Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 22, 2019

https://griid.org/2018/04/09/nestles-theft-of-water-when-boycotts-are-not-enough/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/27/573774328/california-says-nestle-lacks-permits-to-extract-millions-of-gallons-of-water

Yep, they never re-signed their contract but still keep taking the water.

The bottle generation.

And of course there’s the little problem that the plastic bottle ends up in a landfil. Because you US-Americans can’t organize a decent way of recycling.

How much comes from an Aquifer anyway? Most is “purified” city water. Some of the best purified city water was Iron City beer. Still remember the commercial when Rolling Rock was touting their mountain spring water.

Frazz with another epic closing line!

We’re fighting a uphill battle, but it’s better than doing nothing at all.

It is a credit to Jef Mallett that upon reading yesterday’s strip (continued today), the first thoughts that zoomed through my mind re: Caulfield’s “people like me” comment were “Intelligent? Funny? Smart-alecky? …” before I got to “… oh yeah; black.” So here I pay tribute to an artist who has created a character so unique and so lovable that this reader (and I’m sure many others) truly see the content of his character and not the color of his skin.

Question I always wanted to ask; “Was Jim Crow a native American.?”

@Russell Bedford; The term “Jim Crow” typically refers to repressive laws and customs once used to restrict black rights, but the origin of the name itself actually dates back to before the Civil War. In the early 1830s, the white actor Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice was propelled to stardom for performing minstrel routines as the fictional “Jim Crow,” a caricature of a clumsy, dimwitted black slave. Rice claimed to have first created the character after witnessing an elderly black man singing a tune called “Jump Jim Crow” in Louisville, Kentucky. He later appropriated the Jim Crow persona into a minstrel act where he donned blackface and performed jokes and songs in a stereotypical slave dialect. For example, “Jump Jim Crow” included the popular refrain, “Weel about and turn about and do ‘jis so, eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.” Rice’s minstrel act proved a massive hit among white audiences, and he later took it on tour around the United States and Great Britain. As the show’s popularity spread, “Jim Crow” became a widely used derogatory term for blacks.

Ol’ Jef is packing a lot of societal issues in just four frames, plastic waste, dwindling aquifers, long distance transportation of goods, racial tensions,…. Frazz’s hair.

I thought Caulfield was smart enough to buy bottled water once for the bottle, and then just fill it from the tap.

Remember: “Evian” spelled backwards is “naive.”

Truck from the nearest body of polluted water, then filtered

Bottled water. One of corporate America’s largest and most successful scams. Can you say “manufactured need”?

https://www.moneycrashers.com/bottled-water-vs-tap-water-facts/

I do find it sad every time I help my wife (who works for a private school) pick up cases of water bottles for a school function or dance. I’ve had the same stainless steel bottle for ten years, refilled thousands of times, and I’m working class; yet the kids that attend private school HAVE to have disposable water bottles at their functions? Math and history aren’t the only thing they’re learning…. but there is hope. My wife was also the leader of the movement to have drinking fountains replaced with new ones that have refill stations as well.

Who do I owe for water that fell to earth thousands or tens of thousands of years ago? Most aquifers are filled with ancient water. My tap water has a strong taste I do not enjoy. And if I am going to sue someone for selling me bad water I would rather sue Nestles or Coma Cola than my friends and neighbors who are just trying to supply a basic commodity I use to water my plants and animals as well as to wash my clothes and dishes

Did anyone read about the guy stuck with warehouses full of plastic bottles he normally sells to China. China is no longer going to take plastic. So he is cutting ties with universities that won’t be able to recycle their plastic but should just throw away. What happened to making plastic boards, and material from plastic here in USA?

Yeah. The guy who got the idea of selling water, which used to be free, to people by slapping a fancy label on it, was a genius of sorts. As is that fellow in Seattle who got people to pay six bucks for a fifty cent cup of coffee.

as a kid in the 40s I used to travel with a minstrel show, my mother was a member of the pit orchestra, that made the rounds of VA hospitals and military bases. I always wondered why the group disbanded in the late 50s. Never suspected what the interlocutor and sidemen were propagating, as a 6 yr old I just liked being with the singers and dancers and comedians.

Remember that there are “Us” and “Them” all over the world that look alike, too. The problem goes much deeper than different skin colors. I was raised to be “color blind” but that doesn’t suit some people. I think they want to claim some pride for what has been over come. I guess I can’t blame them for that.

Water will be the oil of the 21st Century.

The kid brings up a good point. Bottled water is such an incredible waste, from the bottles to the transportation. Stainless steel or high-quality plastic bottles save a LOT of energy.

One of the good things a comic can do is to get people thinking and talking. Good going, Jef!

exactly what I thought!! Thanks for expressing it so well.