Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 15, 2011

Looks like Alex is going to be cramping Grammy’s style.

I gotta give Mr. Trudeau credit. He sure knows how to mess with the cadre of Ann Landers types around here. The strip itself is funny… the deathly silence in the comments section as heads everywhere go ’splodey is even funnier. :D

Well, we know one item in Alex’s insecurity closet.

Ew.

Hey, even a grad student has to work his way through college.

DT3.14159Welcome back

NCIS TV – turkey vulture

Welcome back DT. I often forget to take my meds and wake up to take them later in the night too.Agreed, “Once a cougah, always a cougah”, but I am not sure that fits Joanie, except in Alex’s nightmares.

Alex’s nightmare could reveal something about her, but it doesn’t tell us anything about Joanie.We’ve already seen that Alex, like some of those posting on this thread, can’t take in the spectacle of a politically active grandmother. Likewise, today’s “cougar” jokes seem to express a male anxiety about sexually active older women.Maybe Alex’s nightmare expresses her jealousy of Drew, a roommate she’s more likely to have found in bed with a man.Or, given Leo’s shrewd question, Alex may be imagining herself as the cougar, competing with Joanie in her dreams for the sexual attention of a younger man (I assume she’s older than Leo).

PD π…glad to have you back, hope you had a good time away.

Alex ia a worldly, sophisticated, and broad minded young woman. What specifically did she see that disturbed her so much?

Oh boy, love taking my meds again.

Sorry, I guess I’m too literal-minded. When did this dream or nightmare begin? With the conversation with Grams or before that?

It occurs to me that Joanie’s quite possibly only been with two men in her life, her first husband and Rick. Although she was the right age to have had a “Swingin’ Sixties (and/or Seventies)”, when she was introduced she was already an unfulfilled housewife with young children. The first night she spent with Rick was a momentous leap for her (“As the kid goes for broke”), and I don’t remember there having been any lovers before or since (although I recall her going on a couple of dates with Reverend Scott back at Walden, I also seem to recall that Scottie never "closed the deal”).

Alex has a lot of issues: abandoned by her mother, a step-mother young enough to be her sister, and college roommate at MIT who looked like a super model and was smarter than her. Her grandmother is the latest addition to her insecurities.

Surely GBT wants us to focus on Leo’s question: “How you know he . . . he . . . was grad student.” You don’t have to be a Freudian to see that in her dream, Alex is substituting Joanie for herself.Maybe the dream betrays Alex’s (groundless, irrational) fears that she’ll cheat on Leo. That would be normal, given her devotion to him when she’s awake.Even the most perfect intimacy is prey to the irrational “unconscious.” Here’s what Adam tells Eve after she’s had an adulterous dream (Paradise Lost, bk 5):“Know that in the soulAre many lesser faculties that serveReason as chief; among these fancy nextHer office holds . . . She forms imaginations, airy shapes,Which reason joining or disjoining framesAll what we affirm or what deny, and callOur knowledge or opinion; then retiresInto her private cell when nature rests.Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakesTo imitate her; but misjoining shapes,Wild work produces oft.”

“It was a nightmare” could just be a method of expression. It may have actually happened. She doesn’t ACTUALLY say she was dreaming. She ACTUALLY says “it was a nightmare.”

@dt pi; glad to hear from you again!

I would totally do Joanie! ;-)