Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 29, 2017

Well, it still has two days to go. Who knows what can happen in that time.

Well, it wasn’t a leap year…

Of the thousands of years in known human history, this hasn’t been bad, really. Quite the contrary. Most of the trauma faced by those most greatly affected is purely emotional and caused by internal conflicts.

We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of 1968. That was a particularly nasty year.

Unbelievably so.

I lost weight. Please open the champagne.

My business started rolling, I had a great summer, took a long weekend in Vegas with a friend, said friend came over on Christmas Eve bearing thoughtful gifts, developed more great work contacts. We had an awesome solar eclipse, people came to the aid of others effected by floods, fires, hurricanes.

So I wonder how long Mallett spent on drawing that second panel with them getting into their coats. I imagine him with someone there putting on a coat and a vest while he watches their movements.

Maybe I just see things differently.

Have a wonderful new year and in the immortal words of Monty Python, “Always look on the bright side of life.”

But in another 2017 years it will be 4034, which is not a prime number.

Found this winner floating on the internet:

We all know that 2017 is a prime number, but it is more than just another prime number.

2017π (rounds to nearest integer) is a prime.2017e (rounds to nearest integer ) is a prime.The sum of all odd primes up to 2017 is a prime number, i.e. 3+5+7+11+…+2017 is a prime number.The prime number before 2017 is 2017+(2-0-1-7), which makes it a sexy prime, and the prime after 2017 is 2017+(2+0+1+7). 2017 itself is of course equal to 2017+(201*7).Insert 7 into any two digits of 2017, it is still a prime number, i.e. 27017, 20717, 20177 are all primes. Plus, 20177 is also a prime number.Since all digits of 2017 is less than 8, it can be viewed as an octal. 2017 is still a prime number as an octal.

By some standards it wasn’t too bad but I hope the increase in natural disasters isn’t a trend.

Re: P4. Unless Rose knocks you off the door.

My very special sweet man beat cancer this year.

Um, one of my coworkers got a new job so I won’t have to put up with that daily drama, and . . . yeah, I’m really stretching. This year TOTALLY sucked.

I’m still alive … which, of course, is a valid argument for both sides.

Seemed like a pretty danged good year to me!

Incredibly short, though…

Kept my job, got a raise, lived with my loving family, didn’t go hungry (or even peckish) a single day, learned a bunch of stuff, saw some good movies, at no point fought in a trench. 2017!

Compared to the Great Depression, two world wars, the 2004 Indian earthquake and subsequent Asian tsunami, I think this year was pretty darn good.All we had was a bunch of idiots rioting because they did not get their way in the 2016 election.

Lost my father to pneumonia less than a week after he had to have his leg amputated, very nearly lost my boyfriend’s father to a horrible car accident brought on by a misdiagnosed sodium deficiency, still looking for work after my “temporary” lay-off in October, my friends’ marriage disolved – yeah, not going to miss 2017 at all

Some good friends of mine, a married couple, were remarking ruefully about this time last year that they’d started the year with 4 living parents between them and were ending it with only 1, so I guess 2017 had to have been an improvement for them.

No President Hitlery

Even though I’ve got a perfectly good alarm on my phone, I still wake up to a clunky old alarm clock that plays CDs. Oh, I still use my phone alarms, too; it’s not easy getting up this early, this consistently, and I have a whole string of alarms lined up on the phone just in case. But the first one is the CD player on the dresser across the room. Why throw out a perfectly good clock? Actually, the question is why NOT throw it out, and it’s not perfectly good. The answer is, it plays CDs, which is still what most of my music is stored on.

Usually on Jan. 1 I’ll wake myself up to “Happy New Year,” from Todd Snider’s “The Devil You Know” album. Give it a listen and thank me later. It rocks. But come Monday, I think I’m going to throw in “(It’s Been a) Long Year,” another Todd Snider masterpiece. Without going into detail other than to say mine didn’t stem from the same causes as the song’s, these years happen to everybody and it was my turn. I figure I can tie it off with a sympathetic wakeup. Monday. Tuesday will switch to something much more up-tempo and battle-ready. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The butt-kicking let’s-do-this song will already be cued up in the Monday backup alarm on my phone. And another butt-kicker, and another. I’ve got a better year coming up, and I am not about to waste any time getting it going.Frazz by Jef Mallett for Dec 29, 2017 | GoComics.com

I learned I’m going to be an uncle.

I hope that some people get their fantasies about how good things are fulfilled. I’m sincerely praying for better times this next year. The America we knew and loved won’t survive intact with another year of this. In any case, I love Frazz’s statement in panel 4. I’m clinging, I’m clinging!

“We cling to whatever floats”? Poop floats, but you couldn’t make me cling to it.