I get my comics from the Internet these days. This includes everything from Agnes to xkcd (wow, that was unintentional). But it also has the added bonus of some "classic" strips. I read old Fox Trot and Calvin and Hobbes dailies, repeats from years ago.
The comics are hilarious, but the thing that really gets me are the comments. For some reason, GoComics.com thinks it's a great idea to let comic fans comment on the comic of the day. You have to have an account, and all, but once you do, you're free to berate Non Sequitur or laugh at Hobbes...
This is all well and good, except that there are people predicting what will happen next in both the Fox Trot and Calvin and Hobbes threads, as well as interpreting them in a modern context. A strip of Calvin building a sandbox city and flooding it ran on September 11th this year. It was probably drawn way back in 1989, and there were people saying how insensitive the comic was.
Ummm, folks, are you not aware these are old? Makes me laugh.
The Boy is just starting looking for a job for next year. I hope we can afford to move. We might possibly wind up in Virginia, but I'm hoping for Massachusetts. Maryland is another potential. I ruled out the Deep South and the southwest (I never ever need to step foot in Texas again, once was enough), so the positions we're finding are all eastern. I wouldn't be adverse to the west coast, necessarily, or even the mountains, but, jobs out there don't pop up.
Rented the first season of Leave It To Beaver. It's not terribly corny at all, and it's much better than some of the family comedies I've seen on, say, ABC lately. There was a line about June telling Ward she, "...gave the Beaver a bath. He was looking a little the worse for wear" that made me laugh inappropriately.
I'm struck by the fact that everyone on that show is genuinely trying to be a good person (except Eddie Haskell, who is just being Eddie). Even when Wally is being a jerk deliberately, he's trying to do it for the right reasons, and not just to be a nasty little kid. Ward and June give the boys a great deal of responsibility and whether or not it's realistic of the period, it certainly seems a better expectation than what's on TV now.
When the boys went to the Voodoo movie instead of Pinocchio, they got sent up to their room for that night and the whole next day, and TB made a little noise of shock. To which I say, June and Ward trusted Wally and Beav to walk all the way downtown, or maybe take the bus, by themselves and to come back home again afterwards. They went without adult supervision, without cell phones, without saying when they might be back. You have to trust that your kid is going to do what they tell you in a situation like that. If you can't trust them to do that, you can't let them go places, and if you don't make that point perfectly clear they'll just do it again.
Anyway, the only truly surreal thing about the show thus far is the alligator. I do have difficulty imagining a world in which you can get an alligator by mail order.