That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for October 05, 2023

My original post in 2015:

Telephone company worker given the assignment of coming up with codes for the the countries in the New World.

/// The Account Keeper used innovation

to advantage her organization.

For her bosses, the Kruiks,

she kept two sets of books:

One for borrowing— One for taxation.

Research assistant, doing 90% of the work, and getting 0% of the credit.

Dreaming of AI!

Account thinking: “First this guy claim his boat is worth 10 million florins then when it comes to tax time he claims it’s only 1 million florins.”

The sweet-looking old lady pretending to be an account keeper. No wonder the cops haven’t been able to find the leader of the biggest numbers racket in town.

With taxes, she’s a bit of a nutter.

With long forms, she likes to putter.

Columbus’s 3 ships

Unlimited duration and mileage trips

The marine capital depreciation forms have her all aflutter.

Writing these romance novels is tiresome at best, I keep nodding off just like I do with Fred.

I do not like all these “explorers” every time one comes back I have to redo my maps.

Who knew? All I have to do is sit under a huge map while I read my romance novels, and everyone thinks I’m doing something important.

After Anne had the boring spice accounts done

She wrote spicy romance stories just for fun.

“Cinnamon Tieeklaar” was her heroine

And — OH! — the predicaments she got in!

Her tulips were widely planted, her bodice oft undone…

.

Moll Flanders was a nun in comparison

(Cinnamon once handled an entire French garrison);

Fanny Hill was shocking as static on a carpet

(Cinnamon was lightning that ignited a hay market).

She was far beyond embarrassin’

.

Of course Anne’s lurid works were uncovered

Among her spice sales accounts discovered

She asked for mercy, but didn’t get any,

Forfeiting her possessions down to the last penny.

And though escaping The Stake, she never recovered!

.

Many years passed and Anne’s stories again saw light

Somehow preserved in court records all right.

Most people considered them trash to be burned —

But at auction a huge price they earned

And from them a cable TV series took flight.

Mary Murphy, mother of nine, prepares her Instacart order.

Mary looks forward to a day when all she has to do is give something a LIKE, and not have to actually read all the family correspondence.

“Once, upon a midnight dreary/

While I pondered, weak and weary/

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore..” – E.A.Poe

The Trump Family Accountant.

Some people take forever to get their expenses in. (Me)

Portrait of My Mother-In-Law At Work, and Hell If I’m Going to Spring For the Large Canvas Option, 1656

Mary’s life was surely not a lark,…… Her surrouindings were meager and stark,…. There was never any romancing,…. And certainly no chance of dancing,…. So she just did crossword puzzles in the dark.

Man: Oh sigh, I am the loneliest man in the world….I’m three ships in the wind!

Magellan’s team got stiffed on a day of per diem.

Two hundred years later ?

Since the Santa Maria never made it back to Europe, handling the mileage (knotage?) for that ship would be challenging.

…and wishing that Pacioli guy’s new book had some ‘recipes’ for situations like this.

“Oh, right! A negative number means below the equator. Well, they should be having an interesting voyage.”

the new idea of indoor plumbing has hit 17 century. so she is taking full advantage of it.

Some comments from that earlier day …

@helen ferrx: Columbus’ editor correcting the spelling mistakes in his autobiography “Nine Pints of Strawberry Margarita”.

The Account Keeper: 

Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:1657 oil on canvas paintings" Wikimedia 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines) and choose the first Category: found, and once there find the text string Maes, and click its link for info and links that point to more info (perhaps best viewed using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, which can automatically translate most webpages, if necessary) about this roughly jumbo envelope size painting. File history has the strip coloration image.

That larger strip image is also shown by merely clicking the image in either Mr. Melcher’s THROWBACK THURSDAY: MASTERPIECE #1188 (4/8/15) (October 4, 2023) or MASTERPIECE #329 (September 6, 2010) blog entries, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment. I have added a comment at the first (awaiting Mr. Melcher’s approval, has to happen before the second’s link works) pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. So far, 4 works by this artist have been used here (6 times total, including this Throwback Thursday repeat of this later strip with a different caption), the April 15, 2012, strip being its first use. GoComics has deactivated the hyperlinks and removed the new lines in my comment (almost the same at the 4/8/15 strip) and reply there; but, perhaps the text remains informative. The April 4, 2014, strip has the prior by him.

Is he taking into account how much distance the Pinta and Santa Maria traveled as they sank? :p

What is it! Six letter “Name of Greatest Painting Captionist” and starts with M. I got to finish this, only 3 more days until next puzzle comes.