Terrapin Station

Ah, the Police Blotter

The Denton Record-Chronicle is my hometown paper.  I subscribe to it because I always subscribe to my local paper.  Because, that's what I do.  I am probably the only person my age that I know who does that.  Oh well. 

One of Ken's and my favorite features is the Police Blotter.  Donna Fielder, the courts reporter and a Sunday columnist, writes it with a wonderfully wry tone.  Here's a recent favorite...no, two...both from the same day. 

Blotter: Dogs confront each other, followed by their owners

08:09 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 4, 2011

An altercation between two canines at a dog park led to an assault of one owner by the other, a man reported Saturday.

The victim said he took his two dogs to the park in the 1700 block of Davisville Drive in the Providence area Friday. A woman was in the park with her husky dog, he said. As soon as one of his dogs entered the gate, the husky attacked it, and he grabbed the husky and threw it off his dog.

He said that angered the woman, and she hit him in the face with a bag of dog feces.

The woman argued that the attack was really the man’s fault. She said her husky is aggressive, and everyone knows that. She said the victim should have given her time to get the aggressive dog on a leash before he opened the gate.

She denied hitting him in the face with the bag of dog feces. She only waved it very close to his face, she said.

 Other reports

2300 block of West Prairie Street — A man reported Saturday that he rents a two-bedroom apartment so that he can use the second bedroom for his office in his presidential campaign.

He opened a file where he keeps documents for his exploratory committee findings and discovered that someone had taken a number of bank-issued temporary checks for his campaign, he said.

I love living here.  I love the Denton newspaper. 

Random Images

 

Ladies' room door in my building this week.  We have 400+ students of Intensive English sharing this space with us.  A message was conveyed! 

 

When I was growing up in Houston, KLOL (K101) was THE rock and roll radio station.  My older sister had a poster with this running radio graphic on her apartment wall, and his conversation balloon on that one said, "Mother's Family!!"  I thought that was very funny, for a reason I can't imagine. 

I was deeply sad to return to Houston a few years ago, tune to KLOL, and find that it is now a Hispanic station. 

Ah the good old days...

Overheard at my house

A lazy Saturday morning.  I am reading blogs and catching up on e-mail. 

Ken comes in and asks me if we missed paying a water bill - there is no water.  "I was going to take a shower," he says, plaintively. 

I remind him that the water bill is paid by automatic draft, so surely that is not the problem...and that I was just washing dishes to put in the dishwasher a few minutes ago. 

I go to the sink - sure enough, no water. 

We peer out the front door window.  "Yep, there are cones out there," he says, and shows me a line of orange traffic cones blocking off the street as for workers. 

"Shall I go out and ask them if they have the water cut off, and how long it might be?" I ask.

- A quizzical look.

"Well, I guess it had better be you, because I don't speak cone."

Cue laugh track.

Friday Five: See you in the Funny Papers!

(comic from Google Images)

PG says at RevGals:  After an exhausting election here in the states it's time for some spirit lifting! Join me with a nice cup of tea or coffee or cocoa and let's sit back and read the Funny Papers!

Amen, let's think about something less weighty for  a bit!  Thanks, PG!!

 

1. What was your favorite comic strip as a child?  Being a very weird child, I always liked reading Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G and Rex Morgan, MD.  I thought of them as the "grownup" comics and most of the time they made no sense to me.  My dad had told me he used to read Mary Worth when he was little and that she was an apple woman - selling apples on the street during the Great Depression.  Wow, was she well-preserved in my day and beyond!

 

...I also loved Peanuts and Prince Valiant.  And as a teenager and college student:  Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County.  LOVE ME some Bloom County!  Its author, Berke Breathed, attended my high school in Houston (before me).  My brush with greatness!  Opus is my hero. 

2. Which comic strip today most consistently tickles your funny bone?  One Big Happy by Rick Detorie.  It's not in the paper I get, so I get my fix on the internet:

 

   

 

Also love For Better or for Worse (glad they are running the old ones over and not just cancelling it)

3. Which Peanuts character is closest to being you?  Well, in order to answer this, I took the Which Peanuts Character Are You? quiz.  And I am Charlie Brown.

 

You are Charlie Brown. You are always optimistic and persistent, and everyone appreciates your simple sweetness. Sometimes, however, your anxieties get the best of you, and life's mysteries can confuse you.

 

4. Some say that comic strips have replaced philosophy as a paying job, so to speak. Does this ring true with you?  Indeed.  Who has philosophy as a paying job any more?  Where have all the philosophy shops gone?  Social commentary is a big part of many comics, including of course Doonesbury, which I've also been reading for years.

5. What do you think the appeal is for the really long running comic strips like Blondie, Family Circus, Dennis the Menace as some examples?  Familiarity...we like to look back at those things we have read for years.  They never change and I think that feels good to us...in a world in which everything is constantly changing. 

Bonus question: Which discontinued comic strip would you like to see back in print?  Calvin and Hobbes.