Recent Comments

1. 3 days ago on Outland

   You’re forgetting about Air America Radio, a left-wing talk radio network that was active from 2004 – 2010. They debuted with a lot of promise, and even had Al Franken as the host of their weeknight show.

   Long story short, the people they trusted to raise the money they needed to get started were corrupt. It’s estimated that they only raised a fraction of what they claimed they raised, and much of that was embezzled from a charity & so had to be paid back. Couple this with some scandals involving the early shock jocks they had as daytime hosts, scandals that led to at least one major advertiser pulling their ads, and AAR’s finances were in a constant shambles.

   It’s hypothetically possible that they might still be going if they’d have gotten honest individuals working on their initial fundraising, but we’ll never know unless we start being able to peer into alternate realities.

2. 5 days ago on Rose is Rose

   There are literally holes in the center console and dashboard where some sort of CB radio or other communications equipment must have been mounted. They yanked the equipment out before putting it up for auction, but didn’t even try to patch or conceal those holes.

3. 6 days ago on Arlo and Janis

   Ever have cat hair in your mouth?

   As cats shed, hair gets all over, and can even get into food if they’re so much as sitting on the table while you’re trying to prepare or eat food.

4. 6 days ago on Rose is Rose

   The vehicle I presently drive used to be a government fleet vehicle. A relative purchased it from a surplus action, and I got it from them. Because it was a government fleet vehicle, it was made to somewhat different specifications than the regular civilian version and so there have been several instances where the third-party repair manual my dad purchased didn’t reflect what I was actually staring at.

   For example, the manual says that there are only three bolts holding the manifold in place, but on my car there is actually eight and one of them is under the cowling used to protect and shield another component. It took me ten minutes to try and convince him that no, what I was staring at and what was in the diagram did not match up and that I needed his help to find that 8th bolt.

5. 7 days ago on Rose is Rose

   I think the issue is that it’s 1986.

   After MASH ended, Alda starred in a series of movies and TV shows that resulted in him being very visible in Hollywood but which, to put it bluntly, were something of a mixed bag. A lot of his content has ended up essentially being forgotten about.

   It’s entirely plausible that this strip represents the characters, and possibly even the author, coming to feel that he was over-rated and over-exposed.

6. 7 days ago on Rose is Rose

   Even then, there’s an art to doing it.

   For example, my dad’s thing is “Here’s the book; go do it.” That was his way of “teaching” myself and my brothers several critical life skills, thinking that if he gave us the instructions and the tools as needed we would eventually figure it out on our own. He would also sometimes deliberately drop us into stressful situations and then pause to make us figure out how to resolve them.

   The problem was that he often had very poor timing when it came to this, like when it was a dangerously hot day outside and I was needing his help to do some work on my car. I have an arrythmia, and by the time I finally got through to him that no, I needed help and his repeatedly walking away from me was not helping, I was in a very bad way. In hindsight, I probably should have gone to the hospital.

7. 8 days ago on Rose is Rose

   My first system was a Commodore 64. By the late 1980s you could find “educational” games for them as well as kid-friendly platformers, with Disney and Sesame Street in particular being popular licenses circa 1989. People really underestimated what computers could do back then or what power they had to be educational if kids were guided in how to use them & taught how to think critically.

8. 8 days ago on Overboard

   During the Covid lockdowns, cornhole surged in popularity as it was a rare competition game that could be played while still social distancing. The rise in popularity combined with the cancellation of most other sports actually led to at least one major US – based all-sports network to air cornhole events in prime-time, further driving curiosity.

   Professional wrestling organizations WWE and AEW also got a boost from the lockdowns, as they were able to retreat with a portion of their roster to dedicated isolation facilities and continue producing new content. Things were a bit janky because they had to make do with who was able to get to their facilities before the travel restrictions kicked in, but it was new content and people were desperate for new content.

9. 9 days ago on Doonesbury

   They were substituting for a while before running the explanation, but due to how my schedule works on Sundays it’s often late in the evening before I can sit and read anything. As a result it wasn’t until they started running those explanations that I was able to confirm that yes, they weren’t running the official strips for that day.

10. 13 days ago on Rose is Rose

    At the time this strip was made, some grocery stores literally had an entire aisle of product that was in plain white packaging with black text and images. This was in the days before store brands were really catching on as a concept, and so if you wanted to get something for cheap you had to buy this visibly obvious product.