Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 22, 2023

A very relevant slogan.

Mall Stuff you don’t need.I need the latest Ned Beatty from Deliverance T-Shirt.

I love the folding maps.

Should sell coffee with it. With directions to the toilets printed on the paper cup. (The advice giveb without being asked.)

Giving advise to someone without being asked is pretty much also asking for someone to let you know how much they do not appreciate you giving them your advise.

I already knows what I want to know. Please don´t confuse me with your facts.

The question on most mall-rat minds is What happened to my life?

Ned will be quick to retort: You wasted it.

One way to deal with empty-nesting.

Mall teens don’t want to be seen by their peers with their parents.

Same with Ned and Irene’s adult children.

When I was a kid all the mall stores were located outdoors on various streets around town.

“When I was your age…”

The basis for a new “reality” TV show?

Walk down Memory Lane.

Google: dead malls

A large no Wi-Fi zone. No light bulb moments either. That would mean ‘electricity’. At least in a symbolic sense.

Maps. Grandpa used to talk about them.

Rapid changes in products and methods and advances in tech have obliterated some professions and support services. Old skills for still common problems have almost disappeared.

That said, about the only common experience one can pass on to offspring is the work ethic: get an education, get a job, work the job better than the next person, and pass this ethic on to your children. [And hope for the best.]

Well, while I appreciate the entrepreneurship, I don’t care for the product. I suppose even a doomed business is, at least, a tax write off.

Mall busybodies.

Oh! Rupert Murdoch‘s latest new media operation!

“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.” — Neil Gaiman

They need a postcard rack (for people who actually write).

The good old days when you got advice but still had to take time to think about it.

Analog-ous to what? Not everything non-digital is “analog”.

I’m impressed that there are trash cans available and they don’t have wadded up trash on the ground beside them.

Need the answer, ask your local reference librarian. Its free.

Google Maps has a rough map of Home Depot you can zoom in on.

Feels just like home!

Needs a tip jar.

Or the new-school information sources, ChatGPT and Bard: “We DO know it, and we’re POSITIVE about it. Trust us.”

This “Analog search engine” brought us to where we are today, and it worked without rebooting all the time.

A little-appreciated cartooning skill is the ability to print letters at the sort of slant they’d have if viewed from an angle, as with the booth signs in today’s strip.

just what we need

This is your father’s (and mother’s) opinion served as the bedrock of all knowledge. It isn’t, but that’s irrelevant to them.

I have found that most TV advertisements are just trying to convince you to buy stuff you don’t need, and don’t really want. Apparently you "need’ to buy stuff to clean your dishwasher, and your washing machine, when that’s the job these devices are supposed to do automatically; that’s just two – the airwaves are full of ’em. I could come up with more …

There may be a market for that.

I always take a paper map if I am driving somewhere I have not been before. I keep folded maps of the nearby states in my car. Other places, I can always print out a map from the internet before I leave home. (Such as details at the exit for Ohio Route 18 from I-77, or options to get to my hotel in Erie, PA from the Ohio Turnpike)