Top Ten Comic Strips from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Can Anyone Top Stephan Pastis?

Greetings to our blog readers in Cyprus, Peru and New Zealand.

Welcome to another edition of "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time," which dates back to Sept. 21, 2005! But, our friend and fellow blogger Chris Knight has been around longer than us as he just celebrated the tenth anniversary of his blog "The Knight Shift."

Special greetings to those of you checking us out from The o2 Lounge in Breckenridge, Colo., and Crooks Corner Restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC, which are a mere 26 hours and 45 minutes away from each other! Hope all is well in Colorado and North Carolina.

Today, we look at our favorite comic strips from "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va. The competition is a little less steep than "The Washington Post," which features "Sherman's Lagoon," "Rhymes with Orange" and "Brewster Rockit: SpaceGuy," but "The Roanoke Times" does have "Hi and Lois," which "The Washington Post" does not.

Our sweepstakes winner for today is once again "Pearls Before Swine," which proves that we are over his character Ataturk the Spitting Llama (Tilly Gokbudak, the editor of this blog, who is me, is a Turkish-American. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the patron saint of modern Turkey, well in the secular sense).

Today, Stephan introduced a complicated concept for a 'Brain Alert' system for older people who can't remember that Jimmy Carter was president before Ronald Reagan. The last panel ends more perfectly than a season finale of "Homeland." We'll leave it there, so we don't have to issue a 'spoiler alert' (I'm still shocked at the season finale of "Homeland.")

The runner-up strip was the increasingly surprising "Garfield," which seems to have gotten exceptionally more funny since it has been parodied by "Garfield Minus Garfield." Garfield has actually around since 1978, which means at 36, he is older than the world's oldest cat, who reportedly lives in York, South Carolina, a border town with just under 10,000 people (ok, we are making that up).

"Get Fuzzy" was a bit shockingly literate today as it seemed to evoke George Orwell's "Animal Farm" or perhaps we are reading too much into it!

Here is today's top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Garfield

3) Get Fuzzy

4) Doonesbury

5) Zits

6) Speed Bump

7) "Non Sequitur"

8) Agnes

9) Dilbert

10) Funky Winkerbean

http://www.theo2lounge.com


http://www.crookscorner.com

http://www.stephanpastis.wordpress.com

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

Ten Novels to Re-Read: The Great Gatsby, et al

As beach-reading season is winding down, we thought we'd take a look at some great, vintage novels which are worth of a second, third or even a fourth look.

Many of these novels are listed in the Modern Library's best novels.

Here is the list:

1. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) #2 on the Modern Library list

2. "Lord of the Flies" by William Goldig (1954) #41 on the ML list

3. "The Black Book" ("Kara Kitap") by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey. 1990. English version published in 1994)

4. "Less Than Zero" by Breat Easton Ellis (1985)

5. "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

6. "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerny (1984)

7. "Deliverance" by James Dickey (1970) #42 on the Modern Library List

8. "1984" by George Orwell (1949) #13 on Modern Library List

9. "Franny and Zooey" by J.D. Salinger (1961)

10. "Catch 22" by by Joseph Heller (1961) #7 on the Modern Library List

http://www.modernlibrary.com

http://www.malaprops.com/ (Indy bookstore in Asheville, NC)

http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/ (Indy bookstore in Durham, NC)

http://www.boulderbookstore.net/ (Indy bookstore in Boulder, Colo.)

Special Quote of the Week- Albert Camus

Today, we conclude with a spillover entry from the month of May, in which we posted quotes from famous novelists, with a quip from the late French writer Albert Camus
(1913-1950). Like the subject of our other entry on our other blog who was George Orwell (1905-1950), both writers were born abroad and died at age 46. While Orwell was born in India, Camus was born in Algeria. He often wrote about the plight of the north African country which remains an area of concern today given the political upheveal in neighboring Libya. Prior to the Libyan mess, there were earlier uprisings in neighboring Tunisia, which lead to the 'Arab Spring."

In addition to his criticism of colonialism, Camus was an outspoken critic of the death penalty, saying that it would never deter perspective murderers because 'the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in the state of equilibrium.'

Alas, the likes of Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) and others on the anti-intelllectual right will assuredly always find a way to dismiss any logic that challenges their self-righteous Christian hypocricy.

McDonnell will be speaking at the Virginia United Methodist Assembly Center in Blackstone, Va. on June 11th, according to Eskii Kebede of "The Collegiate Times," the Virginia Tech student-run newspaper in Blacksburg, Va. The topic will be the faith of the founding fathers. Assuredly, any arguments about how a man who sees himself as an upstanding Christian can support the morally inconsistent pro-death penalty argument will not be brought forth.

Camus, who recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, is known for three novels "The Stranger" (1942), "The Plague" (1947) and "The Fall" (1956).

Surreally enough, the much-heralded Turkish film director Zeki Demirkubuz loosely adapted "The Stranger" into his well-recieved 1999 film "Yazgi" ("Fate). I'm sure Camus would have been proud; here is his quote:

"An intellectual is someone who mind watches itself."

Special Quote of the Day- Johnny Bench

"I can throw out any man alive," Johnny Bench.

For those too young to remember, Bench, a catcher with the Cincinnati Reds, who is now 63, was a vital part of the Big Red Machine. Alas, the Reds who had won 102 games during the regular season were upset in the 1970 World Series by the Baltimore Orioles.


FYI- In case, you are wondering who is Terry Gross (yikes, we almost spelled her name with an 'i'!) going to interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" today, the answer is former "SNL" star/current "30 Rock" star/wonderful Sarah Palin impersonator Tina Fey. For those of you in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where we think at least one person reads this blog, we're pretty sure you will have to go the "Fresh Air" web site (http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/) to listen to show since public radio is probably not otherwise available in the former Soviet republics.

PS- In case, I seemed a bit too harsh or critical of Barracuda yesterday, I just want to say I have seen the light: "I Love You, Big Brother" (reference to George Orwell's novel "1984").