Labor Day 2019

Today we observe Labor Day, a celebration of the unions which gave new freedoms, wealth, and dignity to peons who previously suffered under the cruel oppression of capitalist bastards. Nowhere is this more the case than in the editorial cartooning industry, which has come so far in the past century.

Once considered a "job that Americans won't do," 100 years ago editorial cartoons were farmed out to Irish immigrants and Chinese coolies who were functionally little more than slaves, working at crude drawing tables in return for a weekly ration of potato peels or fish heads.

Later, when the Irish turned to police work and the Chinese turned to ruining SAT scores for everyone else, the greedy editorial cartoon barons put women and children (as young as four years old) into forced servitude, penning cartoons in dingy, airless factories. Their work shifts were 24 hours long, every day except Sunday - when they got 15 minutes off to pee and whimper.

Some died of ink poisoning, others died violently in the process of collecting the ink by milking octopuses, while many simply lost the will to live after being forced to look at grim news items every day.

But then the unions entered the scene and changed everything. The sweatshops were closed, women went back to prostitution, and children were again free to be beggars and pickpockets. But actual editorial cartoonists, now holding the reins of collective bargaining, became the masters of their own fate.

Today, editorial cartoonists are among the most highly paid and respected professionals in our nation, loved by all, desired by beautiful women, and universally sought after for their wit, intelligence, and dashing good looks.

Not to mention their vivid imaginations...

FROM THE VAULT

AND IN ALL SERIOUSNESS...

We just wanted to do a light blog entry for today, but we would be remiss if we didn't mention a couple of big stories.

At the time of this writing, hurricane Dorian is bearing down on the Bahamas and Florida and is up to Cat 5 strength. The potential for massive damage and loss of life is huge and unstoppable. Our thoughts are with all of those in harm's way, and we hope that Dorian will change its course and spare as many people as possible.

The other story involves two mass shootings on Saturday, one in Texas and one in Alabama. As of Sunday morning, we know very little about the Texas incident other than that an idiot started shooting at officers who were attempting to make a traffic stop, and this kicked off a long chase in which the suspect fired at people randomly. Seven people were killed (including the shooter, which is no loss at all) and another nineteen have been hospitalized with injuries. Meanwhile in Alabama, a 17 year old opened fire on people after a high school football game (perhaps targeting - poorly - someone with whom he had a grievance), wounding nine people. There are no fatalities so far.

Knowing so few details in either case, we have nothing to say just now other than that we grieve for all those affected by this madness, and we again salute the selfless courage of the law enforcement officers who brought an end to the carnage.

Comey-tose

James Comey has been found guilty of violating FBI policy, violating his terms of employment, misuse of confidential official records, and violating pretty much every standard of professional ethics known to man.

So of course, the lanky sumbitch is apparently not going to be charged with anything because, as Jeffrey Epstein so recently reminded us, it pays to be on Hillary's good side. Or, considering what Comey spent much of his career covering, her backside.

This lack of justice, and our desire to start Happy Hour a little early, is why you're getting this Earwigs cartoon today...

DISCUSSION TOPIC: GOOD MOVIES?

We recently discussed our dissatisfaction with movie theaters, but now we want to address a problem with watching movies at home: too many of them stink.

Mrs. Jarlsberg's favorite movie is "Die Hard" (it's also her favorite Christmas movie), but there just aren't many slam-bang, good guys versus bad guys, high stakes actioners for us to watch. Or are there?

That's where you come in: in the comments section, give us some suggestions of "Die Hard" type movies that we've been missing (or might just want to see again). We've enjoyed things like "Cliffhanger" with Sylvester Stallone, "Breakdown" with Kurt Russell (excellent film!), and "Air Force One" with Harrison Ford.

The movies don't have to be particularly current nor high budget, but they do need to be emotionally engaging and eventually show good triumphing over evil.

In other words, NOT a movie about James Comey.

Bomb-y Weather

It is being reported that President Trump has, on more than one occasion, told his staffers to look into the possibility of dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to break them apart before reaching American shores. Trump, on the other hand, tweets: "This is so ridiculous, never happened. Fake news!"

Granted, the story is pretty suspicious, and bolstered only by statements like "there's reportedly a White House memo that proves it." On the other hand, can we imagine that Trump might have suggested bombing the living hell out of a weather phenomenon? Absolutely! And even though it would be a terrible, terrible idea, the 8-year-old that lives in our brain says: "yeah, but it would be so cool!"

Frankly, we don't think Trump ever really planned to bomb hurricanes. Rather, he was simply taking a tough position in order to bring hurricanes to the bargaining table.

BONUS: MEIN FUROR

We got an interesting email from a well-intended reader recently, who asked: "Just out of curiosity, who IS this guy that appears in your blog's background?"

Wait, what?! We'd never noticed that before, but sure enough if you open your browser window really wide and squint at the margin, there he is...

And it looks like our special mystery guest is...Hitler! Holy crap!

Okay, it isn't really Hitler. It's just a little stain spot on a grunge design which Blogger/Google offers free to users. But still...that's not exactly a good look for a conservative blog at a time when we're all being called Nazis. And what if Google deliberately inserted the subtle image in their most patriotic template knowing that conservatives would use it, and they could later be accused of spreading subliminal fascism and get a lifetime ban from the Internet?

Not willing to take the risk (and to distract from our attack of paranoia), we opened the HTML of the website to change the background and give Little Adolf the boot (or jackboot). This was, technically speaking, a huge mistake. Because we don't actually know doodly-squat about HTML and had soon managed to completely screw up the whole look of "Stilton's Place."

Every link we've included for the past few years disappeared. Text was suddenly an almost-invisible grey. Post Titles were bright blue. And the background color for posts was "blinding white." Not to mention that every alternative graphic background we tried (to replace the offending one) made us want to gouge our eyes out.

Happily, after about two hours of work (and by "work" we mean hundreds of random mouse clicks), we managed to put the site back together again. And we made an important journalistic decision: rather than try to remove a meaningless smudge that might offend someone or might be construed as dog whistle Nazism, we are leaving it on the page while formally and officially stating IT ISN'T FREAKING HITLER. Although the little spot next to it does look a little like Eva Braun.

By the way, that spot is actually a pretty interesting example of pareidolia, the fascinating tendency of the mind to take a vague stimulus and try to make it into something recognizable (and frequently a face). It's why we can take the completely random and meaningless and imagine we see spooky faces in wallpaper, animals in clouds, or - in the case of Democrats - presidential potential in any of their candidates.

UPDATE: BETWEEN A REICH AND A HARD PLACE

Hooray! Thanks to the help of an anonymous reader (hey, stand up and take a bow!) we were able to change the background image enough to send Mr. H back to Argentina! Now if we could just do something to take all of those filthy, disturbing images out of the Rorshach inkblots...