SlowpokeBlog

I'm writing this inside the Mudhouse, one of several Charlottesville coffee shops I frequent when trying to get some work done, usually in vain. Someone just walked in with, like, a giant bongo. Earlier I was working in a nearby park, and damned if someone on the next block didn't start up a leaf blower, a heinous device longtime readers know I despise. I could not actually see what this person was attempting to blow away, but I cannot imagine at the height of spring it was anything more than a few flowerbud petals. I attract leaf blowers like mosquitoes. A couple months ago, on a mild midwinter day, I was sitting outside on the UVA grounds when not one, but two, men with shrieking leaf blowers appeared out of nowhere to blow microscopic dead leaf particles out of the grass. I'm sure those of you reading this from the confines of a sickly gray Herman Miller cubicle feel little sympathy for me, so I'll stop now.

Onto this week's strip, yes. Mr. Slowpoke suggested a while ago that I do a cartoon on how most people don't want poison in their food, yet many scoff at organic edibles. I will be the first to admit that there's plenty of BS marketing out there -- no one really needs organic, hemp-infused butt moisturizer -- and organic food can be expensive. But people are quick to reject a label they don't identify with, even if this means contradicting their own rational beliefs. This is how politics works in the age of right-wing media domination: invoke a powerful stereotype, preferably in the form of a carefully-crafted sound bite, and people forget to think.