Flies Time

Welcome to Summer, the Halftime Show

I regret to inform you that the year is nearly halfway over. Does it seem like half a year has passed? Maybe. It depends on what marks your passage of time. There are things that could be in your life that measures it more carefully. Perhaps you got a puppy for Christmas and you’re now the owner of a much bigger dog. January could seem like a sentimental, long ago time to you when you took happy puppy pictures of your dog learning the difference between carpet and grass. Maybe, god help you, you’re a news junkie. January seems like forever ago to you because so much has happened and you’ve aged ten years since then. Or maybe you’re a seven year old with fantastic reading comprehension who improbably reads Substack articles. Six months ago is such a significant fraction of your life that it feels the same as six years would to an adult. I envy that perception of time more than you know.

But for the rest of us it’s Happy New Year then, BAM, welcome to summer and bugs (depending on your geographical location). Bugs tell us when it’s summer, not the calendar. If you have a problem with gnats in March, that may be climate change, but it’s also summer whether you like it or not. Bugs, and this is always reassuring, have a much shorter lifespan than us. Maybe time passes slowly for them, there’s no way of knowing, but they don’t even care that it’s summer. All they know is that they better reproduce before they’re dead. Sure, it sounds a lot like the lives of many people we know, but trust me when I say that they’re not exactly the same. You might think that their brief existence would cause me to have a great deal of sympathy for bugs, and I do to an extent, but they have been know to provoke me into levels of violence that I do not engage in with other life forms. Please, buggy creatures, just stay off of me so we can all go about our lives, as brief or as lengthy as they may seem.

I like summer, I like longer days, and I don’t like bugs. I will celebrate two out of three. I better enjoy each and every day because there’s only one thing worse than summer bugs and that’s Christmas holiday shopping. Perhaps I should buy a puppy.

I came up with this idea about five years ago and revisited it because I thought I could make it better. Did I succeed? That’s the task for future scholars. For now, I can say that the tombstone that was originally in the fourth panel has been replaced by a small child, and that’s more visually appealing. Am I saying that the aged man was reincarnated in the fourth panel or that the child is a symbol of renewal and hope? Again, I will leave that to future scholars, who will most likely not give this comic a second glance as they try to explain our world leaders instead. Hint to future scholars: Focus on the comic. There’s a chance you can actually explain it, whereas it’s impossible with the leaders.

This is based on my phone’s inability to recognize my face at the end of a long day. I know I look bad, but phones just had to come up with facial recognition to press the fact harder.

I’ve said it before, but Tabby’s ability to suppress her emotions is what makes her good with customers. If keeping a neutral expression during a conflict were some sort of competition, it would be won by somebody in customer service.

I hate to say this, I really do, but Walmart has the best self checkout machines. There are other stores that like to frequently interrupt the process with redundant and inane chatter, but none of them come as close to the ones you’ll find in Kroger grocery stores. Those literally talk to you throughout each and every item that you’re scanning, and then continue to talk to you as you’re bagging. If you fiddle with the bag, or try to double bag an item, it stops everything to make sure you’re not up to something. Kroger owns Ralph’s on the West coast. I think a road trip is in order to see if they are just as annoying there.

I liked this one because it was me at so many jobs. I would hover over the clock out button, appreciating that I was earning time and a half with every second of hesitation. This caused some pretty negative feedback from some readers who said this was impossible and would never happen. It was not only possible, it happened. At several companies.

I will never stop being surprised at what dumb, little things cause people to yell out the ol’ “That would never happen!”

Customer service desks are all about big display screens now. I was at one that had three. There’s something about a nice, big TV screen that forces customers to stare at it as they wait in line. They should really be playing old cartoons. It would lighten the mood. How mad can you get about a transaction with a Goofy cartoon in action above your head?

Commenters informed me that Japan is much more affordable than Paris. Well, it’s obvious that I’m Penny in this scenario, isn’t it?

This was in my notebook for ages. It’s based on a guy at the self checkout station that liked to go on about the old days as he was supposedly helping you. I enjoyed this one. I’m not sure about anyone else, but when you’re making these things you have to please yourself first.

This was also in my notebook. “Tabby: Resting Cute Face”. After months of it sitting in my notebook, I had to try and figure out what sort of comic I was planning on building around such an observation, but the immediate realization was that all I had was her resting cute face. Todd was brought in for his own resting face problem.

Finally, this was based on me as a customer. A guy at a store’s self checkout helped me without ever looking up from his phone. I was too amazed to say much more than “Wow.” I don’t think he was listening to me.