I don’t know what it says, but LOOK! It’s Cardbo! From Yotsuba&!5!

I have a new favorite comic strip. Take a look.

I ran across a picture of Clifton’s Cafeteria in a book called California crazy and beyond: roadside vernacular architecture, by Jim Heimann. It was a fantastical cliff face and forest affair in the middle of an LA street. It opened in the Depression offering pay-what-you-can meals and free food for the destitute.

In looking for more information about Cliftons, it turns out it’s still there! They mention that a few changes have been made: replacing the organ and organist with a moose (I didn’t realize they were equivalent), singing waiters and canaries with Muzak (again, not really equivalent in my book) and artificial plants with real (OK, that’s cool). But they still offer the guarantee: “Dine Free Unless Delighted!”

Update: more information can be gleaned from items in the Los Angeles Public Library’s Menu Collection by searching for “Clifton’s.”

The article is entertaining in an awful reducing humans to a cartoon type of way, but the best part is this: “Ms. Looney, a certified reality therapist”

Hooray!

Those Germans, always coming up with le mot juste:
Vorne Kurz, Hinten Lang = a mullet
Arschgeweih =“Ass-Antlers,” a tatoo near the bottom of the spine

Despite the assurances of the book Der Struwwelpeter, your cats will neither warn you against using matches nor cry after you are burned to ash.

So I’m watching At the Circus, starring the Marx Brothers. Groucho makes a joke about not having seen Chico since he stopped taking Scott’s Emulsion. Wondering what that is, I look in up on the intertubes. Well, it’s a brand of cod liver oil, still available, but not in the US, made by GlaxoSmithkline. And browsing through the list of their various worldwide brands, I also find Granufink, a German pill made from pumpkin seeds, “used to strengthen the function of the bladder and help treat prostrate disorders.” Hey! I’m prostrate right now, but I just thought it was related to watching movies on a Saturday afternoon!

Read it before it vanishes forever: the TSA blog with open comments! Someone read an article about Web 2.0, and somebody’s bum will be canned when they realize that being open with complaints may mean having to actually be accountable for them rather than just restating policy (or “policy”, you must read the comments, you absolutely must!).

Some favorites so far: the elderly couple with replacement joints who are made to sit in a low chair with no arms (and no help in getting up from said chairs) to be repeatedly wanded despite having documentation about their replacement joints, the several military people who get searched on every flight, the person complaining about having their wallets searched (!!), the flight attendant with a background check to have the job in the first place who gets searched every time at a particular airport… and those were just comments on one post!

You don’t need to know what happened, but it was unpleasant. You don’t need to know where it happened, but it was nowhere near here. All you need to know is:
“The child’s mother was working on a computer in another part of the library.”

Like Pop-Tarts says, children should be supervised.

A gem of wisdom from Hijinks Ensue, the webcomic/blog I like not just because it has three dots in a row in the first word:

“Is it just me, or have you all enjoyed this break from TV? I started to realize how little I actually enjoyed some of the shows I was watching (Prison Break), and have been able to let them go. I feel like a contrived, poorly planned, monotonous burden has been lifted from my shoulders.”