This song was popular in 1965, but it seems even more timely in 2020.
Have a good day, enjoy the rest of your weekend, and just wear the damn mask. More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Musical Sunday
This song was popular in 1965, but it seems even more timely in 2020.
Have a good day, enjoy the rest of your weekend, and just wear the damn mask. More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Cartoon Saturday
As Der Furor and his enablers double down on their attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act - in the middle of a raging, deadly pandemic, no less - it's terrifying to realize that that isn't even the worst of the news ...
In a masterpiece of understatement for the ages, infectious disease chief Dr Anthony Fauci says the nation has a "serious problem" as 16 states reel from a spike in Covid-19 cases; an abandoned oil tanker, moored off the coast of Yemen loaded with more than 1 million barrels of crude oil, is at risk of rupture or exploding, causing massive environmental damage to Red Sea marine life, desalination factories and international shipping routes; in Henry County, Tennessee, three people have been charged after a child was found a kennel in a trailer with several mice and snakes, including a ten-foot boa constrictor; on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence tried to put a positive spin on the surging coronavirus cases, stating that “we did slow the spread. We did flatten the curve. We’re in a much better place;”and in New York City, A bipolar man holding a sword died after being tased by police officers on Sunday.
Laughter is said to be the best medicine, and once Der Furor and the Republicans are done, it's the only medicine you'll be able to afford, so let's get to it with this week's collection of cartoons about aliens ... not the ones Der Furor blames for all our ills, but the ones that shut their windows and lock their doors when they fly past the Earth ...
Be careful who you abduct ...
Well, it's not jet lag, is it? ...
The truth ...
I don't blame them ...
Don't worry, the pandemic will kill them off soon enough ...
Hah! ...
An understandable mistake ...
Space opera ...
They were expecting to be taken to an actual leader ...
A common alien ailment ...
Have a good day and a great weekend. Wear your mask, wash your hands, and practice social distancing. See you tomorrow for a very appropriate song on Musical Sunday.
Bilbo
Friday, June 26, 2020
Great Moments in Editing and Signage
It's been quite a month, hasn't it? Let's celebrate with a final collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage ...
Aha!! ...
I'm sure a good lawyer can get him off ...
Such a deal for cash-strapped hospitals looking to outfit the employees' gym ...
The visual is just too much ...
Well, there goes my plan for a summer vacation ...
A natural mistake ...
When you want to have the spittin' image of a great garden ...
I can't imagine this could be true this year ...
Special prices for those who think wearing masks is a ghastly example of government tyranny ...
I think I know several women like this ...
And there you go ... the last edition of Great Moments in Editing and Signage for the horrendous month of June, 2020. I hope it helped put a smile on your face for at least a few seconds.
Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for the final Cartoon Saturday of the month. You know you need it.
More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Fathers' Day, 2020
If you were looking for Poetry Sunday, don’t despair – I have my traditional (and slightly updated) tribute to fathers today, you'll have to wait a while for your next poetry fix.
Today is Fathers’ Day, the day we honor the man who contributed half of our chromosomes and many of the life lessons that shaped us into who we are.
Fathers don’t get the same degree of respect that mothers do. They work in design, rather than production, after all, and don’t earn the credit that mothers do for going through nine months of pregnancy followed by months of sleepless nights and years of worry. And truth be told, many fathers don’t earn that respect. For all too many men, fatherhood is an unfortunate side effect of good sex, and a child is an impediment to the enjoyment of life. For many men, fathering a lot of children by a lot of women is the imagined sign of a manly stud ... not of lives betrayed by a thoughtless ass who thinks with his man parts* instead of his brain and heart.
Luckily, though, there are many good men out there trying their best to be good fathers. It’s not an easy job, and not everyone is good at it ... but fortunately, enough do.
I have often reflected back on the course of my life, and I've come to the conclusion I’ve been a better grandfather than I was a father. This is probably normal. You’ve seen more of life, and had more experiences – good and bad – to share. If you’re the grandfather, you get to be the gentle, wise, let-‘em-do-what-they-want fellow the grandchildren love to see, rather than the grouchy, tired father who has to put bread on the table, crack the whip, and enforce the discipline. You get all the joy of holding and loving the children with none of the negatives ... when the baby needs changing, for instance, there's none of that messy fuss - you just give her back to her mother. What's not to like?
I think that, from the father's perspective, we have our children too early in life. We're still learning how to be adults, and all of a sudden we're fathers, responsible for teaching our children all the lessons of life that we haven't even learned yet. Our children grow up as much in spite of our mistakes as because of our excellence in parenting.
When you get to be a father, you look at your own father differently. It was Mark Twain who supposedly once said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
It's true.
A good father, as I came in time to understand, is a gift beyond all price. The gold standard for fatherhood is, of course, my own father. He fought the Nazis** in the skies over World War II Europe, ran his own business, raised four children and buried one, and cared for mom through the long years of misery as Alzheimer's gradually destroyed the mind of the dynamic and witty woman he loved. Dad left us five years ago, and I no longer get to hear his jokes and stories and learn the lessons he still had to teach, yet he remains the man to whom I owe whatever shreds of honor, decency, and ... well ... manhood that I can claim.
This was the man who took the war in the air to the Nazis in 1944 ...
After the war, he turned successful businessman, running his own photographic studio and drawing the attention of the ladies ...
At the Mount Vernon Wine Festival in 2002, he was surrounded by admiring ladies (from left to right: our friends Susan and Nadja, his granddaughter Yasmin, and Agnes) ...
Today is Fathers’ Day, the day we honor the man who contributed half of our chromosomes and many of the life lessons that shaped us into who we are.
Fathers don’t get the same degree of respect that mothers do. They work in design, rather than production, after all, and don’t earn the credit that mothers do for going through nine months of pregnancy followed by months of sleepless nights and years of worry. And truth be told, many fathers don’t earn that respect. For all too many men, fatherhood is an unfortunate side effect of good sex, and a child is an impediment to the enjoyment of life. For many men, fathering a lot of children by a lot of women is the imagined sign of a manly stud ... not of lives betrayed by a thoughtless ass who thinks with his man parts* instead of his brain and heart.
Luckily, though, there are many good men out there trying their best to be good fathers. It’s not an easy job, and not everyone is good at it ... but fortunately, enough do.
I have often reflected back on the course of my life, and I've come to the conclusion I’ve been a better grandfather than I was a father. This is probably normal. You’ve seen more of life, and had more experiences – good and bad – to share. If you’re the grandfather, you get to be the gentle, wise, let-‘em-do-what-they-want fellow the grandchildren love to see, rather than the grouchy, tired father who has to put bread on the table, crack the whip, and enforce the discipline. You get all the joy of holding and loving the children with none of the negatives ... when the baby needs changing, for instance, there's none of that messy fuss - you just give her back to her mother. What's not to like?
I think that, from the father's perspective, we have our children too early in life. We're still learning how to be adults, and all of a sudden we're fathers, responsible for teaching our children all the lessons of life that we haven't even learned yet. Our children grow up as much in spite of our mistakes as because of our excellence in parenting.
When you get to be a father, you look at your own father differently. It was Mark Twain who supposedly once said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
It's true.
A good father, as I came in time to understand, is a gift beyond all price. The gold standard for fatherhood is, of course, my own father. He fought the Nazis** in the skies over World War II Europe, ran his own business, raised four children and buried one, and cared for mom through the long years of misery as Alzheimer's gradually destroyed the mind of the dynamic and witty woman he loved. Dad left us five years ago, and I no longer get to hear his jokes and stories and learn the lessons he still had to teach, yet he remains the man to whom I owe whatever shreds of honor, decency, and ... well ... manhood that I can claim.
This was the man who took the war in the air to the Nazis in 1944 ...
At the Mount Vernon Wine Festival in 2002, he was surrounded by admiring ladies (from left to right: our friends Susan and Nadja, his granddaughter Yasmin, and Agnes) ...
With my brother Mark and I, on the occasion of Mark's retirement from the Navy (our brother Paul served in the Army, but wasn't able to be there) ...
If you’d like to know more about the life of this wonderful man, you can read my remembrance here.
It's politically correct (bordering on mandatory) nowadays to say that a child can grow up just fine in a household with same-sex parents, but you'll never be able to convince me that it's the same as being raised by a father and a mother who love each other, treat each other with dignity and respect, set a good example, teach their gender-specific life lessons, and subordinate their own dreams and desires to the momentous task of raising a brand new human being.
Have a good day. Honor your father. And if you're a father, be a good one ... preferably a better one than I was. Your children ... and indeed, the future ... are depending on you.
More thoughts coming.
Bilbo
* As the late Missandei would have said. If you're into "Game of Thrones," you'll get it.
Bilbo
* As the late Missandei would have said. If you're into "Game of Thrones," you'll get it.
** The real ones, the ones that murdered millions of innocent people and destroyed most of Europe, not the imaginary ones to which ignorant people in this country compare their political opponents.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Cartoon Saturday
Sometimes you have to wonder whether a week will ever end.
The Supreme Court rejected Der Furor's attempt to dismantle DACA, the program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, ruling that the administration had not followed procedures required by law; the Justice Department asked a judge to order John Bolton, Der Furor’s former national security adviser, to halt publication of his bombshell memoir, claiming it contained classified information*; continuing the nationwide trend of removing statues and monuments to Civil War era Confederate figures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the portraits of three former Speakers who served in the Confederate government to be removed from the Capitol; at least 20 Indian and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed in a bloody clash along the disputed border in the Galwan Valley; and in Russia, an ultraconservative priest who denies that the coronavirus exists has taken over a women's monastery by force and said that church authorities "will have to storm the monastery" if they want him to leave.
From the Department of You May As Well Laugh Because You Can't Cry, this week we offer another collection of timely cartoons about surviving 2020 ...
The latest contest show featuring your favorite socially-distancing celebrities ...
When even the goldfish are socially distancing, you know things are serious ...
Only six more weeks? We can only hope ...
Will we be looking at another baby boom as home remains the only place we can't social-distance? ...
Rat has it exactly right ...
Ain't it the truth? ...
You can't be too careful as you keep your business going ...
The Four Horsemen need to look out for their emergency supplies, too ...
I'd probably wish for the same things ...
It does seem to change with dismaying frequency, doesn't it? ...
And that's it for this week's edition of Cartoon Saturday ... I hope it helped you cope with the unrelenting bad news. Like I said, you may as well laugh, because crying doesn't help.
Have a good day and a great weekend. See you back here tomorrow for Poetry Sunday - more thoughts then.
Bilbo
* According to Der Furor, any conversation with him is "highly classified." News flash: it's not.
Friday, June 19, 2020
The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for June, 2020
That we're awash in ass clowns is not surprising. What surprises me is that it is still possible - on occasion - quickly to identify the most "worthy" ass clown for a given period. So it is today.
With the usual flatulent blare of trumpets, we announce that the designation of
The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for June, 2020
is bestowed upon
John Bolton
Hard-line conservative national security hawk, former US Representative to the United Nations, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton is currently at the center of a legal knife fight with the Trump administration over the publication of his book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he relates unflattering (okay, damning), but not unexpected information about his time as part of Der Furor's administration.
The fact that a former government official would publish a book about his (or her) time in the limelight, or that that book would contain vignettes not flattering to the administration, is not unusual, and is in fact a part of life in the DC anthill. Bolton, however, deserves condemnation for his willingness to document the misdeeds of Der Furor's administration in a book from which he can personally profit after refusing to testify during the House impeachment probe of Der Furor unless subpoenaed, and then only if a court agreed that the House had a right to subpoena a presidential advisor. He did offer to testify in the Senate impeachment trial, but this was an empty gesture because he knew Senate Republicans would never agree to call witnesses who might be hostile to Der Furor.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, the Left Cheek Ass Clown for June, 2020, is John Bolton - a prime example of the shameless greed, ideological rigidity, and boundlessly self-serving attitude of those who serve in Der Furor's misbegotten government.
Have a good day. Expect more from your government, but don't be surprised when you don't get it from this administration.
More thoughts tomorrow, when Cartoon Saturday returns. Wash your hands, be sure you are registered to vote in November, and vote.
Bilbo
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Musical Sunday
Der Furor is all about his base. Postmodern Jukebox is all about that bass. I know which one I prefer.
Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming,
Bilbo
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Cartoon Saturday
As weeks go, they don't get much weekier than the last one, eh?
In San Antonio, Texas, a man denied entry to a bar because he was already drunk went to his car, returned with a rifle, and shot eight people; as cases of Covid-19 spike in areas which have relaxed pandemic-related restrictions, some cities and states are rethinking their reopening plans, and considering reimposing some restrictions; in response to fierce criticism, Der Furor has postponed his first campaign rally in months by one day so as not to conflict with the Juneteenth observance of the end of slavery in the United States; for the first time in its history, ABC's popular reality series "The Bachelor" will feature a black lead - Matt James, a 28-year-old real estate broker; and in Taiwan, Taipei City Councilor Chiu Wei-chieh pledged that he would snap one chopstick in two with his buttocks for every 10,000 votes exceeding 400,000 in the recall vote against then-Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu, leading a gastroenterologist to warn people that attempting to snap chopsticks in two with their buttocks can result in injuries to the buttocks or the anus and cause cellulitis*.
This week, let's find Waldo ...
After this long, it could be where he is ...
Now, why didn't anyone else think of that? ...
It must have been tough to pick a winner ...
Evasive technique ...
I'm not sure therapy will help ...
That's one way to find him ...
That was some walk ...
She's going to need more notepads, I think ...
Waldo's not here, man! ...
Busted! ...
That's it for today! If you see Waldo, send him home.
Have a good day and a great weekend. Wash your hands, continue to practice social distancing, and come back tomorrow for Musical Sunday with Postmodern Jukebox. More thoughts then.
Bilbo
* He suggested they simply drink bleach or ingest Tide Pods instead.
Friday, June 12, 2020
Great Moments in Editing and Signage
Isn't it nice that you don't have to rely just on the government for things to groan at? ...
The car of choice for assholes? ...
I'm sure I would lose weight with this diet ...
Specials offered daily for Senators ...
ISIS littering? ...
Not everyone is particularly choosy ...
Small dog ...
Hmmm ...
Must see to appreciate! ...
That's quite an approach to enforcing discipline ...
Well, you've got to give them credit for persistence ...
And that's it for this edition ... hope it gave you a chuckle in this time of trial. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday - more thoughts then.
Bilbo