Cartoon Saturday

As if Halloween season needed more stuff to make it scary ...

Much of the southeastern United States continues recovery efforts after the enormous destruction wreaked by Hurricane Helene; Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz squared off in what will likely be the only vice-presidential, and probably the final, "debate" of the election season; former First Lady Melania Trump has joined other Republican former first ladies in support of abortion rights, putting her at odds with Der Furor's position in a possible attempt to divert attention from unpopular GOP positions on the divisive issue; Special Counsel Jack Smith filed his updated motion to clarify Der Furor's liability for prosecution following the Supreme Court's decision establishing an expansive view of presidential immunity for crimes committed in office; and in (where else?) Florida, a man is in custody after shooting and killing a friend who was helping him guard guard a home from ... someone else. 

We begin our annual celebration of Halloween October with our first monster-themed Cartoon Saturday, this week featuring that man of many parts, Frankenstein*. 

Like I said in the footnote ...

I think they need to test for more than sex ...

He's a natural for piece work ...

A stitch in time ...

He could have an advantage with modern EVs ...

He could have an advantage in some games, too ...

He has a point ...

Yes, that does sound better than "sewn together from corpses" ...

I think this lawyer is gonna be rich ...

It must be nice not to have to worry about finding a charging station ...

And Frankenstein's monster lurches off, stage left, to close our first Cartoon Saturday of the Halloween season. I hope you enjoyed the collection.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, when Musical Sunday presents one of the greatest Halloween song mashups ever. See you then. 

Bilbo

* Yes, I know that Frankenstein was actually the creator and not the monster, but just work with me on this, okay?

The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2024

I've been considering this award for a while, but wasn't sure when to award it. As we draw closer to the election and the hysteria builds, it seems like now is the right time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, I hereby present the tinfoil and toilet paper crown designating

The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2024

to

The "Election Integrity" Zealots

The United States has been electing presidents since George Washington took the office in 1789. Since that time, we have elected a total of 46 presidents (45, actually, since one of them, Grover Cleveland, was elected to two nonconsecutive terms). Between 1789 and 2016, the elections were generally carried out and the new presidents took their oaths of office with minimum fuss ... except for the election of 1872 (documented by CNN anchor Dana Bash in her new book America's Deadliest Election), the 2000 election, which the Supreme Court gave to George W. Bush*, and the 2020 election, which was contested by a violent mob egged on by the loser. 

Now, urged on by the rhetoric of an angry, petty, vindictive, thin-skinned wannabe tyrant who refuses to admit error or loss, a whole cottage industry has arisen in this country, dedicated to sowing doubt about the accuracy and fairness of elections their candidate loses. Election deniers, almost exclusively Republicans, insist that their candidates can only lose when their opponents cheat, and insist on new, intrusive measures to ensure "election integrity."

The "election integrity" zealots absolutely believe - in the complete absence of evidence - that Republican candidates only lose because vast numbers of illegal voters swamp the polls with their ballots. Although few if any of these zealots have ever trained or worked as election officials, they nevertheless work tirelessly to solve this nonexistent problem by attempting to make it more difficult for everyone to vote, by means of measures like:

- Purging voter rolls of people who have not voted in recent elections, even if they are otherwise properly registered;

- Eliminating or severely restricting availability of mail-in or absentee ballots; 

- Refusing to accept mail-in or absentee ballots postmarked on or before, but received after election day - at the present time, the number of days mail-in ballots can be accepted for counting after election day varies by state, from a low of 3 days in Kansas to a high of 14 in Illinois. 

- Removing most secure ballot drop boxes, making it difficult to find one in a safe and convenient location; 

- Requiring documentary proof of citizenship* to register to vote (under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, people may vote in federal elections by attesting to U.S. citizenship under penalty for perjury, without providing documentary proof); and,

- Making it illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (ignoring the fact that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections).

The fact that there has been no evidence of illegal voting in numbers that would come remotely close to affecting the outcome of any federal election does not slow those anxious to impose harsh solutions in search of imagined problems. At best, the "Election Integrity" Zealots simply enrich lawyers by gumming up the system with useless litigation; at worst, they sow mistrust among citizens in the integrity of their elections and the people who administer them.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, we present the Right-Cheek Ass Clown Award this month to the "Election Integrity" Zealots ... people who - without any knowledge of what they're talking about - are working relentlessly to undermine your confidence in the honesty, accuracy, and security of your elections.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for the first Cartoon Saturday of our annual Halloween Month celebration, celebrating everyone's favorite man of many parts - Frankenstein. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Supreme Court decision in Bush v Gore, 2000.

** What constitutes proof of citizenship? In general, an official copy of your birth certificate, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (State Department form FS-240), or a passport ... but how many of you can readily lay hands on an official copy of your birth certificate or your FS-240? And how many everyday Americans have a passport?

Learning a New Language at 73

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may recall that my undergraduate major in college was Linguistics, with a specialization in foreign languages, which required me to minor in one language and study another to the "intermediate" level. My minor language was German, in which I'm conversationally fluent; my "intermediate" language was Russian, in which I can, sadly, no longer claim anything like fluency. Nevertheless, I remain fascinated by the subject of languages and enjoy studying them, if not always learning to speak them fluently.

Back in July, Agnes and I went on a cruise vacation from Boston up the New England coast to Québec, and in preparation for our planned stay in that francophone city, we decided to learn some French* ...

I signed us up for an online French course with Babbel, which we gamely struggled through for a few weeks before deciding we were not learning very much other than such useful expressions as Il y a vache dans le jardin (there's a cow in the garden), je veux travailler dans une usine de chocolat (I want to work in a chocolate factory), and votre poulet est sur mon pied (your chicken is on my foot)**. On the advice of our daughter Yasmin, we decided to switch over to Duolingo.

We found Duolingo to be superior to Babbel for the way we learn, although Agnes had a bit of a head start on me, having studied French many years ago. We thus arrived in Canada armed with a few weeks of survival French ... only to learn that pretty much everybody in the touristy areas spoke better English than we did. Agnes got several positive comments on her accent, and I thought my accent wasn't bad either, although I was reminded of my long-suffering college Russian teacher's comment that I spoke a perfect accent without a trace of Russian.

Once back from our trip to Quebec, we decided that since we'd paid good money for the Duolingo program, we should keep up with it. Agnes has continued with French, although I decided to switch to Spanish, which seems to be more useful in present-day America***.

I think I'm making reasonable strides in basic Spanish, although there are a few things that are giving me fits:

- The grammatical gender of nouns^† is not always the same in Spanish as it is in German, which can be confusing. On the plus side, Spanish only has two grammatical genders, while German has three.

- Spanish is spoken at a rate of 570,000,000 words per minute, making it a bit difficult for a beginner to follow. Of course, German is spoken rapidly, too, but I've had a lot more years to learn to follow it.

- As in pretty much all languages, the verb to be is irregular. But Spanish gives it a twist by making you learn two different verbs which both mean to be: ser and estar. The basic rule of which one to use is this: your first guess is always wrong^††.

So ...

Yo hablo alemán, y necesito estudiar mucho, porque español es muy difícil.

If that's wrong, I'll just check with my granddaughter Leya, who is patiently trying to help me out. After all, it's commonly known that it's a lot harder to learn a language when you're 73 than when you're 17.

Schön Tag noch! Weitere Meinungen folgen.

Bilbo

* I remembered the hysterically funny essay "French for Americans" by Robert Benchley, in which I learned (among other things) that French has five vowels - a, e, i, o, and u, pronounced ong, ong, ong, ong, and ong. You can read a summary of the whole essay in this Futility Closet post.

** In fairness to Babbel, the last one was helpfully offered by our friend Kathy.

*** Much to the horror of most conservative voters.

† I have a degree in linguistics and I still have no idea why nouns need a grammatical gender ... in German, for example, you eat your meals with a knife (das Messer, neuter), fork (die Gabel, feminine), and spoon (der Löffel, masculine). Whyzat?

†† Making ser and estar the linguistic equivalent of USB connectors.