no. 465

Cranky Agnes column #116

"Sedate Your Family With Love And Gravy"

In an attempt to bring health to the holidays, I adapted a recipe for dressing using using olive oil and high-fiber whole-wheat bread, and ended up with a pan of something that had a definite this-is-good-for-you vibe that lacked the all-right-I'll-go-to-hell flavor of true celebration food. But it doesn't matter, because while I like dressing a lot, it's really just a delivery system for the gravy. In fact, the Cranky Agnes Theory of Holiday Cooking can be summed up in two words: More Gravy.

from Agnes And The Hit-man by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Meyer

no. 464

"Screw soccer, ignorance is the official sport of humanity"

from Jeph Jacques' comic "Questionable Content".

no. 463

"Determination, of course, being nothing more than anger with brakes and a steering wheel."

from The Last American Vampire (pg 31) by Seth Grahame-Smith

no. 462

"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."

Dan Hodges @DPJHodges

no. 461

"Viewed through the lens of history, the main job of U.S. presidents is to be mature and wise enough to stand up to the permanent war machine."

Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Earth Institute at Columbia University

no. 460

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

Neil De Grasse Tyson

no. 459

I'm just going to steal a whole post here, reprinted whole cloth from the Rude Pundit:

Abraham Lincoln Would Still Fuck Tea Partiers Shit Up (Immigration Edition)
Yeah, yeah, Abraham Lincoln wasn't really thinking about immigrants from Mexico when he talked up the good of diversifying our population through an influx of newbies. But considering that whole freeing-the-slaves thing, there's a good chance he wouldn't have cared where the immigrants came from. In fact, regarding freeing slaves, during a speech in Chicago on July 10, 1858, he responded to his opponent for the Senate, Stephen Douglas, by kicking him in the taint with those long legs: "I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but, as, God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby." This is followed by some uncomfortable talk about mixed-race marriages, but at least Lincoln put himself and the "negro woman" on equal footing.

In that same speech, given as part of 4th of July celebrations, in a section that is often cited by conservatives for its affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln lays down some logs of truth about the necessity of immigrants to the still-growing country:

"We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.

"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.

"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

A little later, after saying that he disagreed with the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln added, "I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! (The audience yelled, 'No') Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then." Lincoln believed, and he expressed it often, that you either mean "equal" or you don't and can go fuck yourself.

But the tall man with squeaky voice didn't just talk the talk. As president, he called on Congress to pass legislation to encourage immigration. When he was nominated for reelection in 1864, the Republican Party platform contained this resolution: "That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy." The act was passed, which allowed Lincoln to appoint a Commissioner of Immigration.

And in his final annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, "The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country."

Now, you can also argue that Lincoln was talking about legal immigration, but, actually, he was for creating a system to make immigration easier and to treat those who came here with dignity. Republicans, of course, won't talk about that Lincoln.

no. 458

"If teenagers were called 'incompetent adults', we'd avoid a lot of these misunderstandings."

John Allison

no. 457

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Groucho Marx

no. 456

Jamie: "You're an asshole"
Cheryl: "I'm a woman. I'm not an asshole, I'm a bitch."
Jamie: "Bitches bring puppies into the world. You're an asshole."

From the comic "Leftover Soup"

no. 455

"It strikes me as sad when something becomes widely disregarded. Piles of unsold Halloween “goods” are shoved into bins, to wait in the shadow of aisles filled with Christmas and Thanksgiving. No, I don’t especially want or care about plastic skulls and pumpkins. It is not about the object, I think, but the inherent humanity present in that object. Somebody made it. This would not exist if not for them, and yet what value does that add to such a thing? There is no passion in the factory, so none ends in the product. It is the way of our world to create in surplus while stripping away significance, one very much costing the other. I know the person who made this stuff didn’t give a shit. I wouldn’t. But when I look at that pumpkin, I see a small bit of someone’s life and can’t help but feel it deserves better than the throwaway bin at Fred Meyer."

Alex Hobbs

no. 454

"It doesn't take much cruelty, to make people afraid of your kindness"

a softer world, no. 1171

no. 453

"When you say average, do you mean that basically if you tightly gathered all the girls in the world, it would turn into that girl!!? That would be a girl crystal!! Th-that would be a jewel!"

Shinohara En, the cross-dressing, girl-loving protagonist of Komura Ayumi's manga Usotsuki Lily, vol. 0, ch. 4, pg. 30


As someone who has long been a champion of seeing beauty in the "ordinary", I find this to be a lovely statement.

no. 452

Daughter: "Where does snow come from mommy?"

Mother: "Broken Dreams, dear. They fall to the earth, coated in cold, unforgiving reality."

from the comic "Something Positive".

This is the kind of thing I try to tell my kids, but just cant seem to be able to.

no. 451

Nick: "I didn't know being grown up is just about finding complex ways to be childish."

Philip: "Then you, my friend, haven't been paying attention to adults."


from Randy Mulholland's comic Something Positive

no. 450

"For a country that used to pride itself on a certain stoicism, the United States has become a land of whiny little boys and girls."

Ted Rall, "Wimpy Cops and Scared Soldiers: Why Are Americans Such Cowards?"