Cartoon Saturday

Christmas is over, and now it's time to head back to the malls to exchange all those unwanted/wrong-sized/inoperative/duplicative gifts. It's also time for the last Cartoon Saturday of 2014 ...

An 11-year-old Israeli girl received severe burns after the car in which she was riding in the West Bank was hit by a Molotov cocktail; a Jordanian pilot was taken hostage by ISIS fighters after his warplane crashed in Syria; gaming networks of Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox Live were crippled by hackers on Christmas Day; two men were arrested in Hong Kong after police said they stole some of nearly 15.23 million Hong Kong dollars that spilled from a money transport van onto a street on Christmas Eve; and in Russia, president Vladimir Putin announced the cancellation of holiday vacations for government ministers as a result of the deteriorating condition of the economy.

After all this, 2015 just has to be better. Doesn't it?

For our final Cartoon Saturday of 2014, in honor of the complete lack of effective ... not to mention civil ... communication between our major political parties, our selection of theme cartoons deals with language ...

I wonder about this sometimes when I read e-mails that I've received ...

Sadly, nowadays not many people need the training this place provides ..

All those linguistic history courses I took while in college could have been made a great deal simpler ...

Why lawyers need to be very careful with jury selection (this one's for you, Kathy and Melissa) ...

It probably took less than a day for prehistoric politicians to master this linguistic skill ...

We all know that men and women don't always speak the same language ...

 Moving on to other cartoon topics, I think I'm going to try this approach to financial well-being in 2015 ...

I really think that this is how weather forecasters in NoVa work ... 

A clever sight gag that riffs on veterinary tools ...

And finally, a cartoon that's really for the birds ...

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Things at Chez Bilbo were relatively quiet, as we had no visitors or guests for the holiday ... with the exception of our daughter and her dog Clara, a pit bull who is very cuddly and very, very exuberant. Clara spent Christmas Eve night with us and surprised the hell out of me when she came rocketing into our bedroom in the middle of the night and took a flying leap onto our bed, landing right on my crotch before running in circles around the bed in search of someone to play with. I can tell you now from personal experience that a pit bull - which is simply a single huge muscle disguised as a dog - can cause major distress when it hits you at speed in a sensitive location.

Thank goodness I'm still a baritone ... I was afraid I'd end up a soprano.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your long holiday weekend, if you are fortunate enough to have one. I'll see you back here tomorrow for Poetry Sunday.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

P.S. - Don't forget to cast your votes for the Ass Clown of the Year - voting closes at midnight on New Year's Eve, and the results will be announced on January 1st! We'll recap the current standings tomorrow after Poetry Sunday.

B.