Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for November 12, 2020

Today’s Frazz, second panel.

Well, now that you mention it… NO!

Um. Here’s the, um, thing, Esther…

I find the best way to break bad news is establish context first. “Hey, did you hear about the destruction of rainforests in Indonesia? It’s an absolute tragedy. Also, you’re dumped*.”

*(or “free to explore other relationships”)

I find a Kindly But Firm (417-t) works well.

(now to see if we have any Retief fans here!)

Do not try to make it suspenseful, you’re not telling a fictional narrative where you have to do something special to hold someone’s attention. Give a quick summary, including how bad it is and how bad it doesn’t reach to. “Robin is in critical condition, everyone else is mostly ok. Robin and Charlie and the kids were in a car accident.” or “You didn’t get the part in the play.”

“You just stepped in dog poo.”

This reminds me of a joke I read when I was a kid. A drill sergeant gets word that the father of one of his recruits has died. He’s not sure how to break the news so he has all his soldiers line up and says “Step forward if you’re going to give your father a call on Sunday.” Everyone steps forward and the sergeant says “Not so fast, Jones.”

Nancy has her ways.

James Thurber refers in his memoir to having a 78 comedy record called ‘No News, or: What Killed the Dog," which he and his brother played to death, and it would stay in one ’groove’ if you didn’t nudge the needle. He quoted it as “ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh…”

The track is 99% certain to be at Archive.org, though I’m not sure anyone needs to hear it. It’s an anecdote where someone comes back from a trip and asks what’s new, and the only thing the other can think of is that the dog died. Why? Well, he ate some burnt hoss flesh. Where’d he get that? Oh, well, the hoss died when the barn burned down. It did what? Well, it caught a spark from your house… It goes on a bit.

I had a chance to see the exact same phenomenon when I was allowed to try the cylinder machine at a small museum at a college I was visiting, and I put on a 1909 comedy cylinder called “Uncle Josh at the Bug House” (which is also at Archive), and it was worn to the same degree. I had to keep a finger on the needle to hear more than a little less than a second of it.

Commedia et Tragedia.