Being Jim Davis

"Live fast, die young, read Garfield." That quote is pretty much all you need to know about todays's episode.Today's strip:

Today's episode seems vaguely like a promotion for the NRA. In the background, of course, are the notoriously high crime rates of the 1970s: Incidentally, when Donald Trump claims that the murder rate in the United States is "the highest it's been in 45 years," he's lying, of course, but he's also sending a message about who he's with (prosecutors, police unions, "law and order" types, racists) and who he's against (human rights advocates, criminal justice reformers, minorities.) Remember that.Today's strip:

In today's episode of Being Jim Davis, we discuss suicide and the subjunctive mood. In fairness to us, though, Jim Davis really left us with no choice on either count. We're not convinced that suicide is funny, but then again, we aren't wildly successful syndicated cartoonists, so what do we know? For real, though, a lot of people find the holiday season dark and oppressive. If that's you, maybe call the National Suicide Prevention Line: 1-800-273-8255. This podcast has few enough listeners already!Plus, do we talk about the both Kantian epistemology and the three types of heat transfer? I mean, sure, we mention them in passing. Today's strip:

In today's episode, we spend an excessive amount of time discussing the details of SCP, our new time-saving acronym for "Standard Countertop Position," our new time-saving shorthand for panels where Jon is on the left, standing, and Garfield is on the right, sitting on a countertop. Basically, we save a lot of time in this episode. A lot.Today's strip:

Hey, you know what's great in a podcast? People talking about various hand signals you're not able to see, that's what! Also when random other people wander by and start unrelated conversations -- that's great too. Or even if it's not great, it's what happens in today's episode. So live with it.Oh, hey, after we recorded this podcast, I (Christopher Winter) changed my Twitter handle back to @thechriswinter, so don't be tweeting to @doctor_garfield anymore. Why did I change it? Hard to say, but it's a thing I did, and now we all have to live with the consequences.Now here's a diagram of some basic gospel source theories, a thing we talk about: Today's strip:

A raucous night in the Grand Ballroom of the Trump International Hotel in beautiful downtown Philadelphia! We enjoy a Garfield-themed quiz, shout at each other, and do a live commentary of 1987's "A Garfield Christmas Special."You can watch the special on YouTube while you listen. That would be fun, right?Also, here's a screengrab of Jon, Garfield, and Odie on their way to the farm. Take a good, long look at their home city (which we have always assumed to be Muncie, Indiana) in the background: Compare with this shot of Muncie... ...and this shot of nearby Indianapolis: It's totally Indianapolis, right? I mean, you be the judge, but it's totally Indianapolis.

Listener, can you imagine a time where 'man has staring contest with his cat' was actually amusing, or heck, even conceptually interesting in any way? You can't? Well, don't worry, because you don't have to! That's what our podcast exists for. That is, more or less, its very conceit, its raison d'etre. Oh sure, you didn't ask for it and neither did we, but it is in fact the way of things. Look, let's just acknowledge the existence of Being Jim Davis as yet another tragedy in the long national nightmare that is 2016, ok?Merry Christmas everybody!Today's strip

   We really don't know what to make of this one. Is this merely a cry for help, or is Jim Davis trying to create some sort of anti-humor singularity that will destroy the entire universe? It's not answered within the text of today's comic, so we're forced to speculate. The only other possibility is that Jim Davis, after 33 years of life on earth including FOUR MONTHS drawing a daily cat-themed comic strip, JUST NOW realized that cats are 'nice to have when you're feeling lonely' and thought it was worth throwing out traditional comedic structure to evangelize this fact. Either way, we really worry about Jim Davis in this one.Today's stripThe 'Intelligence Staircase'

   Fair warning, we get into some pretty controversial territory in this one, including the bold assertion that a changing table can also be a cabinet. Of course, anything goes in a universe where people buy charcoal briquettes in quantities small enough to fit in a regular grocery bag. Seriously, the fuck?Today's stripBerenstein Bears theory of parallel universes

Hey, you know what's pretty darn good? The Darkwing Duck video game for NES. I mean I guess it's no surprise since it was made by Capcom, literally the ONLY company that was able to consistently make good video games based on licensed properties in the 1980s, but while the likes of Ducktales and Rescue Rangers seem to get no end of good press in today's retro gaming community, relatively few people seem to have Darkwing Duck on their radar. But it turns out to be pretty freakin' great. So much so that I think it's far more worth your time to play it for 15 minutes than to listen to today's episode of our dumb Garfield podcast.Seriously, I promise you're not missing anything if you skip this one. Just play Darkwing Duck instead.Today's strip

Today's Garfield strip is pure applesauce. Really just a tangled mess of legalistic argle-bargle, if not outright jiggery-pokery. Honestly, I can't in good conscience recommend reading it, even though I HIGHLY RECOMMEND listening to this episode of our podcast. It's ok. We argue about geometry.Today's strip

“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.”      -Henry Ward BeecherToday's strip

Can one genuinely describe Jim Davis? Or does the very act of measuring his essence alter it in some fundamental way? Even if you succeed in painting an accurate representation of Jim Davis as he exists in the present moment, does that get us any closer to understanding the origin of Jim Davis, or is Jim Davis Irreducibly Complex? Jim Davis.Anyway, this one's got a toilet in it, so it couldn't possibly be entirely disappointing.Today's strip

How do you convert degrees into radians? And also, why would you do that? And why, for that matter would Jon Arbuckle attempt to take his cat, Garfield, for a walk on a leash? We talk about that stuff for a while, then about old people and attitudes toward immigration, then, finally, about whether committing to a multi-decade daily Garfield recap podcast was a terrible soul-crushing mistake. Today's strip:

Hey, you tune into this podcast mostly for discussion of 17th century Japanese poetry, right? Well, good, because that's what you're going to get. Today's strip:

So @elliottlusztig, precious voice of sanity and conscience over the past few months, was forced off of Twitter yesterday (Thursday, December 15) by abuse and death threats directed at him and his family. Fucking appalling, Twitter. Appalling. Whatever, here's your goddamn daily Garfield recap podcast. And happy birthday mom.Today's strip:

In today's episode, we discuss (again?) what Garfield's thoughts sound like. Then Chris tries to do a bit about the weather in Muncie, Indiana but to be honest it really doesn't go anywhere. Sad!Hey, off-topic, but have y'all read Ta-Nehisi Coates' retrospective on the Obama presidency in The Atlantic? Damn, that guy can write!Today's strip:

In today's episode of Being Jim Davis, we talk about phonetics some more -- or do  I mean phonology? If you're a linguist, or just someone with access to the internet and no other purpose in life, why not drop us a line to let us know? (email: info@beingjimdavis.com; twitter: @beingjimdavis) You might be surprised how few people contact us about this show. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised?Also, I guess we talk about Garfield or something. Today's strip:

Believe it or not, today's strip actually made Jon laugh. Weird, right? We also debate whether Lyman has become a born-again evangelical Christian, or whether he just has congenital analgesia -- a term neither of us knew at the time.Today's strip:

In today's episode, something-something Garfield something Jon and Chris something-something-something lawnmower something "I hate Mondays" something-something, with predictably hilarious results!Today's strip: