Recent Comments

1. about 13 years ago on Bloom County

   Lettering is illegible. Constantly. Next time through, I’m cancelling. Too bad. I love Brethed’s stuff.

2. about 13 years ago on The Academia Waltz

   I cannot read the lettering.

3. over 13 years ago on Jeff Danziger

   @dtroutma, Turkey is devoutly and fanatically a secular democracy that is planning to join the European Union.

   Thank you, @Bailey, I agree on both counts.

4. over 13 years ago on Jeff Danziger

   Anybody care to comment on the content of the cartoon? Is that, in fact, what Turkey is doing? What else might Turkey do?

5. over 13 years ago on Steve Breen

   dtroutma, the metaphor has nothing to do with birds. The usage to which the cartoon refers comes from the 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Mariners around the globe regarded the presence of an albatross, following the ship, as the highest form of good luck. In Coleridge’s poem, the ‘ancient mariner’ shot the ship’s lucky albatross with a cross-bow, thereby bringing a dire curse upon the ship. The mariner’s shipmates responded by tying the albatross around his neck and forcing him to pursue his duties with this very large (wingspans are 6-10 ft) rotting bird tied to him. Since then the image of having an albatross around one’s neck has become the metaphor of being heavily, inescapably burdened by something consequent to one’s own behavior. In the above cartoon, Sacramento has become businesses’ own albatross because of the role they have played in the development of regulation – laws are not made prohibiting behavior that is not occurring.