Tag: smirk

At Least I’ll Get My Washin’ Done

While harmless for the person repeating the word or action, this behavior can be troublesome or stressful for those caring for the person with dementia. Fortunately, there are some ways to distract the person and break the repetitive action.

  • Provide plenty of reassurance and comfort, both in words and in touch.‬
  • Try distracting the person with a snack or activity.‬
  • Avoid reminding them that they just asked the same question.
  • Try ignoring the behavior or question and distract the person into an activity.‬
  • Don’t discuss plans with a confused person until immediately prior to an event.

https://www.nextavenue.org/coping-dementia-related-repetitive-actions/

‬

…or do what Linda Bushka does: stand back and let ’em have at it! Bull’s torturous decline continues, and apparently the only support that Linda seeks is for herself, online. And what’s Buck got to smirk knowingly about? He shared with Linda that he’d (impossibly) been diagnosed with CTE himself, shortly after Bull was. He still appears hale and hearty, while Bull has been reduced to a mindless laundry addict.

Speaking Truth to Powergirl.

Link to today’s strip

Sorry for the late post. The strip wasn’t available for preview so I wanted to wait for it to drop. Boy I’m sure glad I did! *eye-roll sarcasm*

As a female who enjoys comic books…I’ve pretty much heard it all too. And by heard it all, I’ve had a few scattered males ask me about my ‘unique’ viewpoint on comic books. And my ‘unique’ viewpoint is the radical idea that sometimes there’s a little too much TNA fanservice. That’s it.

It’s a male dominated medium to an extent, but not some kind of misogynistic boys club, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Gail Simone’s been writing comics since 2002! There were a couple female Transformers comic writers in the last couple years.

And Batiuk is willfully erasing female centric history by ignoring the fact that Ruby here would have been a comic writer at the height of the Teen Romance comics. Does he even remember that these exist? Or because they aren’t spandex or space monkeys he doesn’t consider them ‘true’ comics.

Let us celebrate women in comics with a little Wikipedia Copy Pasta

“Comic books, as well, have been produced by a number of female artists.

One publisher in particular, Fiction House, used many female cartoonists, both on staff and through Eisner & Iger, one of the era’s comics “packagers” that would supply comic books on demand to publishers testing the emerging medium. Action and adventure-oriented genres were popular at this time, and Fiction House’s forte was capable and beautiful female protagonists, working as pilots, detectives, or jungle adventuresses. Women working for the publisher include Lily Renée, at the Lambiek Comiclopedia Fran Hopper and future romance artists Ruth Atkinson and Ann Brewster. These stories were frequently written by a female writer, as well: Ruth Roche, later an editor. Before finding fame as a crime novelist, Patricia Highsmith wrote for Black Terror and other comic books.

In the 1950s Marie Severin, sister of artist John Severin, was a frequent EC and Atlas/Marvel colorist, later drawing her own stories as well. Her cartoon style made her a frequent contributor to Marvel’s Not Brand Echh satirical title of the late 1960s. Another prolific artist was Ramona Fradon, who drew Aquaman and was co-creator of Metamorpho.

Later artists and writers include Ann Nocenti (creator of Typhoid Mary and Longshot), Louise Simonson (Power Pack writer), June Brigman (Power Pack artist), Gail Simone (Welcome to Tranquility), Devin Grayson (Batman writer), Becky Cloonan, the first female Batman artist.,[10] Marjorie Liu (The Amazing X-Men writer), Sara Pichelli (Ultimate Spider-Man artist), G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel), Amanda Conner (Power Girl artist), and Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Bitch Planet) at Image Comics.”

Consolation Prize

Link to today’s strip

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh! This is awful. The only possible more awkward engagement involves a shotgun in one hand and a pregnancy test in the other.

Pete was going to propose tonight? On a night they just sort of randomly decided to go to the fair because Mindy wanted to? He wasn’t going to wait to plan a more meaningful or romantic date? And he was either going to propose without a ring, or he’s got a ring in his pocket, bought off credit, that he now has to return.

And his response to losing his ring money is just awful and pathetic. He just offhandedly tells Mindy this. It’s worse than a non proposal. It’s a non-proposal proposal. “I was going to ask you to marry me, but now that I’ve wasted money I would have spent on gold and jewels that retain some monetary value in the long run I’ve instead wasted hundreds on a stuffed tiger worth 5 bucks. But I still want you to marry me, so I’m basically asking the question in the form of a passive statement.”

My sister was going to get proposed to over Christmas. She and her boyfriend had traveled to spend the holiday with our whole family, and her boyfriend had the ring mailed to my parents house so he could propose on Christmas morning. The ring arrived damaged. SO HE DIDN’T PROPOSE THEN. He didn’t even tell her. He waited to get the ring fixed and then set up a date to propose to her later at the place they first met. He eventually told her the story about what happened over Christmas, sure. Because it’s a funny story. But telling her ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, would have gotten him run out of the house.

You can’t tell someone, “I was going to ask you to marry me, but…” Unless the ‘but’ is something along the lines of “I don’t actually want to marry you.” Otherwise it’s a proposal.

I miss Chien. You remember when they sort of implied Pete and Chien had some attraction during High School? That girl was sassy, and snarky, and smart. She was a stereotyped goth-chick, sure, but in a sea of skinny blondes she would have stood out. And she wouldn’t have squeebled over a stuffed tiger. She would have given Pete a dirty look, and then a piece of her mind. I wish Pete was marrying Chien. Mindy is dumb as a box of rocks.

Murderball most Foul.

Link to today’s strip

At first I thought panel two of today’s strip was incredibly implausible. Why would this game have a hard backdrop behind the bottles that a ball could ricochet off of? Isn’t a game involving throwing hard projectiles at fragile glass bottles while people stand watching dangerous enough already? So I actually looked up a couple pictures and videos of how this carnival game is played. I didn’t see any balls ricochet right back like this, but most of the games I looked at had a hard metal sheet behind the bottles.

And you know what? This game is actually easier than a lot of carnie games. As long as the bottles are standard beer bottles, and the balls used aren’t completely nerfed, this game is less likely to be rigged than the milk bottle toss, the ring toss, or the free throw game.

What I’m saying is, unless Pete is completely inept, he should be able to do this at least once out of ten or so tries.

Which will probably win him a cheap stuffed animal roughly the size of his fist, worth about 10 cents.

Mindy could definitely do better. At both the carnie game and the dating game.

A Veritable Smorgasbord…of Horror.

c

Comic Book Harriet back again. And I want to thank Beckoning Chasm for taking one for the team. The last slot was an absolute void of material, even when the strips were available, and he filled it up with snark like only an inviting ravine extending into nothingness knows how.

And what a treat for me! We have Mopey and Mindy! A sad sack of a man only defined by comic books, and a carbon copy of every other blonde in the strip, only defined by the men around her.

I mean, seriously, can you be more of a non-character? Not to get nerdy, but we are dealing with some serious replicative fading. Each Cindy clone gets less and less viable. Cindy at least has a detailed history of independent action. And she used to have an actual personality before the Westview blandification virus infected her and turned her into the same neurotic depressive as everyone else, like an insidious hive-mind of wryness.

Jessica is less interesting, has never had a personality, and also is partially defined by her father, John Darling, who was murdered. But at least she attempted a career for a while separate from her husband. She also occasionally has conversations with other women that pass the Bechdel test.

But Mindy is like a box of expired No-Doz. Perky, yes. But completely flavorless and kind of nauseating. She wandered into her boyfriend’s office one day and he gave her a job because she was good at coloring in the lines. What did she do before other than work at the Valentine? What does she like? Did she ever have any kind of dream that wasn’t being handed a job by a man she knew? The only things we know about her inner life is that Cranky is her grandpa. Pete is literally dating the memory of an elderly man.

Still we’ve got a real buffet of monsters in the background here! From left to right. We have man presumably unironically wearing a Cincinnati Reds shirt. With a projected 7.9% chance to make the playoffs this year, and an average home game attendance of 20,000, nearly filling up half their ballpark, their future is definitely so bright they’re gonna need shades. His landwhale wife in her pointy sunglasses looks like she could have walked to the fair straight from the Far Side. And her terrifying tiny wig may have been stolen from a pediatric cancer patient.

Between Pete and Mindy is either an escaped convict in a hat or a construction worker on break. Right of Mindy’s head is the reincarnation of King Tut, complete with sloping forehead, elongated skull, slim body, and slight gut. Mindy’s arm is blocking his feet, so we can’t tell if he was cursed with a club foot in this life too. Next to him is a poor shoulderless woman who either has prominent rounded ears or a horrifyingly unfortunate nose.

Then we have the return of the dickhead! He even has a nice little coronal line where the shaft of his neck meets his glans, I mean face. He is drinking a refreshing beverage from a reusable cloth cup and straw he has fashioned from leftover fabric from his shirt and hat.

His wife looks like an extra from Planet of the Apes trying to pass. Lucky for them two of their three children look relatively normal. The poor kid in the stoller though. Pull that sunshade down! No one needs to see that! And it’s child abuse to let your lumpy potato child roast in the sun until he’s nice and crispy brown.