We're Back from Very Long Break..........Roanoke Times Comics Quotes

We are indeed back from a very, very long break!

Greetings to those of you in Wales, Sweden, and Croatia...

Our celebrity of the day is..........we'll go with Marc Maron....!

Here are some comic strips quotes mostly from the Roanoke Times (July 17th, 2017 edition) with exceptions including "The Knight Life" from our good pal Keith Knight, which will start us off.....

1) You kids these days have it so good! (Knight Life)

2) Hi Jeremy. Are you hungry? (Zits)

3) Sara, can we get pizza delivered? (Blondie)

4) Nelson, what are you doing? (Pickles)

5) I'd like to return this bird (Wizard of Id)

6) That's all anyone needs to know (Judge Parker)

7) Good man! (Jump Start)

8) Don't be afraid! The lightning won't strike as long as mommy's out here (Family Circus)

9) Ooooo, what's that? (Get Fuzzy)

Comic Strips Survey from Father's Day Roanoke Times: We Like This Week's Doonesbury

Greetings to our blog readers in Dubai, Bulgaria, and Indonesia.......

A lot has happened since we last tweeted one week ago today: 1) There was a mass shooting that resulted in the deaths of nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, here in America, sparking a national debate between guns and racism. 2) President Barack Obama surprised the world by sitting down for an interview with edgy comic podcast host Marc Maron in Los Angeles. 3) And, Muslims around the world started celebrating Ramadan, which according to the Turkish English-language newspaper "The Daily Sabah" is quite challenging in Iceland where there is 18-22 hours of daylight per day. There are about 770 Muslims residing in Iceland, and adjustments have been suggested for the holiday period's fasting period.

Our images for the week are of: 1) The Jetsons family as "Doonesbury" tackles how fathers are adjusting to modern parenting; 2) Since "Dilbert" features a character who looks just like Turkish shadow puppet Karagoz (center image, the dude with the long beard and a drum; Hacivat is his frenemy; 3) Doctor Who for "Pearls Before Swine" which features a British alien (not in the E.T. sense)

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from Sunday's "Roanoke Times":

1) Doonesbury

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Dilbert

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Zits

6) Jump Start

7) Non Sequitur

8) Agnes

9) Mutts

10) Speed Bump (this comic strip was number one for four weeks in a row!, but not this week).....

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

Our Top 10 Favorite TV Shows of 2014: We Must Like Sex and Violence

Greetings to our blog readers in the Netherlands, Croatia and Yemen (is our blog available there? Yeah, I don't know either), and a special Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun to our friends in Turkey, my late father's country.

Here is our top ten (amended Jan. 4, 2014):

1. Rectified. Sundance Channel. Second Season. (image #1, the show deals with an inmate coming home to his zip code in small town Georgia, hence the reason for the prison cell)

2. Maron. IFC-TV. Second Season. (Mark Maron continues to impress us, but he could probably care less)

3. The Americans. F/X. Second Season (the reason for the middle image of Ronald and Nancy Reagan)

4. Halt and Catch Fire. AMC. First Season

5. The Affair. Showtime. First Season. (image #3, a postcard of a hotel room from yesteryear)

6. Master of Sex. Showtime. Second Season.

7. Homeland. Showtime. Fourth Season

8. Mad Men. AMC. Eighth Season

9. Orphan Black. BBC America. Second Season

10. Portlandia. IFC-TV. Fourth Season. (Fifth Season starts Thurs., Jan. 8th)

UPDATE: We revised this from the dubious initial version in which we thought it would be a good idea to include three shows we've never seen! They were: 1) Game of Thrones; 2) Orange is the New Black and 3) The Waling Dead, but we shall keep The Game of Thrones tags anyway.......:)

http://www.sundance.tv/

http://www.ifc.com

http://www.sho.com

Halloween Tweets: Trick-or-Treat Invasions

Greetings to our beloved blog-readers in Scotland, Switzerland and Kuwait.

Today is not only Halloween; it also marks the sixth anniversary of our blog "The Daily Vampire." Perhaps some of you remember 2008, The Beatles had just arrived in America, Chairma Mao Tse Tung became the leader of China and a marijuana-inspired cartoon with a talking dog named "Scooby Doo"debuted on television..........:)

In case, you are wondering the bottom image is from the Turkish horror film "Drakula Istanbul'da/Dracula in Istanbul"!

Here are some unique tweets from Halloween night:

1) News&Record: Trick-or-treaters invade Greensboro neighborhood.
 
2) UNC Swag: Everyone in Chapel Hill tonight, please be safe and careful in what you do.....

3) Abraham Lincoln: Tonight in 1865, Lincoln, Mary, and Miss Clara attended Grover's Theatre for opera "The Magic Flute." She was with them at the assassination.

4) Bill Amend (the cartoonist from "Foxtrot"): All right enough with the sad Halloween boredom. Booze, meet Springsteen. Booze and Springsteen, meet Bill Amend.

5) Top Conservative Cat (a satiric tweeter): Next on Fox News, President Obama lures children to pagan festival at the White House.

6) Marc Maron (stand-up comic, star of "Maron" on IFC): "Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh! WTFHaloween!!!!"

7) The Coffee Bean (a LA-based coffee producer): "Spooky Halloween greetings 2 U from Ur friends at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Have fun and be safe tonight."

http://www.visitgreensboronc.com/

http://www.visitchapelhill.org/

http://www.foxtrot.com/

http://www.wtfpod.com/

http://www.coffeebean.com/

7 Words in Turkish (5 of 7): Shark

Though Shark Week on the Discovery Channel has passed us by, we have the Turkish word for shark for you today. An interesting note is that in Turkish, the word for dog 'kopek' and the word for fish 'balik' are combing together for this word. (Just last week, a 14-foot, 700-pound tiger was caught off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in America.)

So, the Turkish word for shark is kopekbaligi, or shark=kopekbaligi.

SIDEBAR ONE: We thought it was interesting when we found out that the embassy for Azerbaijan in Washington, DC, has a Facebook page, but the Canadian embassy does not! Gary Doer is the Canadian ambassador to the United States; Elin Suleymanov is Baku's man in DC.

SIDEBAR TWO: As someone who has read Dale Carnegie's classic self-help book "How to Win Friends and Influence People," in order to overcome my personal insecurities, it is refreshing to hear a different take from the American comic/actor/talk show host Marc Maron, who told "Rolling Stone magazine" the following: "Bitterness is a sure fire way to ruin your career. I've pissed off Adam Sandler. I've pissed off Jon Stewart. I've been ruse to people I've been jealous of."

http://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com

http://www.azembassy.us

http://www.wtfpod.com (Marc Maron)

Times Around the World: From Boston to Baku

 

We were going to look at what our favorite people were saying on Twitter; we are especially curious what comic actor Marc Maron and fellow liberal Turkish-American Cenk Uygur are tweeting, but as it is, Javier the Intern told us to keep it simple tonight.

So, we are looking at times around the world, but rather than going with Grenwich Mean Time, we are going to look at times compares to New York City when it is midnight in the Big Apple.

Here we go:

USA

Boston 12:00 a.m.
Denver 10:00 p.m. (map of Colorado is pictured)
San Diego 9:00 p.m.

South America

Rio de Janeiro 1:00 a.m.
Buenos Aires 1:00 a.m.
Quito, Ecuador 11:00 p.m.

Africa

Nairobi, Kenya 7:00 a.m. (Mount Kenya pictured top)
Cape Town 6:00 a.m.
Casablanca 5:00 a.m.

Former USSR

Moscow 8:00 a.m. (Misha the Bear pictured top)
Yerevan, Armenia 8:00 a.m.
Baku, Azerbaijan 9:00 a.m.

Turkey: The Land of the Hijab and the Bikini

Today, I will skip my usual political rants against right-wing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which might make some think I'm a cranky middle-age man like American comic actor Marc Maron, and illustrate that Turkey is ultimately a country caught between two fashion trends: the hijab and the bikini.

And, for good measure as we say here in the states, we've thrown in a burqini (also spelled burkini as well); all of these definitions are from Wikipedia. We are aware that this entry could get us banned in Dubai and Pakistan; but it could make us more popular in Canada. As my favorite comic strip cartoonist Keith Knight says (paraphrase), Canada is the one place that all Americans can still make fun of:


Hijab: A veil which covers the head which is particularly worn by a Muslim female beyond puberty in the presence of non-related adult males.

Bikini: This is a type of women's two-piece swimsuit designed to provide minimal coverage of the body. One part covers the breast and one part covers the groin and part of or the entire buttocks.

Burquini: A Swimsuit for Muslim women designed by Lebanese Australian Ahena Zametti. The suit covers the whole body except the hands, face and feet.  

http://www.hurriyetnews.com (Turkish newspaper in English)

http://www.wtfpod.com (Marc Maron's podcast)

http://www.knightlifecomic.com (Keith Knight's comic strip "Knight Life")

http://www.burqini.com

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com (Our sister blog, which will feature much of the same text as this one, but with different images).