On the Subject of Cathy

An Editorial by a Plastic Mannequin

mnqnn

I am not a historian of the comic strip Cathy. As a child I read the strip regularly. As an adult, I’ve glanced over Cathy from time to time. Because of this unique experience with the work of Cathy Guisewite, one could say I am more like Heinrich Schliemann finding a frozen moment in the development of Troy. Like Schliemann, all I see is ruination.

As a child I loved Cathy. Each week I would eagerly open the funny pages to read about her looking for a date, being fat, wanting to exercise, eating too many chocolates, talking to her cat, talking to her mother on the phone; virtually any of the boring things a young professional woman might do.

I wanted to meet Cathy. Not the character, but the woman who created her. In fact, I will admit to having a small crush on Cathy Guisewite at the age of seven. She seemed to know something about all the normal things in life, stuff a seven year old didn’t know yet. And since the strip was drawn very much as a seven year old would draw, I thought her character was cute and figured she would be, too.

I thought she lived nearby. Then again, I thought all the comics writers lived nearby. Dick Browne wrote Hagar the Horrible from up the street. Bil Keane lived in town with the Family Circus. Lynn Johnston owned the awesome house near my elementary school, pouring out For Better or For Worse. This was reinforced by the fact that Peanuts creator Charles Schultz really did live in my town. So I thought Ms. Guisewite was probably somewhere in the neighbourhood and I desperately wanted to meet her.

Things haven’t changed much in the last twenty years. The visual style of Cathy is surprisingly still very much familiar to elementary school students. It’s amazing that after two decades, she hasn’t been able to control her urge for sweets. She finally got that man she was after, but their dialogue isn’t much different than it was before. Her concerns are still quite parochial. For instance, Cathy still thinks she’s fat and makes jokes about exercise.

This last is difficult to wrap one’s head around. Everyone in the Cathyverse is the same size, so one assumes either Cathy has never been fat or she only knows fat people. Both propositions are quite sad. The former suggests Cathy as the victim of a persistent body dismorphic disorder. The latter is a dystopian proposition that Cathy lives in a dark, gritty world of people unable to control their urges, doomed to an early death from heart disease, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Diabetes seems most likely as insulin is never mentioned.

I no longer wish to meet Cathy Guisewite. Her concerns are parochially vapid and her output offers no deep analysis on the human condition. Probably a woman in her late twenties or thirties when I was a child, she must now be in her late forties or fifties. If Cathy suggests anything about her, on top of being too old for me she’s incredibly dull. I would make her angry when she showed me the latest strip and I told her how bad it was.

I’m not her demographic and that’s okay. I am not, of course, seven years old any longer. I am not a stereotypical young professional woman sitting in my apartment with my cats reading the comics in my sweatpants. I am not a middle-aged biddy wont to chuckle at the latest stereotypically male thing Cathy’s companion does.

I’m sure me, aged seven, would be disappointed with this outcome, but I won’t listen to him. He didn’t know how to tie his shoes then. He couldn’t recognize that Cathy is filler; one of the worst comic strips ever to be granted a syndication contract, and one upon which can be saddled all the accusations of decadence and boorishness ever levied against our culture.

Cathy was and is the early warning sign of a culture about to fall, of a grand civilization tottering toward its grave. When historians look back at the United States, Cathy Guisewite will be held up as one of the first signals that something was wrong. They will shake their heads at our folly and ask, “Why was nothing done?”

The Historigon: Mapril 2007

Historigon

During this month in history:

2005 AD: After one hundred years, Jules Verne continues to remain dead.
2004 AD: After purchasing a piece of the True Cross online, Ron Stanley of Kenosha, WI, wonders why the Romans made crosses out of plastic.
1988 AD: Brian Warner of Fort Lauderdale, FL, decides to try on some of his mother’s lipstick. He is disgusted to find out later that lipstick often contains fish scales.
1980 AD: Members of the band KISS are convicted of treason for selling nuclear secrets to the Iranians.
1954 AD: Adlai Stevenson invents the game of Beer Pong, also known as Beirut.
1944 AD: Nazi Fuehrer Adolph Hitler enjoys an apricot.
1889 AD: While attempting to design a revolutionary new kite, Alexander Graham Bell accidentally invents the telephone again.
1681 AD: Edward Teach grows a beard.
1602 AD: William Shakespeare scratches a dirty sonnet into a lavatory wall.
1578 AD: Samurai warrior Akakawa shames rival Tokogura with a beautiful and exquisitely composed haiku about how good crabmeat tastes.
1537 AD: Shortly before Spaniards arrive there, the Island of California joins the rest of North America.
1381 AD: Janth throws herself beneath the wheels of the advancing Juggernaut and has little to no effect on its progress.
1215 AD: At Runnymede, English King John first attempts to sign the name “Tohn” and then “Dohn” before the nobles make him write his real name on The Magna Carta.
923 AD: A Tatar named Multigin gets very angry when he stubs his toe. He raids a neighboring village, slaughtering the entire population and takes their herd of goats. This makes him feel better.
701 AD: In order to impress a beautiful, dark haired and blue eyed young girl with ample bosoms, Erthik begins writing the Beowulf Saga.
575 AD: Five year old Muhammad begins a life-long fascination with raisins.
483 AD: No one notices that the Nestorian Church has had a schism with the Orthodox Church.
102 AD: Pan Chau’s expeditionary force reaches the Caspian Sea. He sends reports home stating that there isn’t anything interesting out that way.
25 AD: An irate man in strange clothes, speaking in an unknown language attempts to stop several soldiers as they crucify a Jewish man. He fails to stop them due to a crippling and fatal bout of dysentery .
17 BC: Japeth of Judea thinks he could use a new smock.
274 BC: Rendithes of Corinth pens the most beautiful poem ever written. A visitor from nearby Porlock knocks over an olive oil lamp, causing a fire which burns down Rendithes’ house with all its contents.
440 BC: After wandering the entire Mediterranean, Herodotus remembers where he left his change purse.
765 BC: Ancestors of the Ainu people of Japan amuse themselves by using a wooden board with a snow monkey tied loosely on top to plug up geyser holes, then watch the resulting expressions on the monkeys’ faces when the geyser erupts.
901 BC: Cruthoatlec drags a valuable load of jade to his home across the isthmus of Panama, creating the first and short-lived Panama Canal.
1300 BC: A Phoenician named Dehrem steps on a sea snail and has an idea.
3,809 BC: A trader, who by pure coincidence is named Seanconnery, invents cuneiform.
12,003 BC: Shurprizh, a resident of Southwest Asia, produces the first play in history. It is remarkably similar to an unaired episode slated for the second season of My Mother the Car.
109,800 BC: After dropping a goose egg on a rock near the fire, Omak eats it, finding that the heat has transformed the egg into a congealed, rubbery substance. He spits it out and goes to look for some berries.
507,032 BC: A human band wins its third consecutive war against a nearby group of chimpanzees, thanks mostly to Churdu’s excellent rock-hurling prowess.

The Dangers of Time Travel

The Dangers of Time Travel

Time travel is not, and may never be, possible. However, a committee at the prestigious Flagstaff Institute of Theoretical Physics has released a new report detailing just how stupidly dangerous travel to the past or future may be. The report is of special concern to our growing corps of chrononauts.

“If you go back in time,” stated Dr. Steven Hawkins at a press conference held in the Luau Room of the Particle Physics Research Institute and Brothel “you may affect causality in numerous ways; say by killing your parents before they screw you into existence, or rolling your ATV over the sherwlike creatures which gave rise to all modern-day mammals.”

However, Dr. Hawkins warns against an even greater threat. “The real danger isn’t from paradoxes. It’s from disease.”

The group warned that the past is rife with all manner of pestilence, disease, and infections including, but not limited to, every disease ever. The FITP committee hypothesizes that a time traveler venturing, for instance, to 25 AD to prevent the Crucifixion would perhaps succumb to amoebic dysentery within two days before he could prevent the salvation of mankind.

“It wouldn’t be a pretty death either,” stated Hawkins. “Even the 19th and early 20th Centuries aren’t safe. We advise not venturing back more than a couple of decades if time travel is ever invented. Which it won’t be, because it’s not possible.”

According to a high-level official at NACTA, the National American Chronambulatory Travel Administration, the report is of grave concern to the nation’s fourth largest department. Both the Armstrong Administration and NACTA refused to comment for this article.

So, while it may be interesting to see what Napoleon could have done with machine guns and a logistics planning computer, any chrononaut who heads to Austerlitz with a crate Kalashnikovs and a planeload of MREs is going to be too distracted by small pox, diphtheria or cholera to enjoy the battle. Furthermore, photographs of Napoleon with a mustache could be taken, which would demoralize modern-day Corsicans.

The future may be safe, though people in the future will probably imprison and quarantine you before you even have time to look up your great, great grandchildren in some sort of futuristic phone book. You’d actually be quite easy for a group of futuristic, leopard-human hybrids to capture and we imagine they will take many photographs of you with their prosthetic audio-visual communication hands.

“If you have to go back, say to prevent Buddhism or something,” Hawkins concludes “it would be best to wear a containment suit that you burn as soon as you return to the present. Of course, you won’t ever do that, because time travel isn’t possible.”