"the said someone"?

If I ever decide to go bad, I know how: I'll answer one of these scam messages and offer my professional services to turn them into passable English.

Where can I get me one of those "United States International Passports"? Oh, I've got a regular one, but it just doesn't seem special enough.

On second thought . . .

Toots on the bus this morning wasn't my old kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Abbott-Costello -- she was this woman!

I can't help being glad she's lost all her money and has to take transit.

"Oh yeah? Same ta YOU, toots!"

A woman getting off the bus this morning who apparently, like my kindergarten teacher, mistook physical awkwardness and slowness on the uptake for malice, screeched at me, "You're in my way, lady!"

I loudly thanked her for telling me that, since it was my life's goal to trouble decent people like herself. She was halfway down the block before I finished, though her husband or something was still standing outside the bus with his mouth open, staring in at me. Everyone else looked away.

In real life, you don't get applause for smacking down the most obnoxious passenger on the bus. People aren't sure you deserve it -- they didn't hear the whole thing, or can' t tell what's being said -- and anyway, they don't have a dog in this fight.

It's the one who takes it public who comes under scrutiny first. This often means the one with the louder voice. Guess who that tends to be.

Hm. Maybe she was my kindergarten teacher. Unlikely, but it makes me feel better.

Flame on

Reconsidering

Things to do before you can expect the printer to work again

1. Put paper tray back in
   
2. Make sure there's paper in it
3. Put cartridge back in . . .
   

"France's leading expert on modern thought" has quoted extensively from a philosopher who's only about as real as De Selby:

Leading French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy has been caught red-faced for praising the work of a philosopher who, it turns out, was invented as a joke by a journalist from a satirical daily.

He says the creator is "a good philosopher all the same". Maybe, but he's probably more use to society as a satirist.

Overheard in the animal hospital waiting room

"This place is about as much fun as a people hospital."

The drama drags on

(Sigh) Click to enlarge

Maybe someday my stuff will be as good as Mary Worth.

Quaint Urban Folk Myth

"If the car in front of you can make a left on yellow-going-red more or less safely, why then, so can you!"

I'd gotten used to seeing my light turn green as a car turned left in front of me -- but now, there are almost always two of them. Talk about coattails, tailgating, coattailgating -- whatever you want to call it.

Look, people. It may be okay to put yourself in a position where, if the light doesn't stay green long enough for you, your only option is to turn on what is really someone else's green light. But if the guy in front of you is doing this, and you're just barging through the intersection all but attached to his rear bumper, then what you're doing is cutting someone off.

Not so sure now that I want either of my sons to be successfull cartoonists

Bill Watterson, one of the greats, says:

Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist -- how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!

But he knows when to quit:

It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.