A pair of Ewws from Olivier:
Every year when I (Winter Wallaby) go to the Washington state fair, I see a booth selling something like “Cow Chip cookies,” or “Cow Patty cookies,” with a graphic to match. While I assume the cookies themselves taste fine, I always wonder about the marketing decision to have a name and graphic that makes me go “ewww” when I’m considering what food to buy.
On the other hand, every year I see poop emoji hats for sale at the state fair, and I assume they wouldn’t keep putting them out if people didn’t buy them, so what do I know?
Comics I Don't Understand 
We used a couple of those vacuum-sealed bags when sending my son off to college. I suppose I need to bring a vacuum when I go back to pick him up.
When we moved to FL from WI, we used quite a few of those vacuum-sealed bags – what a great idea those are (and we didn’t need to worry about redoing them, as I never went back to WI, despite our original plans to do so).
http://alldogssite.com/floridays02152.html
Not sure why the first one is an Ewww.
Just the idea of putting clothes, etc., into a garbage compacter. Yuck. Unless it was brand new. Which I doubt.
Hmmm, I see two bugs hiding in the first panel, and one hiding in the second. Is this a new McPherson thing? Is the number of bugs a ratings thing? Is he trying to give the squirrel a run for the money? Should we start expecting pies and firecrackers and eyeballs soon?
Logically, the smushing wouldn’t last, once the machine is opened and the items taken out.
Andréa: That kind of bugged me too. But then I figured “good enough for comic logic.”
futabakun: I feel like I’ve seen those bugs in Close To Home for a long time now, although I couldn’t say exactly how long.
futabakun: Oh, actually, I guess I can just click on the “Close To Home” tag on this blog, and then I can see that the bugs have been there semi-consistently since at least December 2018.
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/why-on-earth-would-this-impress-them/
I was expecting something really gross, which may have influenced my first thought, that she had put Hobbes into the trash compactor. Then I read the caption.
I have never owned a garbage compactor. I guess I assumed that it would periodically be cleaned out. Otherwise, it would be pretty gross regardless of whether or not it’s being used for compacting non-trash items.
That trash compactor will never work, because (1) the drawer is too tall, and will collide with the sink, and (2) even if the sink were not in the way, the drawer is still too tall, because it does not leave room for the (retracted) compactor mechanism.
P.S. @ Mitch4 – I remember hazarding an estimate in an earlier thread, but I can’t find the comment now. The earliest appearance that I could find of that moronic alien was dated 3-Sep-2018.
P.P.S. … and (3), because no matter whether one is crushing trash, or clothes for a suitcase to New Zealand, the relevant constraint is not volume, but weight.
. . . and who’d compact SHOES? They’d break apart.
Right – when the important factor is space, the vacuum-sealing bags are good for traveling by car/van, or loading a moving van, but putting all that in a suitcase would make it impossible to lift (I don’t see any wheels on that suitcase).
Winter Wallaby: I’d seen the occasional bug there before, but this was the first time I saw two in one panel. It made me think there was some new development going on, but perhaps not.
futabakun: Oh, I misunderstood. A quick scan of the archives shows mostly 0 or 1 bugs, but I do see this 2 bug cartoon from 2019:
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/sunday-funnies-lol-december-8-2019/
Hm, scouring the archives to count bugs in Close To Home probably wasn’t the best use of my time.
Trash compactor story. My brother managed a time-share condominium in ski country. Rich, entitled time-share owners and guests. He got a call from Karen: “The compactor doesn’t work. Fix it!” So when he made his rounds, Karen wasn’t there but he tested the compactor and it worked fine. Next day: “The compactor still doesn’t work. Fix it!” Karen wasn’t there, he put in some trash, ran it, it worked fine. Third day: “It still doesn’t work!” So he went right over to the unit.
With Karen watching, he opened the compactor, put in some trash, closed it, pressed the button, waited for the cycle to complete, and opened it again. The trash was neatly compacted in the bottom.
Karen pointed and said “SEE? IT’S STILL THERE!”
There IS a difference between a trash compacter and a garbage disposal. 🙂
And in France, I’ve seen only garbage disposal units, never a trash compacter: I’d have been puzzled like Karen but would have figured it out, out of curiosity.
With mandatory recycling, my regular trash has so little in it that compacting wouldn’t make much sense. Not that I ever had a compactor, or knew anyone that had one.
I don’t think trash compactors ever caught on as much as did garbage disposals. I remember my parents had an In-Sink-Erator (in the 60s), and I’ve had one in every house I’ve owned. Hardly use it now, as I don’t cook, but it came with the house, as did the kitchen.
In a large time-share condo community, trash compactors make it easier for the maintenance people: fewer garbage bags. And this may be the first time Karen has seen anything you put garbage into and the thing MAKES NOISES AND DOES SOMETHING and the garbage is still there. She might know that garbage trucks work that way but EWWWWW! Who wants a GARBAGE TRUCK in their kitchen!
I’m sorry, but I just had to laff that her name was . . . Karen. (Or did you make that up?)
@ Olivier – I have never seen a trash compactor nor a garbage disposal anywhere in Germany. Recycling is ubiquitous here, so compactors serve little or no purpose. Disposals are probably illegal, or at least contrary to local waste management regulations.
P.S. @ Andréa – Why should “Karen” be funny? I have an aunt named Karen, but her sense of humor was significantly impaired.
@Kilby: my mistake; I took garbage disposal to be ‘le vide-ordures’ (=garbage chute?), I’d completely forgotten these noisy contraptions attached to sinks in the USA. Here’s a picture:
This company was located in the city next to where we lived in WI; I don’t know if anyone else makes them . . . https://insinkerator.emerson.com/en-us . . . in fact, the word ‘insinkerator’ was easier to say/remember than ‘garbage disposal’ (much as ‘kleenex’ is now used in place of ’tissue’).
When we lived next to Lake Michigan, I had no compunction about using this. And I remember my Mother using it constantly because she cooked every meal.
Now that we live in FL, where water is much more ‘precious’ (and expensive), I feel guilty the few times I use it; mostly just to flush it through. Luckily, as we no longer cook much, we rarely have to do this.
I guess you could say we became “environmentally woke”. In fact, I’m surprised these haven’t been banned.
I don’t know if it was just confusion over the word “disposal” or was a brand, but we used to refer to the under-sink grinder kind as a “Disposall”.
Here is an odd video — it doesn’t seem to be a repair guide or anything useful, but just shows the thing running. However, on the metal rim at the sink base, you can see the branding “GE DISPOSALL”.
A commenter suggests getting an Insinkerator instead!
@Andréa: here’s a funny one
https://www.bugmartini.com/comic/marriage-disposal/
“Disposall” was the former name of our garbage collection company. Now it’s “Orion”, altho I’ve no idea what a constellation has to do with garbage collection.
Olivier: You know, that’s not far from the truth. NOW we have the same ‘discussions’ about what can and cannot go into the recycling container. As I’m the one who brings them to the recycling center, I’ve become the final arbiter, and Hubby has no idea what I take and what I don’t. We avoid the marriage counseling aspect that way ‘-)
“P.S. @ Andréa – Why should “Karen” be funny?”
“Karen” has become the term for a certain type of person (usually women; sometimes men) . . . who are entitled and likely to call 911 upon another person . . . usually one of color. You can see examples on YouTube here . . .
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=karens
I think of “Karen” as more of the “I want to see your manager” type in a store.
The name was already in decline, but I will bet that it has plummeted lately.
Andréa, the constellation was named after the hunter Orion. I guess the collection company goes hunting for garbage.
. . . and always finds it!
I picked Karen expecting you would all pick up on the reference, as most of you did.
For a long time, garbage disposals (In-Sink-erators, Disposealls) were not legal in New York City. I think this was true even during the Seinfeld years.
I remember a horror comic from the 1950’s. Man can’t stand his wife. Man buys sink disposal. His friend, a licensed plumber, installs it. Man tells everyone his wife is going away for a vacation. Man kills his wife, chops her up and disposes of her through the disposal. Cleans up everything neatly. Invites friends over for a poker game. Offers glasses of water; brags about the pure quality of the well water. Plumber says, “Wait! You didn’t tell me you had a well! The disposal will contaminate the well water.” At that exact same moment, man turns on the tap to fill up the glass with: fresh red blood pouring out of the tap!
(In actuality, if you have a well you almost certainly have a septic tank. The disposal will not be good for the septic tank and may make it fail, but if everything is properly set up it won’t contaminate the well any more than the toilet does.)
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a new bill designed to end false, racially motivated 911 calls. It’s called the Caution Against Racial and Exploitative Non-Emergencies Act, or CAREN Act for short — a pun on the concept of a ‘Karen,’ a white woman who calls the cops on Black people for trifling reasons.
@ Brian in StL – Your description fits perfectly to my aunt’s personality.
P.S. The SSA’s “baby names“ statistics show that “Karen” was in the top-10 for almost all of the 50’s and 60’s, and was in the top-200 as recently as 2008. Since then, usage of the name has fallen rapidly, dropping to #660 in 2019.
According to Wikipedia (usual caveats) the “Karen” meme is relatively new, although the idea of the entitle white woman using her status to bully people has been around longer, just not that specific name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(pejorative)
You’ll find plenty of Karens in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”. Being a Karen was pretty much the accepted way of dealing with anyone the slightest bit lower on the social scale.
Speaking of ‘Karen’ . . . and yes, I think the squirrel is a good addition to the comic, this time . . .
