Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 29, 2024

Taking out the trash is a never ending task as well.

Ten years later, the trash weighs more than this stone.

NOW we know the truth. He pushes that thing up the hill on a near-impossible task just to get away from her nagging. Some things are more torturous than others.

Rock on, baby.

That trash ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Hold this for a minute while I get the trash. Pickup this week is on Friday.

Not the point of this comic at all, but it just occurred to me that the grand old Duke of York might have been a descendant of Sisyphus.

The grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men,

He marched them up to the top of a hill,

Then he marched them down again.

And when they were up they were up,

And when they were down they were down,

And when they were only half way up,

They were neither up nor down.

Then he had them take out the trash.

It’s wind-borne vapor when he is pushing it, though. Don’t forget your keys

Or, his wife?

Leave him alone…he’s on a roll!

Relax, Momma. This is gonna take a while.

If this were Sisyphus’ wife, she would be telling him he was doing it wrong, exactly how to do it…and then tell him to take out the trash.

Sounds a lot like my wife.

Eternal Nagging was added to make this a true Hell.

All he has to do is move aside and let the ball roll down over her. No more complaining.

Sisyphus spends Eternity rolling that ball and the piled up garbage has formed the world we live in today. On and on with no end in sight.

Given that his mother was royalty (queen), she is depicted as slumming it here.

Mom, or wife, or girlfriend… and you know she walked past the trash can and the bins to follow him halfway up that hill.

Rock on!

Now he knows how a dung beetle feels

No one seems to remember why Sisyphus had to roll the boulder up the mountain — it was because he was a cheat and a cruel trickster and the gods finally got ticked off enough to punish him. That is why tasks that are laborious and futile are called Sisyphean. Aptly applied to the trash issue as well.

Does Sisyphus have a cat?

“And I need you to clean the litter box.”

She must be thinking of a dung beetle.

Lay the laundry out on the ground. When the boulder rolls back down .. voila … the ironing is done.

And then he moves and let’s the boulder roll backwards.

Or wife!

“But Mom, every time I take the trash out to the curb, it just rolls back to the house!”

She’s going to be waiting a long time; the gods’ penalty for Sisyphus to do THAT particular job was for it to last for eternity. Apparently he’s still doing it.

I’m female and I always take out the trash in my house. My husband will take out a half empty bag, and ignore the smaller waste baskets in the house. I empty all the trash into one bag and take that out.

I (used to) take my trash to work, and add it to the office’s bagful to make a fully filled bag each week. The town issues way more permit stickers per household than I need per year, so I’m happy to use mine for the combined haul, while reducing the packaging.

How did that one end up anyway?

And did they play Strauss’ PERPETUUM MOBILE while he was pushing the rock?

Isn’t this just a metaphor for growing up.