Award War One

It WOULD come with a lubricant, Mr. Krugman, but you were against fracking.

Donald Trump just released his first annual "Fake News Awards," and pretty much everyone in the mainstream media is going crazy about this affront to journalistic integrity. Of course, when the awards (and the cockamamie stories behind each) are looked at closely, it becomes pretty clear that there isn't much in the way of journalistic integrity to defend anymore.

Frankly, we'd hoped to have a lot of lightweight fun with this story, but it hasn't worked out that way - perhaps because we're in a sullen mood today (for details, see the next story below). But rather than just enjoying the usual Trump carnival and the corresponding outrage, we found ourselves unhappy about the obvious, tacky, showbiz nature of Trump's stunt. But...

What really upset us was the realization that this kind of grandstanding buffoonery is exactly the right thing to be doing at this dismal moment in journalistic history. Face it, both politics and news are now simply subsets of the entertainment industry. And in case you hadn't noticed, the entertainment industry isn't exactly targeted at the Einsteins among us.

And so we get nonsense for news (95% of stories about Trump are negative, which is surprising considering the many great things which have happened in his first year), and in turn we get nonsense for rebuttal in the form of tweets, fake award shows, and unending meme wars. We will, however, give points to Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her presence of mind and willingness to kick asses.

It all adds up to a bit more of a Looney Tune world than we're comfortable with. And frankly, we blame the Left for all of it.

BONUS: BUT WEIGHT, THERE'S MORE!

mmMMmmm.... Donuts.

We recently informed you of our go-for-broke, this-time-we-mean-it diet and exercise program for 2018. And we thought it was time to share a progress report.

Sadly, the picture above (as bad as it is) isn't so much what we look like at the moment...it's more of a goal for us to shoot for that's still a long way off. As is that giant tropical pool, now that we think of it (albeit not in Hawaii - those nuclear attack warnings could make us spill our Mai Tai).

We've made a point of not weighing in often, because we like the burst of motivation and pride we feel when the difference is a more significant milestone. SOooo, after about two weeks of low-carb dieting with no cheating, half our usual alcohol consumption, and visits to the "Active Older Adults" workout class at the YMCA (stop singing that song in your head!), we stepped on the scales yesterday wearing only our orange inner tube (it's filled with helium - every little bit helps).

The results: we'd lost NOTHING and gained two tenths of a pound! And don't give us any of that "muscle weighs more than fat" nonsense, because the muscles we're most actively building at the YMCA are those directly related to gasping for air. And geez - this is supposed to be the period of a diet when weight just flows off (even if mostly water weight), leading to happy calculations like "5 pounds in a week? That's great! I'll be at my goal weight by...let's see...August 2019!"

But are we discouraged with this initial setback?! Well, heck yes - what kind of insensitive question was that?! But are we going to quit? We are not! (the crowd erupts in wild cheers and applause!)

We assume that there's currently just a little miscommunication between our body systems as this new lifestyle is being put in place. For instance, with all the painful punishment we're deliberately inflicting on ourselves while sweatin' with the oldies, our body is probably thinking "we'd better hang on to as much fat as possible! He's clearly gone nuts, and he'll need that stored energy if he gallops into the woods to howl at the moon!"

Our body knows us SO well. Too well, in fact. Which is why we hope that it will soon (and finally!) be seeing less of us.

The Jarlsberg Diaries: Big Mac Attack

Man. The tool user.

We're taking a day off from the usual routine today because we just took delivery on our new 27" iMac with superduper 5k Retina screen, blazing processors, lots of RAM, SSD hybrid hard drive, and a new, up-to-date operating system which assures we'll probably be unable to use any of the goodies above.

See, we've been using our current iMac for 10 years, and bit by bit (no cyberpun intended) various chunks of it have stopped working. Even worse, because we've been using an old (as in very old) operating system, it's gotten to the point that we've been unable to upgrade software for the past several years...and now (the final straw, as it were) the outdated web browsers on the computer just won't talk to a lot of important sites anymore. Like our bank, for instance.

So we've taken a reluctant leap into the future by purchasing a refurbished 2015 iMac, thereby saving ourselves about a thousand bucks over a 2017 model. And that's important if there's any chance whatsoever that we might, in the process of setting up the computer, hurl it to the ground and jump on it.

Currently it's sitting by our elbow on our L-shaped desk, sneering haughtily at the decaying old computer we're using at the moment. Our first job will be to transfer the "Abby Normal" brain of our current computer into the new one, but that can only happen after the new arrival has warmed to room temperature (it was 20 degrees out when it was delivered). And we'll also need an electric storm into which to fly our kites.

We've been very reluctant to take this step because we're at the "old dogs, new tricks" stage of life in which, if we actually were a dog, we'd no longer remember how to lick ourselves. And even though Macs are relatively straightforward compared to Windows machines, each new iteration of operating system takes them a little farther from anything like a baby boomer's idea of reality.

Not to mention that many of our favorite programs won't even work on the new machine, which means more learning curves on more pieces of software we'll need to buy. Sigh...

But on the positive side, this will also be the start of some great new things for us. For instance, we just opened a good bottle of scotch to take into battle.

BONUS: SOB CORY

As noted political scholar Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon!"

The Shinola Hits the Fanhola

In a later statement, the President clarified that he "loves savages. Great, great people."

Donald Trump sparked eye-popping, vein-bulging outrage from liberals (that's actually an opening phrase we're programming into our computer to save keystrokes for the next 3-7 years) by allegedly asking, in a meeting about special immigration protections for certain populations, "why do we want people from shithole countries?"

Because the reference was to Haiti and various African nations, the President was immediately accused of blatant, foam-at-the-mouth, KKK-style racism. An accusation which filled the news cycles and distracted from the real question: why do we want people from shithole countries?

Is our immigration policy intended to make America better (or at least no worse), or simply to give shelter and haven - and taxpayer-funded benefits - to those who currently live someplace worse than the United States? Which pretty much means every man, woman, and child on Earth, making such a goal impossible in the long run and societally suicidal in the immediate run.

We're tired of the argument that it's necessary to bring in the unskilled and uneducated to do the jobs "Americans won't do," and think we should revamp our current entitlement programs to make it clear to the able-bodied who simple prefer not to work that it's no longer an option.

We'll admit that the President might have spoken more tactfully about Haiti, but his question was a good one. Why should we import people from an island that can't do anything right, when we already have an island that can't do anything right...

The Aloha State of panic.

On Saturday, palm trees swayed in tropical breezes, warm surf washed pristine beaches, and tourists in Hawaii wept, screamed, cowered in fear, and stuffed their children into storm drains because of an "oopsy" alert (delivered to phones, radio stations, and wailing sirens) saying the island paradise was about to be vaporized by incoming nuclear missiles.

We single out "tourists" as being terrified rather than actual citizens of Hawaii, because those who have lived there for longer than a week already know the Aloha State's ill-kept secret: local government officials screw up pretty much everything they touch, so the odds of a false alarm were (as Trump might say) yuge.

We have plenty of personal experience with Hawaii from which to draw this conclusion. The state, which is almost psychedelically beautiful, has several factors working against it. The first is that it's essentially a jungle, with rainwater, vines, lizards, and highly aggressive insect colonies attacking every manmade bit of infrastructure on a non-stop basis.

The second is that all government functions are run by aloha-shirted Democrats and can't-be-fired civil servants, all of whom have a uniquely Hawaiian year-around "Spring fever" which keeps them from really committing to work when the weather is nice. As in, "daily."

While overt public terror is nothing to laugh at, except from the mainland, things could have been a lot worse: imagine what was going through the minds of our military personnel who were wondering if they should quickly launch a counterattack before going out in a Slim Pickens-style blaze of glory.

Theoretically, all of this was caused by one person "pushing the wrong button." Arguably the worst mistake made by a Hawaiian government official since Department of Health official Loretta Fuddy stated that she (and she alone) had looked at Obama's birth certificate and sent him a copy.

Shortly after which, she became the only fatality in a plane crash. Oopsy.

BONUS: A MAJOR AWARD!

We just found out that we nailed the #1 and #2 spots in the 2017 cartoon competition over at The Right Reasons.net!  Check it out (at the link) to see all the top finalists.

Just being included with so many talented cartoonists is a real honor, and let us express our thanks to Pookie18 (who handles the competition) and everyone who voted!

BONUS TWO: MARTIN LUTHER KING DAZE

The bad news is that even the NAACP no longer values the important contributions and directions of Martin Luther King Jr.

The good news is that Dr. King's vision has brought us far enough that the NAACP is now hopelessly outdated and should be disbanded.