Cartoon Saturday

A small-town church pastor in Florida has called off plans for his "International Burn a Koran Day" after conclusively proving that Christians can be as ignorant and bigoted as radical Muslims; an enormous explosion and fire caused by a ruptured gas line in a California neighborhood has destroyed dozens of homes and killed at least four persons; the CEO of airline Ryanair is proposing to save money by eliminating co-pilots on flights, and that a flight attendant on each flight could be trained to help land a plane if something goes wrong; Afghan president Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into the beheading of an Afghan journalist; and an enormous ice island four times the size of Manhattan that broke off a glacier early last month has split in two after repeatedly smashing into an island in the Nares Strait, west of Greenland.

Don't worry, folks ... Cartoon Saturday is here to make it all better, at least for a little while.

Andrea loves her "Nook" electronic book, just as Agnes loves her Sony e-Reader. Although I much prefer real, ink-on-paper books, I must admit that here are some advantages to electronic books ...

The Air Force Times newspaper last Thursday reported the story of an Air Force colonel fired from his job in Afghanistan for, among other things, saying that “For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information.” I'll be writing more about Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software in an upcoming post, but in the meantime others have already commented on its ubiquity in the workplace...

We're going to Wolf Trap tonight with our friend Nadja to see the movie The Return of the King on a big HD screen with live orchestra and chorus accompaniment. It promises to be a great evening. I'll be fixing dinner for us before we go to the show using a great recipe borrowed from a neighbor ...

Isn't it a pain when you pick up the wrong glasses? ...

Having to go to the government office that handles anything dealing with the purchase of, registration of, or payment of taxes on automobiles - whether it's called the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or something else - is a pain. I sometimes think there's an unwritten law that forces DMV operations to be as painful and bureaucratically complex as possible ...

And finally, getting back to one of my favorite themes - that of the pleasure of sending and receiving handwritten letters - I thought this was a particularly good (if poignant) cartoon ...

Speaking of which, I sent a letter to my granddaughter Marcy this past week in an attempt to help with her penmanship by encouraging her to write back; on the downside, I have yet to start on the letter promised to fellow blogger Kathy, despite the best of intentions. Hang in there, Kathy, it's coming ... I promise.

So, what's on today's agenda? Paying bills, grocery shopping, picking up books on hold at the library, and - this evening - going to the show in the company of not one, but two beautiful ladies ...

Life is good.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo