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Observation: John likes Anthony because he can take him.
Hypothesis: John is relieved that he will no longer get his ass kicked by Elly's dad.
Hypothesis: John is relieved that he will no longer get his ass kicked by Elly's dad.
As you know, I love to point out that I really think that Lynn made a mistake not skipping over 1979 all together and thus avoiding the new-runs and hybrid and all that other confusing stupidity that drove people away. If this had happened, we'd be on the other side of another annoying and stupid incident in which John's letting stereotypes do his thinking for him made his and everyone else's life worse. Said incident is his balking at remodeling the kitchen and getting rid of all of the clapped-out old appliances that burn food and make it unpalatable. John spent entirely too long moaning about the horrible expense of renovations he could easily afford because he's a moron programmed to think that while he, a doorknob who wastes money on toys, is practical and clear-headed because he's a dude, Elly just pisses money away despite the evidence of his senses because she's a woman. It's obvious that Trash Bag Johnny still has no clue what a cheapskate he married because his brain isn't wired to get to know people.
Since John isn't designed to really get to know the people around him and since his brain replaces the insight it isn't built to process or comprehend with cardboard cutouts, he not lives in a world where he, the practical man wanted to keep Elly from spending them all into the poorhouse because silly women Don't Know The Value Of A Dollar is surrounded by irritating people who want to tell him he's wrong all the time, he also lives in a world where other people come along and tell him that he isn't the long-suffering father of baffling and disrespectful children who need his firmness but instead an out of touch old coward who hides in his shed playing with toys rather than get to know who they are and what they really want because of his fear of actually being the bad guy. That would make him the one cardboard character he doesn't want peopling his world: the moron antagonist who blunders his way through life not knowing what he's talking about.
Since John isn't designed to really get to know the people around him and since his brain replaces the insight it isn't built to process or comprehend with cardboard cutouts, he not lives in a world where he, the practical man wanted to keep Elly from spending them all into the poorhouse because silly women Don't Know The Value Of A Dollar is surrounded by irritating people who want to tell him he's wrong all the time, he also lives in a world where other people come along and tell him that he isn't the long-suffering father of baffling and disrespectful children who need his firmness but instead an out of touch old coward who hides in his shed playing with toys rather than get to know who they are and what they really want because of his fear of actually being the bad guy. That would make him the one cardboard character he doesn't want peopling his world: the moron antagonist who blunders his way through life not knowing what he's talking about.
Now, to get to why John acted so gracelessly to the proposed solution to the problem of Farley rooting through the trash, we have to remember two facts. First, he'd wasted time and made a fool of himself solving a problem that didn't exist. Second, he didn't like the idea of adopting someone smarter's solution for an easily understandable reason: he didn't like being reminded that he's not a very smart person and tends to screw things up left to his own devices.
You see, when Red Green points out that the three words men find hardest to say are "I don't know," he knows that they're usually accompanied by three words men find impossible to say: "I was wrong." John was wrong about why the garbage got scattered over the curb, he was wrong about how to solve it when he did learn and he's wrong to get angry at Farley because he doesn't understand that Elly is making canned food into a problem. Where he's most wrong is not admitting that he's wrong because of that stubborn male pride thing. Simply put, his belief that admitting to making a mistake is far worse than the mistake made keeps him from learning from his mistakes and primes him to make worse ones.
You see, when Red Green points out that the three words men find hardest to say are "I don't know," he knows that they're usually accompanied by three words men find impossible to say: "I was wrong." John was wrong about why the garbage got scattered over the curb, he was wrong about how to solve it when he did learn and he's wrong to get angry at Farley because he doesn't understand that Elly is making canned food into a problem. Where he's most wrong is not admitting that he's wrong because of that stubborn male pride thing. Simply put, his belief that admitting to making a mistake is far worse than the mistake made keeps him from learning from his mistakes and primes him to make worse ones.
On why Will laughs at John.
Jul. 22nd, 2016 01:15 amAs we all know, one of the hallmarks of the adolescent is the belief that no one on Earth can understand what it is to be him or her owing to the fact that said child doesn't have the life experience required to understand what other people understand nor really overly much the ability to think things through. This means that most of why Molly and Connie failed to get along is Connie taking offense to Molly's angry comment about how she'd forgotten what it was like to be young and in love. This is, of course, pure D twaddle because like Elly, Connie does remember what it was like to be young but has simply learned the wrong lessons. Elly has learned to be angry at all the popular girls and Connie has learned that she wants to be Elly.
If Molly wanted to encounter someone who's forgotten what it was like to be a kid, she should actually be talking to John. While he does vaguely remember not being a social lion and feared that no one really liked him much, he's usually found running around wondering why his children feel moody and alienated when he was himself a groovy, upbeat kid instead of the sullen, unhappy goof angrily telling his folks that no, they don't remember what it was like to be a kid. Eventually, his dad has to remind him that he too was a moody pinhead saying crap like that. The interesting thing is that after this happens, Will Patterson laughs at his son for a reason that escapes John. The reason is that Will has just learned that bushwa about forgetting being a kid can actually happen and isn't just crap kids who don't know better say; funnier still, it happened to the pompous noodle who told him that back in 1968. Since John is kind of stupid, this sails right over his empty head.
If Molly wanted to encounter someone who's forgotten what it was like to be a kid, she should actually be talking to John. While he does vaguely remember not being a social lion and feared that no one really liked him much, he's usually found running around wondering why his children feel moody and alienated when he was himself a groovy, upbeat kid instead of the sullen, unhappy goof angrily telling his folks that no, they don't remember what it was like to be a kid. Eventually, his dad has to remind him that he too was a moody pinhead saying crap like that. The interesting thing is that after this happens, Will Patterson laughs at his son for a reason that escapes John. The reason is that Will has just learned that bushwa about forgetting being a kid can actually happen and isn't just crap kids who don't know better say; funnier still, it happened to the pompous noodle who told him that back in 1968. Since John is kind of stupid, this sails right over his empty head.
The lecture helmet.
Dec. 22nd, 2015 01:10 amAs we know, John has it in his stupid head that his children have bad attitudes and don't know the value of work or money and need to learn to respect their elders and be grateful and admit that they owe Mommy and Daddy for the great big freaking favor they're doing them putting food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs. Since he's sort of dumb and, as I've suggested before, can hear a story about children working in factories and come away with the impression that his kids are lazy and won't pay their own way because they're selfish, he needs to come up with a way to brow-beat them into not noticing that his thinking is wrong, anti-social and self-serving.
The boring lecture about the mining helmet he gets his dad to send Mike tells us that his path to getting them to not realize that he and Elly have a duty of care and should thus be horsewhipped for suggesting otherwise is to make them feel bad about the truth. Just as he lectured Lizzie about how bad she was feeling bad about something that she could actually do something about by invoking a problem too entrenched for a middle school girl to fix, we're going to get an annoying lecture about how hard Will worked in the coal mine and how he needs a reminder of the great guy who knew the value of honest work and so on into the guilting his son into thinking that a horribly soppy present is the sovereign goods.
The boring lecture about the mining helmet he gets his dad to send Mike tells us that his path to getting them to not realize that he and Elly have a duty of care and should thus be horsewhipped for suggesting otherwise is to make them feel bad about the truth. Just as he lectured Lizzie about how bad she was feeling bad about something that she could actually do something about by invoking a problem too entrenched for a middle school girl to fix, we're going to get an annoying lecture about how hard Will worked in the coal mine and how he needs a reminder of the great guy who knew the value of honest work and so on into the guilting his son into thinking that a horribly soppy present is the sovereign goods.
John versus kindergarten graduations.
Jun. 15th, 2015 07:04 pmAs we've all guessed, the kindergarten graduation reminds us that part of Elly is the part of Lynn who thinks that children are tricking her into attending events that really don't mean anything no matter how much they behave otherwise because she doesn't want to be there. The interesting thing about that is that we eventually reveal the part of her that resents her children for having things she never got; the part of her that outs her as Mrs Begrudgery is, of course, John.
As this strip indicates, John says he is against April's graduating from eighth grade to the freshman year of high school (or, to put in in Canadian English, from Grade 8 to Grade 9) because he doesn't believe the transition from middle school to high school is especially worthy of attention. This is very interesting and very telling because the whole "in my day" experience is pretty much a dog-whistle sort of deal.
This is because whenever someone runs his mouth about how things were different in his day and children weren't so soft and didn't have so much handed to them because it makes them ungrateful, what's really going on is that Daddy hates the fact that he didn't get a party when he was a kid and can't abide the idea of someone getting something he wasn't allowed to have. He poses as a guardian of the traditions but deep down, John is a mean-spirited child mewling for toys he cannot have. The sad thing is that he achieves the near-impossibility of having less self-awareness than Jerome "It MUST be the PC police hounding me because the scary alternative is that I was never all that funny to begin with" Seinfeld, Esquire and thinks of himself as an exemplar of common sense.
As this strip indicates, John says he is against April's graduating from eighth grade to the freshman year of high school (or, to put in in Canadian English, from Grade 8 to Grade 9) because he doesn't believe the transition from middle school to high school is especially worthy of attention. This is very interesting and very telling because the whole "in my day" experience is pretty much a dog-whistle sort of deal.
This is because whenever someone runs his mouth about how things were different in his day and children weren't so soft and didn't have so much handed to them because it makes them ungrateful, what's really going on is that Daddy hates the fact that he didn't get a party when he was a kid and can't abide the idea of someone getting something he wasn't allowed to have. He poses as a guardian of the traditions but deep down, John is a mean-spirited child mewling for toys he cannot have. The sad thing is that he achieves the near-impossibility of having less self-awareness than Jerome "It MUST be the PC police hounding me because the scary alternative is that I was never all that funny to begin with" Seinfeld, Esquire and thinks of himself as an exemplar of common sense.
On how John keeps fooling people....
Mar. 18th, 2015 01:21 amIt seems to me that what I said about Gordon being tricked into following along with the plans of someone who isn't really what he seems to be is due to two factors that need to be expanded on. The first of these is that with the Gordon Mayeses of the world, there is no substantive difference between the private and public versions of his persona. Since Gordon is the same man in public that he is at home, he assumes something that he probably should not when he assumes that two-faced people like John who don't deserve the praise they get don't actually exist.
This means that it turns out that you can cheat an honest man like Gordon if you manage to present yourself properly. The same Gordon who looks at Liz and sees someone who needs to be pushed into getting what she's supposed to get because she is someone who needs to have her destiny guided because she won't do it on her own is sort of defenseless in the face of manipulators like John and Anthony who are able to hit hot buttons to make him do their bidding.
Not, of course, that they give themselves the name 'con artist' or 'charlatan' or 'suburban Machiavelli.' The second factor that must be considered is that John thinks that he's the straight-shooter salt of the earth friend to everyone that the public falsely believes him to be and Anthony looks in the mirror, sees the sunken-chested and heartless whining imbecile we see and thinks he's the go-getter he's said to be. After all, the best con men in the world always end up being their own best mark.
This means that it turns out that you can cheat an honest man like Gordon if you manage to present yourself properly. The same Gordon who looks at Liz and sees someone who needs to be pushed into getting what she's supposed to get because she is someone who needs to have her destiny guided because she won't do it on her own is sort of defenseless in the face of manipulators like John and Anthony who are able to hit hot buttons to make him do their bidding.
Not, of course, that they give themselves the name 'con artist' or 'charlatan' or 'suburban Machiavelli.' The second factor that must be considered is that John thinks that he's the straight-shooter salt of the earth friend to everyone that the public falsely believes him to be and Anthony looks in the mirror, sees the sunken-chested and heartless whining imbecile we see and thinks he's the go-getter he's said to be. After all, the best con men in the world always end up being their own best mark.
Further notes on the gratitude issue.
Mar. 4th, 2015 01:15 amAs we saw last Sunday, Lynn has issues with gratitude in that she doesn't think that she gets enough of it and people who expect it expect too much of her. What she tends to not remember is that since all of her characters are aspects of her own psyche made to wear the forms of people she knows, she tends to reveal a certain hypocrisy in that the Pattersons never seem to want to admit that things cut both ways.
It seems to me that John's reactions to receiving and having to express gratitude tell us pretty much the whole story in that one little strip. As we saw, he exploded in a sort of blind rage because he believed that he didn't get the level of gratitude he actually deserved while (as always) ended up being utterly dismissive of Elly's equal struggle on his behalf. What I believe to be going on inside his and everyone elses' head is that he thinks too damned highly of himself and not enough of those around him. Despite his (and Lynn's) obvious belief otherwise, it just isn't possible for someone to sustain the sort of groveling gratitude that he clearly expected of Michael without turning into someone who can't function in society. It's as absurd as Elly's belief that Mike's silly little crush on Martha would naturally be followed by them dropping out of junior high and living in sin or John's own belief that praising people for doing what they're supposed to do would somehow turn them into selfish monsters.
What he and the others don't realize is that this explosive over-reaction to not getting the absurd level of deference they expect of those around them and the accompanying tendency to withhold thanks out of entitlement and a fear I'll get to later is that it resulted in men and women who can't thank people because of an instinctive belief that praise and gratitude are traps meant to lead one to being yelled at for being insincere. Not, of course, that we can expect John to admit this. Since the dumb-ass doesn't admit to having a violent temper, a blinkered and self-serving view of his family and a seemingly bottomless level of resentment, he'd be as ready to admit people are right to see him as a humorless, tyrannical ogre as he and everyone else would admit that people who are better than they are at things aren't doing to with the specific intent of mocking them. More on that tomorrow.
It seems to me that John's reactions to receiving and having to express gratitude tell us pretty much the whole story in that one little strip. As we saw, he exploded in a sort of blind rage because he believed that he didn't get the level of gratitude he actually deserved while (as always) ended up being utterly dismissive of Elly's equal struggle on his behalf. What I believe to be going on inside his and everyone elses' head is that he thinks too damned highly of himself and not enough of those around him. Despite his (and Lynn's) obvious belief otherwise, it just isn't possible for someone to sustain the sort of groveling gratitude that he clearly expected of Michael without turning into someone who can't function in society. It's as absurd as Elly's belief that Mike's silly little crush on Martha would naturally be followed by them dropping out of junior high and living in sin or John's own belief that praising people for doing what they're supposed to do would somehow turn them into selfish monsters.
What he and the others don't realize is that this explosive over-reaction to not getting the absurd level of deference they expect of those around them and the accompanying tendency to withhold thanks out of entitlement and a fear I'll get to later is that it resulted in men and women who can't thank people because of an instinctive belief that praise and gratitude are traps meant to lead one to being yelled at for being insincere. Not, of course, that we can expect John to admit this. Since the dumb-ass doesn't admit to having a violent temper, a blinkered and self-serving view of his family and a seemingly bottomless level of resentment, he'd be as ready to admit people are right to see him as a humorless, tyrannical ogre as he and everyone else would admit that people who are better than they are at things aren't doing to with the specific intent of mocking them. More on that tomorrow.
On not letting things sink in.
Feb. 8th, 2015 08:04 amAs we know, we're coming up to a bit of a break in the "Elly assists John" arc to remind ourselves that once again, Mike is struggling at school because percentages and decimals and all the other stoopid numbers make no sense. As you might also recall, I speculated that Mike might have an organic disorder that prevents him from understanding that one hundred percent of anything will always be all of everything; I went so far as to get banned from Coffee Talk by alluding as to how two plus two equaling four every time (instead of being three, seven, R or tangering) was the same sort of unaccountable miracle birth and death are.
The odd thing is that John himself inadvertently disproved this notion by marveling at a tendency to not let a fact he didn't feel like hearing sink in that he himself demonstrated. We get a further hint as to why Mike doesn't seem to make much headway with mathematics later on when another wise-ass who thinks that school is all about only doing things that please him when Liz's overseer tells her flat out that Dylan's math grades are in the cellar because a child has to actively want to understand math in order to do well.
We thus have to deal with the possibility that Michael simply suffers from a mental block that prevents him from wanting to understand math because it's hard and it's not fun and it's too much like work and life is supposed to be easy and fun ALL the time. It's akin to how John has a mental block that prevents him from understanding that it's not woman hormones that make Elly feel as if her life has no meaning because that would make him a bad guy who welched on a deal because he believed in a fairy story about some fake, impossible, bull-shit and non-existent thing called a maternal instinct that magically makes women love domesticity because he's too stupid to understand that his mother wasn't a grinning robot who mindlessly baked socks and knitted cookies. She CHOSE to do so because it pleased her and besides, someone had to. John can't allow himself to listen to complaints that require him to be a less self-serving dick because he can't face the possibility that he actually IS a self-serving dick.
The odd thing is that John himself inadvertently disproved this notion by marveling at a tendency to not let a fact he didn't feel like hearing sink in that he himself demonstrated. We get a further hint as to why Mike doesn't seem to make much headway with mathematics later on when another wise-ass who thinks that school is all about only doing things that please him when Liz's overseer tells her flat out that Dylan's math grades are in the cellar because a child has to actively want to understand math in order to do well.
We thus have to deal with the possibility that Michael simply suffers from a mental block that prevents him from wanting to understand math because it's hard and it's not fun and it's too much like work and life is supposed to be easy and fun ALL the time. It's akin to how John has a mental block that prevents him from understanding that it's not woman hormones that make Elly feel as if her life has no meaning because that would make him a bad guy who welched on a deal because he believed in a fairy story about some fake, impossible, bull-shit and non-existent thing called a maternal instinct that magically makes women love domesticity because he's too stupid to understand that his mother wasn't a grinning robot who mindlessly baked socks and knitted cookies. She CHOSE to do so because it pleased her and besides, someone had to. John can't allow himself to listen to complaints that require him to be a less self-serving dick because he can't face the possibility that he actually IS a self-serving dick.
I can't remember quite when but a while back, I wrote something about how little curiosity Elly and Lizzie had about what the other person could possibly have to talk about. The underlying assumption of that is that nothing that a child could be doing could possibly matter to adults while children tend to have no curiosity at all about what real people do. The reason that I mention that is that the men in the strip tend to have their own idea as to what women talk about: them.
As this strip in which John tries telling himself scary social change that would cause him to suddenly become an insensitive and selfish oaf cruelly holding his wife back because he's selfish and hateful hasn't taken place so he isn't a grunting, knuckle-dragging ape indicates, he firmly believes that while he talks about important things, silly women have nothing better to do than to pick apart the men in their lives because that's what media tells him. Meanwhile, no one has less to say about anything important than John does because he's got a huge case of head up the ass. From blathering about how Mike magically owes his parents a living to running his stupid mouth about what a great guy someone he can actually intimidate is, John needs to meditate on this bit of wisdom from Red Green: "you have nothing to say....stop talking."
As this strip in which John tries telling himself scary social change that would cause him to suddenly become an insensitive and selfish oaf cruelly holding his wife back because he's selfish and hateful hasn't taken place so he isn't a grunting, knuckle-dragging ape indicates, he firmly believes that while he talks about important things, silly women have nothing better to do than to pick apart the men in their lives because that's what media tells him. Meanwhile, no one has less to say about anything important than John does because he's got a huge case of head up the ass. From blathering about how Mike magically owes his parents a living to running his stupid mouth about what a great guy someone he can actually intimidate is, John needs to meditate on this bit of wisdom from Red Green: "you have nothing to say....stop talking."
The odd thing that I've noticed about John is that he's full of great advice about how Ted should conduct himself. If Ted needs reminding that the reason he fails as a love interest is that he never seems to realize that the women he steps out on have a right to feel as if he doesn't think they really matter, John is there to set him straight. John, you see, is loaded with great advice about how to run the world. Too bad that most of it can be called a load of one unpleasant commodity or another.
The reason is that he thinks that he's a neutral, unbiased observer who thinks what everyone would think in a given situation when we know that he's incredibly biased. He's biased in favor of getting his own way, he's biased in favor of assuming that Elly's discontent is due to crazy woman hormones instead of anything he either is or is not doing and he's especially biased in favor of thinking that the kids were plopped onto the surface of the Earth to unquestioningly obey his every super reasonable and not at all self-serving and arbitrary command. This is because, as I've said before, he's biased in favor of seeing people as stereotypes instead of learning things because doing so would tend towards the dangerous concept of his not actually being right about something.
As if his self-willed ignorance as to who the people in his family are is not bad enough, the following glib, meandering comment:
Boy, as a dentist who works in 10 minute segments, it's incredibly frustrating to see how slow and wasteful the court system is. There seems to be absolutely no accountability for the time they take or the gross inefficiencies they have, and further, they don't care that Liz has to take oodles of time off. Every time there's a slight bump or concern, the whole thing is delayed and put off. Liz then has to take more time off! Obviously it is organized by those who never have been good at efficiency or accountability. It seems they just want it to be drawn out and take way longer than it should. I should take a week to do a root canal and charge by the hour!
about the alleged inefficiency of a court system as compared to filling a tooth tells us that someone spent most of his time in civics class mentally undressing the girls in the room instead of paying attention to the boring stuff about 'due process of law' and all that other boring stuff that gets in the way of the lynch mob mentality that Whitey McCrackerass thinks is normal, just and good. John would rather not think about things like context and nuance because, as I've said, the realization that he might be wrong would make of him the bad guy in the equation.
The reason is that he thinks that he's a neutral, unbiased observer who thinks what everyone would think in a given situation when we know that he's incredibly biased. He's biased in favor of getting his own way, he's biased in favor of assuming that Elly's discontent is due to crazy woman hormones instead of anything he either is or is not doing and he's especially biased in favor of thinking that the kids were plopped onto the surface of the Earth to unquestioningly obey his every super reasonable and not at all self-serving and arbitrary command. This is because, as I've said before, he's biased in favor of seeing people as stereotypes instead of learning things because doing so would tend towards the dangerous concept of his not actually being right about something.
As if his self-willed ignorance as to who the people in his family are is not bad enough, the following glib, meandering comment:
Boy, as a dentist who works in 10 minute segments, it's incredibly frustrating to see how slow and wasteful the court system is. There seems to be absolutely no accountability for the time they take or the gross inefficiencies they have, and further, they don't care that Liz has to take oodles of time off. Every time there's a slight bump or concern, the whole thing is delayed and put off. Liz then has to take more time off! Obviously it is organized by those who never have been good at efficiency or accountability. It seems they just want it to be drawn out and take way longer than it should. I should take a week to do a root canal and charge by the hour!
about the alleged inefficiency of a court system as compared to filling a tooth tells us that someone spent most of his time in civics class mentally undressing the girls in the room instead of paying attention to the boring stuff about 'due process of law' and all that other boring stuff that gets in the way of the lynch mob mentality that Whitey McCrackerass thinks is normal, just and good. John would rather not think about things like context and nuance because, as I've said, the realization that he might be wrong would make of him the bad guy in the equation.
Imagine yourself in the following situation: you're a fourteen year old girl whose rather meagerly talented garage band managed to luck its way on stage at some big show only to have an instrument fail at the worst possible time. Since you ARE a fourteen year old girl, this embarrassment is going to be the worst thing in the world and a disaster from which you'll never recover so the last thing you need in your life is a bozo father who says something that reminds you that he just doesn't seem to care about your feelings.
The reason that I mentioned John's horribly ill-timed and amazingly insensitive comment about Aoril's disastrous performance is that he's terrible at consoling his daughters when they're feeling low. I've already talked about his stupid ass "you have problem hair" speech but I haven't talked about why he doesn't understand Liz's problem in a while. You see, it had to be explained to the stupid prick that like a lot of kids her age, the Liz who had problem hair and thus couldn't obviously care about things she couldn't do anything about and was thus a bad child needed to feel as if the people around her knew enough about her to sympathize with her on her bad days. I can tell you right now that she made a huge mistake assuming John would be one of them. This is because she, April and pretty much everyone else who isn't Jim can look at his smug, stupid face and not come away with the realization that the abrasive muttonhead is the worst sort of imbecile: the complete cement-headed nitwit who thinks that he's a smart and supportive father who knows what's going on. We have the advantage of seeing that he has no idea what's going on around him, who the people around him are, what they want, why they do what they do and what he should actually do about it. We also know that he likes the idea of reigning supreme on his throne of lonely and ignorant too much to actually do anything to correct the mistakes he doesn't realize he's making because he thinks he's cleverer than he actually is.
The reason that I mentioned John's horribly ill-timed and amazingly insensitive comment about Aoril's disastrous performance is that he's terrible at consoling his daughters when they're feeling low. I've already talked about his stupid ass "you have problem hair" speech but I haven't talked about why he doesn't understand Liz's problem in a while. You see, it had to be explained to the stupid prick that like a lot of kids her age, the Liz who had problem hair and thus couldn't obviously care about things she couldn't do anything about and was thus a bad child needed to feel as if the people around her knew enough about her to sympathize with her on her bad days. I can tell you right now that she made a huge mistake assuming John would be one of them. This is because she, April and pretty much everyone else who isn't Jim can look at his smug, stupid face and not come away with the realization that the abrasive muttonhead is the worst sort of imbecile: the complete cement-headed nitwit who thinks that he's a smart and supportive father who knows what's going on. We have the advantage of seeing that he has no idea what's going on around him, who the people around him are, what they want, why they do what they do and what he should actually do about it. We also know that he likes the idea of reigning supreme on his throne of lonely and ignorant too much to actually do anything to correct the mistakes he doesn't realize he's making because he thinks he's cleverer than he actually is.
As we all know, the reason John looks forward to Marian's visits is that the woman can do something Elly never quite mastered and cook edible food. What's more, he has no problem letting Elly know this because he's a self-absorbed and insensitive clod who can never wrap his tiny mind around the fact that other people's feelings matter to them as much as his feelings do to him. Never does it occur to him that Elly isn't going to lighten up and laugh at something that makes her feel anxious. The most he can do is not complain audibly about the awful slop that results from her idiotic experimentation and reliance on the sort of cook-book Lileks pillories.
The reason that I mention this is that some point, Elly went from being a poor cook to having her cooking praised to the skies as being the most delicious thing ever. As by way of example, her home cooking was so good, Jim ate himself to death in order to bathe in the deliciousness. This sort of thing, though, gets me to thinking something I've thought before. The thing is that Jim's ability to taste things must have declined over the years to the point where he could have eaten shredded paper and been delighted with the flavor. If so, it could well be that Elly's cooking is the same old indigestible, nauseating slop that it's always been; the difference is that her family has been subjected to the fate that Hawkeye Pierce feared would happen to him after eating a river of liver and an ocean of fish in that their taste buds have been murdered. If this is the case, they can no longer tell her sludge from real food and thus think they're eating better than they are.
The reason that I mention this is that some point, Elly went from being a poor cook to having her cooking praised to the skies as being the most delicious thing ever. As by way of example, her home cooking was so good, Jim ate himself to death in order to bathe in the deliciousness. This sort of thing, though, gets me to thinking something I've thought before. The thing is that Jim's ability to taste things must have declined over the years to the point where he could have eaten shredded paper and been delighted with the flavor. If so, it could well be that Elly's cooking is the same old indigestible, nauseating slop that it's always been; the difference is that her family has been subjected to the fate that Hawkeye Pierce feared would happen to him after eating a river of liver and an ocean of fish in that their taste buds have been murdered. If this is the case, they can no longer tell her sludge from real food and thus think they're eating better than they are.
The gift of bad wordplay.
Dec. 2nd, 2014 01:05 amYou'll have noticed over the years that the Pattersons have the unlovely habit of using forced wordplay as a sort of round-about means of expressing themselves. We're coming up to a prime example of that in the early future when John tells Mike and Lizzie that yes, they gotta wait for the olds to stumble out of bed in the morning before they can attack their stuff. Instead of doing being one kind of idiot and browbeating them about the need to include Jim and Marian in the magic, John says something stupid about "age before booty" to sort of jolly them into accepting the inevitable.
That sort of irritating groaner would have been bad enough were it not for the fact that John continued to make stupid comments that revealed a rather cynical outlook about the holiday season. I mean, sure, he's the poor bastard who's gotta worry about paying for all of the holiday goodies but there are better ways of expressing one's frustration than being a wise-ass.
That sort of irritating groaner would have been bad enough were it not for the fact that John continued to make stupid comments that revealed a rather cynical outlook about the holiday season. I mean, sure, he's the poor bastard who's gotta worry about paying for all of the holiday goodies but there are better ways of expressing one's frustration than being a wise-ass.
The very interesting thing about this year's run-up to Christmas is that we have a very typical reaction from John to Mike's enthusiasm as regards all the neat stuff available for Christmas back in the eighties. Instead of simply letting it wash over him like the non-event it was, our lad took it as cause to make a ludicrous comment about how suddenly children are greedy entitled monsters who have lost sight of the Real Meaning Of Things. I remember at one point, he got so desperate to "prove" this point that he talked his dad into helping him give Michael the gift of appealing to worse problems for Christmas.
The reason that I mention this is that John seems to be the only person not aware that he's being a hypocritical jackass when he stands around making his stupid speeches about how materialistic his children are. Trying to remind him that he's far more into playing with toys than his children ever were is a non-starter because unlike his children, HE knew genuine hardship and deprivation....which took the form of his dad and mom telling him that no, they weren't magic angel babies with a printing press in the basement and therefore he'd have to save up his allowance to get his pile. This makes him a lot like Assthony owing to the fact that the reason he's still angry at his father is that Daddy Caine expected him to put up an amount greater than zero when he came looking for a car.
The reason that I mention this is that John seems to be the only person not aware that he's being a hypocritical jackass when he stands around making his stupid speeches about how materialistic his children are. Trying to remind him that he's far more into playing with toys than his children ever were is a non-starter because unlike his children, HE knew genuine hardship and deprivation....which took the form of his dad and mom telling him that no, they weren't magic angel babies with a printing press in the basement and therefore he'd have to save up his allowance to get his pile. This makes him a lot like Assthony owing to the fact that the reason he's still angry at his father is that Daddy Caine expected him to put up an amount greater than zero when he came looking for a car.
On wieners both real and metaphorical.
Jul. 27th, 2014 01:57 amAs we saw the other day, one of John's 'solutions' to the imaginary problem of Michael being both insufficiently grateful to be bossed around by a purblind old fool and having a life of non-existent ease was to convince some idiot with a hot-dog cart to put the boy to work. It seemed to not matter to John that Mike felt very self-conscious about being in a monkey-suit and hairnet selling weiners. If anything, Michael's discomfort seemed to be a selling-point owing to John's willful blindness as to who Mike is. As I've said before, John needed to see Mike as being a defiant parasite who needed to be humbled and taught the value of things in order to protect himself from looking in the mirror and seeing a self-absorbed and callous hypocrite and greedy, immature imbecile.
The blinkered vision effect.
Jun. 27th, 2014 01:47 amOne of the most distressing strips that I can think of is the one that starts with thin-skinned dullard John not being able to handle a petty frustration with anything like grace and ends with Lizzie attacking her doll because she has no one to pass the poison down to. The distressing thing is not that John can't put on his big boy pants and not turn into a sulking buffoon who rages witlessly at the inoffensive but that said behaviour is not seen as being essentially bad. Even In the latter days, we're supposed to laugh off John being a humorless choad who reacts to frustration and mockery with a display of petty violence that he should have outgrown long ago.
The reason for us having to nod and say that we have to give Angry!Daddy a wide berth because Angry!Daddy can't possibly be told to shut his fool mouth and shove his toxic, petulant and childish rage up his nether end is, I should think, related to Lynn's disdain for Rod's constant and pointless complaining about how John is portrayed. It seems to me that when Rod said something about kindly toning down John's character traits because it has an effect Lynn didn't feel existed, she interpreted his comments to mean that he couldn't laugh at the very funny thing of a man who acts like a spoiled brat because he had no sense of humor and made up a crazy lie about how random strangers wouldn't believe that John was a cartoon no matter how sincere he was to hurt her feelings. This caused her to amplify how churlish John got to punish Rod for not knowing a great joke when he saw it. As time went on, the endgame became akin to watching some poor sap trying to pull a Chinese finger trap apart in that the more he struggled, the angrier and douchier John got.
The reason for us having to nod and say that we have to give Angry!Daddy a wide berth because Angry!Daddy can't possibly be told to shut his fool mouth and shove his toxic, petulant and childish rage up his nether end is, I should think, related to Lynn's disdain for Rod's constant and pointless complaining about how John is portrayed. It seems to me that when Rod said something about kindly toning down John's character traits because it has an effect Lynn didn't feel existed, she interpreted his comments to mean that he couldn't laugh at the very funny thing of a man who acts like a spoiled brat because he had no sense of humor and made up a crazy lie about how random strangers wouldn't believe that John was a cartoon no matter how sincere he was to hurt her feelings. This caused her to amplify how churlish John got to punish Rod for not knowing a great joke when he saw it. As time went on, the endgame became akin to watching some poor sap trying to pull a Chinese finger trap apart in that the more he struggled, the angrier and douchier John got.
The craziest thing about the last big arc is not just that John willingly broke into someone's house to steal a potty when the sane course would have been to either make Richard use the one offered OR show him the price of being all persnickety by walking around with soiled underpants. The odd thing is that the jackass dropped his trousers in public for an acquaintance's child when he would never do so for his own kids. The image of John sourpussing around as if to say "I was there at the hospital, what more things that you don't deserve do you want?" when confronted with his children's wanting him to not piss away his time forted up in his stupid workshed playing with his stupid, ego-gratifying toys because his parents didn't want to be vending machines sating the petty desires of a greedy, entitled imbecile boomer arsewipe is too common to be commented upon.
His need to whine about how he has no time to himself because he has to give as well as take and TAKE and TAKE to make up for a life of fake-ass privation isn't the only factor in this, however. The strip wherein he barged upstairs and demanded that April apologize for upsetting the volatile lunatic he married tell us why he both stole the One and Only Potty and why he can't be asked to support his kids with any sort of grace. In the case of the potty, he'd made the mistake of pointing out that Elly would have to be some kind of stupid, crazy idiot to think that there was the third option of catering to an annoyance because an imbecile couldn't be asked to think. In the case of the homework, Elly was screaming again and since the loudest one has to be settled down, time to threaten princesses. In the case of the charity event, Elly would clearly whine and moan about being up all night and not being able to do her fifteen loads of clothes a day so whatever the Martian wanted clearly couldn't be worth it.
His need to whine about how he has no time to himself because he has to give as well as take and TAKE and TAKE to make up for a life of fake-ass privation isn't the only factor in this, however. The strip wherein he barged upstairs and demanded that April apologize for upsetting the volatile lunatic he married tell us why he both stole the One and Only Potty and why he can't be asked to support his kids with any sort of grace. In the case of the potty, he'd made the mistake of pointing out that Elly would have to be some kind of stupid, crazy idiot to think that there was the third option of catering to an annoyance because an imbecile couldn't be asked to think. In the case of the homework, Elly was screaming again and since the loudest one has to be settled down, time to threaten princesses. In the case of the charity event, Elly would clearly whine and moan about being up all night and not being able to do her fifteen loads of clothes a day so whatever the Martian wanted clearly couldn't be worth it.
Potties, sandwich boards and bus routes.
Jun. 22nd, 2014 01:09 amAs you know, I keep on running my mouth about how we should actually be following the 1986 strips in 2014 because the weekdays line up better. Were this the case, we'd right now be in on the ground floor of the arc in which Elly got outraged that they were going to tear down the old town hall and build that arena "no one" "really" needed. The reason that I mention this is that she made herself into something of a spectacle and exposed her poor, delicate little boy to teasing because of her publicly wearing a sandwich board to draw attention to an unpopular problem.
This seems almost benign compared to the time when someone who hadn't a clue what the issues really were protested what he mistakenly believed to be a huge increase in bus fares meant to improve service in the Tri-Suburb Area. Mike made a bit of an idiot of himself being "ill-informed juvenile sound-bite deliverer #14" but to judge from what John said, you'd think that he was Gandalf speaking the Black Speech in Rivendell. The reason that both occasions are mild faux pas being whined about by imbeciles is that adult men in the Patterverse have the gnawing tendency to make fools of themselves retrieving stupid things. The John who talked himself into stealing a potty when the sane course was to do nothing has no reason to think that Mike's chowder-headed comment on the six o'clock news will destroy a reputation he himself sullied any more than a fool who wrote a simpering and stupid break-up e-mail has any call to whine about what his mom does in public.
This seems almost benign compared to the time when someone who hadn't a clue what the issues really were protested what he mistakenly believed to be a huge increase in bus fares meant to improve service in the Tri-Suburb Area. Mike made a bit of an idiot of himself being "ill-informed juvenile sound-bite deliverer #14" but to judge from what John said, you'd think that he was Gandalf speaking the Black Speech in Rivendell. The reason that both occasions are mild faux pas being whined about by imbeciles is that adult men in the Patterverse have the gnawing tendency to make fools of themselves retrieving stupid things. The John who talked himself into stealing a potty when the sane course was to do nothing has no reason to think that Mike's chowder-headed comment on the six o'clock news will destroy a reputation he himself sullied any more than a fool who wrote a simpering and stupid break-up e-mail has any call to whine about what his mom does in public.
On strange potties and devil children.
Jun. 4th, 2014 01:41 amNow that we're in the middle of yet another "Annie's children are devil creatures" arc, let's remind us of what it is that makes Richard a monster who is monstrous. As we're about to see, what went wrong is that in her haste to do whatever, Annie didn't just forget to do some housework. She also forgot that Richard had a severe case of shy bladder and would react with panicky rage at the scary prospect of using an unfamiliar potty. While this would be a minor inconvenience for normal people, any student of the Pattersons would know right off that they'd make a complete botch of things.
First off, we have to deal with Mister King Train Loving Dentist Man and his bad attitude about the whole project. It seemed almost karmic that a pompous buffoon whining about the horrible horror of him, John Patterson, being COMMANDED by an infant who should have been forced to man up and use a strange commode to break into a locked house and grab onto a potty like a fool be held by the fuzz on a breaking and entering beef. Watching the dreary moron wail like the idiot he is about how everyone is actually laughing at him would almost be a source of pleasure were it not a reminder that he thinks that being laughed at is a sign that he's weak and bad and weak but also that anyone who inconveniences him is clearly out to destroy him.
This leads us to the real problem: the inability (or, more properly, refusal) of the Pattersons to admit that there isn't always a bad guy who wants to hurt them because they hate them when something bad happens. You and I see a frightened child who doesn't and can't know what the results of his panicky refusal to go where he doesn't want to go are. John sees a monster who wants to see him with his pants down because the alternative is really scary. John needs to see monster children who want to defy him and make him a slave to their cruel drama because the idea of well-meaning children who don't want to hurt him but still make good-faith mistakes means that instead of a reasonable, calm and cool straight-shooter, he's a thin-skinned, vain and hostile mess picking on people for the unworthy reason of making him look bad.
First off, we have to deal with Mister King Train Loving Dentist Man and his bad attitude about the whole project. It seemed almost karmic that a pompous buffoon whining about the horrible horror of him, John Patterson, being COMMANDED by an infant who should have been forced to man up and use a strange commode to break into a locked house and grab onto a potty like a fool be held by the fuzz on a breaking and entering beef. Watching the dreary moron wail like the idiot he is about how everyone is actually laughing at him would almost be a source of pleasure were it not a reminder that he thinks that being laughed at is a sign that he's weak and bad and weak but also that anyone who inconveniences him is clearly out to destroy him.
This leads us to the real problem: the inability (or, more properly, refusal) of the Pattersons to admit that there isn't always a bad guy who wants to hurt them because they hate them when something bad happens. You and I see a frightened child who doesn't and can't know what the results of his panicky refusal to go where he doesn't want to go are. John sees a monster who wants to see him with his pants down because the alternative is really scary. John needs to see monster children who want to defy him and make him a slave to their cruel drama because the idea of well-meaning children who don't want to hurt him but still make good-faith mistakes means that instead of a reasonable, calm and cool straight-shooter, he's a thin-skinned, vain and hostile mess picking on people for the unworthy reason of making him look bad.
![one that starts with thin-skinned dullard John not being able to handle a petty frustration](="http://catalog.fborfw.com/strips/80/FB070680.GIF"){kind=link}