Moan-ivational Posters

There comes a time in life when we feel the importance of giving back to younger generations and sharing the hard-won wisdom we've accrued over decades of experience.

And for us, that time came yesterday when we had an hour to kill and nothing to entertain ourselves with other than an iPad and an app designed to make motivational memes.

The app comes complete with a number of iconic, tasteful images which can easily be paired with genuinely inspirational quotes.

Or not - which is the direction we took...

Feel free to print these and hang them on your walls for inspiration. Better still, print them and hang them on the walls of those who deserve to be confused and depressed!

Ross To Judgement

In what we're hoping will soon become a trend, ABC News has suspended their reporter Brian Ross not for boob grabbing, fanny patting, weeny waggling, or misuse of an under-the-desk "rape button," but rather for committing actual journalistic malfeasance.

Specifically, Ross broke the story (perhaps not realizing just how broken it was) that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that candidate Donald Trump had told him to make contact with the Russians during the election - no doubt for purposes of heinous collusion in the first degree.

Wow! That's a pretty damning story - and the stock market reacted with a plunge of over 300 points as evil millionaires and billionaires rushed to the exits, aware that the criminal Trump administration was finished.

Fortunately for us, and quite unfortunately for ABC, the story was 100% untrue - although we can't say yet if this can be attributed to straight up lying or just ham-handed ineptitude.

Actually, Flynn was prepared to testify that President-Elect Trump (after the election) predictably and appropriately asked him to make contact with Russia as any transition team would do - in this case to discuss the possibility of joint US/Russian military options to fight ISIS.

Ross has been suspended without pay for 4 weeks, and ABC has issued a retraction of the earlier story...albeit without the hoopla surrounding their original "scoop." Frankly, we're hoping that Ross spends his time off productively, perhaps watching old reruns of "Dragnet." He'd at least be reminded of the importance of gathering "just the facts."

We'll Get Hat Mail For This

Yes, it's another "free association" Earwigs day here at Stilton's Place! There are some things happening on the home front that are keeping us from being able to really focus - and besides, wouldn't we all really just enjoy a few simple laughs on a Friday?

Oh, we could have riffed on sexual improprieties again, but we're getting sick of the story. Not that we're getting sick of guys getting their asses handed to them for being jerks to women - we're just getting tired of talking about it.

Perhaps because some of these most recent sex scandals don't really have a lot of zing to them. Owl-faced Garrison Keillor hugged a woman and his hand briefly touched her bare back?! Give us a break. Back in old Hollywood, comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping a woman to death with a Coke bottle, and more recently actor Bob "Hogan's Heroes" Crane shot hundreds of porn videos of himself with different women until the night he was beaten to death with his own camera. (Which, incidentally, would be a lot harder to do in the age of the iPhone.)

We're not saying that those are good things, but we're saying they're at least more interesting than hearing about Mr. Lake Woebegon fingering the notches in some woman's spine.

We might also have written about North Korea's new ballistic missile that can theoretically nuke anyone in the United States...or easily cause an EMP event which would kill off 90% of Americans through starvation and disease (as could John Conyers boxer shorts). But hey - is THAT what anyone wants to hear about on a perfectly nice Friday?! We think not.

So instead, we've got the Earwigs cartoon and a very important request: Please help us wish "Happy Birthday" to the lovely (and loved) Mrs. Jarlsberg today! Absolutely no one of AARP age should look as good as she does!