Jackass-teroids

Donald Trump has officially finished his first full year in office and, depending on who you ask, he either ended that year in a radiant glow of triumph, or standing in the chaotic rubble of a post-apocalyptic world. Albeit one with a booming stock market.

The government has shut down, of course, owing to the fact that Democrats won't allow funding for pretty much anything that Americans want, need, and paid for because they prefer illegal aliens (some of them euphemistically called dreamers) to actual citizens.

Frankly, we're enjoying the shutdown and the media's crazed coverage of this unimaginable, society-destroying catastrophe. Special points go to CNN, an alleged news network, for their claim that the "Government Shutdown Risks An Undetected Asteroid Strike." We're not sure, but it's quite possible that we'll also be more vulnerable to attacks from Godzilla, Mothra, and the 50-Foot Woman.

And speaking of women...

Don't panic, folks - it's just a prune.

To protest Donald Trump's first year in office, activist women took to the streets in orifice to protest whatever the hell is on their silly little minds.

We believe that they're upset that, because of Donald Trump, a multitude of famous (and now unemployed) liberal men started sexually abusing women years and years ago. And no, we don't follow the logic either.

The women flooding the streets also want cheaper, easier access to those who provide baby puréeing services, pay equity (even though they skip work whenever there's a chance to wear vagina masks in public), and handicapped parking stickers to use when they have PMS and are in no damn mood to search all over Hell's half acre for a f*cking parking spot!!!

Amusingly, "pink pussy hats" were somewhat less on display at this year's protests because social justice-conscious women realized that the noggin-warmers might be triggering or offensive to women who have genitalia that isn't pink (or perhaps just not well-washed), as well as women who don't have vaginas.

We don't know, and we don't want to know, what they're wearing on their heads.

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!"