads. Mockery is the most sincere form of flattery, right?
The rise in popularity of these restaurants followed a similar rise in the healthy foods segment of the grocery industry. Stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and even lo-fi chain ALDI (with its Fit & Active selections) changed the marketplace with their selections.
Despite the higher costs of “healthy alternatives” people bought them, causing large grocery chain managers to section off areas of their stores just for these foods, foods which became increasingly available as more producers realized their products now had a place in the market.
Consider how ubiquitous the marketing terms for such foods have become, terms rarely used twenty years ago. These foods are advertised as local, natural, seasonal, environmentally friendly, hand crafted, whole grain, organic, gluten free, grass fed, farm fresh, farm to table, with no artificial flavors, preservatives or sweeteners and absolutely no Trans fats.
Many of these same terms are used to describe microbrews. Will you drink to that?
Bigfoot Leaves an Impression
Bigfoot is my favorite mysterious creature. Yep. BF is my BFF. I can identify with him more readily than the other camera shy monster types. For one, he walks upright–just like I’ve been doing since about 11 months. And, like me, he’s American (Washington state counts, right?). Sorry Nessie. I may have some Scottish roots, but I’ve never called her home.
Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it is often called, is also presumably a forest lover. The same goes for me. We both have hair and we both like to walk around barefoot. I cannot imagine him in a pair of Tevas, and I sincerely doubt that Timberlands come in BF sizes.
But what I might find most appealing about the Sasquatch is his take home factor. Bigfoot, I feel, would be the easiest creature to domesticate. The Jersey Devil might assault (or worse, eat) your loved ones and aliens might do similar, though by more high tech means. No aquarium at the pet store is going to be able to contain the Loch Ness Monster (or Champ, his relative known to inhabit Lake Champlain). Conversely, you’d be able to invite Bigfoot home to meet the family. A solitary sort, Bigfoot would naturally take to games of hide ‘n seek with the children, and if you’ve a daughter, she’d enjoy combing out his hair. But be wary of mites and burrs. And don’t ask him to play kickball with your loved ones, as injuries are certain to occur. And buy earplugs, ‘cuz the snoring! And also, consider dowsing him with a strong-scented perfume or cologne, ‘cuz the smell! Hmmm…maybe Sasquatch is best left to the wilds after all.
Remembering…
Remembering back to the holidays and birthdays of my childhood thirty some odd years ago, I realize that I’ve forgotten many of the presents I was given. Generally speaking, I could count on my uncle for a Lego set (at the time the only options were Lego town or space) and my grandparents on my mom’s side were always good for an outfit. I never did much appreciate the clothes they gave me–but I was always grateful for the wrapping paper. You see, my grandmother would wrap my gifts with the pages of the Sunday comics, aka “The Sunday Funnies.”
I loved reading comics.
I especially loved reading them on Sundays, when they were given the color treatment. I would come home from church and stalk the house for the paper, so I could get my hands on the latest escapades of Beetle Baily and Hagar the Horrible and Heathcliff and Garfield and–am I forgetting any other orange cat cartoons?
My hometown paper had a couple pages of color comics, but my grandparents? They lived much closer to New York City, and their “big city” Sunday paper had two or three times as many cartoons! Those that didn’t end up as gift wrap sat in a pile in gran’s attic, awaiting my arrival. Truthfully, there wasn’t much for a kid to do at my grandparents’ house when the weather outside was poor, so I just sat–sometimes even in the attic, immediately after grabbing the topmost pages from the pile–and read and read. I would read so many colored comics that my fingertips would ingest the ink from the pages and my eyes would begin to see halftone dots everywhere I looked.
Looking back, my grandmother, alive during the Great Depression, was probably just being thrifty when she chose to wrap my gifts in Sunday funnies. But in doing so, she presented extraordinary blessings–blessings of laughter and artistic appreciation that stimulate me to this day.
See the evidence as follows:
(My crack at a punchy 1-panel comic, a la “The Far Side” or Bizarro.”)
I’ll venture to post a cartoon such as this every week.
Scream? Ghosts Make Me Yawn.
A Halloween-themed mini comic.
