Saturday, February 08, 1997

Ladies Love Cool Ed (ED! #06)

One of my favourite cartoon strips aside from Dilbert is Calvin & Hobbes. Here's one that caught my eye recently.

Calvin (a young kid) approaches his father. "Here's the latest poll on your performance as Dad. Your approval rating is pretty low, I'm afraid."

Dad says: "That's because there's not necessarily any connection between what's good and what's popular."

Dad goes on. "I do what's right, not what gets approval".

Calvin is unimpressed. "You'll never keep the job with THAT attitude."

Dad has the last word. "If someone else offers to do it, let me know".

It loses a certain something without the pictures, but it makes a nice point.

I could read comic books all day.

Sadly I don't get the chance, I'm too busy thinking about my ego. I like to think I'm a pretty modest guy but now and again I get an attack of the bigheads.

In my more extreme moments I've even considered changing my name. After all, plain 'Ed' is nice but is pretty ordinary.

What I need is a name like a pop star - perhaps one of those nice rap artists - to get me noticed.

Scanning through the charts I noticed Mr LL Cool J in the top spot. Apparently that's short for 'Ladies Love Cool James'.

Hmm. 'Ladies Love Cool Ed'. That has a ring to it, but it is, of course, not true. 'Everyone Loves Cool Ed' ? Mm, no, that's not true either.

'Everyone Who Counts Loves Cool Ed'. No. It'd take me ages just signing the receipts in the supermarket every week.

Perhaps I'll shelve the idea of a name change for the moment.

Other projects which crossed my mind in the bath have included the formation of the 'Mailbox New Ruling Class'. An organisation devoted to furthering the causes of mailbox and mailboxers, and employing everyone else, especially those without satellite or cable, as our slaves and personal servants.

But then the soap disappeared and I put the idea out of my mind.

I recall mentioning in the last annual update of Ed! that I was waffling on about diaries. In the end I did buy that page-a-day A4 job for 1997.

And now that we're about 40 days into the year, how many pages have I written on?

Three.

I always was rubbish at keeping diaries..