Cartoon Saturday

Just to make sure that I don't get any psychopathically pious people angry at me, let me just lead off with this ...

And now the news ...

A blogger in Saudi Arabia, sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes (50 at a time over 20 sessions) for the crime of "insulting Islam," had his second set of 50 lashes delayed because he hadn't healed enough from the first 50; Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan incurred the wrath of the National Rifle Association by vetoing a state law that would have allowed persons with restraining orders against them to purchase weapons as long as such a purchase was not specifically forbidden in the order; the FBI arrested a 20 year old Cincinnati man it claimed was preparing to attack the US Capitol building with a combination of homemade pipe bombs and gunfire; Darrell Winfield, a rugged Wyoming cowboy who starred as the Marlboro Man in cigarette advertisements, died Monday at age 85 ... although no cause of death was announced, at least four other "Marlboro Man" models have died over the years of smoking-related illnesses; and Duke University reversed an earlier decision to allow a Muslim call to prayer to sound from a campus chapel bell tower because the move "was not having the intended effect" of unifying the student body.

In a world full of political buffoonery, religious intolerance, and general ass clownery, it's a good thing we have cartoons to keep us sane. Or as sane as any of us is likely to get. This week's set of theme cartoons celebrates the tortured relationship between men and women ... a relationship which often does not make one think of sane ...

I think most of us men have had a date like this ...

If there's one question every man dreads having to answer, it's this one ...

Sometimes, it's just the only answer that works ...

Men and women just take fundamentally different approaches to things ...

No matter what you do, there can still be communication problems ...

Some women have problems that are more fundamental than others ...

There's the birds-and-the-bees lecture, and there are the talks fathers have with their sons about other important subjects ...

Most men dread having to go shopping with their wives, because we have to sit in those uncomfortable chairs and wait for her to try on clothes, with nothing to read but tattered six-year-old copies of Vogue. Here's how most of us would really like to be able to wait ...

Turning briefly to other topics, I thought this one was pretty interesting, given that the new Jurassic Park film comes out later this year ...

And finally,  things nowadays just aren't the same as they used to be, are they? ...

And that's your cartoon fix for this third Saturday in January, the start (for some of us) of a three-day holiday weekend. Agnes and I will be headed out shortly to watch our granddaughters' ice skating lesson*, and much of the rest of the weekend will be occupied with the ongoing excavation and renewal work in my study. It's amazing how much stuff one can accumulate in the course of a military career, followed by almost 20 years of living in one place.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

* A skill that they most assuredly did not get from me.