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