This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
7:28 PM Sunday, October 15, 2006
[Five minutes of total fun.]
I have intermittently intimated in Jonathan's Coffeeblog that this weblog is not really about coffee, but about the meaning of life. It would not be hard to prove the assertion that it is not really about coffee, but the meaning-of-life thing is more ephemeral. It usually comes up in my daily planning when I am confronted by my 43 inboxes and must choose among paying an overdue bill, getting rid of more junk mail from my house or car, writing something for the coffeeblog, or just putzing the day away in the gallant spirit of dolce far niente. A firm grounding in the meaning of life is helpful when such decisions are to be made.
However, my fascination with the meaning-of-life topic was jolted when I read the Sunday, August 6, Zippy the Pinhead comic strip, wherein the muu-muu-clad clown asserts, "five minutes of fun on a dinky little ride & then bada-boom." The title of the strip is "Existence and Stuff," which makes it clear that the cartoonist, Bill Griffith, knew that Zippy was referring to the meaning of life. Of course Zippy himself, a lover of pop culture, diner food, doughnuts, and oft-repeated inanities, does not exist other than the abstraction of that ideal human that we all strive to be (or at least I strive to be.) Five minutes of total fun. Have I ever had five minutes of total fun outside of sex and netsurfing? Wow.
Not content to merely bask on the glow of Zippy's enlightenment, I looked him up in Wikipedia. I knew he would be there. I have never looked him up in Wikipedia before, but I knew that even in a world menaced by North Korean nuclear holocaust, global warming, and bird flu, the all-merciful gods would not condemn us to a place where the Wikipedia did not have an article on Zippy the Pinhead. I was right, of course. I learned that Zippy first appeared in the Berkeley Barb in 1976, and was dropped for a second time by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. Why was it dropped? The Wikipedia says, "many people find nothing humorous in Zippy and cannot comprehend the strip." Ridiculous. Zippy is the funniest comic strip out there since the demise of S. Clay Wilson's Checkered Demon. I like to believe that the Chronicle dropped the strip because Griffith wanted to charge them more than they could afford. Now, some might say that Zippy makes fun of individuals afflicted with microcephaly, a clinical syndrome which affects the shape of the head and possibly the size of the brain. I say that Zippy, whose head is shaped like a bowling pin with a little bow on the top, reveals the folly of the small-minded and those who are endowed with normally sized brains which they don't use.
More links: Comics Zippy Existentialism KrispyKreme BillGriffith
More images: Diner Donut Carnival
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