Our Favorite Sunday Comics from the Jan. 18th Roanoke Times: Sorry, No Hi and Lois

Greetings to our blog readers in Germany, Thailand and Ghana..........and to those of you who reside in Cong. Tim Huelskamp's (R-Kansas) congressional district, which is most of Kansas (not an endorsement)..................

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from the most recent Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. As usual, "Hi and Lois" didn't make the cut, but some comic strips that we usually rank very low actually made the top ten!

The images are of 1) an octopus for "Speed Bump," this week Dave Coverly's single-panel strip focused on octopi flirting; 2) Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" for "Zits," which got a surprisingly high third place from us, in this week's strip the teenage title character is wearing something akin to a Dr. Seuss Hat and 3) Rain, which correlates with Stephan Pasits' "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip where (SPOILER ALERT) it starts to rain as Rat is showing Pig how accurate iPhones are; we imagine if the late Steve Jobs were alive, he may have liked this strip.

Here is our top ten, as has been the case for many weeks in a row, "Get Fuzzy" finishes second:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Zits (highest ranking so far)

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Agnes (highest ranking so far)

6) Mutts (highest ranking so far)

7) Garfield

8) Dilbert

9) For Better or For Worse (it made the top ten)

10) The Family Circus (it made the top ten too!)

http://www.aqua.org/

http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/

http://www.tnaqua.org/

http://www.travelks.com/

Presidential Quotes (9 of 16): The Man who Followed Honest Abe

Greetings to our blog readers in Brazil, the Czech Republic and Thailand.

We're not sure how well a quote from Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United State, will do overseas, but unlike our entries on Turkish soccer* and women's college volleyball, we can assume someone reading this entry in the year 2024 will find that this entry will not be dated.

Here is Andrew Johnson's quote, a man who became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre, which will follow with a link from the Miller Center in Charlottesville, Va.:

"If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet."

http://www.millercetner.org/president/johnson

*- Kudos to Istanbul powerhouse GalataSaray for upsetting Juventus 1-0 today in Turin, Italy, a city which saw some snowfall today, and congrats, to Fethiyespor, a lower level Turkish team, which pulled 'an upset of the century' by beating another Istanbul powerhouse Fenerbahce 2-1 in Turkish Cup play two weeks ago. As I jokingly tweeted, my dream UEFA final in the year 2020 would be between Fethiyespor and Barcelona. Hopefully, Lionel Messi will be retired by then.

Quote of the Day- Marilyn Monroe

Today, we continue quoting people who have been made into plush toy dolls from the American novelty company The Unemployed Philosophers Guild. Most of the companies' other dolls, do in fact, include the likes of Sigmund Freud and Frederick Nietzsche.

We are going with Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), one of the newer dolls (we believe) and by quoting the actress who alas died under mysterious circumstances at age 36; amazingly enough she would be age 86 today.

One of Monroe's signature film the musical "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" (1953, (dir. Howard Hawks)will air on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on July 12 at 8:00 p.m., New York time/6:00 p.m., Aspen, Colorado, time.

And, we believe that by quoting Marilyn, we are the only blog in the world (perhaps) to quote both Marilyn Monroe and James Monroe, the fifth president of America, within the same week.

Special thanks to those of you in Slovenia, Turkey and Thailand for visiting the blog.

Here is her quote:

 "Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered."http://www.marilynmonroe.com

http://www.tcm.com

http://philosophersguild.com

UPDATE_ The answer to our question regarding the distance between Los Angeles and Tokyo is B) 5,452 miles

Quote of the Day/Week- Frida Kahlo

Greetings to those of you in Thailand, Greece and Norway who have been visiting us lately.

Today, we start a series of quotes from persons associated with the Unemployed Philosphers Guild, a toy/novelty production company which offers everything from Russian Leon Trotsky (who was friends with Kahlo) to Albert Einstein. Today, there are advertising a Leonardo Da Vinci plush toy for $17.95.

The manufacturer also offers a plush toy of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, pictured here, for the same price, and there is also a Frida Kahlo puppet for $5.95.

Here is Frida's quote; it is reference to her relationship with fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera:

"There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst."

www.philosophersguild.com

www.fridakahlo.com

http://www.fridakahlofans.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Anton Leeuwenhoek

Though his name is just slightly less difficult to spell than that of acclaimed Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul ("Blissfully Your's), we are quoting the great Dutch biologist Anton Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) today as part of our month-long series of quotes from scientists and artists. Previously, on this blog, we quoted Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin for this series.

Here is the quote from Leeuwenhoek (yes, we got it right; it takes a few tries though!):

"A man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything is to be accomplished."

Yes, We Have Experienced Distractions

The proverbial easy thing to do would be to lie and say we took a trip to Miami or Park City, Utah, for a few days, but nope that's not what happened. I've been interested in some new creative projects and the computer hasn't been working as properly as it should. I guess everyone else has been there too.

But, we hope to at least somewhat get back to our regular schedule. Of course, this is made difficult by the fact that on occasions, I can become somewhat of an insomniac.

Thus, I was able to catch an interesting Taiwanese film on Link-TV, based in San Francisco, last week called "Blue Cha Cha" about a woman who was imprisoned in jail for killing her husband, but is now being released and has to make a normal life for herself.

It turns out that Link-TV is showing Taiwanese film's every Thursday as part of a "Made in Taiwan" series in conjunction with the Taiwanese Government Information Office.

This coming Thursday, Link-TV will air "Nyonya's Taste of Life." The film deals with the subject of immigration in Taiwan, and the central story revolves around Indonesian and Thai workers who come to Taiwan looking for a better economic situation. There is also apparently aculinary aspect to the film.

The term 'nyonyas' refers to daughters from intermarriages between Chinese and Malaysian parents.

And, according to Twitter, which I haven't checked on in a long time and since there is a cover story regarding how Twitter has been declining in "Fortune" magazine I must not be the only one, the physicist Stephen Hawking is a trending topic today. I don't watch "The Simpsons," as much as some of my friends, but I caught the episode he was in, it was pretty good!

Top Ten Lists- People with Long, Difficult Names (Males)

Here is an arbitrary list of famous or relatively famous people with long, difficult names. Since my name is Tilly Gokbudak, each of them has my full sympathy! A random top ten list of women with long names will be on our other blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time."

1. Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul_ (pictured) Whew! We almost didn't spell this one right. But, I suspect many people would have this problem. The 40-year-old Thai director is known around the world by cineastes for his eccentric, off-beat 'small movies' like "Tropical Malady."

2. Siva Vaidyanathan_ This American author of Indian heritage (b.1966) is a media scholar and author. He teaches at the University of Virginia and his current book is "The Googlization of Everything." Yes, we are double-checking his name. It appears to be spelled right!

3. Eugeny Viktrorovich Pluashenko. This 28-year-old Russian figure skater won Olympic gold at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

4. Gebre Gebremariam. An Ethiopian long-distance runner who finished third in last week's Boston Marathon; he also won the 2010 New York Marathon.

5. Zach Galifianakis_ Famous Greek-American actor from Wikesboro, NC, who was in "The Hangover" and "Due Date." His father was a member of Congress.

6. Matti Hautamaki_ This 29-year-old Finnish ski-jumper won silver medals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

7. Naim Suleymanoglu_ This 44-year-old former Turkish weight-lifter actually defected from then-communist Bulgaria. He went on to win Olympic gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Also known as the 'Pocket Hercules,' Suleymanoglu has alas suffered major health problems in recent years.

8. Rod Blagojevich. This disgraced former Illinois governor is one of the very few Democrats I would never vote for.

9. Volker Schlondorff. He is a legendary German film director best known for cinematic version of "The Tin Drum" (Germany, 1979.)

10. Ross Bagdasarian Jr. This Armenian-American is continuing his late father's legacy as the voice of "Alvin and the Chipmunks."

We hope we got all their names right!

Beers of the World (#45)- Chang Beer from Thailand

Today, we are featuring world beers that we learned about through a Beer Geography Quiz that we took on mentalfloss.com on both of our blogs; I got a 100 on the quiz---when I took for a second time!

Chang Beer (chang is the Thai word for elephnat) is a relatively new beer from Thailand which has quickly displaced rival beer Singha, the oldest beer in the country, as the popular brand domestically. Chang Beer not only maintains 60 percent of the Thai market, it has also been available in the USA since 2007.

SIDEBAR: We want to congratulate WKNC (88.1 FM-Raleigh), the student-run college radio station for North Carolina State University for qualifying for the top 10 in the MTVu College Radio Woodie Awards contest, which are given to the best college radio stations in the country. The station has a real cool speed metal show on Friday nights between 10 p.m.-midnight, which has helped introduce me to bands like Slipknot, which are admitedly not going to be on any NPR station I regularly listen to anytime soon!