Random Soapbox for Saturday 4/24/10

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but ...

... who are you to censor my comics? Who are you to stifle the creative, the envelope-pushers, the instigators, the make-you-stop-and-think folks? Look -- I didn't like Roseanne when I was younger (she reminded me too much of the step-mother in my life), but I've come to appreciate her in my later years because she was insistent on using her artistic platform to make you uncomfortable. And that's what creative people do across many forums.

Instead of commenting on the recent turn of events with South Park creators and their depiction of Islam's #1 guy (believe me, I don't have any resources to devote to protecting myself from a fatwa, so I have nothing but respect for him and any of his prophet brethren), I'll stay true to theme week and provide links to recent censorship of comics -- Opus, Doonesbury and Tank McNamara. And I'm in true "bite the hand that feeds you" mode, since the three examples before are instances where the Washington Post did the censoring (Kaplan, the company for which I work, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post).

Moving forward, how about you let me decide the level of controversy in my Sunday funnies? How about you let me choose to define where lines are drawn? How about you let me experience the ability to have my thoughts challenged by the creativity of others?

WASHINGTON POST CENSORS 'OPUS':
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294779,00.html

WASHINGTON POST CENSORS 'DOONESBURY':
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/washington-post-censor-doonesbury-comic-strip

WASHINGTON POST CENSORS 'TANK MCNAMARA':
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2009/08/why_you_wont_see_dick_cheney_o.html

WASHINGTON POST CENSORS 'CAPRICIOUS COGNITION':
[this place saved for link in case this is consequence of today's post]

Random Thought for Thursday 4/22/10

When I was little, the MiniPages were part and parcel of the Sunday comics experience (do kids still "learn" from that source?), always teaching me something about assorted themed topics. Even thought that's not in the local Chicago papers, I still learned something new from a recent comic strip in the funny pages (do people still call it that?) ... about how pink lemonade was formed by a guy named Pete Conklin who made lemonade with water "dyed pink from a horse rider's red tights". The comics didn't begin to go into the fact that there are so many competing theories about pink lemonade's origin -- although most do seem to spring from the circus, and most do seem to involve the fact that a guy needed more water for his refreshment stand and could only find some that had been "dyed" because clothing or a blanket or something had fallen in the water. Nowadays, that would seem to be grounds for a lawsuit, but I guess it certainly wasn't going to be the last time that artificial dyes found their way into what we eat and drink. Further proof that you can find edification where you least expect it. [And if this isn't your cup of tea, you can always pull out the silly putty and imprint a panel!]

PINK LEMONADE ORIGIN STORIES: http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/pink_lemonade/

MODERN MINI PAGES:
http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/features/mini_page/index.htm

MAKE YOUR OWN SILLY PUTTY (IF YOU DARE):
http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/sillyputtyreci_sdyd.htm

Random Wordplay for Wednesday 4/21/10

Pleonasm; Pleonist; Pleonasochist, Pleonasochistic

Used in a sentence: "Don't tell me the Sunday comics (theme week, theme week!) are for the simple-minded because just a few days ago, I learned the word pleonasm in a strip, which I had to go look up right away because it wasn't in my WordWealth inspired vocab (thanks Mrs. Mills for making me do that exercise every week in 9th and 12th grade)."

And after learning that it meant "the use of more words than are required to express an idea; redundancy; a superfluous word or phrase" and considering how my posts have expanded since this original concept launched, I have to admit that I'm surprised that I haven't heard this phrase (or been accused of being a pleonist or a pleonasochist) before!

If Capricious Cognition doesn't take off, maybe I could relaunch it in a year or so as Pleonasochistic Tendencies -- unless that sounds too much like a college rock band.

VIEW THIS LINK FOR THE COMMENTS ALONE:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080320114535AAjC3iN

Random Tune Therapy for Tuesday 4/20/10

Look, if I'm going to pick on anyone from last week's show and suggest an alternative performance as a form of therapy ... it's going to have to be the decision to pair poor Carole-King-wannabe Brooke White with underwear-model-Miley-Cyrus-throwaway-Nashville-Star-ex-contestant Justin Gaston to try to sing Elvis' "If I Can Dream" on the results show. She should have just sung it by herself. Or, even better, I offer up (instead) the American Idol 1968 version (from an earlier edition of Idol Gives Back) of Celine Dion paired with the King himself through the magic of TV special effects.

By the way, it's Sunday comics theme week at Capricious Cognition, and you might be wondering how I would possibly tie it in to today's post ... but if you are thinking that way, then you must not have followed the penguin Opus to the end of his strip -- when Elvis appeared to him to tell him to get ready for his final resting place (the ghost paying it forward so that Opus could avoid his fate of being forever remembered as having been eliminated whilst eliminating, so to speak). Of course, I could have just as easily referenced Opus yesterday as a memorial item, since he's been out of my Sunday routine for some years now like Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes. [And based on a google search of my fond-remembrance-comics-lineup, I found a comics soul mate in Elizabeth S, a commenter near the bottom of the blog linked below.]

As I decided how best to connect theme week to today's tune therapy, I stumbled across a website that allows you to research comics and cartoons by subject! So you can explore your own randomness at the link below (and they allow you to put the toons on products, use them in e-cards, etc.)!

ELVIS and CELINE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpGb7lo7RMs

MY COMICS SOUL MATE: http://www.prophecyfellowship.org/archive/index.php/t-236675.html

CARTOON/COMICS SEARCH: http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/bysubject/subject.php?p=1&sid=60

Random Memorial for Monday 4/19/10

Gone but not forgotten: days of yore when reality competition ideas hadn't infiltrated the Sunday comics.

[BTW -- It's that time of the month -- time for Theme Week. For April, randomly enough, it will be all about that colorful section of the Sunday paper whose very existence might just be threatened.]

The Chicago Tribune started "Comics Carousel" a few weeks back -- and the concept is that they will print two new strips for awhile, and then the readers will vote on which one gets to stay in the rotation. Now that I think about it, maybe that's more like when radio stations play songs "against each other" each night at nine. [Dear I-generation readers: in case you haven't heard of a newspaper, please know that it is primarily an ancient mechanism designed for advertising and the embarrassment of local folks in the police log. Oh ... and a radio is kind of like an I-pod, except someone else choose the songs that are played such that if you want to make a mix-tape, you have to stay by it for hours to catch them playing that song you wanted to hear. But I digress ...] Don't get me wrong -- I like me some reality television, but I'd also like to keep those concepts to one entertainment medium at a time!

Days of reading the Sunday comics without thinking about whom should be voted off, you will be missed.

RULES FOR THE COMICS CAROUSEL (at the bottom of this particular post): http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/tribnation/2010/04/seriously-funny-talking-about-changes-to-our-comics-page.html