What We Talk About When We Talk About the Flag

The other day while I was looking at the ol’ Star Spangled Banner I thought to myself, it’s also spangled with stripes, so why isn’t it called the Stripe Spangled Banner? And then I thought, why do we ever call it the Flag, which is the most boring term of all for the national symbol? So, here is a list of nicknames I’ve adopted for the red, white and blue. Happy Independence Day, everybody!

• The Forever Symbol

• Broadstripe & Brightstar’s Excellent Adventure

• Community Cloth

• The White Represents Sarah Palin and the Red Represents Michael Moore and the Blue Field is All the Rest Of Us Waiting for Them to Shut Up

• Old Glory, Recent Shame

• Suck it, Yellow, You Symbolizer of Stupid Stuff

• Navajo Nation (NOT! HAHAHA!!)

• Betsywear

• Francis ScottTowel

Resolution

My New Year’s Resolution this year was to take free-falling classes. Oh, good! They have them here locally.

No Thanks

One thing that’s always bothered me about the Christmas season is this overemphasis on commercialism, where everything has to be for sale. It’s so excessive.

Stray Shots

The camera application which I prefer to use on my iPhone is different than the built-in camera. It’s one in which you touch any part of the screen to take a picture instead of a single “shutter” button. It’s fine, except that it also means that in handling the camera – switching between hands, taking it in and out of my pocket, shoving it in my armpit as I fumble through my bag looking for something – the screen gets touched a lot. I think half of my pictures are of the accidental, oh-crap-I-thought–the-camera-was-off variety. But you know what? Some of them actually look kind of cool, especially when you gallery them. So I’m committing to this. If you need a wedding photographer and you don’t care if the pictures look like arbitrary screenshots from The Bourne Ultimatum, feel free to make me an offer.

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Postscript from Chinatown: Signs that Seem Like They Should Mean Something Kind of Dirty but Probably Don’t

They say that tragedy plus time equals comedy. I’m going to go ahead and say that travel plus fatigue equals comedy also. I think that’s the only reason to describe why Matt Diffee and I snapped these pictures at the end of our trip to the Bay Area this week.

Inquiring Mind

When I’m waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, I like to flip though the magazines there. I don’t go for those gossipy Enquirer-type rags, though. I prefer an article that will give me something substantial to think about as I walk home: science or sociology or politics. My favorite magazine is the New England Journal of Medicine, because they always have timely and interesting topics, and it’s clear that they’ve done thorough research. Here are some of their recent topics:

UPDATE: I was just told that these are not from the New England Journal of Medicine at all, but from Cosmopolitan! So, I’m apparently not paying as close attention as I think I am. Crazy, right? This probably also explains why the supermarket clerks get annoyed when I ask them if there’s a designated area where I can try on my bowling shoes.

 

Mmmmmm

I recently worked at a meeting inside of TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, on the campus of the University of Minnesota. They like their M’s! The U of M ‘M’ is branded on virtually everything in the stadium offices. Chairs, doors, mirrors, you name it:

Whiplash Elevator?

I did this cartoon for the New Yorker a number of years ago while thinking about shuffle play, and about how it’s great for the iPod but maybe not so great for other things. As often happens in this crazy world of ours, something that you did as a jest ends up actually coming true, because look what I encountered at a hotel elevator last week:

I’d make a joke about how it’s at least better than random rooms or roommates, but then that might also come true, so I won’t.

Bitten

I clipped this out of my local paper’s police blotter last year because it’s one of the greatest examples of crime journalism I’ve ever read. This was the entire entry. The obvious question is: bitten by what? A man? A pit bull? A mosquito? The flu bug? His past? The desire to toss down a plate of buffalo wings? Was the writer bitten by the same creature in mid-sentence, and that’s why he or she never finished it? We’ll never know, and plus, it’s better if you use your imagination anyway.

If It Wasn’t for This Mug, How Would I Ever Remember?