Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 13, 2014

…………I don’t get it?It’s probably Frazz’s higher social tastes than mine…

The very much quoted final stanza of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”:

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

I’m so glad I live in a place where nobody would even think of bagging leaves…I could burn them, which is kind of cool, but I just drag them into the woods and they disappear….Bagging leaves? (shiver…)

Well, la di da.

A little self praise there, Jef?

Barnes:Here we can’t burn, not allowed to use plastic bags, have to buy biodegradable paper bags.

Quiet?

Horse manure, kitchen waste, garden clean up and millions of dried sycamore leaves, and my compost pile cooks all winter. Lots of work, but I am retired…

Mower with mulcher.

He left the"but" out because “bagful” has two syllables, just like “bang but”.

We rake them into the street and they disappear in the middle of the night.

Who let Patis in here?

I’ve been wondering about Frazz’s final statement. I feel that it surely must mean something other than self praise by Jef Mallett. It is worded in such a way… a little ungainly, perhaps? It makes me want to reexamine it. Looking up Eliot in wiki, it is said that he borrowed liberally from other writers. I wondered if Frazz’s statement might be a reference to this, but I can’t glean enough to put that together. The one tenuous explanation that teases at my understanding sounds too simple to be valid, but, here goes: Perhaps each falling leaf is a “T.S. Eliot rip-off”. There are many of them falling, each whispering “Shhhh,” so quietly that you don’t hear them “that good”… or well. I know, this sounds silly. Perhaps his statement is to be taken at face value, or perhaps it is a reference that Eliot scholars would need to explain. Or, maybe, it is simply a breezy, light-hearted play on words?

Hi comicssfan! Sorry I moved my post out from “over” you, up there – I wanted to change a couple of words. I wonder, is the pun so obvious, there’s no need to explain? Did I go to way yonder too much trouble? SFFanatic implies as much in much fewer words, lol! But, I hadn’t read his/her post when I started writing mine. (A lot of distractions here.)

I loved Peter Ustinov in Logan’s Run! (Or in anything, for that matter.) He stole the show doing this bit based on “The Naming of Cats.”

Ants, spiders, beavers, gophers and humans all modify their environment to suit themselves. Which is the less natural?

“You don’t hear that many TS Eliot ripoffs that good” is atrocious English. Frazz, I thought you held yourself to a higher standard. At least go with “You don’t often hear a TS Eliot ripoff that good.”

Looks to me like it should have gone out with an “IT”! Afterall, that leaf went out/down with a “Shhhh” “Shhhh” “Shh” “Sh” – Nothing left to add but the old “IT”. Or “it” to complete the complaint of the leaf! And, to anyone that can’t figure THIS Elliott out, that is “Sh!t”!!!