Brevity by Dan Thompson for November 11, 2011

Cute.

Um…what?

This is the kind of comic I love to see, especially in Brevity. It’s simple—the idea takes a phrase we all know and puts it into context, and the art gets across exactly what we need to see in order to get the joke. I love the succinctness of it.

Well put a %$#@! sock in it, sailor.

Be glad you don’t have a potty mouth, cos if you have to put a sock in one of those it might clog up.

Cursin’ like a sailor.

Who woulda thunk it?

Well, you wouldn’t want them to go OFF curse, would you?

A !#$% sailor went to !#$% sea sea sea to !#$% see what he could !#$% see….

damn those navy censors (but it sometimes needs to be done, of cuss)

Seriously, I was a sailor back in the late 70’s. It was like that on ship. Even if you were not a big curser when you came aboard it was contagious. Myself and several ship-mates I knew had to adjust when we got out to quit talking like that as a routine. It took awhile for the habit to wear off.<BRWhich brings me to a Navy memory:A guy on our ship, Holt, was going to be getting out of the Navy in two weeks. We got together for our usual noon time game of Hearts (A lunch-time staple when we were out at sea).Holt mentioned that he was going to be getting out soon and since he was going back home with his parents for a while he was afraid of slipping and using foul language around his parents. He asked that we not cuss around him so he could start breaking his habit.Of course being the sympathetic people that we were, we exaggerated our cussing and kept saying things ike, “yeah everybody, watch your #%$#ing language!”Eventually he had enough and he scolded us. It went something like:“Hey this is a no $#!er you guys! I’m not #%#^#ing around here. I need to stop my #^#ing cussing!! Please, stop #%*#ing cussing around me!!”Okay, as funny as this was, sadly he wasn’t kidding.I thought this was especially good timing today having this comic come out on Veterans’ Day. I don’t know if Guy and Rod planned it this way or if it was a coincidence, but it was very appropriate for today. At least in my opinion.Unfortunately, I have to work today. Which is fine, but it does irritate me that non-vets in some jobs get a paid day off while others who actually earned it are working. I just hope the non-vets who do have a paid day off apprecieate it and show some reverence for it and don’t just piss it away.To my fellow vets out there, I salute you. And to all the non-vets who are enjoying the day off with pay – You’re Welcome!

I don’t get the joke…

SusanSunshine, I answered your question about undeleteable posts in yesterday’s comments, but here one is again. Dave H‘s post is not flagable by us or deletable by him. mistyped html is the problem. It’s a comments software bug (it should close all the tags and clean up whatever) which I’ve reported some time back. I got no feedback though so I don’t know if it’s being worked on.Also I’m a Vietnam era vet — went to Panama and supported tests of stuff for use the tropics (ie Vietnam). Supported means I’m a meteorologist and served as one so made sure the weather was properly recorded so they could be sure the tests were applicable to where the stuff would be used.

I can’t let the Navy take all the credit. The Army was no different. (The other services will have to defend themselves.)

As I have commented elsewhere, I’ve never been sure if I should count myself as a vet since I never got shot at. But if a meteorologist serving in Panama can be a veteran, then so can a Nuclear Weapons Assemblyman in Germany during the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile crises. Be very grateful that nobody ever shot at me.

My father spent 20 years of his life in the Navy. After he retired, he still reverted to sailor’s language.

Now Now Now. Dont use potty words! Finally a comic makes a veterans day reference. Thank you to all of you out there!✌

NightGaunt I had a post go missing from Agnes — it showed up at the time but was gone this afternoon.

I thought maybe it was censored, though pretty benign, but then I noticed I had another missing from Monty, which was completely bland.

Maybe it’s a glitch.

Larry — thanks, yet again!

Guess I need you to follow me around explaining things…. LOL.

BTW I think you mean X_tech’s posts, not Dave’s…..

I didn’t see any open tags, but then, he used a LOT more tags altogether than I do, including some I’m unfamiliar with, like “code”.

I seem to get the same results with just the specific mark-up for the word formatting, like bold, italic, etc.

I figured it was because, as it’s for “consumers”, not programmers, the tags signifying things like style, font, and even that it’s an HTML document are already built in – but I’m no coder so that’s only a guess.

I’ve noticed that if I fail to close a tag, or just leave out the forward slash in the end tag, all that happens is that the attribute fails to stop, and the rest of that post is in the marked style.

I learned what little I know from HTML tutorials on the web…. and one thing I have read is that pasting in segments of pre-formatted text leads to problems.

No idea why — and I’m sure you know more about it.

I just like to play with puzzles, and this is like that.

Oh, and I didn’t mean to fail to acknowledge that I learned some things last year from CoBass, another poster at Comics.com (and now here.)

The rules were different there, and far fewer tags were allowed.

But thanks, CoBass, if you ever see this!

Aaand…. while I’m making too many posts anyway — PSchearer, I answered your similar post on A&J.

Larry – The links appear on Dave’s post in Firefox, so I hadn’t noticed anything amiss, not that I probably would have anyway.

I thought you were referring to the fact that X_Tech said he couldn’t delete his own first two attempts last night – also they showed up in Courier or another plain text font, not the San Serif we post in.

BTW I always use FireFox because it enlarges the text without enlarging the graphics, which makes an easier to read page without having to scroll every picture…..

And…… mostly cos that also makes the text in this box larger — I can’t see what I’m typing in IE or Chrome.

The last time I used Opera (ancient history, I admit) Hotmail, which was then my main e-mail, was weirdly formatted..

I spent 24 years in the Navy. I never had any trouble turning the foul language off and on. There was just two ways of speaking-ship talk and non-ship talk.

When I first worked in a corporate facilites group, my immediate boss was a disagreeable younger man who had nothing to do with my hire and not only did he declare that “women do not belong in engineering, and he would get rid of me one way or another” but he also encouraged rude language and (when he found that I disliked smoking) regularly passed out cigars around our department room (where we also hung our coats). I had recently bought one with a fur collar-nuff said. I occaisionally used some of the language around them, just for effect, but did not adopt in for normal life ;-)

JAM — He’s apologising for swearing by saying he has a mouth like a sailor, ie a sailor’s mouth.