Monthly Archives: August 2005

Dagwood Bumstead visits The Family Circus.

And to answer a question people keep sending: No, I have no idea if all the strips involved in this will someday be collected in a book or something. But it wouldn't surprise me.

Fred Kaplan on what's in the portions of the Iraqi draft constitution that have been released so far. His interpretation is that the language is vague, that many clauses contradict other clauses, and that this thing is far from becoming the governing document of a democracy.

Reader Scott Tacktill calls my attention to this article inspired by Costco getting into the business of selling original Picassos. This is not the first time a department store has done something like this.

Malcolm Gladwell writes an interesting article about the health care system in this country. My impression for years has been that most Americans think it's inefficient and expensive to the point of killing people who can't afford proper medical attention…but at the same time, there's an attitude of "Don't you dare try to change it." This piece discusses why that might be.

I'm not waiting for tomorrow. Here's a link to tomorrow's Mother Goose & Grimm strip which is part of the Great Blondie Crossover.

And here's a link to tomorrow's Beetle Bailey, in which Mort Walker recycles an old joke from his great strip of the sixties, Sam's Strip.

Meanwhile, you might want to keep an eye on the Blondie strip, which is most easily read at The Official Blondie Website, not to be confused with The Official Blondie Website.

Blondie reference in today's Wizard of Id.

Some of the press coverage of this Blondie thing seems to have missed the fact that though Blondie and Dagwood are celebrating an anniversary, it's the strip (not their marriage) that has been going on for 75 years. The first Blondie strip by Murat "Chic" Young appeared on September 8, 1930. Blondie Boopadoop — that was her maiden name — was courted by Dagwood Bumstead for a time and they finally tied the knot on February 17, 1933 in the strip from which the above panel was taken. Their first kid, Alexander, was born a year later.

In the meantime, the folks in Mutts get their invitation to the Big Bumstead Bash. And more characters show up in today's Blondie strip. (It's really tricky linking to some of these.)

Two very prominent Conservative bloggers have declared their opposition to the War in Iraq. Andy McCarthy states his reasons here and Professor Stephen Bainbridge does so here. Essentially, McCarthy feels that Americans are dying in Iraq to establish a theoracy ruled by and for Islam, which is not what we want…while Bainbridge feels that the war has been ineptly planned and has been a distraction from the Conservative agenda.

I offer these views without comment, except to say that if the war effort keeps losing supporters like that, it's all over.

I haven't mentioned it here lately but the Reach Access Daily Flosser is still the greatest scientific breakthrough of the last few centuries. Others may try to tell you that honor belongs to the personal computer, the airplane or even the decoding of the human genome. These people are damn idiots. It's the Reach Access Daily Flosser, I tell you.

Hey, which is more important? Wiping out all disease and suffering or getting those little bits of food out from between your back teeth? I rest my case.

I do not own stock or any other financial interest in the Reach Access Daily Flosser. I just think it's a wonderful thing and I am grateful that technology has advanced to the point where this was possible. I mean, I'm sure that for the first fifty years of my life, it was scientifically impossible to make a stick with a little piece of dental floss on the end. In any case, I'm glad someone finally did.

You can stock up on Reach Access Daily Flossers at any market or drugstore, or you can get a free one sent to you at this site. I'd recommend laying in a big supply…at least three or four for every tooth.

The King in The Wizard of Id plans to attend the Bumsteads' anniversary celebration. This will require all the elaborate preparations he mentions plus one he doesn't: Time travel.

Meanwhile, the anniversary is acknowledged in the "Crimestoppers Textbook" feature of today's Dick Tracy strip. I suppose someone will suggest the Blondie strip is among the greater crimes that Dick has called on his readers to help eradicate.

The Great Blondie Comic Strip Crossover kicks up another notch today with a quick mention in B.C. and with many of the invited characters showing up in the Blondie strip. I think some of the guests aren't going to receive invitations in their strips until next week but, hey, these are the funnies. They're not supposed to be logical. I also don't understand how Garfield has suddenly learned how to talk. [NOTE: I'm going to try to link to all the strips involved in this event but some of them may be behind subscription walls or on sites that require registration.]

Yesterday, I posted this list of which strips are involved in the promotion and when. Apparently, the person who furnished it to me got it from the rec.arts.comic.strips newsgroup, mainly from a posting there by D.D. Degg. You should know that r.a.c.s. is a fine gathering place for fans of newspaper strips and a good place to visit if you have a question about that topic or if you just want to discuss them.

My longtime friend Joe Brancatelli runs an excellent website about travel, aiming primarily at the airlines and all that they do wrong. It costs a few bucks to access Joe's site but it yields much valuable info, plus you get e-mailed updates. I just received one that Joe said I could share with you here…

I've just posted several new items at JoeSentMe.com about the first day of the Northwest Airlines mechanics strike. The bottom line: Of 99 flights I tracked at random on Saturday, Northwest racked up a miserable 46.5 percent on-time rating. And this was Saturday, the light day. By Sunday evening and Monday morning, when business travelers have to get back on the road, things will probably be worse.

Bottom line: Despite what you may be hearing in the general media, which merely repeats Northwest management assertions without actually checking the stats Northwest itself is publishing on its flight tracker, this bears all the hallmarks of a 2000-style United Airlines meltdown.

Joe is updating the stats on his site. I would tend to believe him before I'd believe the press coverage that quotes airline execs as saying all is well.

To answer several inquiries: No, I did not post the "pledge break" because I'm planning on buying the Picasso.

Costco is selling another original Picasso. This one goes for $129,999.99 and I'm wondering if the price is because some sort of tax or insurance fee kicks in if it's $130,000 or if someone actually thought, "Hey, let's knock a penny off and make it sound a lot cheaper."

Last time they did this, the web page had the little Costco "quantity" window on it so before you hit the "add to shopping cart" button, you could specify that you wanted two or three or ten of the item. This time, they don't have online ordering but I like the fact that the webpage includes this announcement…

Costco.com products can be returned to any of our more than 400 Costco warehouses worldwide.

Almost makes you want to buy the thing just so you can take it back, go up to Customer Service and say, "I'd like to exchange this for 268 sets of snow tires and a box of frozen calamari."