Boring Thursday

You ordered a pizza yesterday like Gladys and Wilberforce didn't exist.

Multiverses are very in right now but I never would've thought that Wilbur from Mary Worth falling overboard to his (sadly) not death, would wind up in Mark Trail.

You can continue reading Mark Trail here. I didn't need Wilbur to die, turning into a seaweed monster would've been just as good.

Why Does This Santa Stuff Seem New To Wilberforce?

Mary MacLane was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on May 1, 1881. At an early age, her family helped found Fergus Falls, Minnesota. After her father died, Mary's mother married a family friend and they moved to Montana, eventually settling in Butte. Mary began writing for her school newspaper in 1898.

In 1901, shortly after high school at the age of 19, Mary MacLane wrote her first book, The Story of Mary MacLane, published by Herbert S. Stone & Co. It sold very well and was very influential to young women although more conservative outlets criticized it. The book was raw, honest, self-aware, and extreme, even by today's standards. She wrote honestly about her life, even about her love life, egotism, and bisexuality and lesbianism. Her second book, My Friend Annabel Lee, was a modest success but not as notable as her first book. She continued to write article through the early 20th Century. In 1918, she wrote and starred in a silent film, The Men Who Made Love To Me, about her life and six love affairs. The film is now considered lost.

Her last book, I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days, was published in 1917 and may have sold well but was probably overshadowed by the United States' entry into World War I. She used the money she made from her books and other writings to travel the country living her Bohemian lifestyle. It's rumored that MacLane was a partner or even spouse to editor and writer Harriet Monroe.

On August 6, 1929, MacLane was found dead in a Chicago rooming house of "unknown causes" at the age of 48. Below is one of her essays, published in her third book, I, Mary MacLane.

My Damns                                by Mary MacLane

I bear the detailed infliction of being a person with a tired mixture of patience and indifference and scorn.

I say on Monday, Damn the ache in my left foot: on Tuesday, Damn that rattling window--I hate it: on Wednesday, Damn this yellow garter--it's too tight: on Thursday, Damn my futile life: on Friday, Damn the solitude: on Saturday, Damn these thoughts: on Sunday, Damn my two dresses.

But I pronounce each day's Damn in a half-perfunctory half-preoccupied tone, more from duty and fitness than from conviction. I intently mean each Damn, but the scornful indifferent patience which is my spirit-essence leavens each one. I swear at my life's perversities with only a fatigued contempt due partly to bodily fragileness but mostly to a cold continently reckless mood which is clasped on me like a strong stupefied devil-fish. In this mood I should murmur the same gelded Damn if I found myself penniless and foodless in strange streets: if I became suddenly deaf: if my Body were being lashed with whips or raped by a Mexican bandit. I should murmur the same worn Damn if I were this moment on a gallows with the rope around my neck and life were dearly madly precious.

I mark that with my musing regrets. I remember in the strong young furies of eighteen each new day of my life was filled with passionate poetic blasphemy, protests and rebellions of youth. Those were not tired, not acquiescent, not indifferent to slings-and-arrows, but firey-blooded quick-pulsed breathless brave young Damns.

There is splendor in being brave in a fighting attitude, but in being brave through indifference there is no splendor.

But it is only toward calamity and adversity and worldly untowardness that I feel indifferent. Fighting blood is stirred in me if not against the hated things then for the loved things. I could fight and I could die, and love it, to save poet-lusters, poet-fineness, poet-beauty from the world's flat griefs. In that, which I feel warm and real and sparkling in my blood, in some splendor for me.

--and also I could die for my country: and there is fighting hatred stirred in me against its foes--

But in poetry there is nothing that evokes a lusty curse against its vulgar adversaries. Poetry floats too high upon its dazzling wings. I get delicately drunk from watching it till I can see the wings' Gold Shadow touch its foes and magically split them into dust-atoms.

So then the morale of my Damns remains perfunctory.

But they are apt and useful. They fit into the nervous rhythms of my life. They mark time in my spirit's flawed action. I begin each day with a Damn of sorts. I end each day with a Damn of sorts. At midday sometimes it's, 'Damn the terrifying ignorance of people.' In the dusk a deep-felt Damn of the blood. In the night another. And at my late eating time a negligible Damn.

A wonderful word, Damn. It means enough and not too much. It means everything in life, and roundly nothing.

Without Damn my day would lack tone. Damn richly justifies each pronouncement of itself in word-value, substance-value and musical resonance. It harms nobody and it helps me. It destroys nothing and it strengthens me. It damages my annoyances and mends me somewhat.

But--perfunctory, desultory, tiredly insolent, it would be thrilling to think the hot fire would sometime be back in my Damns. Better that than Youth's faith in my dreams. Better that than the jeune-fille beauty in my hair. Better than even Youth's ichor in my veins: Youth's fire in my Damns--

But there is dearness in this mood, which is indifferent and scornful and slightingly patient, though it wants splendor. Let my Damns be always brave, always contemptuous of disaster to me, and they will be first-water value though their kind alter never-so.

News and Notes of Movieland by Daisy Dean, a syndicated column
talking about young Hollywood. This article, reviewing Men Who Have
Made Love To Me, appeared in the Hutchinson News in 1918.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dennis the Menace

What's the point? I've read this comic strip most of my life. Dennis'll just leave the clothes on the floor, too.

Mutts

Earl doesn't have to take this. If Earl wants to howl then either let him howl or he'll start a pissing contest a la Libby in Mary Worth.

Mark Trail

Oh, no! Mark Trail has snapped! He's going to start burning down corporations until they end their dependency on fossil fuels. How is anyone going to stop him?

Mark apparently hasn't heard that Elon Musk and/or Jeff Bezos is going to save us. They are going to help get all of us into space to either live in Earth's orbit or to colonize Mars. I'm sure we'll take good care of whichever situation we're placed in. I mean, Mars already have a lot fewer trees.

Arlo and Janis

Is...Is Janis dead and Arlo is now just a shadow of his former self seeing his dearly departed wife in places she used to always be? Or is Arlo just a sexist ass who thought "She's a woman and women belong in the kitchen"?

The Born Loser

You can't just bring up magic and elves and say "Santa has to watch his budget" when your kid wants more stuff. Santa has no budget, he and the elves make all the presents themselves. Just tell your kids when they want more stuff from Santa that they're being greedy little pigs. Santa Magic can't fix that.

Stay safe this holiday season. Get vaccinated, get boostered, get tested, and wear a mask. Do your part to keep everyone safe and healthy. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Very Late Night

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith

Well, if Donald Trump can just make up laws, then so can your local police.

Family Circus

Were they holding an intervention for Kitty Cat? Cats don't respond to them. I've tried.

Mark Trail

AAAH! Where'd you come from?! How'd you get out? Back in the crawlspace with you.

Dennis the Menace

It's never a good thing when an older person breaks a bone. Dennis doesn't care. He will loudly whisper about how you may have hurt yourself to his friends and you'll just stand there and take it.

Mother Goose and Grimm

Those Photos Are Just Drawn On There

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith

Well, lookee here. It's singer-songwriter and Nancy cartoonist Guy Gilchrist in today's Barney Google. Guy and Brad Gilchrist took over Nancy back in 1995 then Brad mysteriously vanished. Did Guy do something to Brad or was Brad just a made-up person used by Guy to get two paychecks?*

Mary Worth

No, it's totally a great idea. I love getting matching tattoos with people I've just barely started...dating(?).

Family Circus

"And I'm telling you, Jeffy, I am getting damn tired of saying that extra syllable."

Mark Trail

Here's hoping that Mark Trail will still provide us with the wildlife scenes, conservation guilt-trips, and zoological science that we're going to need in the upcoming four years.

Marvin

I wish this trope would die. I wish this trope would die. I wish this trope would die. I wish this trope would die.




*Don't worry. I'm well aware that Brad Gilchrist is alive, well, and in existence.

Inauguration Quickies

We have a new president for the first time in eight years. I hope this doesn't become a regular thing because I would like to see more than just one one-term president in my lifetime. I am not a President Trump supporter and I have promised to give him and his administration the same respect that Republicans gave Obama and his administration. That's not to say that I hope Trump fails as a president. A bad president hurts the entire country but from what I've seen from him for basically my entire life hasn't been good and I have little reason to believe that Mr. Trump will change now that he is president. He has said he will be a president for all Americans. He has also called people who have spoke out against him and his policies losers, crooked, and liars. That doesn't bode well for a president who says that he will unite us.

Nothing President Trump campaigned on is stuff I want to see happen but that happens with every president. We're not going to like every single thing they propose or sign into law. What we can do is stand with them and make sure they are accountable. They all need to be held accountable. Just like Republicans were there to call Obama out on flawed policy, we'll be there to call Trump out on not only every flawed policy but every lie, every insult, every attack, every tweet. Welcome to work, President Trump. I hope you know how.

Crankshaft

"Oh, no, it's the Hitler Youth."

Mark Trail

I feel like this is the best example of life these days.

"Wow. Everyone loves this shiny new thing I made."

*posts shiny new thing on Internet*

"Well, that was a terrible mistake..."

People Want Stories About Ants

Mark Trail

"Oh, great. Let me have it."

"Well, I wasn't able to get any information on the ants but the island did blow up and I barely escaped with my life."

"Look, Mark, I love you, but I wanted a story about red imported fire ants. Maybe some people want to read an action-packed story with several near-death experiences and a week's worth of explosions, I don't know. I don't want to know. I guess I will just print that story about that ghost shark."

Hi and Lois

Tell the twins to stuff their ketchup in a sack. I haven't been this disgusted since my son started putting ketchup on bologna sandwiches.

It Was Her Fault for Asking How Mark's Day Was

Blondie

Mark Trail

"I didn't choose the wild and crazy nature writer life, it chose me. I warned you, when you're with Mark Trail, every day is a Jason Statham movie."

Funky Winkerbean

Everybody in the world has some sort of foible. Sometimes it's a foible that someone is just particular about but sometimes it's a foible that the person can't really control. No matter the reason, Tom Batiuk makes his character's foibles mind-blowingly annoying. Always. It's quite a skill when you think about it.

Abbey Is Probably Going To Ask Mark How His Hair Stayed So Calm

Mark Trail

"No, Abbey. I guess you could say that I'm kind of happily married to a woman I see a couple times a year. We also have a kid together. Well, he's really adopted--and an orphan so I guess he's not really anyone's kid. Anyway, I guess I sort of have a family and they make me relatively happy."

Ripley's Believe It Or Not

Every U.S. President with a beard has been a Republican. O...kay? There have only been five presidents with beards, the last one being Benjamin Harrison and he stopped being president in 1895. This is a terrible Believe It Or Not. That star-shaped sand is cool though.

Are We Just Going To See Underwater Whale Images All Week?

Mark Trail

Are Mark and Abbey going to say that the ants caused the volcano to erupt because that's not how that works. They don't even have proof of the ants. No one took any pictures and the island is now scattered all over the Pacific Ocean.

Funky Winkerbean

That sounds awesome. I plan on doing the same thing when I retire.

Dennis the Menace

Cock-blocking is some tip-top menacing. I approve.

Screaming At Babies

Crankshaft

Oh no! I have an opinion similar to Ed Crankshaft. Please save me!!!

Mark Trail

Soooo...I guess that fire ant problem is solved.

Popeye

I do the same thing, Olive Oyl. Not to my own child but just to any random children that I see. They need to know where they stand with me.

Exploding Islands! Superheroes Through Windows!! Hollywood Cliff Driving!!!

Mark Trail

"I hope Mark and that woman he met here were able to get off the island. Hope she doesn't mind that I took her boat. I'm sure they were able to get away."

The Amazing Spider-Man

I would like to thank the writer and artist on The Amazing Spider-Man for giving us two days of Peter Parker being thrown through a window. It's like an early Christmas.

Funky Winkerbean

Oh-oh. We're in black and white again. I'm more concerned about that than I am about Marianne driving her car off a cliff near the Hollywood sign.

Dennis the Menace

"Do girls just wander around the woods by themselves a lot because I learned this really cool trick the other day and I want to try it out."

Slylock Fox and Comics For Kids

I'm glad that Slylock Fox is finally starting to cater to what the kids really know a lot about--the economies and exports of foreign countries.