Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 4, 2010

Growing up in South Carolina, tobacco use was not so much encouraged as it was celebrated. The stuff grows like, well, like weeds, so it just made good sense to support it. The fact that it is insanely addictive certainly helped. You were, for all intents and purposes, handed a pack of smokes when you entered the state. I remember the coaches of my brother’s baseball team sharing a chunk of their Red Man chew with an eight year-old kid who simply asked for it. Yep. I am deeply thankful that I was never hooked.
 
I think about this occasionally when I see others who were in fact hooked — huddled in their designated smoker areas, exposed to the elements, and hopefully downwind. There but for the grace of… well, I don’t pretend to know God’s intentions for such things. But unless he’s from South Carolina, I’m guessing he’d prefer I didn’t smoke.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, August 28, 2010

First, to explain the topics covered:

There was a recent staging of a mixed martial art (MMA) or “cage fight” event here in Grand Rapids, and apparently it was for amateur fighters. And whereas there are regulations and certain safety rules for professional events (like having a doctor on hand), there are none for amateurs. I think that was it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know exactly what the story is here. When I see MMA, my tendency is to look the other way. Professional, amateur, whatever — it’s all sort of violence porn to me. It hits so high on my “that’s really stupid” scale, that I cannot generate the energy to learn more.

You may or may not be aware that this summer Michigan had its own oil spill disaster. A pipeline burst and spilled an enormous amount of oil (not BP enormous, but still quite substantial) into the Kalamazoo River. I’m surprised I didn’t cover this earlier, but with one cartoon a week you can only get to so many topics (even doubling up like I did with this one). Anyway, this story led the Grand Rapids Press to do what good journalists do and investigate further. (I’ll give you a moment now to put down your web browser and go buy a dang subscription!) The Press found there are lots and lots of pipelines that transverse Michigan carrying oil, gasoline, natural gas, chemicals, and other toxic nasties — what sort of plans are in place to monitor and maintain these? Turns out, not a lot.

And now for a full disclosure: Credit for the live grenades and minefield line in the third panel should go to Garry Trudeau. One of his very early Doonesbury cartoons (and one of the first that I read) involved his character BD joining the Army to go fight in Vietnam. Some officers were testing new recruits and requested a volunteer to go retrieve a live hand grenade for a minefield — BD races forward enthusiastically screaming, “I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” Obviously it stuck with me, and I ended up paraphrasing it. Of course I know I’m likely the only person in the world (other than Trudeau) who could detect my “sampling,” but telling you makes me feel a little less skeevy. Hmmm… maybe I can relate to MMA promoters….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, August 21, 2010

One time, back in my teenage years, I was riding in a car around Flint with friends. I don’t remember exactly what we were doing. Typically a car full of us meant we were heading someplace to play baseball or football. Or if it was evening, we were looking for an empty but lighted parking lot to throw a Frisbee. (I think it was being the proper mix of generally good kids and generally without money that kept us out of trouble.)

In any case, we were heading west on I-69 and we wanted to get to Bristol Road. I said, “That’s impossible. Both I-69 and Bristol Road go east/west. We’ll have to turn around and go back to I-75.” My friend Dominic said, “No, there’s actually an exit off I-69 for Bristol Road.” I said something back to Dominic, likely questioning both his intelligence and his parental heritage. But Dominic insisted, “I’ve seen it. We use it when we go to the mall.” Again I made disparaging remarks. It made no sense to me. Two parallel lines cannot intersect. It was simple geometry. I bet money. Dominic accepted and — lo and behold — minutes later we came upon the Bristol Road exit. (I-69 does not, in fact, travel perfectly east/west in the Flint area.) I was dumbfounded — reality had totally trumped my ideology. (Dominic let me weasel out of the bet — because he was a good kid and also because he knew I didn’t actually have any money.)

It was a good lesson that I still remember today: It’s fine to carry a general philosophy of how things work, but it’s not a good idea to let ideology blind you to reality. So it goes with public education in Michigan. Last week the Grand Rapids Press ran an extended series on the relative merits of school consolidation. The realities of the situation (dwindling tax dollars but an urgent need for better educated graduates) are smacking around traditionally held views to the point where liberal and conservative ideologies seem to be crossing. To me, that’s a positive sign. It’s time for Michigan to accept that fact that there’s a Bristol Road exit off I-69 and go from there.

I see a lot of animation that I like and some that I love. But every rare once in a while I see something so devastatingly brilliant that I want to help it go viral:

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, August 14, 2010

One of my favorite water balloon fight techniques (and I believe one of the most effective) is to first lob a balloon at the soakees. (It’s important to throw it high enough so the impact is certain to have the balloon burst.) As the soakees look upward to track the flight, the soaker burns another balloon low and hard, so the soakees either get popped by the low balloon or dodge the low balloon at the risk of the high one bursting on their noggins. Summer fun.

I am not so thrilled, however, with this technique being used on me. And as our family has been following the slow, arching, oncoming costs of sending our first child to college, it seems that our health insurance company has been aiming low — yet another annual increase of 11% come September. Summer not so much fun.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, August 7, 2010

Sometimes I feel like I come across as a know-it-all in my cartoons (this blog, too). For the record, I am keenly aware of the vastness of what I don’t know. I am also aware that what may seem to be self-assurance is often simplification for the sake of a better comic. So I want to make clear that what I say in a cartoon is not necessarily what I feel to be the final word. I’d rather provoke than preach.

This week for example I chose to comment on the recent primary elections here in Michigan and how the immigration control became something of a hot topic. The one strong feeling I had was the oddity of it being a hot topic — Michigan isn’t exactly attracting large numbers of immigrants these days, legal or illegal. A lot of seasonal workers come to Michigan to pick fruit, particularly in West Michigan, but we’re not talking enormous numbers. Still, I appreciate that there are rules about how people can enter this country and the frustration with those who obviously are not following the rules.

But that sort of nuanced consideration went out the door when I read a quote from my state representative, Dave Agema of Grandville. Agema is sponsoring legislation to tighten immigration controls and put an interesting spin on the issue:

Agema said his proposed legislation doesn’t target Hispanics but all illegal immigrants. It would require state contractors to use an online verification system to prove their employees’ names match their Social Security numbers, thus blocking illegal workers. “We have the largest concentration of Muslims in the state in the Dearborn area,” Agema said. “I know we have (sleeper) cells there. That is what I really want to get at.”

That sort of locked up my gears. I want to believe Agema’s intentions are good, but… What? Really? How did…? I mean, is this…? Wait, what was that again? Eventually all I could come up with was to slightly exaggerate what Agema said. (See first panel.)

I felt like the cartoon needed more than that, and so here’s another thing you should know: Sometimes my thinking isn’t thinking at all — sometimes it’s merely an absurd but amusing (to me, anyway) thought that happens to get loose. Say, like replacing illegal farm workers with athletic children.

Next week: Less self-analysis

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 31, 2010

I understand perfectly the benefits of flossing my teeth. It’s simple, straightforward, and the advantages are clear. It really doesn’t take much time and saves money in the long run. I encourage my children to floss and admonish them for being lazy if they don’t. Still. At the end of the day (both literally and in the cliché sense), I have no enthusiasm for flossing. So I make weasely rationalizations with myself and typically don’t follow through on doing it. Hmmm… Maybe this sudden realization that I’m behaving like a Democrat will motivate me to do the right thing and start flossing regularly. (Or I could do the Republican thing, stop all oral care regulation, and let the free market decide whether my teeth rot.) Perhaps it’s time to seek third-party dentistry….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 24, 2010

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 17, 2010

One of the real treats of teenage children is having them list parenting techniques that they, as it turns out, really hated. For example, my kids never liked it when I locked them in the basement closet with all the spiders as punishment for refusing to steal cigarettes for me. Who knew they were so sensitive?… Um, right.

Actually the instances they tend to bring up are more on the subtle side. One technique that apparently was universally despised was my use of the term “standard disclaimer.” My kids were all both highly creative and somewhat dubious that I was capable of having good ideas. The net result being long, tedious delays before certain events. Sometimes Jane and I had time to indulge them; and sometimes (as all parents know) you just have to make things happen. Here’s how it worked:

Me: Okay, it’s time for bed. Let’s put these toys away.
Kid: But what if we want to play with them tomorrow.
Me: Then you can get them out tomorrow.
Kid: But what if I forget about the ones I want to play with.
Me: Put them on top.
Kid: But what if somebody moves them around and my favorite one falls to the bottom and gets crushed and turns to dust and floats —
Me: Standard disclaimer.

And with that the discussion was over. “Standard disclaimer” meant “all these scenarios, all the highly improbable eventualities you are spinning right now, they matter less than what we need to focus on. So we’re not going to discuss it further. Let’s go.”

Circling back around to this week’s comic: The Press is running a series of stories about the Grand River, the longest river in Michigan. Like many Midwestern waterways it was horribly polluted by the 1970s, but is in much better shape now. What happened? Well, as I hope you guessed, the correct answer was “C.” (You can’t just pick “B” because you’re a Charlton Heston fan — SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!) I’m old enough to remember that there were people who argued against the Clean Water Act and spun their highly improbable eventualities till somebody declared “standard disclaimer,” and it became law. It wasn’t a perfect law, certainly, but it was time to fix problems and make things happen.

Ugh. You know, sometimes I get to the end of these things and I think “what point was I trying to make?” Because I’m obviously torturing two ideas in a mighty attempt to get them to connect. Let’s go with this: If parents weren’t jerks sometimes then there wouldn’t be clean water.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 10, 2010

My friend Keith wrote me this nugget: “I’ll never understand the hard right. I mean, there are lots of places with weak governments and little regulation. They are called third world countries!”

Nicely done, Keith. (And by the way, no, it wasn’t Keith Olbermann.)