Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 04, 2012

Originally published on January 19, 2011.

The cloud, with butterflies? No, I don’t think it means she’s, um, unwell in the mind or crazy, cuckoo, demented, deranged, insane, loony, mad, nuts, nutty, off her rocker, psycho, psychopathic, psychotic, or schizophrenic. To the contrary, I think it means she’s recovering from a temporary form of maniacal loony-tunes ‘n’ marrie melodies! She’s realizing she’s not gonna get married without Leo participating willingly at every stage. She’s coming to her senses. Now she’s gotta restore.

I think Trudeau may have just enough biblical blood in his veins to represent the cloud-with-butterflies as a symbol of God’s creation. Or, in this case, re-creation. God is rescuing beloved creature Alex from her own folly — drifting away from reality into a wish-fulfilment fantasy where she get’s to decide everything and “her man” (whoever he is, but in this case Leo) is really “her ornament”, her “arm candy”, or whatever metaphor you choose to characterize the temporary condition. It’s not something that sets her apart from the rest of us flawed humans, but it is an aberration.  Sorry, friend Doughfoot, but that’s the best I can do to reach eye-to-eye agreement with you.

It’s the cloud of bad weed she’s been smokin.

Is there pie in that sky?

I read a Rolling Stone interview with GBT a liitle while back, and he mentioned that its only recently that cartoonists have been allowed to do a week of reruns, and actually have a vacation. I can’t begrudge him the need – we’re all human, and he’s not obligated to keep me freshly entertained 365 days a year.

That’s not butterflies, it’s sea gulls.

Sea gulls? Cuckoos, surely – she is living in cloud cuckoo land…

 I finally got it: pico-gulls!

Leo’s about as grounded as a human can be, being a vet, he’s the anchor to Alex’s kite. with “film school” the highest goal of every indoctrinated kid, and Paris the height of romance, the new world chaos can only be taken in by an imaginative dreamer in very small bites….and she knows she needs help — how many of us are that smart?

“Hmmm, Nano drones spying on us all!” Would you believe pico-drones?

 Femto-drones!

Whatever it is…I think we all get the point!

You’re welcome for 30 seconds of my time.

“The further result: Occupy Wall Street. ¶ Cripes!” Such unjustified / unjustifiable attacks on the OWS movement will do little / nothing to convince fence-sitters, to say nothing of the unconvinced.

OWS is protesting American fascism. The top wealthiest, thinnest über-crust comprises the military-industrial-financial complex (MIFC). The MIFC “owns” the government in the sense that it “owns” the legislators, both federal and state, via campaign contributions and million-dollar-per-year lobbyists who write the bills that are destined to become law. Ditto for the executive branch, again both state and federal, such that the President / governors will sign them into laws.  Example: laws that seduced, via “fine print” deception", middle-class home owners into buying dwellings with sliding-rate (as opposed to fixed-rate) interest payments. When the bubble grew the sliding-rate slid upward and through millions of roofs, rendering the hapless property owners “under water”. But did the MIFC-owned government bail them out, as it did the failed financial institutions that did the “dirty deed”? Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! The union of the MIFC and the government is the very definition of fascism. In Nazi Germany (not to mention Mussolini’s Italy) fascism defined the economic system. In Germany’s case, the government (i.e. der führer Adolf himself) controlled the MIFC. In America today the reverse is true, though the system is still fascist. The MIFC controls the government, via the system described above: campaign contributions and lobbyists. Understand this principle and you understand the OWS protest movement. Otherwise you’ll continue to be “sounding brass or clanging cymbals”.

Charles Schultz took vacations and didn’t do reruns.

“… being a psychopath doesn’t mean you are crazy. Not at all.” If you’re sure psychopathy is not a mental disorder, then you’d better tell America’s psychiatrists AND psychologists, both of whose professional organizations use the DSM as the highest authority in their profession. In my many years of work as a professional science / medical writer / editor I had reason to refer to the DSM it all the time. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia: “Psychopathy … is a personality disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deception. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are disproportionately responsible for violent crime when in a violent emotional state or situation. Though lacking empathy and emotional depth, they often manage to pass themselves off as average individuals by feigning emotions and lying about their past.…. ¶ …. The publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of MENTAL DISORDERS third edition (DSM-III) changed the name of this MENTAL DISORDER to antisocial personality disorder …”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy Note: All-cap emphasis by dtπ.

“So like a vine wrapping around a tree the various corps have their tendrils holding up part of the tree that is gov’t. And sucking out lots more juice than they need.” Good post, NG49. I would only opine that the “various corps” need little if any juice from the tree (the gov’t.). Rather, they should be paying their own fair fair share of juice (in the form of taxes) to the American people’s reps (the gov’t) — and helping, rather than preying on, them.

Add 15% Gratuity to the check!That should bring her down to Earth.

its Lucy in the sky, with diamonds :)