Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for May 29, 2017

Figures

The word “paycheck” is not a paycheck.

Did you fill out all the forms (in triplicate) requesting a safety net? The only request we received in the Requisition Office was for a Nylon- Mesh Butterfly Net Model no. 23A-7R.

Note: Our mesh is typically shipped in roll form wound on cores to prevent creases. Occasional flaws that can affect the continuous roll length are inherent in the weaving process. Excessive handling can increase static that entraps random particles.

What happened to the other half of crap?

So this kid is working in produce at the supermarket when a guy with a Texas accent comes in and asks if he can get half a head of lettuce. He says wait and he’ll check with the department manager. He goes over to him and says, “Some idiot Texan wants half a head of lettuce.” Then he notices that the customer followed him, and finishes with, “And this fine gentleman will happily take the other half.”

Little known fact, you cannot pull a rope. You have to push it, using friction. The interwoven fibers push each other through their molecular bonding, which is not pulling either but actually the response of energy fallen into a state of matter through the pressure of force outside our spectral awareness. Nothing in nature pulls.

So be happy as you fall, that the Earth is not pulling, but “empty” space is pushing.

Oh… and the word “net”? It isn’t a net.

Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that “the map is not the territory” and that “the word is not the thing”, encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse models of reality with reality itself.

Frog Applause is the very model of a comic strip.

" Sagittarians are the tightrope walkers of the world….They look down, and applaud the crowd for being brave ! "

“Oh, well!” it replied. “You’ve got me again. And, I might add, spoken like a true Alice. If you didn’t summon me, then maybe I’m not a shikigami after all. It would then appear that I’m actually a hallucinatory fabrication of your subconscious, a dissociated portion of your own awareness, a third man apparition. I’m told that it is quite common for people to experience such things in times of great hardship in the absence of any actual persons in accompaniment, a compensation for unbearable solitude in the face of adversity, an imaginary lifeline above the abyss, an expression of the unique egoless perspective afforded by such misadventures.”

It appears Mz. T is questioning the power of words today, which surprises me. But she does raise the fact that words represent things other than themselves. Because they trigger associations – meanings – in other people’s minds, they are powerful indeed. Many literary theorists (Bakhtin and Bataille, for instance, among many others) study language with battle lines drawn, as though every word tips the imbalance of power ever so slightly.

So that means the word “rope” is a trope.

That guy’s life is hanging by a thread.

He’s holding on by the skin of his teeth.

In Paris doggie doings are often parccrap.

If he lands on his hard head, he will be good to go!

The treachery of comic images.

“A painting of a flag is not a flag.” – Jasper Johns

If you happen to slip then let go, you’ll simply bounce off from the ground. That’s one of many advantages of living in a comic strip world..

Ceci n’est pas une corde.

Words are the money of fools.

Thomas Hobbes

The word rope is a rope if you brayed it.

The words Social Safety Net are an illusion to Republicans.

Faith, ‘tis a peculiar message to be emblazoned upon a safety line. A _line o’type or two_ used to be a grand potpourri of humor and verse on the editorial page of the old Chicago Tribune, in the Way-Back-When days of Col. McCormick and my occasionally-published letters to the editor (the so-called vox populi columns). That was before the time of our intrepid Daring Acrobat who is too muddled to have checked his safety rigging before taking the grand plunge. I attribute this carelessness to the Zeitgeist.

Crappie crap crap….

Larphe

There’s a troll over at Sarah’s Scribbles that reminds me of the ones that used to surface around here once upon a time. I rather miss those anonymous cowards. I guess they gave up after they realized that their words were treated with amusement instead of wounding Sister Teresa’s “delicate” disposition. It didn’t hurt that Vlad was in the wings pounding his fists together. Where are you, Vlad? I’m not one to pine over other guys, but I miss that manly hunk of manhood.