Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 30, 2012

Those glasses give me a headache.

S0 THERE! all you readers who’ve been carping ‘n’ harping on all the inconsistencies in Doonesbury: hair turning white then brown then white again, some people not aging while others are, you know, stuff like that.

Tried it with my theater glasses. Slightly less fuzzy, but no 3D effect.

Not all of the last panel is in 3D. Of all the visual items in panel 4, only Zonk’s right hand is in 3D.

Excuse me a moment, his thumb’s in my nose!

I hate the 3D craze. Alas, my eyes don’t work like that. For me, 3D just means “fuzzy”. Watching a whole movie like that would give me a headache. Never ever could see anything in one of those “magic eye” images either. Good lesson though: just ‘cause you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Technology is leaving me behind. I don’t have a cellphone, and every time I think of getting one, they seem to have gotten even more complex and expensive. (Of course, I don’t have a wristwatch, either, but that’s a different story.) When the switch to digital TV came, I practically gave up watching broadcast TV since the signals are too weak in my area to be reliable, converter box and power-assisted antenna notwithstanding. Half the time the pictures breaks up too often to make the TV watchable. Most of what I want to see is on PBS and I’ve always contributed to that, but I am not going to be forced into paying for cable in addition, which seems the only viable alternative. At least for now, there is still Netflix; but when they phase out DVDs for streaming exclusively (as is inevitable) … Ah, well, the fate of all old fogeys.

That’s still decades-old technology. Even if they brought back Duke 2000, it would still be obsolete.

“Tom from Lansing”!! Local guy goes national!! Whohoo!!

If you squint your eyes, Zonker’s hand comes right out of the panel…some kind of a Hawaiian gesture…..

Hang loose!!!

The black and white version of the last panel (not all newspapers publish in color) is quite different.

To see boatloads of “shaka”, copy “shaka” (not including the quote marks), go to Google > Images and “dump” it (or just type “shaka” into the query box, hit RETURN (on a Mac), and will popup hundreds to thousands of pix. Some you can copy, other’s are copyrighted and Google won’t let you. Have fun.

A drawback to technology is neglecting to use one’s imagination. My newspaper is black and white and I got the idea without aids.

These are the days when this strip is about comics and not about Newt and Mitt and all of the campaigning. Which makes me happy.

A solution in search of a problem.

I heard from my fatherinlaw that Shaka means right on!

I bought a 3D television a couple of months ago. The effect is very cool but it hasn’t improved the programming any.

Good ol’ G.B., always up with the latest gadgetry.

Thrusting objects forward out of the plane of the panel (or screen) is just plain cheesy and 3D creators should just quit it.

Ever Heard of an Avatar? • Am I Welsh? Yes, part.• Do I write poetry? Yes.• By what right do I claim to call myself that revered name? By what right do people named David claim to call themselves by that revered name?• Am I some descendent of the master? Yes, spiritual.

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees / Is my destroyer. / And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose / My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.” —The real Dylan Thomas, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower”, 1st Stanza 

I’m more concerned with Mr. Thomas taking one of my favorite ratios as his own.

Yikes! not the mail bag again, I thought Zeke took care of that problem.

Boo! Fake 3-D. Really, how much trouble would it have been to do the real thing?

>> Which came first, the circle or the diameter?

Uh oh, I think I’m punching above my weight class, but I’m going to have to go with diameter.

Good luck on your “cataract removal” together with an ocular implant, Sharuniboy. I had the procedure three years ago. It’s slightly less uncomfortable than having a dental crown. You’re put into a state of “sedated consciousness” and your only perception is the rainbow colors as the surgeon emulsifies (removes) the pupil and substitutes the poycarbonate lens.The next day, the surgeon warned me that my sight would be improved but “not as good as it was when you were younger.” She took off the bandage and I was amazed. I’d been myopic from birth; now I could see 15/20. I told her she’d improved on God’s work, so she was entitled to claim a miracle.An unsung advantage of old fogeyism: modern science can give us a second birth. Ever since, my wife (who sees 20/20) and I have been rediscovering the world (America and Europe) that I’d never really seen, except in pictures.