Lest We Forget

We haven't discussed politics much here lately because, in these troubled times, we just wanted to give you "funny." Happily, upon looking again at the two remaining Democrat candidates for president, it turns out we can do both at the same time...

Joe Biden, looking even more washed-out and disoriented than usual, is now making political broadcasts from his home. The address of which is stitched onto every article of his clothing in case he gets out and wanders away.

Not that Old Bland Joe is out of touch with current events. In a recent appearance on "The View" (via remote video), Biden was asked if he was concerned that Trump said (of coronavirus and quarantines) "we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself."

Biden's stupefying answer: "We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse, no matter what." After which he was hit with a tranquilizer dart and the screen went black.

And of course, Bernie Sanders is still on the cyber-campaign trail, his mood lifted by the fact that with staggering unemployment, closed businesses, and emptied supermarkets, half of his job will already be finished if he's elected.

Plus, he's got a unique perspective on our nation's health crisis...

BONUS: KNIFE KNOWING YOU

Nearer My Dog To Thee

During this trying time, perhaps the best way for all of us to keep our spirits up is to do things for others. In our case, we keep draining green plastic bottles of Clan MacGregor because the empties are our dog's favorite backyard toys.

Penny (the official dog of Hope n' Change) dances with joy when she realizes there's a fresh bottle to enjoy at playtime. She then goes absolutely insane when we drop a marble inside the bottle to give it a pleasant rattle. Seriously, it's like she becomes a kangaroo on meth and her eyes bug out so far she could be mistaken for Adam Schiff.

The official Clan MacGregor Bottle Game has simple rules: we throw the bottle across the yard, Penny gives chase, then tries to inflict maximum chew-damage on the bottle until we can wrestle it away from her locked and foaming jaws. Repeat as necessary until one or more participants are completely exhausted.

For those without dogs, we can't think of any reason the game couldn't be played by substituting a spouse or child (don't even try it with cats) and ignoring what your neighbors may think. Which reminds us: we occasionally underestimate our own strength and hurl a bottle into our neighbor's back yard. We're pretty sure we find this way more amusing than they do.

And speaking of neighbors...

As long as we're on a musical note, by popular request we're presenting another song that wasn't chosen to be in the movie "Muppets From Space."

This was to be the big happy celebration at the end, happening after (Spoiler Alert) Gonzo the Muppet is reunited with other Gonzo-ish Muppets from Outer Space, and Bruce Willis finds out he was dead the whole time. No wait, that's a different spoiler.

In any event, the song begins with some of the aliens singing about their quest to find Gonzo, after which every Muppet in the movie sings about how swell it is to be in dangerously close proximity to friends and family.

As before, the music was written, arranged, and produced by an award-winning composer whose name we're withholding for now, with the lyrics written by Stilton Jarlsberg. BONUS: Stilton also sings the part of every Muppet heard in this song, bravely putting himself in the line of fire for about a dozen copyright violation lawsuits and public derision.

And now, let's party...!

The Jarlsberg Diaries - Songs in Space

Who here wants to hear more about the coronavirus and political discord? Nobody, right?! Which is why I'm taking inspiration from the sainted Monty Pythons and going with "something completely different" today - another installment of "The Jarlsberg Diaries" in which I share some of the oddities of my life and career. And there have been plenty.

In this case, we're going back 20 years or so. At the time, I was involved in a number of showbiz type pursuits, songwriting being one of them. And so it was that my musical partner and I (okay, mostly him) were approached to submit spec songs for the movie "Muppets in Space." It would be a high-profile and presumably very profitable enterprise if they bought any or all of the songs we created.

For two of the demo songs, I sang the parts of all the different Muppets - probably a dozen characters. "It Takes Two to Tangle" was sung by Miss Piggy as she beat the stew out of some guy, and "It's a Party Just To Be With You" was the big blowout song for the finale. "Make it have the feeling and energy of the song 'Celebration'," the producers specified. And they knew what they wanted, because in the end they just licensed 'Celebration.'

All together, we wrote and recorded three songs to submit - none of which sold. Dammit. But in this period of involuntary retrospection, it seemed like a fun time to revisit one of them.

In the movie, a crazed alien-hunter working for the government is trying to catch Gonzo the muppet, believing him to be from Outer Space (spoiler alert: he is)...

Jeffrey Tambor's finest moment

The song we submitted is called "When I Get My Hands on You," and features the villainous alien-hunter rhapsodizing about everything he was going to do when Gonzo was finally in his clutches.

I wrote the lyrics and my grammy-winning partner wrote, arranged, and produced the music. And on this one, we used a real singer (several, actually) which is why it remains my favorite of the tracks to this day. And I hope you'll enjoy it, too!

FROM THE VAULT: HOG HEAVEN

The Democrats are treating the Covid-19 crisis as an answered prayer, cramming everything they've ever wanted into the necessary-to-pass emergency relief bill. Sadly, it's unlikely that some poor bastard fighting for breath in a hospital (or quite likely at home) will benefit much from taxpayer dollars going to boost solar and wind power, mandating new levels of "diversity" in boardrooms, or forcing new emissions standards on the already crippled flight industry.

And as long as they're holding America hostage, the Dems have also called for $300 million to go to the National Endowment for the Arts, another $300 million for (ahem) "migration assistance," and $35 million going to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. An institution where, ironically, they give you dirty looks for coughing during a performance.

All of which put us in mind of this cartoon from 2009. New crisis, same old Democrats...

Tick Tock Tic-Tacs

The cartoon above represents the kind of wild, out-of-the-box ideas that ordinary Americans can come up with during these trying times to help make sure that our investment in Tic-Tacs stock doesn't tank any further.

Moreover, using Tic-Tacs can improve what few social interactions we have left...

On a less comical note, we'd like to call your attention to a valuable resource from a singularly good source of information we've been paying attention to: the Peak Prosperity Home Lockdown Survival Guide.

Note that to read the whole report (which contains many useful links) you need to sign up for an account, but it's easy-peasy and doesn't cost anything. Or if you prefer to get your information in an audio/video way, here's an overall review of the survival guide from Peak Prosperity's excellent Youtube channel:

Okay, enough of that for now. We'll close today by sharing a video which we much enjoyed (granted, we have unusual tastes). What if all of the little white lies that parents tell their children in order to make them behave turned out to be true...?

Bad Rap

Joe Biden says, "makes sense to me."

We don't have a lot of time for today's post, owing to an avalanche of chores which have been stacking up since the Bat Soup hit the fan. For one thing, we just had to fill out our census form and it made us wonder: wouldn't it make more sense to postpone the census until next year and then just count the survivors?

We also have to attend to our retirement portfolio. Not that we can do anything to save it, but it only seems proper for us to toot out "Nearer My God to Thee" on the kazoo as it sinks out of sight.

Also complicating things is the fact that Daughter Jarlsberg moved back home last Friday ("just in the nickel dime," as the saying goes) and so we have her entire house's worth of stuff to somehow sort and incorporate into our modest home. On the plus side, having stuff strewn everywhere really adds to the post-apocalyptic chic which we expect to become popular.

We should be back to more normal posting soon. For now, have a great weekend of social distancing, and remember that our comments section is always a contagion-free zone!

Green and Beer It

Okay, we missed St. Patrick's Day by 24 hours, but we went with the cartoon anyway because we promised the young woman in the cartoon that we could "get her into showbiz" and didn't want to disappoint her.

Having Irish blood ourself, we were disappointed that Covid-19 shut down all of the usual celebrations, but we successfully made do by watching "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" while drinking a Guinness.

All in all, not a bad day in the midst of Apocalypse. And certainly better than a friend of ours had...

Clearly someone hadn't really thought through this allegedly simple self-test, although we assume that it will still work for people who aren't Bernie Sanders supporters. And actually, we wouldn't want to bet on the accuracy of such a test, though it's not a bad thing to try anyway. Unless immediately upon finishing, you gasp in air at the same time someone is sneezing several billion virus particles at your face.

According to articles which we're too lazy to find and link to, it's folks around Lucy's age who don't seem to be getting the message about self-isolating to slow the spread of Covid-19. Many of them are aware that the mortality rate for people their age is very, very low (but not nonexistent). But it doesn't reduce their likelihood of infecting others, including grandparents who may be facing a mortality rate in the 15% range.

Hopefully, Lucy's friends will get the message and start staying home instead of going clubbing. Otherwise, the police may need to use some clubbing to get their attention.

BONUS: THAT'S ONE...SMALL STEP...FOR GROCERIES

The chaos being caused by Covid-19 was, until recently, something that we personally weren't experiencing firsthand. Well, apart from having our retirement portfolio unexpectedly throw us to the ground and giving us a Brokeback Mountain-style colonoscopy.

But yesterday, between growing reports of a possible lockdown or another wave of madness at stores, we decided we needed to get a few more items for our self-isolation time.  Uh-oh.

We'd already heard reports that, in the initial scare, our quiet, local supermarket had lines of shoppers (each with Armageddon-ready baskets of stuff) stretching to the back of the store...and there were fist fights in the aisles that police had to break up. And as an additional bonus, any of these people might be spreading coronavirus everywhere - a very special worry since folks at the Jarlsberg home are in high risk groups.

So we planned our trip to the store down to the last detail: we'd go at 10:30 pm when crowds were likely to be low, we'd have an anti-viral N95 mask and nitrile gloves, we'd have hand sanitizer in the car, and a complete change of clothing waiting just inside the door of our home so we could shed potentially contaminated garments.

Arriving at the store, we were pleased to see that the dark parking lot was sparsely populated, so decided to move ahead with the operation. Before exiting the vehicle, we donned our gloves and our mask - feeling like we were preparing to rob a bank. And - oh yeah! - in order for the mask to function properly, we'd had to shave off our magnificent white Santa beard and return to looking like a turtle with a moustache.

Entering the store, we felt terribly weird and conspicuous wearing all of this stuff. The effect wasn't helped by the fact that we were mouth-breathing and sounding like Darth Vader, and that with every exhalation our glasses fogged up from the inside. Yeah, nothing creepy about THAT.

Happily, the store had very few shoppers - although only one other person was wearing a mask. There were employees in many aisles restocking stripped shelves (not with Purell, darn it) and we drifted past them like an asthmatic ghost.

Some shelves were bare: fresh meats, anything remotely like bread, toilet paper and paper towels, hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes, etc. Various other shelves were either stripped or greatly reduced from their usual capacity. That being said, we were able to find plenty of things worth buying.

Still, the overall emotional impact was a lot more than we expected. It felt like a nightmare made real, and made worse by the knowledge that we wouldn't be waking up from this anytime soon. And while shopping, we were constantly wondering if we should buy more of this or that, just in case it wouldn't be available in the very uncertain future. Or perhaps ever. And all of this with fogging eyesight and sweat trickling inside the mask and gloves. The undercurrent of desperation was all too tangible.

During checkout, which we did at self-check to avoid having others touch our groceries, we finally struck up a conversation with another human being - a nice store employee who didn't recognize our beardless, masked face. She saw dog food and dog treats in the cart and asked about our dogs - and it was wonderful to have someone just talk about something so normal and treating us like we were normal despite our odd getup and profuse sweat.

We chatted for five minutes or so about dogs and how much we love them (and how much they love us back). She showed us a picture of her labrador retriever - a beauty who, at 16 years of age, went to dog heaven just three days before Christmas. The store employee got a little misty sharing her story, and made us promise to give ear rubs to our dogs as soon as we got home.

After nearly two hours in the store, we left - thanking all of the employees along the way for the hard work and the extended hours they were putting in for the good of others. We then loaded everything into our car's trunk, after which we oh-so-carefully removed the mask and gloves in the parking lot and dropped them into a trash can near the shopping cart corral. Entering the car, we gave ourselves a little Purell party before touching anything, then slowly drove home after midnight thinking about how real this strange new world had suddenly become.

At home, we exchanged our potentially contaminated clothes for clean ones, used lysol wipes on our shoes (including, especially, the soles), then scrubbed up like we were preparing for surgery.  Zombie-ish by this time, and emotionally drained, we wanted nothing more than to fall into bed in search of a long and dreamless sleep. So that's what we did.

Right after giving our dogs those promised ear rubs.

Debate Wipe Out

If you're too young to get this, you're probably safe from coronavirus.

Owing to strict journalistic deadlines which can't be missed if Happy Hour is going to get started on time, we're writing this before the sure-to-be-epic debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. And we're going out on a pretty sturdy-feeling limb to predict that both fossilized candidates will be losers after shouting nonsense at each other nonstop, playing to dead silence, and without other candidates on stage to give them time to catch their breath, collect their marbles, or enjoy a moment of tinkle time with their adult diapers.

We'll also go on record predicting that both men will talk about the Covid-19 pandemic, and both will assert that they could have handled the crisis much better than the Trump administration is doing. Biden will claim that the virus could be scared off by a couple of shotgun blasts in the air, while Bernie will point out that under a socialist presidency there would have been no run on toilet paper because the stores would have already had empty shelves.

BREAKING NEWS: "PATIENT ZERO" FOUND

Researchers have discovered who the first Covid-19 carrier was, and how this individual spread the illness worldwide...



PARTY TIME

Remember the Donner Party? The one that gave "surprise" parties a horrific new meaning? Well, we're bringing the Donners back in comic form to explore the strange new world of actually living in close proximity with family members as food supplies dwindle and cabin fever sets in.

Hopefully, unlike our other webcomics, we won't still be doing this one ten years from now!

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This won't be a regular post, but considering the way everything seems to be going to Hell, it's hopefully better than nothing.

We're away from our hermetically sealed office at Stilton's Place, and are currently helping daughter Jarlsberg pack up the last of her things here in Oklahoma where, apparently, it's considered the height of good manners for strangers to cough on you.

Meanwhile, we've caught just enough of the news to know that the contents of our portfolio, if cashed, will fit neatly inside a ragged sock which we can take with us when we start living under a bridge (if you see a sad-looking bum holding a sign specifically asking for a few bucks for Clan MacGregor, please give and give generously).

On the home front, we're about to be enjoying the comforts of self-isolation because, for one reason or another, everyone in the household falls into one high-risk category or another. And not just because this column regularly makes fun of Hillary Clinton.

We can't even make a fresh cartoon because we don't have the software with us. It's like a world gone mad! But just for fun, here's a blast from the past when another President was in charge of plagues and (surprise!) screwing it up...

FROM THE VAULT

The first case of Ebola contracted inside the United States has now been documented in Dallas, after a nurse who bravely treated "patient zero" Thomas Eric Duncan tested positive for the virus. Disconcertingly, she was infected despite wearing full protective gear (trust us, "hazmat-chic" will soon be the new fashion rage).

The Center for Disease Control quickly responded that the nurse must have been responsible for a "protocol breach," because, as every political organization knows, nothing can stand up to protocol, including hemorrhagic fever.

Barack Obama, stealing a few precious moments between fundraising, golfing, and conceding defeat in the Middle East, attempted to quell public fears by saying you can't catch Ebola "by sitting next to someone on a bus."   Which is why the CDC is suggesting a new protocol in which medical professionals will skip the hazmat suits and simply treat patients while seated next to them on a bus.

Still, these palliative measures will accomplish little unless the United States can keep additional Ebola carriers from our shores. To that end, the president has ordered Homeland Security and the TSA to upgrade their screening procedures for people entering our country. Formerly, people were simply asked if they've had contact with Ebola victims. Now, after answering "no," they will also be asked to cross their hearts - a security measure previously only used to identify potential terrorists.

To be absolutely fair, it's not Barack Obama's fault that Ebola has found its way into our country. Although it is his fault that tens of thousands of young illegal aliens have crossed the border and been squirreled off to God knows where while carrying scabies, tuberculosis, and in all likelihood the enterovirus which is (ahem) mysteriously infecting children across our nation.

And importantly, it's also his fault that in a time of medical crisis neither the "healthcare" president nor his representatives in the CDC appear to have a well-coordinated response to Ebola - or any credibility whatsoever.

Unless, of course, there's anyone else on the bus.

I See a Bad Wuhan Rising

Please hold your applause - it gets Purell all over the theater seats.

We are indeed currently in the Clam before the Storm. By which we mean that we're doing our best to get everything ready for the fast-approaching time when we have to slam our shell shut and lay low.

The tricky nature of illnesses like Covid-19 which grow exponentially, is that they seem to be doing very little for quite awhile...after which they absolutely explode to uncontrollable levels. We're maybe two weeks away from that - which is why we've been dashing from chore to chore and store to store today to make ready to hunker down (in many stores, the shelves have already been completely cleared of hunker).

The CDC has now said that people over 60 with underlying health issues (and isn't that ALL of them?) should be avoiding the outside world. And in Italy, a modern Western country which is currently giving us a free look two weeks into our future, anyone over 65 who shows up at a hospital with coronavirus symptoms and an underlying health issue isn't even assessed or admitted. They are turned away to die...including in the hospital waiting rooms and halls.

This isn't because medical providers in Italy are insensitive dicks - it's because their hospitals are already overwhelmed, so they're only admitting patients who they might be able to save.

Here in the Jarlsberg household, we are genuinely not panicking - but we are preparing with something of a fevered glint in our eyes. We've pretty much got all the necessities (except enough Purell - how the hell did we miss that?!) and we're making some financial moves online to guard against the possibility of American dollars becoming wildly devalued if and when the government starts wildly printing money to keep the nation afloat as consumer demand dies, businesses close, and people find themselves without paychecks. (Note: the devaluation of our currency is currently an unlikely but not impossible scenario. Care to field this one in the comments, John the Econ?)

And here in the offices of Stilton's Place, all employees are being required to take appropriate precautions to reduce the risk of contagion. Damn it...

The struggle is real.

LATE BREAKING BONUS:

EARLY WARNING: It's entirely possible that we won't post on Friday. No health problems (yet), thank goodness - just a heap of chores that won't wait (hey, Burmese tiger traps don't dig themselves). We'll do our best to get something up here, but if not, be safe and for gosh sake be prepared if you're not already!

Hour National Nightmare

The cartoon above is no exaggeration. The whole "Spring forward, Fall back" nonsense not only baffles us, but it makes us feel physically ill at a time when we're trying to be alert to early signs of plague.

We've got a pretty bad case of government-induced stupor today, so we won't be trying to pull off our usual tricks with...uh...oh, what are those things?...everybody knows these, uh, things. Oh, yeah! Words! Our brain is too fogged to use words!

Which is why we're cobbling together cartoons like this one:

And sharing some DST-related goodies from the vault like these:

Okay, that more or less looks like a blog post. Now where did we put our caffeine pills...?!

Warren Peace

Elizabeth "Princess Running Gag" Warren has dropped out of the presidential race, owing to a spectacular inability to get actual primary votes - including in her own home state.

As she made her emotional announcement, Warren said "one of the hardest parts of this is all of those pinky promises (I made to) those little girls who are going to have to wait four more years." Um, wait for what? Someone to show them that a strident serial liar who can't do math can grow up to mismanage the greatest nation on Earth? Yeah...that's a real heartbreaker, Liz.

And while Warren is out of the race (Caucasian?) for now, she insists that she is going to continue making meaningful contributions to our country and planet. Mostly by standing next to highways and shedding a single tear when she sees litter.

BONUS: PLAYING THE WHORE MONICA

In an entirely non-stunning interview (part of a documentary about Hillary Clinton to remind everyone that she's "not running for anything, wink-wink"),  former President and lifetime STD poster boy Bill Clinton has come clean (so to speak) about his infamous affair with Monica "Humidor" Lewinsky.

While many of us believed at the time that Clinton was simply a self-centered a**hole who enjoyed using, degrading, and discarding women (consensually or not), it turns out that Bill had a very compelling reason for firing mayonnaise missiles on company time: it helped "manage my anxieties."

According to the interview, Clinton says that the job made him feel "like you're staggering around, you've been in a 15 round prize fight that was extended to 30 rounds," and he looked at the infatuated young intern as "something that will take your mind off it for awhile."

Let us pause to parse what he said there (always a necessity when considering the man who questioned "what the definition of jizz is"): he viewed Lewinsky as something rather than someone. Which is why he could lie to her, bang her like a screen door in a windstorm, then have her declared a stalker and national security threat when she became a problem.

Frankly, Slick Willie's attempt to generate sympathy leaves us with (and we really, really hate to say this) a bad taste in our mouth. But we suppose there is one small upside to his Caligula-like proclivities while in the White House: since Monica's internship, the Oval Office has always been well stocked with plenty of wet wipes and potentially life-saving Purell.

Making Squirting Great Again

It's Later Than You Thing

At the time of this writing, the results of Super Tuesday voting aren't yet available, but we'll go out on a limb and guess that Trump racked up a solid win on the Republican side, and that a huge majority of Democrats voted for an old white guy whose last name starts with a "B."

It's thought that Biden may make a striking resurgence (despite continuing gaffes like the one in the cartoon, in which he proved that some truths aren't "self-evident" after all) owing to the fact that other candidates have dropped out of the race and thrown their support behind Biden. Not because Biden has anything good to offer, but because old school Democrats will do anything to stop Bernie Sanders.

Sanders supporters are, of course, livid about this - with the memory of the DNC in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, using every dirty trick in the book to steal the nomination from Bernie last time. His supporters are particularly upset because a 100-year-old Bernie will be too old to run again in 2024. Granted, Sanders won't actually be 100, but if these nimrods could do simple math they wouldn't be Bernie Sanders supporters, would they?

ALSO IN THE NEWS

Longtime liberal pain-in-the-butt Chris Matthews has abruptly retired from MSNBC, although reports suggest that if he hadn't resigned, he would have been fired.

The (ahem) "opinion journalist" who was famous for getting a "thrill up my leg" and "a slight tingling in my left nut" when listening to Obama speak was allegedly on the outs with MSNBC management for being "insensitive" when doing things like comparing Bernie Sanders' win in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazi invasion of France in World War II. Apparently, only Republicans are allowed to be compared to Nazis on the alleged news outlet.

Matthews also admitted to having been inadvertently and unintentionally insensitive to women over the years, having made "compliments on a woman's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK." Because it turns out that, no matter how complimentary and positive, you can't pair any descriptive adjective with the word "knockers" anymore and get away with it.

NOT SO FOND FAREWELL

A Feather in his Crap

On the eve of Super Tuesday (which, when it's wearing glasses and working at the Daily Planet, everyone assumes is just a mild-mannered regular Tuesday), the shape of the Democratic race for the presidential nomination has changed dramatically.

For starters, billionaire and alleged candidate Tom Steyer has dropped out of the race, stunning voters from coast to coast who had no idea he was ever in the race. Even more of a shock was this announcement on Sunday...

No, we're NOT proud of this cartoon. Thanks for asking!

These dramatic developments resulted largely from Joe Biden's massive (and first in his lifetime) primary win in South Carolina, where he captured the all-important black vote by repeatedly pointing out that, unlike Bernie Sanders, he was not a Jew.

While this seems to give new momentum to Biden's campaign, the victory wasn't really all that important according to 27,000 primetime television ads paid for by Mike Bloomberg. And we certainly shouldn't count Elizabeth Warren out yet because, while she hasn't got a chance in Hell, we feel bad about our nation's sad history of stealing land from her people and giving them smallpox with infected blankets.

So we should all keep our eyes on the Super Tuesday races. Because between the spread of Covid-19 and Wall Street doing a spot-on "Oh, the humanity!" impression of the Hindenburg, we can all use a really good laugh.