Better Late Than Never ... It's Cartoon Saturday!

If you checked this space at your usual time yesterday and were distressed to not find your expected dose of Cartoon Saturday, I am sorry ... but you were a victim, as we were, of the dreaded derecho. What the #%$@! is a derecho, you ask? Well, I'd never heard of it, either, but it is evidently the formal name for the very powerful, fast-moving thunderstorm with near hurricane-force winds that ripped through Northern Virginia on Friday night, leaving widespread destruction in its wake and hundreds of thousands of people without power. We lost our power Friday night about 10:00 as the storm roared through, and it was finally restored last night. Aside from lost sleep we suffered no real damage or injury, and because we spent the day yesterday at Baltimore-Washington International Airport with our son and his family who were leaving for their new home in Germany, we had A/C. We also met up with fellow blogger Kathy and her husband for dinner on the way home, giving the work crews more time to get the lights back on at home ... which, happily, they did. Several hundred thousand people are still without power across the region, and some secondary roads are still impassable because of downed trees and power lines, but at least our little part of the world is back to normal.

And if Mike can celebrate Friday the 13^th as a moveable date, then we can do Cartoon Saturday on Sunday, right?  Let's get to it ...

Wildfires in Colorado have scorched more than 27 square miles and destroyed hundreds of homes in and near Colorado Springs ... and now to make things worse, looters are burglarizing evacuated homes; Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing (who cares, other than Siri?); the UN has agreed on a plan for ending the violence in Syria ... evidently not realizing that Syrian dictator Bashaar al Asad has a vote, too; Spain and Italy square off against each other today in the 2012 World Cup Soccer finals in Kiev; and the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited ... and unexpected ... decision when it upheld President Obama's signature health care reform legislation.

It's been a heck of a week, and it's time to get to the cartoons ...

Speaking of health care reform, isn't it wonderful when you actually find something your insurance covers (assuming you're lucky enough to have good insurance)? ...

Technology marches on ... although, as we learned when the derecho came through and shut off the power, it marches pretty slowly if you don't have electricity ...

This is about how it felt Friday night and Saturday ... whether you're a luddite or not ...

Keeping with the technology theme, I can relate to this one, as I've been spending odd moments over the last few years trying to digitize the hundreds of phonograph records that are lined up on shelves around the house ...

I liked this cartoon not just because it was silly, but because it works on a multilingual pun level as well - klein being the German word meaning small ...

The yellow blocks on the chart are a nice touch ...

Bigfoot - often better known by the Indian name sasquatch - made an appearance in two cartoons this week ...

And ...

The low-life thieving ass clowns who are burglarizing evacuated homes in Colorado deserve complete contempt and lengthy jail sentences ... and it's a shame that throughout history we have had to go to such lengths as this to protect things from those who would steal them ...

And finally, the "Occupy (Insert Villain Here)" movement seems to have been pretty quiet lately ... but it hasn't quite gone away ...

So that's it for this week's slightly delayed edition of Cartoon Saturday. Hope you are able to stay cool and dry during the coming week (except for you, Amanda, enjoying winter in the Land Down Under), which promises to start off with more triple-digit temperatures before becoming downright balmy in the low 90's by midweek ... just in time for the Fourth of July festivities. If you are celebrating The Fourth pyrotechnically, please be very careful - we have all the fires we need, not to mention that fact that every year we have large numbers of clueless ass clowns who injure or kill themselves playing with fireworks. Don't be one of them.

Have a good day, a cool weekend, and a safe and happy Fourth of July. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo