Top Ten Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post (May 25th edition)

Greetings to our blog readers in South Africa, Iceland and Portugal; domestically, we want to give a shout-out to our blog readers in Raleigh, NC, Atlanta and Seattle...........if we can ever get to the Northwest and see the Space Needle.........

Since Discovery Channel's Shark Week is nearing, it is only appropriate that "Sherman's Lagoon," a comic strip about a shark finishes in our top ten.

The above images are all in conjunction with three strips from the May 25th Sunday edition of "The Washington Post" (the Aug. 3rd comics pages disappeared like Harry Houdini). The living opossums eludes to "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! which feauted possum obits! The laundry of clothes is a nod to "Rhymes with Orange," which featured a circus cyclist who had to strut around in the buff since he couldn't get his clothes washed, and, of course, the "Jaws the Revenge" (or Jaws 4) poster is a reference to "Sherman's Lagoon."

1. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

2. WUMO 

3. Lio

4. Rhymes with Orange

5. Judge Parker

6. Speed Bump

7. Doonesbury

8. Frazz

9. Sherman's Lagoon

10. Foxtrot

7 Words in Norwegian (5 of 7): Shark

The Norwegian word for shark is hai, or shark=hai. The image above is from the American cartoon "Jabberjaw," which ran on ABC in 1976.

SIDEBAR ONE: Kudos to the University of North Carolina for the team's 3-0 win over Notre Dame in the season-opener for women's volleyball. The other UNC (University of Northern Colorado) won as well as the team defeated Cal Poly 3-1. Other victors from the first night of women's college volleyball included North Carolina State's 3-0 over Cleveland State and my alma mater Radford University's 3-0 home win over North Carolina A & T.

SIDEBAR TWO: A few weeks ago on Facebook, my friend Ara Baliozian, a respected Canadian author of Armenian heritage, made the following observation: "Marriage is the best cure for love as suicide is the best antidote for a fear of death."

SIDEBAR THREE: There were lots of interesting tweets tonight on Twitter, and most were about trivial matters, such as Miley Cyrus shedding her Marie Osmond image once and for all, or very delicate news items, such as the Syria crisis. But it was this one from @MarketplaceATM (the NPR/American public radio show "Marketplace") which stood out: "15% of all Americans are offline."


http://www.marketplace.org

http://www.goheels.com

http://www.ruhighlanders.com

http://www.baliozian.blogspot.com

Coming Soon to This Very Blog Near You (No Promises): Ten Most Embarrasing Ways to Die

Greetings to our blog readers in El Salvador, Latvia and Jordan or wherever you may be today.

Oh...........In case you are wondering, yes, the image of the late French mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) is being used just to grab your attention.


Here are some blog entries we are contemplating/considering:

1) More Casualties  of Modern Technology: It's been a good two years since we ran this series, but it seems that pay phones, clothes lines and mixed tape cassettes are not the only things which have been mushroom clouded due to the advent of the new age (my apologies to the Grammar Girl for using mushroom cloud as a verb).

2) A List of Ten Embarrassing Ways to Die: Getting hit by a Valley Metro Bus in Roanoke, Va., does come to mind, but of course, there are two issues with possibly posting this entry: 1) There might well be someone who is a relative of a person who was eaten by Gustave the man-eating crocodile in the central African nation of Burundi; 2) I may get hit by a Valley Metro Bus myself!

3) How to Say Certain Words in Norwegian or Turkish: Did you know they call sharks 'the dog fishes' in Turkish (the actual word is kopekbaligi), and of course, we are arbitrarily mentioning that because we suspect that with the Discovering Channel's upcoming Shark Week that anything relating to sharks shall be trending.

Au revoir for now mon amis...........


http://www.valleymetro.com/

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week

The Republicans Are Coming! The Republicans Are Coming!

This just in_ tonight in Las Vegas, Republican vice presidential nominee Cong. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who is to the right of my namesake Attila the Hun, told a partisan crowd that USA Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney, who won a gold and silver in London, will replace Gov. Chris Christie as the keynote speaker at the Republican Party National Convention during the week of Aug. 27th in Tampa, Fla.

Maroney is also a worldwide social media sensation as the use of her image when getting a silver on the vault has made her a meme.

We are kidding of course, though we wanted to calculate the weight difference between Christie, who has a major weight problem somewhere around 300 pounds, and Maroney, who weighs 105 pounds, according to Bing.

And, oh yes, we had to capitalize on the Discovery Channel's Shark Week, which seems like a great filler  from the Olympics to the Republican convention. We should point out that not all Republicans are like sharks in a tank, but if we mentioned their names, we might cost them their seats (this is a center-left blog, when we discuss political matters, which is not always the case). Although since he has been in Congress for 32 years, I suppose I can admit I really admire Cong. Frank Wolf (R-Va) for his stance on human rights, particularly Sudan.

Our intention during Shark Week II is to cover the convention both subjectively (as in the Cenk Uygur of Current-TV sense) and objectively (as in the Charlie Rose sense) as well as get some views from some partisan right-wingers (in the Dennis Miller sense).

So, whether you prefer Nancy Pelosi or Michele Bachmann, we look forward to seeing here in 11 days.

http://www.mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com

http://www.dcs.discovery.com/sharkweek

http://www.current.com

http://www.charlierose.com

http://www.dennismillerradio.com

http://www.state.nj.us/governor

http://www.wolf.house.gov