Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 30, 2020

Frazz must be from miss-a-sippy.

Not everybody can learn to operate a cup or glass. For a variety of reasons, most of them best addressed by… a straw.

Blah blah blah. The self-righteous Mallett strikes again.

I know how and am able to operate a cup. Whether I use a straw with it depends on where I am and how well I trust the dishwasher who washed that cup.

Steel straws are dangerous, the best solution I have heard is to make straws from corn products.

So many reasons for straws, some day you’ll be able to extend your thinking

Just don’t drink anything that requires a straw: Beer, wine, hard liquor, coffee. Problem solved.

At marathons, aren’t there occasional tables where volunteers pass out water, Gatorade, Yoo-Hoo and such in plastic cups? …

Milk shakes were invented for straws.

Or you could throw your straw into a trashcan instead of the ocean.

And disabled people and younger kids who physically can’t use a cup…?

Cups are easy enough to operate, unless you like ice in your drink (like I do). Then the drink spills trying to get around the ice, and when you get to the bottom, trying to tip it enough to get any drink out of it gives you a facefull of ice. Straws have their place.

Gee, anyone else remember PAPER STRAWS???? I do…

My mother didn’t spend the first three years of my life teaching me to drink from a cup to have me throw it all out now!

As long as some restaurants insist on serving drinks with crushed ice or little-bitty cubes, straws will still be necessary.

Learning to sip a drink without a lid is hard!

Plastic straws are a great start, but we also need to get rid of all the single-use plastic items we have gotten so used to.

I don’t understand why cold drink lids don’t have a sip through spot like hot drink lids do.

I like straws, they keep the liquid off my teeth. I have many reusable ones, including glass straws for hot beverages.

The logic here is faulty…. most CUPS are disposable, landfill filling plastic too.

I happen to prefer to drink from straws. Biodegradable, plant-based plastics are the way I hope we eventually go. Petrochemical plastics are worse than just landfill fillers…. the chemicals in them are not good.

Yeah right, the “strawpocalips” is going to kill us all…

as for fast food places, they already have the answer! use the sipping covers from the hot beverage cups!

How lazy do we have to be that we can’t even lift a glass to our mouths?

Because this is America, and I will use a straw if I want to!

I really like this strip.BUT………………..I have to use a straw to drink as a result of having had a severe Bell’s Palsy/facial paralysis.I have a reusable, foldable straw in my pocket at all times. Very surprised at the lack of compassion today in what is usually a very aware comic.At least you didn’t make fun of “blue sticker/card” parking spaces for the handicapped like Crankshaft once did.

My husband is a C5/C6 quadriplegic who is incapable of holding a cup. In the last year we have been in three different eating places where managers or servers have been very rude and demeaning towards him when we have asked for a straw for him. His life is difficult enough without artists encouraging the “if you dare ask for a straw you hate the environment and our way of life…” mentality. Not finding today’s strip funny at all.

Isn’t it amazing how paper straws were replaced by plastic ones because a) the paper ones got soggy and collapsed and b) we were cutting down all the trees.

Now we are replacing the plastic ones with paper again because the plastic doesn’t biodegrade fast enough. And oh, by the way, the amount of trash generated by plastic straws is negligible compared to other plastic waste such as trash bags, soda holders and plastic packaging, none of which are considered recyclable.

Crushed ice and no straws just don’t mix. Inevitably the ice will shift and you’ll wind up with your drink all over your face and neck. Plus there’s the to-go for the car.

Or maybe we’ll realize that straws are a water molecule in the ocean of problem plastics, and the corporations are making a big stink about them so we won’t look at their contribution to the disaster.

Well, gosh, Mr. Mallett, there are a LOT OF PEOPLE who, quite literally, CAN’T USE A CUP. Handicapped people exist. Just so you know!

How about learning about disabilities and that some people NEED straws to drink? How about being aware that people are not all alike, and not all athletic freaks?

We bought the stainless steel, cleanable, bent straws for when a family member needs them due to illness.

Oh, and not only are illness and handicaps reasons, but injuries, too. Try getting the hand injury known as De Quervain’s tenosynovitis some time. Recovery can take months.

Another solution in search of a problem.

i’m 67; i’ve never used a straw, right, not even as a kid…for some reason never liked them

When I had Bell’s Palsy I could only drink through a straw! A fat squishy one I could hold between my teeth. When a cup won’t work, it’s nice to have an alternative.

If I buy a can of soda from a machine I almost always get the can that has been dropped, dented or bent in such away that you can’t open the can enough to pour it into a cup. A straw is the only option to drink it, and sometimes getting the opening large enough for that is a struggle.

My employer requires a lid and a straw for any beverage consumed beside a computer.My public library requires a lid and a straw for any beverage brought into the library.

The cover for the cup keeps it from spilling so a straw is optimum.

Despite the rock-solid job security that is comics, which is to say show business, especially in a segment seeing as much growth as print newspapers, I will have the occasional million-dollar retirement invention idea. I have yet to act on any of them, which is why haven’t gone bankrupt investing my cartoon fortune into an idea somebody else had at the same time, only with the courage, wherewithal and engineering/business skills to have totally eaten my lunch had I gone forward with it.

Yes, readers, I had the idea for a pedal-based power meter, while a friend with an actual genius-level electrical engineer who could have made it happen. Instead, I created a comic strip and he continued doing electrical-engineering stuff I couldn’t begin to understand while some other company, I think Mavic, lost millions pursuing the same idea. Yes, readers, I had the idea for the brownie pan that was a series of channels so that every brownie in the batch would be a coveted edge piece. Didn’t act on that, either, and the guy who did had the good sense to make each channel curve into the next so instead of making calculations and guesses, you could just pour the whole batch in and let entropy do the work. Yes, readers, I had the idea to take a 25-meter-long LED rope light and sequence the lights (I’m still friends with the genius electrical engineer and he’s still busy) so you could sink the line at the bottom of a swimming pool and have a pace light to follow like a greyhound on a track. Someone else had the idea at I’m guessing about the same time judging from when it went to market, but in addition to having the same basic concept, he put it in a much better package that may have had something to do with his background as an Olympic-caliber swimmer and an MBA. Cheater.

What about straws made out of hay?

Are they grasping at straws here?