A Holiday Harlequinade part 3
Oh alas the poor cartoonist. Pity him, chained to his easel even when wassailers come. But who is the greatest wassailer of them all? Warlock Brian Fitzpatrick from Steeple of course. A merry figure even when he is forcing you to regard the whole planet from the upper atmosphere. Part 4 on Wednesday!
Just remember, kids, you only need to rearrange two letters to turn “Santa” into “Satan”.
Actually, it’s really only one letter, isn’t it?
If it’s the right letter! Rearrange the wrong one and it could take much longer
My kids made this very error while caroling “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” “…to free us all from Santa’s power….” They were old enough to read a lyric sheet but not old enough to have heard of Satan. We still embarrass them with this tale 20 years later.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is one that says shadowy aristocrats appropriated St. Nick and turned “Satan” into “Santa” in order to corrupt Christmas and turn it from a festival of love and care into a Hellish paean to material commerce.
I think Tom Pendennis would have approved of that one.
Not only that, if you rearrange the letters of “present”, you get “serpent”.
…and if you rearrange the letters in “Brian”, you get “in bar”.
Come mighty Bacchus to these rites inclin’d
And bless thy suppliants with rejoicing mind.
Shelley = hell yes
(Steeple = let’s pee)
“Brian” also gives “in bra”. Though bacchantes are usually seen without.
And, lastly, “cartoonist” can be rearranged into any of:
root antics
ration cost
roast tonic
oi! contrast!
casino trot
train scoot
Coors titan
action sort
no ricottas
nitro coast
I realized towards the end of the GoComics rerun of “Fire Inside” that, “She goes to taunt the serial killer,” is an anagram of, “The huge sot trolls an irate selkie.”
Ooh. That’s good.
The poor cartoonist has a hard life. Please, inform him that we readers love him!
I had several guesses as to who the Ghost of Christmas Present would turn out to be. Brian wasn’t one of them. I hope he doesn’t hold a grudge due to that “the author turned me back into a werewolf” thing.
On the lower right, was John greased or ungreased?
Ungreased, the underfed frame of a cartoonist does not compare to Big Ken’s girth.
Wispa! Decadent indeed!
Warlock Brian Fitzpatrick is such a perfect choice for The Ghost Of Christmas Present.
The most munificent.
Pivot… to… video
Not even Beelzebub could be so evil a to suggest such a thing
OTOH, wholly approve of the Chapell Roan album
Will John ever consider himself H-O-T-T-O-G-O?
N-E-E-D-T-O-S-L-E-E-P
Not an artist who brings me any joy, but very 2024
I don’t know if she has another album that vital in her, but it’s a great example of how sometimes being dropped by your record label and saying “Fuck it, then, I’ll do what I want” is the best thing that can happen
PIVOT to Video? Like there’s some magic button to push and then it’s all animated? This is all Fishy or Boozy (and Claire, you should stay out of this.)
Well, y’know, you, like, give it to your “guy”.
You know… your “guy”. The guy who knows how to do all the stuff on the computer. Him. Give it to him and, y’know, he’ll, like, y’know, “render” it, or “morphilize” it, or whatever the hell those “guys” do to do it.
Bingo! Video!
Yeah. And all you have to do then is figure out how to pay the New Crew, which has become an economic drag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video
Well, I’m good and depressed now, but not surprised.
We should never have abandoned Xanga for MySpace. The barbarians are within the gates and they are us.
Once it’s been explained it’s even worse than I thought. Techno Crime, anyone?
Most depressing is this is now a thing of history that needs to be explained.
It feels like a recent change to some of us, but it is as close to the start of thefacebook as it is to the present.
A part of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification…” -Cory Doctorow
Perhaps with a dash of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author ?
How well do cartoonists do on OnlyFans?
They call it Patreon now. And they do slightly better than it used to be called, “Buy a shirt/tote!”
You laugh, but Slipshine is a thing.
Pi-VOT! Pi-VOT!
“Pivot to Video”
I just threw the phone across the room like it bit me
I wish I could do the same but I’d imagine my school would not approve of me throwing one of their precious Chromebooks
There’s probably a pill for that. (I saw it in a video with subliminal messages.)
Bring back ‘blipverts’!
Yes indeed! The whole “exploding head” thing is greatly exaggerated by the media and only very rarely happens under normal conditions.
Who will be the ghost of cartooning future? Mordawwa? Esther? Nemulon-9?
Esther seems like a strong possibility to me, but we’ll see.
Scout!
Natalie Durand? She’s got the shrouded-figure experience.
Also I’d find it amusing if the Ghost of Comics Past was a character from current comics, the Ghost of Comics Present was a character from recent past comics, and the Ghost of Comics Future were a character who hasn’t appeared since 2017.
I thought of Natalie, too.
I love the Nemulon idea!
Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for, but whenever his show trial happens, goosing Facebook’s video engagement numbers to promote the great pivot to video should be high on the docket.
“Pivot to video”. Three words that form one of the most abhorrent phrases in the English language