Cartoonist Vacation

Someone told me recently that comics are the main reason to purchase a newspaper. You can get them on the internet but only in a newspaper can you get all of the comics in one place. That made sense to me. One of my favorite cartoonists just took a week off and had somebody fill in for them. Really? All you have to do is come up with a 3 frame comic once a day (it’s a nice gig) and you’re telling me you can’t accumulate a backlog of 7 strips before you go on vacation? So the cartoonist is basically saying, “Hey, I can draw 344 of these a year but I can’t do 365.” * C’mon!

Oh, and on Sundays I want at least 6 frames. None of this “I’ll just make the frames bigger on Sunday and nobody will notice”. You know who you are.   

*Assumes three weeks of vacation.

Jockey Outerwear

Remember in Easy Rider where Jack Nicholson rode across the country on the back of a motorcycle wearing a football helmet? Yeah. That was fun. Well, I was looking at a picture of the winning jockey from Saturday’s Preakness and noticed that he was wearing his special jockey helmet. Well, I asked myself, is that special helmet really necessary? Could he (like Jack) have just worn his football helmet? 

The amount of money spent on sports equipment in this country has gotten out of hand. Do we really need a different helmet for every sport?  Like knitting kneedles and chop sticks, some of these items may be interchangeable.  (See post dated June 20, 2015.)

Oh, and why doesn't the horse get a helmet? Where is the outrage?

Par King

It’s sad when you’re really good at something and then it’s not needed anymore. For instance, I feel bad for the people who don’t get to use their beautiful handwriting anymore. Bummer. 

One of my talents as many of you know is parallel parking. The new self-driving cars will eliminate the need for that talent unfortunately. But yeah, for the time being, I’m pretty good at it. So good that I received an unsolicited compliment from a stranger eating at a sidewalk diner earlier this week after I backed my car into a tight spot on one attempt. It’s a beautiful art when you do it right. And it makes for fun, inexpensive entertainment for sidewalk diners. They can place bets as to whether you’re going to get the car into the spot, how many moves it’ll take, whether you hit one of the cars or maybe a meter, etc. I suspect the woman who complimented me had won a bet of some sort.

I, like the good race horse jockeys in yesterday's Preakness Stakes, don’t mind being the subject of an occasional bet. But look out you talented jockeys! Are jockey-free race horses the next thing?     

Ear Piercing for Dogs

I saw a sign today along the highway for dog ear piercings. Yikes! So I looked up ear piercings for dogs on the internet. I found a vet’s column about it. As you might expect, he was not in favor of the piercings. Nor was he in favor of dog tattoos. Dog tattoos? That was new to me as well. As the vet pointed out in his article, most dogs have hair so you cannot even see the tattoos. What should a dog tattoo say or convey? “I love Mom”? If you insist on tattooing your dog, I suppose a good message might be, “Stamp out ear piercings for dogs!"

I did not find any articles regarding clip on earrings for dogs so you’re on your own on that one.

Dog Rental

Where I live it costs about $23 per day to take your dog to doggie day care. That’s $115 per week. $500+ per month. That’s less than it would cost to re-carpet your house every month, but that’s still a lot of money! I think I’ve found a way to lower the cost to board a dog for a day, and not cut into the kennel’s profit. Why not make your dog available for daily rental from the kennel? Let’s say you’re a family with small children and you’re not sure about getting a dog. Why not do a test run by renting a dog for a day? Or, let’s say you know that there is a salesman in your neighborhood selling siding. Rent a dog! The dog owner and the kennel would split the proceeds from the rent, thus lowering your boarding costs and increasing the profit at the kennel. This makes waaay too much sense…

I know you’re not s’posed to leave a dog in your car, but if I had one of those self-driving cars could I dazzle my neighbors and send it out with my dog behind the wheel and no people in it? I can’t wait for these self-driving cars…

Self-Driving Me Crazy

My friend at work said that he thought he saw a driverless car go by him on the freeway last week. He said the car went by him pretty fast and it looked like no one was in the driver’s seat. That made me think.  On these driverless cars, if there IS someone behind the wheel, and the car speeds by us and the guy behind the wheel is like reading a magazine or something, how will we know whether this is a self-driving car or if the driver is just being careless? Or asleep? Will it be that guy’s duty to roll down his window and tell us it’s a self-driving car? Should we demand he hold his hands up through his open sun roof to indicate the car is driving itself?

Let’s take this one step at a time. Maybe make each potential owner of self-driving car be required to have some prior experience - like having maybe a self-cleaning oven or a player piano. One step at a time…