Friday Foolishness

One of the primary ways that Stilton's Place is different from Hope n' Change Cartoons is that we've given ourselves permission to "just blow it off" when the news is unappealing or the wind (for whatever reasons) simply fails to fill our sails.

But we're not going to deny you, the dear reader, at least a spot of levity just because we're sick of the blah-blah-blah about Trump vs the Freedom Caucus, Russian hackers vs the DNC, and Maxine Waters vs a Stylish Hairdo (hey, if she wants to support "Habitat for Black Widow Spiders" it's her business).

Anyway, that's why the Earwigs cartoon is lurking above. As we mentioned in our penultimate post over at Hope n' Change, we make Earwigs cartoons (though have not previously published any) as a fun writing exercise and misguided hobby. We basically find a piece of odd old clipart, and then try to spin off as many different punchlines as possible.

While this is mostly just for fun, we fully intend to self-publish a book of these things at some point, and declare it to be the world's first interactive cartoon book. Specifically because you can highlight your favorite captions and then claim co-authorship when you display the newly-personalized book in the bathroom for guests, family members, and visiting clergy to read.

We'd be tempted to run a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of this book, only we can probably complete the whole project for a total cost of about $13.99.

Which, by remarkable coincidence, is exactly the cost of a plastic jug of Clan MacGregor alleged scotch!

Many Unhappy Returns

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Ready, Blame, Fire!

Now that healthcare reform reform has been cancelled, two groups of people are celebrating. Those who love Obamacare the most, and those who hate Obamacare the most. In this way, President Trump has brought opposing political factions together in a way which we would like to call united, but will more accurately label as "schizophrenic" and probably dangerous.

At this point, it's moot to debate the relative virtues or failures of the proposed GOP bill, but we are going to take strong exception to the idea that if the healthcare system is allowed to completely collapse in the next few years (which Trump is touting with Caligula-like glee), that America's sick, dying, overcharged, and uninsured will blame the out-of-power Democrats for having created Obamacare, rather than the fat and happy Republican legislators who stood around this national bonfire roasting marshmallows and making s'mores.

Put another way, when Obamacare fails the voters will not reward the party that did nothing (even if the reasons were good), but will instead flock to the party that promises a quick and all encompassing fix - namely, a single-payer "Medicare For All" plan. That's going to be the Democrats, which is hardly surprising: Obamacare was designed to fail after destroying the free market health insurance system, thereby leaving fully socialized medicine as the only viable alternative. And the Dems knew human nature well enough to understand that this would assure their party power.

We really hope we're wrong about this, but ask yourself - if you were the patient in the cartoon above, who would you blame? The bad doctor who misdiagnosed you, or the good doctor who says he'll watch you suffer or die just to teach the bad doctor a lesson?

BONUS: NO TAXATION WITHOUT MEDICATION

Per Friday's post, we're still working on our taxes (yes, that's really our desk in the picture above) and things have just taken a turn for the worse.

Once we finally had all of our data entered into Quicken, all we had to do was fire up our TurboTax program and get cranking on the job of finding out how much of our money the government would steal.

But wait! It turns out that this year's edition of TurboTax won't run on our old Mac operating system (note to Intuit: you suck), meaning we're going to have to upgrade to a newer, fancier operating system which we already know won't really work on our old computer.

To accomplish this without destroying our sanity and life's work, we have to create a "partition" on our internal hard drive (basically just a dedicated space) in which to install Mac OS 10.10, which is code named after a ravenous jungle cat or a mountain prone to landslides or some damn thing.

But to find enough room to create that partition, we first need to find tens of gigabytes of existing data to erase from our hard drive - a process which in itself takes hours.

If you're waiting for this to pay off with a big punchline, well - sorry. We're just venting about the fact that we're having to jump through 17 flaming hoops just to do a task we hate in order to pay the government's ransom demands to keep us from having to grab our ankles in a prison shower.

AND AS LONG AS WE'RE COMPLAINING...

Remember two weeks ago when we were complaining about how long it takes us to adjust to Daylight Saving Time? Well, we still haven't adjusted - making every daily chore more difficult and exhausting.

We're taking caffeine pills to wake up, we're taking melatonin to get to sleep, and we're taking the Lord's name in vain to express what we think of government interference in our lives.