The late posting of this week’s cartoon owes mostly to life distractions as much to my lack of preparation, so I apologize for the oversight. Or lack of oversight, as the case may be. It’s funny to me that a word meaning “the action of overseeing or managing something” can also mean “an unintentional failure to notice or do something.” It’s like the word evolved to make an ironic joke about management.
Oh, but about this week’s cartoon: I have been thinking about doing an Animal Crossing bit for several months after my daughter bought me a used Switch and a copy of the game. I went through a pretty obsessive period, even after completing the story, until it occurred to me why I was hooked. Like my avatar in the strip says, it’s satisfying to accomplish well defined tasks in a timely manner, even if failing to do so has no real consequence. Real life might define tasks for you, but might not give you the tools or the resources to fulfill them; or revise the terms in an opaque, confusing way without much notice, if any, yet impose a heavy penalty. This is why Kafka endures, he found the humor and the nightmare in it.
By the way, Fetch’s true name is just “Fetch” spelled in a demonic alphabet I found via a Google image search and created by linkavar at Deviant Art. I considered using Theban script, but the characters were too much alike, whereas linkavar’s alphabet has more variety.
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