Cartoon Saturday

Once upon a week so dreary ...

Walmart has removed guns and ammunition from display in thousands of its stores in the United States, citing concerns of "civil unrest" surrounding the election; on Thursday in Nice, France, a man armed with a knife and apparently motivated by religious fervor attacked two women and a man at a church before being shot by police; in Nebraska on Tuesday, thousands of people were stranded for hours in freezing temperatures and about 30 were hospitalized for exposure after Der Furor's rally when buses scheduled to pick them up did not arrive as planned; a strong earthquake struck Friday in the Aegean Sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, killing at least 14 people and injuring over 500; and in Belgium, escaped cloned mutant crayfish have taken over Antwerp's Schoonselhof cemetery.

This is our last Cartoon Saturday of the Halloween Season, and since today is actually Halloween, what could be more appropriate than a collection of cartoons celebrating vampires? ...

Ah, family outings! ...

Some vampires can be very thoughtful ...

It's not just a problem for "normal" folks ...

Need you ask? ...

Vampires can be good citizens in difficult times ...

Vampire parents worry, too ...

Even with the picture, online dating can be difficult ...

It's a reasonable guess ...

It'll be even worse after Der Furor's Supreme Court drives a stake thorough the heart* of the ACA ...

Now that's good service ...

And so ends our salute to vampires, as well as our five-week Cartoon Saturday celebration of scary creatures ... no, not the GOP, but the ones we conjure up in our imaginations.

Enjoy safe trick-or-treating tonight, don't forget to turn your clocks back an hour before bedtime, and come back tomorrow for one last seasonal scary tune on Musical Sunday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Sorry.

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

And - for the last time in October, 2020 - awaaaaaay we go ...

Well, why should he? ...

That may have been a good year, but I still prefer the 2020 Grey Poupon ...

There are a great many Americans who, sadly, fit into this category as well ...

I'll bet the antlers hurt on the way out ...

It's a common problem around Halloween, which is why most garages employ seasonal exorcists ...

Unfortunate juxtaposition ...

Unfortunate juxtaposition, the sequel ...

One of my old friends has a casket he uses as a bookcase, so I suppose this isn't so far out as you might think ...

That's good to know before you go to the store ...

I wonder how this will rank in the "cause of death" statistics for 2020 ...

And that's it for the final collection of editorial and signage gems for October. I hope you enjoyed them. I also hope you have either already voted, or plan to turn out this coming Tuesday. It's never been more important.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for more thoughts and our final collection of Halloween-themed cartoons for a year that's already frightening enough ... at least I can help you laugh about it for a few minutes. 

Bilbo

Poetry Sunday

Anybody hungry? For a story, I mean ...

The Witch Has Told You a Story

by Ava Leavell Haymon

You are food.

You are here for me

to eat. Fatten up,

and I will like you better.

Your brother will be first,

you must wait your turn.

Feed him yourself, you will

learn to do it. You will take him

eggs with yellow sauce, muffins

torn apart and leaking butter, fried meats

late in the morning, and always sweets

in a sticky parade from the kitchen.

His vigilance, an ice pick of   hunger

pricking his insides, will melt

in the unctuous cream fillings.

He will forget. He will thank you

for it. His little finger stuck every day

through cracks in the bars

will grow sleek and round,

his hollow face swell

like the moon. He will stop dreaming

about fear in the woods without food.

He will lean toward the maw

of   the oven as it opens

every afternoon, sighing

better and better smells.

Have a good day, enjoy the rest of your weekend, and be careful what you eat.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Oh, dear gawd, just make it stop ...

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee brushed aside a Democratic boycott to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate, aiming for confirmation before Election Day; in an unexpected outcome of the coronavirus pandemic, turkey farmers fear they will be stuck with hundreds of thousands of huge turkeys that won't sell in a time when traditional large family Thanksgiving gatherings are unlikely to be held; according to the Catholic News Agency, Pope Francis has for the first time declared his support for civil unions for same-sex couples; Der Furor and Joe Biden faced off in their final debate before the election; and in Kansas, a naked teenage boy covered in ranch dressing crashed a vehicle at a Kansas gas station.

This week, for our next-to-last Cartoon Saturday for the month of Halloween - and given that we've been hunting them all year, we offer a salute to witches ...

That's probably how it would work ...

Oops ...

How one gets to be a really good witch ...

Even witches modernize ...

One of Der Furor's ancestors, no doubt ...

Where does a witch buy construction materials? ...

So that's where that expression came from ...

It's a business question ...

There are all sorts of problems with "reply all" ...

Alfred Hitchcock meets L. Frank Baum ...

And there you have it ... the fourth Halloween season edition of Cartoon Saturday (the first three looked at werewolves, mummies, and Frankenstein). We'll round it out next weekend with a salute to bloodsucking monsters ... vampires, not tax collectors ... but in the meantime, click back in tomorrow for another eerie Poetry Sunday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2020

Every month this year seems to last at least 120 days, and it sometimes seems as if I need to announce these awards daily, rather than every two weeks. But it's better to keep them less frequent so that we are forced to concentrate our scorn on only the very "finest" ass-clownery.

And so it is that we announce, after much head-scratching and agonizing over relative levels of yuck, 

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2020

Attorney General William P. Barr

(Fourth Award*)

The mission of the Department of Justice, which is headed by the Attorney General, is

To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

By this measure, the performance of William Barr as Attorney General has been abysmal.

He has shown himself again and again to be a shameless apologist for and tool of Der Furor, starting with his mendacious twisting of the results of the Mueller Investigation. 

He has parroted Der Furor's castigation of lawlessness attributed to liberal or minority groups (such as the amorphous "Antifa"), while ignoring, if not tacitly encouraging, the threat posed by heavily-armed extreme right-wing militia movements. 

He has taken no significant action to address threats to the safety and security of our elections.

He has ignored systemic legal bias against minorities and taken no actions to address abuses of authority by police.

Attorney General William P. Barr, the man who may be the worst Attorney General in recent history, is our Left-Cheek Ass Clown for October. If you're looking for the Equal Justice Under Law advertised on the Supreme Court Building, don't bother asking Mr Barr to help you find it.

Have a good day. If you haven't voted yet, get out and do it, or plan to visit your local polling place on November 3rd. The future of the nation is at stake.

More thoughts tomorrow, when we enjoy some laughs on Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

* You can review Mr Barr's previous awards here: April 11, 2019 (Right Cheek); February 14, 2020 (Right Cheek); and September 11, 2020 (Right Cheek).

 

Musical Sunday

For our second and last Musical Sunday of October, the month of Halloween, what could be more appropriate than this take on the classic Halloween song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett, The Monster Mash? ...

When you get to my door, tell them Bilbo sent you!

Happy Halloween! More thoughts later.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Boy, do we need the cartoons this week ...

Early voting is underway across the country, and records for early voting are being set from coast to coast; On Tuesday, Der Furor and former Vice President Joe Biden conducted town hall-style public meetings in lieu of the debate originally scheduled; General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Mexico’s former defense secretary, is in custody in the United States, accused of helping smuggle thousands of kilograms of drugs into the United States in exchange for bribes; the United States surpassed 8 million cases of Covid-18 and more than 218,000 deaths; and in Baltimore, noises that sounded like a sexual encounter (referred to in reports as "inappropriate audio") were heard during a Baltimore County school board meeting conducted over Zoom.

For our third Halloween-themed Cartoon Saturday of 2020, here's a collection of cartoons about everyone's favorite self-made man, Frankenstein. Well, actually, Frankenstein was the creator, which means that his creature wasn't really a self-made man, but why split hairs?

I always wondered who originally came up with the idea of crowdsourcing ...

There are problems with being a take-charge guy ...

That would be an undesirable side effect of the operation ...

This is going to take a while ...

Monstersplaining ...

She'll be shocked ...

HMOs have all sorts of insane rules ...

This is the sort of thing I'd encounter playing Twister with my precocious grandchildren ...

Yeah, that would require extra pages ...

Uh, oh ...

Have a good day and a great weekend. Enjoy the cooler days of fall, but don't forget to wash your hands and wear your mask.

More thoughts tomorrow, when Musical Sunday does the Monster Mash.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

Have you voted yet? If not, is November 3rd marked on your calendar in huge blue letters? However you cast your vote, make sure it's cast. Until then, here we go again with a new collection of bloopers, intentional and unintentional ...

Not a bad price, but the BYO tires may be a problem ...

By the time you're buying them, you probably won't notice the math ...

Well, if you don't have gloves or hand sanitizer, and you're a male college student, you do what you've gotta do ...

I'm not sure I'd have gone with this defense ...

You have to be really careful when choosing your HMO, because lower co-pays aren't always a good sign ...

But officer, I had one of those little, bitty red flags on the end ...

She bought it from the late Jeffrey Dahmer ...

No words ...

I'd like five stone of clerics, please ...

Especially if you forgot to pack the wheels ...

Have a good day, and be sure to come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday, when our October spooky cartoon series continues! More thoughts then.

Bilbo