Category Archives: Meaning of Life

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Toilet Paper and Tariffs

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Toliet Tariffs Are UnfairToilet Paper Tariffs

After having ignored the latest Internet dust-up about the Ambien-slurping racist Roseanne, I stumbled upon the list of items to have tariffs applied to them since President Jerkbag decided to engage in a trade war with the rest of the world. And guess what? Not only will steel and aluminum in multiple forms be slapped with mindless duties, taxes and fees, not only will orange juice, ballpoint pens, soy sauce, ketchup and mustard be subject to consumer-crushing tariffs, but the most crucial paper product in the home will be subject to tariffs. Yes, toilet paper is a victim in this irrational war of  words.

I could easily devolve into thematically-related insults and name-calling in the direction of Trump and his administration (some very low-hanging fruit would be ‘butt-wipe POTUS’, ‘butt-kissing cronies’, and ‘human farts in suits’). But that wouldn’t bring the discussion anywhere, except deeper into the toilet.

But it must be said — tariffs on toilet paper is pretty low. It’s below the belt. It’s dirty pool. Now it’s personal.

You’re probably asking yourself — well, I am asking myself, actually, since I have been in a state of sleep deprivation for the better part of a year now and I have a very tenuous grip on reality as well as my bank account — how can toilet paper tariffs be personal? It’s not like they’re taxing meats of a smoked and carcinogenic nature, something dangerously close to my heart. Or, perish the thought, chocolate and/or cinnamon danish, the two food groups associated with Olympic strength and endurance. But it is personal.

Rare is the occurrence that I sit on the porcelain throne, toilet paper at the ready, without a filthy, juvenile, sophomoric, toilet inspired-level joke crossing my mind. And with that, the inevitable follow-on thought What would my recently departed uncle Phil, a genuine colorectal surgeon hero, have thought? If there was some kind of butt- or toilet-related humor, I made sure he caught wind of it. Figuratively, of course.

He, one of the very few fans of this comic with a full complement of 23 pairs of chromosomes, sadly left this earthly plane not long ago. Talk about a guy who knew his shit. He even brought to my attention, and to thousands of others, the existence of the Colossal Colon. If you’ve ever had the desire to crawl through a colon, he was the guy to talk to.

Which brings us to the end of today’s sermon. It is soon time for ye all to go to bed, and hold precious the rolls of low-priced toilet paper tissue you already own, and be prepared for the expensive onslaught of tariff-plagued TP the next time you’re on the commode. Or of Trump.

Lovingly misunderstood,
Jon “Not that Crapper” Dribbler

If Trump were a brand of toilet paper, he would be...

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Love and Ugliness

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Stanko & Tibor - Love and Ugliness

Love and Ugliness

People* often** ask me why I don’t like to take pictures of myself when confronted with the opportunity to take a “selfie.” I won’t go into the narcissistic, socially-destructive, morally corrupt value of the “selfie” here, as this isn’t what this post or comic is about. There are more practical reasons why I don’t “love” myself enough to take a photo of, uh, myself.

Having recently been nominated in the Oscars category of “Most likely to repulse a member of the opposite or same sex if seen naked,  partially clothed, or even with a bathing suit on”, I decided that I’d be kind to the greater bulk of non-visually impaired humanity and not take any photos of myself that could have potentially caused retinal damage if they were to be spread across the Internet for others to witness.

Ugliness – Physical and Other Kinds, Too

We put too much focus on the physical ugliness of human features, such as faces, hands, feet, bellies, and other kinds of appendages, and not enough on the metaphysical kind. (Note to reader: I don’t really understand the meaning of the word “metaphysical, even when it was explained to me with puppets, but I’ll use it here anyway.)

There is ugliness that transcends the physical and makes its way to the less tangible parts, like the spleen and the soul of a person. It bubbles its way to the surface in the form of either name-calling, bullying or electing people with inferiority complexes who feel they have to have a comb-over that requires a team of NASA engineers and enough hair product to fill an oil tanker. Sort of like that odious bag of genetic pus, Donald Jerk Trump.

He’s not the only metaphysically ugly person on the planet by a long shot. Putin comes a close second, followed in third place by Wayne LaPierre, but I won’t get into a Top 10 list just now as I recently had a strong coffee with breakfast and I can feel the caffeine stirrings in the lower-intestinal region. Safe to say, people who are ugly on the inside are out there en masse.

Love Thy Self – Just Don’t Overdo It

If there was a way to turn all that ugliness into love, maybe the world would be a better place. Or maybe it would help reduce global warming. Let’s look at this scientifically for a moment.

It takes approximately 461 kilojoules (approximately 437 BTUs) of physical and mental energy to come up with a nasty insult that demeans another person’s religion, race or choice of hair styles. (Less if it’s an indiscriminate insult like calling someone “jerk face” because he just cut you off in traffic while texting and driving.) Multiply that by the number of insults and inflammatory comments, alternative fact-based observations hurled on websites, on TV and in print, and you come out to approximately 14 quadrillion BTUs if you’re only considering the American media. Add in the Chinese, Russian, German, French, Mongolian, Indian, and Luxembourger media outlets, and you’re at close 15 quadrillion BTUs. That’s a lot of heat.

Now let’s look at the energy required for love. One love-making energy unit, scientifically known “a soiree of sweaty debauchery”,  between two (or more) mutually consenting people, usually under the influence of alcohol or other psychotropic substances, requires approximately 208 kilojoules, (197 BTUs) and is usually over after 6 or 7 minutes of heated squealing, including foreplay. That’s less than half the energy needed for spouting ugliness.

Now if people across the world spent much more time committing acts of love than hurling ugliness everywhere, we’d see numerous benefits such as a) people spending less time in front of screens, thus using less of earth’s precious natural resources, b) much more napping due to the aforementioned energy expenditure, and when you’re napping you’re pretty much carbon neutral, and c) an increase in chocolate danish consumption (as a means to replace the love energy you burnt off).

Win-win.

Scientifically and doctrinally yours,

Professor Yengeny Schmutz

* = people in this case are confined to my parole office, my court-mandated psychologist, psychiatrist, shock therapist and the civil servant who sentenced me to 30 years of hard labor in the form of marriage

** often in this case refers to the regularly court-designated sessions with the aforementioned people in order to keep me in check

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

It’s Coffee Time for the New Year

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Stanko & Tibor - Coffee Time

Coffee Time for the New Year Hangover of 2018

As I sip my first coffee of the day, I have time to reflect on the year passing and on the coming New Year.  Yes, it’s soon 2018. Too soon? I doubt it, as 2017 has been a massive disappointment where slimmer bellies and chocolate danish consumption have  moved inversely to the desired directions I had intended when I made those patently false promises to myself back in 2014.

It has been a strange year, one for the history books. Let’s reflect.

It has been a year filled with dumps, rumps and colossal chumps, and of course Trumps.

It has been a year of fats, fat cats, and caffeine.

Killing and shooting hit new heights (or is that lows?). There was so much anger after the election of the Cheetos President that people were frothing at the mouth all over the world in every publication.

Sexual harassment in sanctimonious America finally got the headlines the topic deserves, but nothing really changed. People just acted shocked and then went about their business as they surfed the Interwebs, and watched The Great British Bake Off. (I still don’t understand why people are obsessed with this crapola, but it’s better than having people actually, you know, be active in politics or give their time to charity.)

Knowing that the 3 regular readers of this comic are either under the influence of pain killers, genetically not diverse enough to be considered truly human by reputable biologists,  or incarcerated (ok, it was actually one regular reader with that description), I know my pleas for you to read this infrequently published tome of the obvious and delirious will fall on deaf ears and people with a pupillary distance of less then 10mm (a.k.a. inbreeds).

Either way, I will have my next coffee to warm my innermost self, ponder the incoming new year of 2018, and then take a massive, life-prolonging nap. And finish it off with a life-shortening, artery-clogging, grin-inducing dinner and dessert.

Heck, if 2017 didn’t kill me, not much else can.

Pining for a warm bed and free chocolate,

Jonny Claus Druker

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Harass Or Be Harassed

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Stanko & Tibor - Harass

A Climate of Harassment

So, everyone is getting fired on the male side, politicians, actors, journalists – sadly not any American Presidents, oh the irony  –  and the end is not in sight.  Many men, particularly those with hair, are getting called out for obvious and long-term bad behavior. Harassment galore.  Everyone knows it’s here, it’s not a secret. The cat’s out of the bag. The other shoe has dropped. The chickens have come home to roost. The butcher got his finger in the pickle slicer. No, wait. That last one is from a dirty joke my uncle likes to tell. Skip that.  It all kind of reminds me of the inexorable march of global warming.

You see, sexual harassment and global warming are very much linked in ways you can’t begin to imagine. Only I can, really, especially since the sugar high has just kicked in. Global warming, just like sexual harassment, has many causes, many deniers, and many people saying it’s not their fault. So we are left with the question: How do we slow it down? Or stop it? Or if you’re the racist hypocrite Roy Moore or Donald Trump, or you’re in the fossil fuel business, how do you give less of a shit about it?

Let me answer the global warming angle first because it’s way easier. Sources of rising global temperatures are rife. Anything from too many gas emissions from cattle and sheep grazing in fields in order to satisfy our desire for meat, to coal-fired power plants in China, to gas-guzzling SUVs, to ever increasing consumerism driving up the number of shipments delivered by the UPS/DHL/FedEx folks of the world.

Some say the pace of global warming has even been accelerated by children – by far the least innocent people on the planet – with their devotion to devices with screens that need to be powered with electricity from questionable sources AND the raw crude needed to make the plastic to encase and ship these devices. It’s always the children’s fault. However, another source of heat emissions is staring us in the face every day, and yet we ignore it: It’s bald-headed men.

Regardless of culture or religion or geography, or even shoe size, there are bald men everywhere. The scientific reason why they emit so much heat – and the solution thereto – are patently obvious. Let’s look at the background, shall we? I was informed as a kid that we lose 30% of our body heat from our heads. I had to wear a hat in winter on top of my then existing hair to stay warm. I was responsible for keeping in the heat, and I did, thus sparing the planet somewhat. Therein lies a key answer to slow global warming.

Back in the follicle-rich days, when I’d work out, or dance or chase after something shiny or with breasts, I’d sweat into my hair that would then be trapped in the follicle grease, and drip down the back of my neck and sully my collar. The heat was redistributed from head to neck to clothing, never to be released into the atmosphere.

But as age set in, life began to hurl many indignities upon me, such as heartburn, stress, children, and other worries. As a result, my hair thinned, my pate was exposed for anyone taller than 5 feet and 5 inches (165cm  to you metric types) to see. Since then it has been heat escape on a grand scale. (Note: much hot air used to come overwhelmingly from farts. Still does, but now we have to deal with hot air from the head, too.)

The Solution

Fret not because there is a solution: Solar-powered, air-conditioned toupees. With built-in smart phones. Brilliant, no? You’re probably wondering how I got from global warming to toupees. The answer is simple: my mother cooked with lead pots, poor genetics, mixed medications and a strong propensity for foods with made with industrial sugar. Mix them all together and voilà! But I digress.

Toupees are the answer no one saw coming. In addition to trapping the cranial heat once affixed to a person’s head, and thereby  eliminating a source of global warming, with some keen engineering, we could actually make these super toupees absorb the sun’s heat to then power mini-air conditioners to cool overheated male scalps across the globe. Tack on a smartphone or a similar device with a screen and you’d keep men distracted AND comfortable year round. With a screen in front of them, men wouldn’t have time to play with themselves either. Win-win.

Now some of you in jail are naturally discussing among yourselves ‘Why not just wear wooden caps, pith helmets or baseball hats to cover our masculine heat-emitting heads?’ Because you’d look like a dork if you were wearing a baseball hat at formal occasions, such as weddings, funerals and annual prostate exams. Same goes for pith helmets, although they do possess a level of practicality during the aforementioned prostate exams – you can grab on to the edges of the hat for dear life while the doctor uses his index digit to probe your posterior.

All I ask of you dear reader, is to think about for just a bit, and then send me money to investigate the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of these environmental life-savers. You know, like $50 a person would be a good start.

Wishfully waiting for wampum,
Jose Jimenez Druker

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Birthdays, Brains and Books

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Stanko & Tibor - Books vs TV

Birthday Makes Brain Go Bad

While walking with my younger daughter the other day, I was made painfully aware that my brain and most of its attendant functions peaked in terms of performance a number of years ago. Whether that number is in the single or double digits is a matter of speculation for people with mathematical and scientific knowledge. Neither of which I possess anymore since those bits of my brain probably fell out or were destroyed with loud rock ‘n roll music. To say nothing of the intense alcohol and chocolate danish abuse I have subjected my body to. But I digress.

While walking, she asked me a simple question that really only required me dipping into my porous memory for a name of someone I knew was somewhere in there, but I just plain forgot until she reminded me who it was. Which I forgot some 20 seconds after she reminded me.

Her follow-on question was even more perceptive and unintentionally hurtful. Why couldn’t I remember names of people I am supposed to know, not to mention simple things like how to reset that there device in the house? Without hesitation I had an answer for her, since I could explain it, I didn’t have to recall a fact real, imagined or alternative.

I told her that my brain has reached the point of maturity, or fermentation, where my goal is to prevent bits and bytes of info from falling out of my grey matter cells, albeit to little avail. You want me to quote horsepower ratings, the Simpsons, or Young Frankenstein, sure, no problem. However, other recent facts, and even not so recent ones, like my children’s dates of birth, are lost to the dark, detritus-filled chambers and recesses of my brain. Or my brain realized that the hippocampus has probably either hippo-like submerged into murky waters, or the campus part has decamped and left for distant shores.

My goal now at this ripe age of 50 is to desperately remember, without a worried look on my face,  where the hell I put my car keys, wallet and the password to my phone when my fingers are too wet or greasy from cooking for the fingerprint recognition to work. (I have debated getting the new iPhone X with its facial recognition, but I am told it doesn’t recognize hideous troll-like features my loving and pain-killer-addicted sister said I possess in abundance. So much for technology and sibling love.)

I would argue that to continue to be able to function at the Kindergarten level my brain normally does it has adopted the traits of file compression technology. In order to save a little space for name and facial recognition for my long suffering wife, not to mention car key placement memories and remembering which way is the front of my underwear (50/50 proposition at best these days) my brain has gone into disk space saving mode by compressing some data into ever smaller files to be stored and never recalled, like what my parents dressed me during most of the 70’s or why my dad always called me his “other son” at dinner parties. But I digress again.

Conversely my daughter is at an age where not only is she like the proverbial sponge, sucking and retaining information at a furious pace, she’s also using her brain to process and understand stuff. I explained that much of life doesn’t need to be understood — if you can reconcile the fact that, as my father, may he soon receive his medical marijuana prescription and a vape pen and not be scared to share it with my mother who needs it as much as he does, has keenly observed: people are stupid. When you’ve accepted that, you spend less time wondering how Donald Trump got the undeserved title “President” in front of his name.

But she, and her equally diligent and perceptive sister, persist in reading many books in a bid to learn and increase their horizons. While they are addicted to TV programs like all other people on the planet with an Internet connection, they still read a tremendous amount of books. Paper books at that. Not ebooks. They are surrounded by the printed word, and sop up stories and info like there’s no tomorrow. Honestly, the only way I could ingest that amount of info would be to literally suck the ink off the pages and then eat those pages as a shredded garnish on a salad. I can’t see it working with steak. And definitely not with ice cream. But I digress.

I really thought the skill of reading – in particular reading proper books given how it detracts from the time that could be spent in front of a screen that radiates images and most likely testicle-shrinking radiation – had died off. Heaven (or Amazon) knows I am not the most prodigious reader (car magazines notwithstanding), and I am a sucker for an animated show or a sports event (as a pretext for napping, of course). But it appears otherwise.

That’s kind of refreshing to see. Just hope I’ll remember this vomit of typed, incoherent thoughts twenty minutes after I publish it. Unlikely, since I forgot the password to log in to the system whose name I forget that allows me to publish this drivel.

I need coffee and a danish.
Johannes Not-So-Guttenberg Druker
Crime, Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Shoot! This Is Not The Happiest Post

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Stanko & Tibor - Shoot

Shoot

I can say this won’t be the most uplifting post I have ever tapped on a keyboard, mostly fuelled by chicken soup and residual chocolate danish.

Too much death from guns and hurricanes lately. Some of it man-made, some of it “natural” disasters. It’s clear that it’s “too soon” to have any discussions about gun control, you know, while people are being slaughtered by law-abiding gun-owning citizens. Heaven forbid.

Having the power of life and death over others is pretty heavy-duty, and not exercising that power is not as hard as you’d think if you have half a brain. Obviously there are a lot of people with not even half a brain, which might explain how these gun nuts can get their hands on a literal (not figurative) arsenal of weapons and then use them for target practice on the worst offenders known to humanity – innocent people.

It seems they needed killing because… well, there was no reason they needed killing. The vast majority of people do not need killing. Some do. Hitler needed killing. People who are trafficking humans  need killing. Drug lords need killing. People who believe that killing will make them “one with god” or who call others “infidels” don’t need killing. But maybe they need life in the electric chair on a medium current.

But most of us don’t need death and killing. There’s too much death. Or there are too many people having babies. Too much sexual potency that I am clearly not a part of. I wouldn’t know what that is anymore. Perhaps it’s a question of these sick people feeling a) very important, or b) very impotent. These words sure sound similar, but there is just a minor difference. I’d wager to say it’s option ‘b’ more likely. So take a damn Cialis or Viagra and stop killing people with your “cocked” weapons.

The Question and Answer

Does this surfeit of population and double-surfeit of guns mean we need more death? Probably not.

My solution: Everyone should forcibly given an Internet connection, a subscription to Netflix and Amazon Prime, and then forced to watch every TV show out there until their brains are mush. And unending supplies of chocolate or cinnamon danish, with maybe some mild, brown bean coffee.

I told you this wasn’t the happiest post I have ever made.

Sheepish, sleepy and persnickety,

Carlos “The Platypus” Druker

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Smoking Angry

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Smoking Angry

Smoking Angry – The Lot Of Us

Lately, I think a lot people, everywhere, are smoking angry. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to it, wherever you look. I am not just talking about the putz of a POTUS, but just about anything you can think of.

White nationalists, a.k.a. Nazi-sympathizing fascists, North Korean insanity, international trade disputes, Scaramucci, Kenyan post-election violence,  Venezuela’s descent into an even worse dictatorship (is that possible?), the continued use of tofu in cooking. The list is endless.

And this can’t be good for the general health of the globe. Why, all this stress, all this violence, all this vitriol and bitterness – I’m afraid it will lead to more people taking up smoking.

Now if you’re the type to ask “smoke what?”, well, then I will let you, dear reader, decide if that is to be a legal cigarette, a pipe, a bong, a raft of Cuban cigars, a funny cigarette (for a little while longer), a brisket, a pork shoulder, some bacon, a freshly caught Pacific salmon, or even a caper or two.

Yet, the best course of action may not be to take up smoking in its various forms. Some would suggest exercise to combat the smoking anger. They’re idiots. Others suggest yoga and meditation. Colossal idiots. Retreating into tequila and massive chocolate and/or cinnamon danish consumption? Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.

The Ass That Launched A Thousand Shits

Perhaps getting to the source of the problem is what we need to do to alleviate all this hatred, this anger, this smoking cauldron of negativity. Mostly that would mean getting the POTUS impeached and then thrown into a vat of angry lesbians. But that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

We’re left with an ass in charge of the body politic. And I can assure you every time that ass fires off an alternative fact-based tweet, a misguided missive, a cantankerous comment, there are a thousand people in Washington who utter the word “shit!” He’s gone and done it again, he’s angered up the blood real good.

Retreat, Fight or Nap?

Left with another 3+ years in office and lots of hate-filled, environmentally-destructive and freedom-of-speech-depriving legislation to pass, the options left to the inhabitants of those sort of United States are threefold: retreat, fight or nap.

If you’re the scaredy-cat type, you retreat, try and flee to Canada (hey, it’s cold, people, and Prime Minister Sissy Pants still hasn’t legalized weed yet). If you’re smoking angry, you fight. Well sort of. There’s this #resistance thing going around, but let’s face it, President small-hands was actually duly elected in a democracy (with a lot of fake news, it seems). That leaves you with one option that I am quite fond of: Naps.

Will it bring about change? Nope. Will it fill the airwaves with inspiration and action? Not a chance. Will it lead to less smoking anger and potentially some ruffled sheets? Highly probable.

The Moral

What’s the moral of this story? If you can find one, you’re on more mood-altering medication than me, and you really should take a nap after eating some delicious chocolate babka that will put you into a coma once the sugar-high wears off.

Pontificatingly parochial,

Mozi The Mooch Maldonado-Druker

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Go Into the Weeds! Rid Us of the Ants!

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Into the Weeds with Stanko & Tibor

Emerging Insurgents in the Weeds

Having returned home from work, I passed the tiny, patchy patch of grass and other weeds that co-habitate in front of my place of residence like filthy hippies after a bong hit. Laying about, intertwined and generally useless.  And what was circulating among those invasive weeds? Even filthier six-legged insurgents keen on crawling into my house to search for food that I, or more likely, my filth-generating children, undoubtedly left behind in various nooks and crannies. Ants. Big, small, black, dark brown, far too numerous to count and some were so large they even made a squishy noise when I crushed them.

No matter what I try to keep the garden free of ants, those semi-sentient drones keep coming back and always find ways into our house to eat the scraps of food we have dropped all over the kitchen since we foolishly agreed to host for my many greedy,  usurpatious relatives. That I love, of course.

Dumb But Multitudinous

I cannot understand how, over the eons and millennia of evolution,  that neither the ants nor the weeds have gotten any smarter. You crush them, rip them out, spray them, poison them, curse them while shaking your fist — they don’t learn their lesson. Actually, it’s probably a good thing that the ants haven’t really become any smarter because I think they would have found a way to take their revenge on me for having smooshed so many of their kind over my life. I could well imagine some A-student and Mensa society ants huddling together in a hive, with ant-sized smart boards, notebooks and a PowerPoint presentation having devised a plan to drop a bowling ball on my head. But I digress.

Weeds, conversely, I haven’t killed enough of. You rip them out by the roots, you spray them with illudium phosdex or gasoline, you curse them with a shaman’s fervour, and still, they don’t listen. They come back every week in spring and summer, every year. You’d think one of them would have spread the word to the others by now, but no. Stubborn and relentless.

POTUS Fabric

Neither ants nor weeds are wanted. Anywhere by anyone. They are invaders and despoil beauty. Just like the current POTUS, yet they (and he) still persist, in every garden, every city, every country, continent and country.

Yet accept them we must. We have no choice as they are part of the fabric of life. As we all know the fabric of life isn’t smooth cashmere with a satin liner and Merino wool. It’s more like an itchy, discount wool blend with a polyester weave, surrounded by a lovely layer of wet burlap. Furthermore, this fabric has not been well tailored, there are loose ends, it’s a hideous pastel color, probably mauve and green, and is ill-fitting and creates tremendous lint balls.

But it’s all the fabric we have, so bad parts are there as well as good parts.  Like ants and weeds, we can’t only have the good parts, we have to accept the bad.

Conversely, the ants and weeds that support the current leader of the free world and a bunch of hotels is something everyone has to learn to live with. There is no presidential pest removal service. Well there is, but you have to wait four years to replace him legally or find incriminating photos of him with a Russian prostitute.

Relentless Patience

To remove weeds and ants, one must have patience, perseverance, a large sum of money, a diet high in fibre and chocolate danish, and the ability to take defeat gracefully and with dignity. But stomping and cursing, foaming at the mouth and unspecified acts rage confined to your bathroom only are also helpful in dealing with this intractable problem.

So be sure to accept the situation, do not fly off the handle, unless you know you can win, deal with the unpleasantness as best as you can, and please, for me, destroy some weeds and ants.

Chronically imbalanced and low on sugar,

Facundo Thiago Salvador da Costa Gonclaves Schmidt

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Weedy Reality – It Sucks

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Stanko & Tibor - Weedy Reality

Weeding Out Reality

[Warning: I took a lot of hey fever medicine and followed it with too much chocolate ice cream and not enough sleep. Happy reading.]

Having spent some time thinking about what to rant about, I spent time weeding out my more abstruse thoughts, like why can’t people who are smoking cigarettes during my daily strolls be encased in a giant, flexible plastic bubble so the carcinogenic fumes are trapped with their owners, while I stride by inhaling air, largely tainted by diesel fumes and people wearing far too much perfume and aftershave?

Another brilliant idea I wedded out is why hasn’t someone invented a mini crutch for under my chin that would rest on my collar bones or sternum so I could nap in in appropriate places like funeral homes and other places of worship? An indispensable napping device. Alas, reality strikes again and my wishes and wants remain unfulfilled and I am left with practical thoughts. Like how do I handle the imperfections of spring?

Today was a perfect example of what warm weather and sunshine bring out — beauty-spoiling, grass-molesting, flower-strangling weeds. Sure, while spring has finally arrived with some warmer weather, and the flowers are rising and the lilacs are blossoming, you still have to deal with the rebellious scum of nature: the weeds.

I spent 1 full hour, or 60 minutes to those of you who are more granular and anal in their timekeeping, using a metal weeding tool designed by Finns, no less, and ripping out weeds from the small patch if grass that is at the front of our house. It made me feel good to rid the space of those unruly horticultural whores who will pop up anywhere and everywhere. Made me feel like a man. With gardening equipment. I had the power of weed life and weed death for a brief shining moment. And yet, I still wasn’t totally satisfied.

Weed Remover

Like the unfortunate election of who some people are calling the Cheeto Mussolini, some things don’t work out the way we want them to. He’s an ego-ridden schmuck, but he is the duly elected POTUS (with some help from Russia). People wanted a change, an outsider, someone who would shake things up! And instead they elected a loud-mouthed, pathological weed who should be sprayed with some kind of industrial paint remover, and maybe cat urine. But some voters got what they wanted. Sort of.

We don’t always get what we want, even when we get what we want. I want free chocolate and danish as part of a healthy and nutritious breakfast, but the powers that be say it’s not healthy, and therefore I am thwarted. Instead I am forced to pay for, and eat cinnamon buns and almond croissants. It’s morally wrong, I tell you.

But with this ever-returning metaphorical and literal weed garden, we receive the gift of fodder for discussion. The stuff of comics and talkshows. That which keeps my father livid and his blood pressure elevated. It keeps me in comic heaven and gives me mental sustenance that can’t be provided by simple daily occurrences like work, the kids and giving the government vats of tax money.

Steady

Weedy reality will always be there. The steady hand of chaos and messiness that keeps me awake at night, dreaming of free danish and forever low glucose readings when I am getting my checkup.

Quizzically dizzy and sleepily silly,
Johann of the Suburbs

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Name Calling and Other Policies

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Stanko & Tibor - Name Calling

Name Calling – Because It Works

A simple yet universally true observation of human behavior: Whenever you are walking anywhere, any place, and there are others afoot around you, you say to yourself “what’s with this moron who is walking too slowly and blocking my  progress?!! Idiot.” Conversely, the person who flies past you at a much greater pace, on his or her way to somewhere important like the toilet or the casino, is inevitably met with the thought “why is that jerk face in such a rush?? What a bipedal asshat he is.” You resort to name calling.

It’s such a natural human behaviour to apply a derogative label to someone you don’t agree with or think is somehow making your life worse. It also applies to people who don’t agree with your view on life, or politics, or any other facet of existence. You call them names because we cannot all just get along. But why do we do it, when we as a species really ought to be trying to chill out and not be so aggressive?

Name calling is so liberating and energizing! Don’t like someone’s religion? They are zealots. They are atheist? They are dirty heretics. Don’t like a country’s leader? Call him (it’s almost always a ‘him’ except for Eva Perón and my 9th grade math teacher) a filthy fascist! Or a dirty communist. Or an inbreed. Or a buck-toothed, cross-eyed yokel. (Note: yokels per se aren’t usually blessed with good access to dental care plans , so that’s not really a fair name calling strategy.)

Whether it be political, financial, sexual or religious orientation, humans have come up with some kind of nasty name to call the other person. And man, does it feel good!

Name Calling – Creativity for All

Name calling is not just convenient for letting off mental steam, and not just because it lets anyone feel superior to anyone else by demeaning the other person. Name calling isn’t just for the short-temepered, uneducated boobs among us. It’s a wonderful form of creative expression open to all (except probably the deaf & mute contingent). As proof, there’s a fantastic Shakespeare Insult Kit you can peruse online. It’s WAY more useful than working at your day job. I’ve heard. Dare I say, it’s a form of abusive art. Kind of like this comic. But I digress.

When have you ever not felt elated and all tingly about calling someone a nasty name? Never, that’s when. It’s such a great outlet. And less costly, most of the time, than shooting a gun. So it could be said that shooting off your mouth is less damaging than shooting off your gun. But I’d have to do some in-depth research involving a gallon of whiskey, some cheap ammunition and profanity-laced episode of Archer to be sure.

Some of the most creative, hurtful, demeaning descriptors I have ever heard were uttered by my father, usually while in traffic. In fact, I seem to recall most name calling and epithet hurling occurred where there were many humans in a crowded space. My goodness – if name calling is a result of high human density, that would explain why genuine New Yorkers are such jerks. I can barely imagine the name calling that goes on iat Costco on a Saturday… such a commercial use of words.

Words Matter. Mostly.

And words do matter, people. Concepts we verbalize or print have tremendous power. If you’re branded “a fat bag of gaseous impotent rage” (a.k.a. Prezeedent Donnie Trump), you’re not going to like it.  Call Vladimir Putin “a soulless, conniving killer who’d murder his own  grandmother if she looked at him crooked” then you’d merely be stating a fact, which is not so much name calling.

I would argue strenuously (as long as it wasn’t too strenuous and made me sweat) that humans cannot live without name calling. Many studies have shown that when you try to convince people of your point of view – with facts, no less, the opposite turns out to be the case. They dig in their metaphorical heels and refuse to believe you even more, no mater how much evidence you give them.

So why spend all that effort gathering fake news or real facts to get someone to agree with you? Way too much effort. Stick with name calling and be done with it.

Name Calling Is Genetic

I would argue based on scant research that name calling is genetically built in to humans. Look at the letters of the genetic code: A, U, G and C. And also sometimes T. If you rearrange them, you get “UGAC” – which derives from Bugac, which is a village in Bács-Kiskun county, in the Southern Great Plain region of southern Hungary. [Editor’s Note: He’s not lying, I fact-checked this and he didn’t make this up.] Anyone who knows anything about Bugacian Hungarians know they are the biggest name callers on the planet and must have been the originators of epithet hurling when they were cavemen. See? It’s in our genetic code!! [Editor’s Note: Now he’s lying big-time.]

I’ll bet you that even the sweetest Buddhist monk, the kindest most peace-loving Bahai, the laziest, most rational atheist couldn’t go half an hour without calling someone, somewhere a nasty name.

The Takeaway

So what is the take-away from this scientifically unfounded rant? Is it that the pleasures of a properly uttered series of insulting words is necessary for the human being to psychologically cope with the mass of genetic stupidity that is the human race (at least when there are no firearms present)? Could it be that there is a primordial need to feel better about ourselves by denigrating others with hurtful descriptors? Or have we reached an age in societal development that now forces us to resort to name calling so as to deal with the tsunami of horrible news that floods our airwaves and media? Or are we just all idiots?

Frankly, you’re all a bunch of half-wit morons for reading this swill.

Lovingly short of sleep and full of sinus issues,

Bugac Druker

I call people nasty names because...