I got an assignment today. I rarely get an assignment, because I am A Columnist, and we march to our own drum, off the road, into the ditch, and beyond into the muddy field of irrelevance. It wasn't an assignment so much as a request. Whenever I get one of those, I say Of Course. If someone higher up says "this sounds like something Lileks could have fun with" I am not stupid enough to say "nah, you're wrong about that." So after the workout I went down to the Collaborative and wrote half.

I will write the second half in 20 minutes and then enjoy a Tuesday treat of half a salted caramel ice cream sandwich.

Oh what the hell, the whole thing. Tuesday is a DICD, or Designated Ice Cream Day, and I earned it. The day was long and cold and productive, although that last one is not in the sense of a cough. "A productive cough" is one that brings up the goop, as I understand it. One of those medical terms they use to feel special. To anyone else it sounds like "since he got tuberculosis he's been finishing reports and signing up clients at a remarkable rate."

The workout was a bit annoying, as one of the irregulars gathered all the lower-weight barbells around him like a class of elementary school students to whom he wanted to tell a story. He had some routine that required this weight then that weight, and since he looked very pleased with himself I wondered whether he was thinking "these other guys, they don't know the strength advantage you get from multi-varied weight differential hoisting. Me, I know, which is why I give myself a look of self-regard and stab my hair with my hand before making sounds of conspicuous exhalation."

Oh who are you to judge

Someone who doesn't bogart the barbells, that's who.

I remember being a Doonsebury fan, because we were young and in college and gosh we were smart folk with the proper opinions.

It was part of the ration of correct thinking, which included The New Republic and the New York Times, particularly on Sunday, and at its most placid it was best characterized as "a knowing look and occasional small sneer among friends when the subject of Ronald Reagan came up, as sometimes it must."

Doonesbury, we would eventually realize, consisted of three facial archetypes, one of whom had a ruler for a nose. There was a homeless lady who was funny because she called everyone "Ducks" and she had a friend named Ellwood who was also homeless, I guess. There was a stalwart Congresswoman who was ineffibly decent, as her side always was, and a rotating cast of political figures who were indicated by objects, because the artist was possibly incapable of drawing them. Oh, and the guy based on Sam Donaldson. Oh, and the guy based on Hunter S. Thompson - the one anarchic character who did not share the strip's preconceptions, and was, oddly enough, probably the character everyone liked the most.

Stopped reading forever ago. Would occasionally glance at in the Sunday funnies. (Which I mostly look at to lament the state of the art, as if I think it was all Walt Kelly and King and McManus and McCay in my day. But I saw this on Sunday, and thought: huh.

The people in the comments seem to think this is about the folly of gender-reveal parties in general, how they’re a waste of money, a narcissistic display. Why in my day kids came out and we slapped them right away just so they knew what’s what.

But that’s not what Trudeau is doing here. The baby - the term used when the mother has decided to grant the fetus safe passage into the world - is warning the mother that it is actually a girl. And of course it is doing so with the passive-aggressive sarcasm of a minor Doonesbury character. You’re surprised the strip doesn’t have any trans characters, since the audience of greying NPR listeners would appreciate another opportunity to enjoy their own virtues with a private smile and a warm sense of superiority over the idiots who are frightened by such things. The character would probably be one of the uglier ones with a nose like a ruler and black bags on her eyes, but the character would be smart, unassuming, clever, unflappable, and would regard the “transphobes” with mild amusement, culminating in a zinger that had the snap of a twine whip.

Perhaps the baby here will be that character in 18 years. If the strip goes on that long. The end of print is going to take down a lot of legacy strips for good. It’s not the same, reading them online. In the paper the cartoonist is constrained by space. Online, there are no such excuses. The four-panel format may survive the newspaper, but there’s no reason standard newspaper-style comics have to fit that format.

Anyway. So what’s he saying here? The baby has been invested with a gender identity prior to birth. It will be “AMAB,” or “assigned male at birth,” a notoriously inaccurate method that requires a cursory examination of the genitals. These have nothing to do with gender, which is why, years later, they must be remade, so they conform with the proper gender, which has nothing to do with genitals.

Just so you’re up to speed:

Idea of a soul: LOL

Idea of a gender soul: Science

It’s 1917.

He lived at 195 Whalley Road, according to a page about the local war dead.

This was his street. His house appears to be gone.

He perished in “the great push.” Or the Big Push. The Battle of the Somme.

Yeah well about that

I suppose there was optimism for a while.

Another:

And this was his home.

This had them all reaching for the lotion:

A lot of this is obscure to modern eyes, but I think you get the pith of the gist:

A strong whiff of "Child Labor" here.

Our new story!

		SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS I. and II.-The story opens at London. the Imperial Hotel. Captain Harding is unable to meet his bill. Tessa, the Captain's daughter, wins the manager over with promise of payment in a few days. Mr. Brett withdraws. The Captain congratulates Tessa. She is building a castle founded on Dolf Kennard, her sweetheart Five years ago Tessa was a typist, and hard work and poor pay did not agree with her, so she joined her father and his profession, and after due training became an expert thief. Well, that took a turn. It goes on like that FOREVER.

A look at the types of businesses that had phones, and advertised:

News, as they say, you can use

That'll do! Is there cellophane?

There is cellophane.