Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Gary Larson, How I Love Thee

One of my favorite comic strips, The Far Side, once featured a drawing captioned "How fishermen blow their minds" (a fisherman in a boat thinking, "Fish or cut bait? FISH OR CUT BAIT??").

I would post the strip in question, but I just read that Mr. Larson, he no likey.

(One wonders how da Vinci would feel at our using the Mona Lisa so freely and extensively without remunerating him for his work, but Father Al had not yet invented the Internet, so I guess 1. Leonardo doesn't care, 2. Leonardo doesn't understand copyright laws, 3. Leonardo does care and does understand copyright laws but is dead and can only do so much about it, therefore 4. Leonardo's stuff is free game.)

So I won't. Just try to think back to the 80s. Remember them? Ah. I was a HUGE Far Side fan then, to the point that people gave me Far Side books as gifts or as an incentive to shut up about the Far Side for a while.

Trying to choose a favorite Far Side strip is like trying to decide which child is my favorite - it depends on the day - but pretty much every time, I will choose the one of the lady looking out her front window at the pianos and piano benches falling from the sky, several having heavily landed and implanted themselves in the ground. "My word! I'd hate to be outside on a day like this!"

(See, they're not funny when they're just explained, Gary.)

THE DAILY FABULOUS: This is a new feature. We'll see how "daily" it turns out to be.

I was awake at 3:30 this morning, thinking that my youngest daughter, currently age 7, really needs to be in our annual Veterans Day parade this coming November, and I was trying to think of a way to make that happen for her. She wants to be one of those horrible warped pageant-y children - well, not so much that as she wants to ride in a convertible in a parade, wearing a tiara and a sash, waving and smiling to crowds of adoring admirers. Really, who doesn't want that?

(Her ten-year-old Cub Scout brother was just in the parade - that's what put us there in the first place. Not that I don't love veterans, parades, or Veteran's Day parades, but come on - November?)

ANYWAY. I was thinking that if we were really serious about this one little day of her life, we could have her join Girl Scouts (no thanks), or we could start up a troop of Frontier Girls. "Ick," I thought. "I don't want to do that. If I did that, I'd have to be in charge."

"Why can't you be in charge?" my inner fabulous voice said.

***groan***

I don't want to start up a troop of Frontier Girls - what I'd really like to see happen is our ward or stake Activity Day girls participate more in community events, but I'm not sure how or if that would work - but I have decided that my inner fabulous voice should be listened to more often. A voice of challenge, a voice of self-improvement, a voice that celebrates good and beauty, a voice that rises above fears and gripes and "what-ifs" and dares me to be - dare I say it again - FABULOUS.

So here's today's Daily Fabulous: I'm too lazy to locate my phone and take a picture, and figure out how to disengage the "where I was when I took this picture so you can find my house and stalk me" feature on my phone. That's not fabulous, but it hopefully excuses the lack of picture.

What IS fabulous is the pair of awesome blue wool snowflake socks I'm wearing. How I love these socks. They are warm and cute and Yuppies-trying-to-be-woodsy-ish. I found them at Fred Meyer (and they weren't even on my list that day).

I'm starting small... but I am starting.

Daring herself to get the laundry done so she can put something else on,
Fisher Cutbait

5 comments:

Heffalump said...

What you need to do is come here for the 4th of July parade. It goes right in front of our house. It's a very small and relatively short parade. Only a few floats and the rest of the parade is cars, firetrucks, military vehicles, clowns, people on foot or riding bikes and etc. You could dress her up and put her in the parade.
Every year I think we should dress the boys up as Lewis and Clark explorers, and make a canoe float for them to paddle down the road.

Fisher Cutbait said...

Oh MAN, how much fun would that be!! What day of the week is the 4th on this year?

Elizabeth-W said...

I'm a huge far side fan, too. Some of my faves, of course, were the psychiatric ones. :)

And the dog getting the cat in the dryer labeled Cat Fud.

Fisher Cutbait said...

I'm not science-y at all but I liked the lab ones - "paramecium humor" and "He's pulling your flagellum, Nancy" are two that come to mind.

Carrot Jello said...

My favorite is "Welcome to hell, here's your accordian."