Tom Tomorrow Offers A New Political Movement In 2020 — The Death Cult

In his e-mail that brought today's "This Modern World" (TMW) 'toon, Dan/Tom wrote:

Hey all,

I think it’s week four of quarantine protocol, but honestly I wouldn’t swear to it without looking at a calendar. The days all kind of blur together at this point — if I didn’t have a weekly deadline (i.e., a job) I’m not sure I’d bother to keep track anymore. Especially now that "Picard" has ended its run and I don’t have Thursday evenings to look forward to. (I have mixed feelings about that show but greatly enjoyed seeing Patrick Stewart back in the iconic role. And Jeri Ryan -- a TMW fan! -- was awesome.)

At this point, I’m resigned to this stretching on for awhile. My friend Brian McFadden tweeted something to the effect of “draw, cook clean … draw cook clean …” and that’s about my experience these days, though I’d maybe add in “Skype to preserve sanity, watch tv at night.” My go-to restaraunts are all closing up, and while I want to help these businesses survive, I’m conflicted about ordering take out these days. So, I cook — taking great care around hot oil (after having seriously burned my arm before the lockdown began, as some of you will recall — it’s healed now).

The problem I will face next month is that my ex-wife and I finally have a buyer for the house we still own together, and I have to get a bunch of stuff out of storage from that house before the end of May. I’m hoping things have calmed down somewhat and, taking all appropriate precautions, I can rent a car and drive up there — theoretically I could oversee it via FaceTime somehow, but it would be much, much better if I could do it myself.

Creativity is challenging under these circumstances, but I seem to be hitting the deadline each week so far. There have been a few moments in my life when I’ve had to soldier through despite difficult circumstances — when my mom was killed in an auto accident (a long time ago), and of course the late unpleasantness involving my marriage. It’s part of the job that you don’t think about, when you are young and dreaming about how wonderful it would be to make a living as an artist.

I remain healthy so far, as does everyone I know and care about. I hope you have been as lucky (and that my own luck holds). I don’t think life is going to be “normal” again for a very long time, but I do look forward to whatever gradual re-opening of society becomes possible. There’s a megachurch planning a big Easter Sunday gathering tomorrow — a magachurch might be a better term — but I’m depressingly sure they’ll learn the Liberty University lesson pretty quickly. And I don’t wish for this! But every idiot who gets infected then infects three to five other people. This is basic epidemiology. This is what we get for decades of science-denial actively encouraged for ideological reasons. Google “Lysenkoism” for a lesson in how well that works out.

Apart from idiot outliers, I don’t imagine there will be any big concerts or sporting events anytime soon. At least, there shouldn’t be, though who knows what will happen in this country. What I would imagine will happen in New York is that restaurants and bars will gradually, partially open at no more than half capacity, with new social distancing rituals to be determined. Old movies in which people hug and shake hands and stand close together are going to look as strange as scenes in which characters randomly light up cigarettes on airplanes and in hospitals (there’s a classic example of the latter in The Day the Earth Stood Still). Everything changed last month, and we’re never going back to the old world. This, too, is something with which I have had experience in my personal life. You can grieve, but you also have to adapt and move forward.

In happier news, it appears that my next book is moving forward more or less on schedule. For whatever it's worth, the more pre-orders we get, the more likely this is to happen. I have mixed feelings about linking to Amazon, but if you’re locked into that eco-system, you can obviously pre-order it there. I also recommend Indiebound, or simply ordering directly from your favorite independent bookstore — Powell’s in Portland Oregon is a personal favorite.

Stay healthy, stay inside, wash your hands. And take care of your mental health, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself to learn a new language or musical instrument or whatever. Unless you want to! Just keep in mind that this is not simply “working from home,” this is “working in the middle of a frightening global pandemic.” As someone who has worked from home for decades, I promise you this is a different situation. Be kind to yourselves.

As ever,

Dan/Tom

Thus sayeth the 'toonist. This blogger has a different daily mantra than "Draw, Cook, Clean" — "Blog, Cook, Clean." So goes daily existence in Pandemicland. If this is (fair & balanced) fatalism, so be it.

[x TMW]
The Death Cult
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in the SF Weekly. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political blog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]

Copyright © 2020 This Modern World/Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

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