Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 24, 2024

A Sunday comic on a Saturday???

Calvin, a true patriot (report your father to the police).

The power of advertizing…..

Typical Watterson, thinking people aren’t incapable of deciding for themselves what they like and don’t like.

Billy has more toys than you!

Wait till you see the Internet…

Why is there a Sunday strip on Saturday?

A Sunday strip on Saturday!!

I think it’s mostly “health” and “nutrition” publications that attempt to guilt readers about how they live.

If you didn’t ask for the charity mailings, you have no obligation to finance them…

If I could go back in time, there are many events that I would not change, despite how horrible they were, because when they were overcome, the planet got a tiny bit better (and changing them could make things worse). However… if I ever found a way to time travel to change something, it would be my mission in life to find a way to remove junk mail, pervasive adverts and all that related stuff. I’d be willing to bet that 1/6 of a landfill is just junk mail and unwanted nonsense sent to people unsolicited.

Invention is the Mother of Necessity.

I found the perfect way to stop junk mail of the kind that comes with its own Business Reply envelope. You fold up the junk mail with its outer envelope and put it in the Business Reply envelope and send it back to them. By including the outer envelope they know who doesn’t want their junk any more.

If you have available cash or credit, they will pester you trying to get it.

Guilt is a powerful weapon in the advertising. Today it’s “I bet I won’t even get one like” or something similar on social media…..

So, it’s my civic duty to buy crap I don’t need with money I don’t have yet?

99% of mine now is Healthcare and vote for, ads.

In his version of “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”, Will Rogers tells King Arthur that advertising “is the art of convincing people they need something that they’ve managed without all their lives.” Calvin’s comment at the end of this strip echoes that.

Will tomorrow’s strip be a Monday strip!!??

Because the companies can’t make money off of good deeds.

This comic is relevant regardless of when it was made.

My secret sin is buying “as seen on tv products” even though I know they are crap. Most recently I got a spaghetti maker that split when I poured the boiling water in it, dumping water on the counter. The microwave bacon cooker burns you with hot grease when you remove the outer cylinder These products are endlessly horrifying in an addictive way. I sprayed an entire can of Flex seal on a gutter joint and It leaked like a waterfall.

Calvin, as relevant today as the strip was then.

The internet fixed all that.

Just seeing that “sort of evilish” expression on Dad’s face in the final panel…

Nowadays you get ads on things like Youtube.

Ah…idolizing ourselves instead of putting God first leads to such self-absorption.

Gee, I’m a terrorist, too, I guess. Coming thru the garage into the house, carrying the mail, I pass the recycle can. More often than not, everything in my hand goes in the can.

Well, the models in Sundance, Peruvian Connection and Fabulous Furs (The Count has several coats from them, btw, highly recommended) are quite hawt unlike Psycho Bunny esp and The Count keeps a box in the computer room to save them until it is full and close it up and recycle.

Oops…what will tomorrow bring?

Oh no another political comic?

I do wonder if this was meant to be displayed tomorrow.

Yup! Advertising to create demand. How do they make up names for drugs?

In a society framed by capital, be not surprised when absolutely everything is about money and feeding The Machine, lest the un-oiled gears grind us to grease instead.

And, yes: Capitalism is the worst form of human “civilization”… except for any others tried so far.*

*With apologies to the anonymous originator† and the paraphrasing here of that often-used quotation:

† quoteinvestigator.Com/2023/12/08/democracy-worst/

I stopped donating when I realized the groups I was donating to were losing money on me too. I would make an one time annual donation and then get weekly donation requests with calendar’s /mailing labels/Xmas cards/note pads/pens… The non-profit stamp is only about $.12 but still it had to add up.

“It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most.” – Thoreau’s journal entry of October 5, 1856

I’m guessing Calvin’s dad wouldn’t get a smartphone on principle and would just get a Nokia phone at best.

So true. I am a very bad American. I don’t buy stuff I don’t need.

I do get interesting mail. Since I give to some charities, I get mail from all of them. Because I live in an affluent, white zip code, I get right wing mail. Because of certain candidates I supported, I get left wing mail.

Fortunately, I get few bills.

Also fortunately for me, the recycle bin is between my mailbox and my door.

Like whole body deodorant and deodorant with vitamins?

Some individual comic strips are timeless. Substitute on-line ads for paper ones and no one would know how old this strip is.

The object of advertising is to have you get up from a full meal feeling hungry.

The mantra of advertising is sell the sizzle – not the steak

The product doesn’t have to work. It just has to look like it works.

“Good mail??”

I guess if there’s a check in there somewhere.

Now it’s native ads on the news.

Hey, did we time travel? Have I slept 24 hours straight?

Are we sure this is Calvin and Hobbes?

Calvin’s line describes marketing to a “T.”

I remember one having magazines I never ordered, I contacted them and they had a card with my name, I asked them to mail copy of that card to me, yes did yet not my printing, plus I told them cancel everyone. Then later my daughter started to get magazines, I contacted each one on the cc bill and told them cancel each one I called.

Just wait for this new thing coming your way — The Internet!!!

You don’t need them, Calvin.

My personal favorite junk mail was the magazine, “Better Homes than Yours.”

Use of the word alleged between “your” and “body flaws” would have been wise.

MORAL: As we age, the medium changes but the goal does not.

“It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you have.” – Sheryl Crow

Looks like a new C&H and not a rerun. Or was Bill Watterson that much of a prophet?

I guess I’m a terrorist. Never understood the “keep up with the Jones” mentality. I would rather pursue my own goals, not the goals of other people.

I keep a box for junk mail right outside my door so it never gets into the house. Except for those preprinted checks you just sign to borrow money. Those go to the shredder just inside the door.

My neighbor just got a new something or other. Now I need one.

Why do Leftists (Democrats) always make everything their political platform? The Oscars, for instance….can’t we just have the comics be the comics without the other comments?

Many times over the years I have been reminded of this particular strip. Especially Calvin’s walk-on statement.

The insanity of a consumer capitalist economy………

The problem with advertising is that it works. And advertisers adore the suckers who say “advertising doesn’t work on me”, because it does, and the suckers are fooling themselves into thinking otherwise.

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It’s easy to get rich exploiting all the flaws in HumanOS. Sadly, all appeals to the dev for a patch have gone unanswered.

Truth in advertising?

I’m reading this just as I was debating ordering a number of items that I will not need for several weeks, if ever. It really struck home.

No Hobbes as usual!

One of the artist’s most popular likes

We are an oxymoronic society that believes going deeper into debt will make us happier. How’s that working out for you? :)

Social media has accelerated the cycle for some of these, especially “fashion.”

Next to hardware stores, kitchen gadget stores are the most interesting. So many things that you don’t know you needed until you do

Unfortunately, some of us get the RifleMagazine and need to get an AR-15!

Ain’t it the truth? Well done, Bill Watterson!

Consumption is your patriotic duty.

172 comments and counting. This might be some kind of new record.

I’ve been throwing out that junk mail for years to recycling, so at least the tress aren’t totally wasted. I never thought those things were so cost effective anyway.

Why does Calvin’s dad become so relatable?

A 30 year old comic still hold true today. Bill is either a clairvoyant genius or we have learned nothing in thirty years. With all the drinking going on, Musk is poor compared to the makers of ’The Party Kool-aid".

Bill never brought politics into his strip. But there are trolls that must make everything party politics.

Calvin’s comment is on point and so well said, priceless

Over ten years ago I saw a product on YouTube that I didn’t know existed, but immediately had to have one. I don’t mean to be a crass consumer, but my Roland GR-55 guitar synth has paid for itself many, many times over.

Mom doesn’t eve notice Dad’s evil expression in the last panel. I wonder if Calvin does.

What everybody thought was a Sunday strip on Saturday is now a Sunday strip on Sunday. The miracles of technology.

Are they cancelling this too?

Deja Vu!!

This is yesterday’s strip. I demand a refund.

In its own way, terrorism isn’t so bad, Dad.

Rerun of yesterday.

I wonder what Saturday strip we missed?

Now we have it on Sunday too.

What’s going on with this site? The days are getting all mixed up on the comics…some are repeating….

Why’s there no comic for the 25th?

Eh me is always knews marketing is eevil.

Thirty years on, the medium is different, but the message is the same.

Where is Hobbes????

GoComics be trippin’.

Voting Rep isn’t an error. But voting insane gangsters is a crime.

Today it is no different, although it is no longer in the mail, it is online ads and media telling us about “Amazon week.”

I gave up trying to keep up with The Joneses or The Kardashians years ago. As long as I balance my monthly budget, I am good.

Where is Calvin today(2/25)? Off on another adventure? Hope he and Hobbes are back on Mon. They start the my day with a smile.

CALVIN I HAVE TO GO TO WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Advertising does work on me. If I decide I want something, I will research it on line and I get to see every ad for the product even for months after I buy it and don’t need another one.

Ads have never made me decide that I want something.

Calv8n will get to the sidewalk and realised he has to shovel all of that snow Again in order to get back to his front door. The lad doesn’t think these things though!