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August 08, 2006

Phasers Set On Pun

TODAY'S STRIP

It's been a while since I was in English class, but is that a pun at the end of today's PC? Ugh. It's too early in the day for puns. It's ALWAYS too early for puns.

So yeah, it's a week of hating technology. I keep thinking I've seen this strip before, but I'm not sure if it's because it's a repeat or Stantis drew an old one over again and changed the wording slightly. But Carmen wants us to throw off the chains of technology and free ourselves from being able to do things like communicate with each other. And like Annie pointed out yesterday being able to call 911 from pretty much anywhere if there's an emergency. Not like those good ol' days when we didn't even have 911. Lousy Democrats.

I've never understood Stantis's point. He wants us to give up talking on the phone and via the internet, I guess because he wants us to talk more to each other in person. But who has the time to do that anymore? With this wonderful (please add sarcasm) economy parents are working more than ever and they have less to show for it. At least now now if mom is running late at her second job she can call Timmy on his cell and let him know she'll be late to pick him up from soccer practice and not have to rely on the school janitor to forward the message to him since she had to call the pay phone in the school lobby. And Timmy has access to more information at home than ever before - if it's 10pm on a school night and he still needs to know the state flower of Texas for the report due tomorrow, a quick google answers the question (the bluebonnet).

As I've mentioned before, this is just Stantis and other neo-cons being desperate to return to the 1950s. But not the real 1950s - the glorified images they've put into their brains based on TV shows and fractured memories. Mom, Dad, big brother, little sister, riding around in the family station wagon, dinner on the table at 5pm sharp, little league, apple pie, blah blah blah.

The Cold War doesn't exist in their memories. Neither does North Korea. Or the three (yes, three) recessions under Ike. Civil Rights? What were those? They sound as made up as rights for women.

Maybe he's right. Maybe if we stopped talking on the phone and just talked face to face things wouldn't be so bad in this country. What if Bush actually had to go to Iraq and talk with the people to get their views before invading? Then he would have known more than six weeks beforehand that there are actually three different sects within the country (he didn't know there were Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites in January 2003). Or what would have happened if Conde Rice had actually gone into Lebanon last week as scheduled? I'm sure John Foster Dulles would have gone in there. If we had members of our intelligence agency actually go to Niger to find out if they were selling Saddam enriched uranium yellowcake then maybe we could have prevented the invasion for WMDs. (Oops - we did that - didn't matter.)

I hope by the end of the week Scott explains just what he's hoping to accomplish. I doubt very much that commuters sitting on the subway are going to start chatting because they don't have a blackberry to tell them the news of the day. Maybe Scott hopes that his children will race home from the swimming hole and throw their arms around him and sit and listen to Uncle Milty on the radio while they eat s'mores by the fireplace. Ah, those were the days.

Mind you, Scott Stantis is also the person who advocates punching someone in the face if you disagree with them. So maybe talking with him face to face isn't such a good idea. Unless you brace yourself for a sucker punch.

Comments

Posted by: Charles Brubaker at August 8, 2006 08:35 AM

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