August Date Check
Lynn wrote in her Coffee Talk Blog on July 6, 2010:
The Sunday strips continue to be new additions because I used so many retro Sundays during 2007. The new Sundays will cease in August and the retros will begin with new coloring and sometimes improved imagery. Thanks for asking! LJ
Now it's August, let's check it out:
Sunday, July 11, 2010 was a new-run.
July 12, 1981 was reprinted on Sunday, July 18, 2010.
June 28, 1981 was reprinted on Sunday, July 24, 2010.
July 5, 1981 is reprinted today on August 1, 2010.
It would appear that there is not really any part of Lynn’s statement that is true. There was one more new addition, not “new additions” which did not cease in August, but ceased the very next Sunday after her statement in July.
As for what is really coming up, I can suggest a few possibilities:
1. Since July 19, 1981 was reprinted way back on July 19, 2009; Lynn will start reprinting from July 26, 1981 next week and then continue that way with the strips off in date continuity between 1981 and 2010 by 2 weeks.
2. Lynn will skip 2 weeks and synchronize the strips by date as she did with the dailies where the August 9, 1981 strip will be published on August 8, 2010.
3. There will be at least one more new-run strip published in August, which will make Lynn’s original comment turn out to be true after all.
As for today’s strip, the kids come to Elly playing the blame game and expecting Elly to do something about it. Foolish children. Have you met your mother? Elly does not do anything about it, but she does pretend like she should be able to, with her line, “Since I can’t possibly know who’s at fault here…” Just to give you a clue Elly, the phrase “broke my house” is something that can be checked. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that it is the parent’s responsibility to assess blame in these kinds of situations, but more to assess damage and calm down the kids. Elly sends them to their rooms for 20 minutes as if that technique actually works. It may work for some families, but it never worked for mine. My kids almost never stayed in their rooms when they were upset with each other. It took some time for them to calm down and they usually had to be watched during that time, since that was not their natural tendency. As for Elly’s reaction, it seems perfectly in character for her to show off her non-parenting skills and put those disfigured sock feet of hers on display.
The Sunday strips continue to be new additions because I used so many retro Sundays during 2007. The new Sundays will cease in August and the retros will begin with new coloring and sometimes improved imagery. Thanks for asking! LJ
Now it's August, let's check it out:
Sunday, July 11, 2010 was a new-run.
July 12, 1981 was reprinted on Sunday, July 18, 2010.
June 28, 1981 was reprinted on Sunday, July 24, 2010.
July 5, 1981 is reprinted today on August 1, 2010.
It would appear that there is not really any part of Lynn’s statement that is true. There was one more new addition, not “new additions” which did not cease in August, but ceased the very next Sunday after her statement in July.
As for what is really coming up, I can suggest a few possibilities:
1. Since July 19, 1981 was reprinted way back on July 19, 2009; Lynn will start reprinting from July 26, 1981 next week and then continue that way with the strips off in date continuity between 1981 and 2010 by 2 weeks.
2. Lynn will skip 2 weeks and synchronize the strips by date as she did with the dailies where the August 9, 1981 strip will be published on August 8, 2010.
3. There will be at least one more new-run strip published in August, which will make Lynn’s original comment turn out to be true after all.
As for today’s strip, the kids come to Elly playing the blame game and expecting Elly to do something about it. Foolish children. Have you met your mother? Elly does not do anything about it, but she does pretend like she should be able to, with her line, “Since I can’t possibly know who’s at fault here…” Just to give you a clue Elly, the phrase “broke my house” is something that can be checked. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that it is the parent’s responsibility to assess blame in these kinds of situations, but more to assess damage and calm down the kids. Elly sends them to their rooms for 20 minutes as if that technique actually works. It may work for some families, but it never worked for mine. My kids almost never stayed in their rooms when they were upset with each other. It took some time for them to calm down and they usually had to be watched during that time, since that was not their natural tendency. As for Elly’s reaction, it seems perfectly in character for her to show off her non-parenting skills and put those disfigured sock feet of hers on display.
posted by howard at 5:26 PM
6 Comments:
As for today’s strip, the kids come to Elly playing the blame game and expecting Elly to do something about it. Foolish children. Have you met your mother? Elly does not do anything about it, but she does pretend like she should be able to, with her line, “Since I can’t possibly know who’s at fault here…” Just to give you a clue Elly, the phrase “broke my house” is something that can be checked.
But checking it would be too much like work and force her to make a decision; can't have that or else she'd look like the heavy.
As for Elly’s reaction, it seems perfectly in character for her to show off her non-parenting skills and put those disfigured sock feet of hers on display.
And all the while acting as if her having to endure the company of children was some sort of torment.
Lynn's early years had a lot of this sort of poor-poor-pitiful-me whining, didn't they?
Which would have been fairly loathsome if she had combined it with the speshul-snowflake-me attitude she developed in the later strips. But in the earlies she was either too honest or too naive to conceal that most of her problems were pf her own making, as here.
She's too busy doing her fourteenth load of laundry to check in on her kids and head off this before it becomes a huge blowup. Then, once the blowup occurs and ignoring the kids is not an option, she fails to do her job as a parent and "disciplines" both kids in the least effective but easiest and quickest way, ensuring that the battle will begin as soon as they emerge from their detention facilities.
But at least she gives us a moment to contemplate the Fallen Housewife, feet horribly mangled from ten second's confrontation with the Scourge of Wretched Children...in the later years we'd be invited to coo and slaver over the Wide Matriarch Who Owned The Horses, too.
And what is WITH the woman's problem with drawing feet? OK, I admit, hands and feet are complex body parts and harder to draw than the human buttocks, which may be pictured merely as an enormous pair of hemispheres. But, geez, Lynn...you couldn't look at your own dogs in the mirror or something? And if you did? Holy gods, your feet need 911!
This comment has been removed by the author.
I meant to type "Wise" matriarch, but upon further review, I like the typo.
I wonder if Lynn is really as scatterbrained as her statements make her seem, or whether she really thinks she has a plan, talks like she does, but then kind of just makes things up as she goes. So perhaps she meant to extend the new-ruins up to the end of July, made her statement to that effect, then realized she'd already sent the old strips out to be reprinted...or had forgotten that she hadn't done anything new for July. Or something.
So she's, terminally forgetful or hopelessly disorganized.
Or, alternatively, she sees her actions as disconnected from what she says. Not sure which is more of an oddity.
DreadedCandiru2,
And all the while acting as if her having to endure the company of children was some sort of torment.
That does seem to be the point of the strip. Elly, who is busy washing dishes, is so fatigued from her brief moment with her children, she must take a rest and leaves the dishes unfinished.
FDChief,
And what is WITH the woman's problem with drawing feet? OK, I admit, hands and feet are complex body parts and harder to draw than the human buttocks, which may be pictured merely as an enormous pair of hemispheres. But, geez, Lynn...you couldn't look at your own dogs in the mirror or something? And if you did? Holy gods, your feet need 911!
Lynn’s artwork does improve over the years, but she never did learn how to draw feet, even after 30 years of it. Of course, that is a minor quibble compared to her problems with perspective.
So perhaps she meant to extend the new-ruins up to the end of July, made her statement to that effect, then realized she'd already sent the old strips out to be reprinted...or had forgotten that she hadn't done anything new for July. Or something.
I think scatterbrained Lynn is highly likely. We snarkers have from time-to-time pointed out errors in Lynn’s story-telling continuity; but I must admit that the lapses she had in the story were minor compared to the ones she introduced in the new-run years, after she had fired her staff. Anonymous persons in the know have occasionally dropped comments into this blog to indicate that back in the days when Lynn had a staff, they did raise continuity issues with Lynn and her reaction to being told about them was not good. Nevertheless, she apparently did address some of them. During her staff days, Lynn probably would not have gotten away with things like the too early departure of Deanna Sobinski or the mysterious disappearing children of Anne Nichols.
I can easily see Lynn doing a certain number of Sunday strips and declaring to herself that it was enough to cover up to August without actually counting the number of Sundays necessary. For example, she could say, “I have 3 months and 3 times 4 Sundays is 12 Sundays” without thinking about those months where there are 5 Sundays.
On the other hand, I have gotten e-mails from Lynn that gave answers to questions I had, where she was blatantly lying. So, it is possibly she might think she could say that the last few Sundays were new thinking that her fans were too stupid to figure out they weren’t.
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