Recent Comments

1. 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   My wife apparently LOVES Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. If you’re blissfully ignorant of the approximately two different plots they have (Big City Person gets stranded in Small Town and Discovers Christmas, or Person currently living in Big City goes Home to Small Town for Visit and REdiscovers Christmas), then a) I envy you and b) this is absolutely spot on, except that selling the land the artificial Christmas tree farm is on to build an online mega-mall makes perhaps a bit more sense than average.

2. over 12 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   I saw an interesting documentary once on craft and microbreweries. One of the brewers being interviewed said (paraphrased): “It’s kind of fashionable to run down the huge companies like Anheuser-Busch, but secretly we all wish we had their consistency and quality control; you can count on one Budweiser to taste exactly like every other one no matter where you are, and we just can’t do that.”

   His point was: his beer was great at the brewery… except when it wasn’t, and he occasionally had to discard batches that went “off”… but if he tried to ship it to someplace 500 miles away, it just wasn’t the same.

   I don’t have a dog in this fight, because I’ve tried lots of beers: Conglomo-brand mass-produced, craft beers, microbrews, English stuff at an English pub in England … and I think they’re all vile (though the more it looks like pumpernickel, the less I seem to hate it). I can sort of tolerate Guinness, so I can easily imagine that anyone who likes the others would hate it because it has less of that essence of vileness that they love.

3. over 12 years ago on [Deleted]

   I thought it was “man and woman”. If the person saying it in your mind has the name “BJ”.

   And seeing them in silhouette triggered a realization: Gene really has a muzzle on him, doesn’t he? He’s like a macaque or something.

   Mr. Johnson, please don’t take this as criticism. I’m not complaining, I’m just surprised that I never noticed before.

4. over 12 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   That’s the first thing I wondered also. I initially thought she was at school, but the sun is awfully low in the sky for that. Either that’s a picnic breakfast or Meg is, as someone else suggested, with Grandpa.

5. over 12 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   This is the sort of playing with language we used to get in Pogo. Thank you for sparing us the corn-pone dialect, though, Mr. Johnson.

6. almost 13 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   Then the pair followed Paw to ManhassetWhere he still kept the cash as an assetNan and the ManTook the bucket and ranAnd as for the money – Manhasset.

7. about 13 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   @Ashburn: Eris is more massive than Pluto, but is now thought to be about the same size, just denser.

   @Zedman: learning quantum mechanics kind of kills notions like that. The Solar system is vaguely similar to the mental picture most people have of atoms, but it’s NOTHING like a real atom.

8. about 13 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   @Ashburn: Acts 11:9 and Romans 14:14 are two specific places. Acts 15 has a fuller discussion of the issue.

   Nowhere does it say you HAVE to eat pork, of course, just that it’s okay if you do.

9. over 13 years ago on Arlo and Janis

   Purity Of Essense. General Jack D. Ripper is obsessed by it in the movie Dr. Strangelove. He’s convinced that fluoridation is a communist plot to pollute our precious bodily fluids, and drinks only rainwater. Oh, and grain alcohol.