Cartoon Saturday

Exxon Mobil announced the largest quarterly profits in U.S. history this week (see yesterday's post for the obligatory rant); a boy was shot to death trick-or-treating in Sumter, SC, last night; seven Mexican soliders and their vehicle with a mounted machine gun were taken into custody in Arizona; and some members of Congress are invoking Constitutional provisions protecting them from abusive lawsuits to hinder corruption investigations.

And we still have three full days of political ads and robo-calls before the election.

Boy, do we need Cartoon Saturday.

Regardless of which candidate we choose, I'm not sure he'll have much of an idea of what to do about all the problems the nation faces. I think the most we can hope for is that his direction won't be hijacked by the most extreme wings of his party...

A stock scene in television police dramas is the creation of a sketch artist's picture of the alleged villain from witnesses' descriptions. Did you ever wonder how that concept first came about? ...

When I was in Air Force ROTC at Penn State many years ago (when the Fokker Triplane was the epitome of aerodynamic engineering, ha, ha), I remember anxiously waiting for word of my first assignment (which turned out to be photo interpretation school at Lowry AFB in Denver, Colorado). I never thought about it at the time, but graduates of other schools anxiously await their assignments, too...

I enjoy reading good horror stories, and one of the time-honored themes of those stories is the ghastly curse that is somehow terribly focused on the targeted person. Stories like Edward Lucas White's "Lukundoo," Rudyard Kipling's "The Mark of the Beast," and Stephen King's "Thinner" are all great stories of terrible curses. But sometimes, curses can be avoided...

And finally, one of the sad things about modern life is the decline of the practice of actually sitting down and writing letters to one's friends...of putting pen to paper and paper into envelope to send a long and chatty record of events to those we want to entertain and inform. My offer to send snail-mail letters to the first five who asked for them (Have I Got a Deal for You!) last June was a hit, so I know that people still enjoy receiving letters, if not writing them (I'm still waiting for Mike's reply). I thought this cartoon was, in that regard, a little sad...

Enjoy your Saturday. Write someone a letter. And don't forget to turn your clocks back an hour before you go to bed (if you're in one of those places that observes Daylight Savings Time).

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo