Tuesday, July 12, 2022

It’s A Plot

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a blistering takedown of the President, Tucker Carlson accused Joe Biden of cynically leveraging the power of his office to lower gasoline prices.

“For weeks, Biden has been saying that he’d do something about the price of gasoline,” the Fox News host said. “Now, lo and behold, gas prices are lower. Joe Biden has been acting in plain sight.”

“The American people aren’t dumb,” Carlson continued. “When they fill up their tanks, they notice that it costs less. They can tell that something’s going on, and they’re not going to put up with it.”

After gas prices showed their biggest one-day drop in almost fifteen years, Carlson said, “It’s time to call out the man behind this conspiracy: Joe Biden.”

Carlson demanded that Congress “stop investigating January 6th and focus its attention on a real scandal: Joe Biden’s corrupt plot to lower gas prices.”

“This is worse than anything Hunter has done,” Carlson charged.

Friday, July 8, 2022

Happy Friday

Time to lighten up a little. From The New Yorker:

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—Boris Johnson reportedly “freaked out” when he learned that an uninvited Rudy Giuliani had turned up in London to offer him advice, U.K. government insiders report.

Giuliani announced his mission at an impromptu press conference on the outskirts of the city, at an establishment called Claridge’s Total Hedgerows.

“I’m sure Boris will be excited to see me,” Giuliani said. “Who wouldn’t want a little of that Rudy magic?”

Contrary to the former New York mayor’s prediction, the embattled British Prime Minister ordered security personnel at 10 Downing Street to post a photo of Giuliani at the building’s entrance, and to be on alert for any man with black inky liquid dripping down his face.

Giuliani, however, seemed oblivious to Johnson’s state of alarm. “Before I see Boris, I think I’ll hit a few pubs and go on TV,” he said. “Do any of you fellas know how to get to the BBC?”

If that doesn’t help, how about a moment of summer relaxation on a beach in Michigan?

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Random YouTubery

It’s the classic YouTube meme: LOLcats.

Saturday, June 25, 2022

Precious

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Recount

Humor from Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—An irate Rudy Giuliani has demanded an immediate recount of his blood-alcohol level on Election Night of 2020.

Witnesses to Giuliani’s behavior that night have pegged his blood-alcohol level at .20, well above the recognized limit for conspiring to overturn an election.

Speaking to reporters in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Beverage Barn in Silver Spring, Maryland, the former New York mayor alleged that his blood-alcohol level that night had been uploaded to a “secret Democratic Party computer,” where it was exchanged for the blood-alcohol level of Hunter Biden.

Giuliani’s claims, however, do not square with the Election Night accounts of witnesses who observed Giuliani trying to touch up his dye job with a Sharpie from the Oval Office, talking to an empty yellow chair that he mistook for Donald J. Trump, and persistently referring to 9/11 as “Seven and Seven.”

Step One is admitting you have a problem.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Egg On Their Faces

This bit of news from the Washington Post made me smile a lot.

Eggs. Many, many eggs. That is what greeted a trucker convoy protesting outside the home of a Democratic state lawmaker in Oakland, Calif., last week.

It turns out that residents of the East Bay neighborhood, including the younger ones, were not happy with the hulking rigs disrupting their lives.

Video shows people pelting the trucks with eggs and shouting, “Get out of our town!” Many youths are seen celebrating after emptying several cartons and launching a barrage of eggs.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” one of the egg-throwers is heard yelling in the video.

Drivers had been blasting their horns and crowding the roadway outside the East Bay home of State Assembly member Buffy Wicks on Friday. The truckers said on a live stream that they were targeting the Democrat because she had proposed a bill preventing coroners from investigating stillbirths and other lost pregnancies. Another bill she proposed, which has since been put on hold, calls for employers to mandate that workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The California Highway Patrol and Oakland police told the San Francisco Chronicle that no arrests or citations were issued and that the demonstrations, which congested roads outside the lawmaker’s home for about an hour, were peaceful. Those departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Erin Ivie, a spokeswoman for Wicks, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ivie told the Mercury News that the lawmaker would not be intimidated by the protests over her support of the abortion rights bill.

“Bullhorns and loud trucks lend no legitimacy to baseless conspiracy theories, and Asm. Wicks will not indulge any attempts to influence her legislative work through harassment and intimidation tactics — especially when it’s directed at one’s home and one’s family,” Ivie said.

[…]

Video shows people holding out egg cartons for others to grab and chuck at the vehicles. In one instance, an egg hit a man’s face as he was driving.

More than a dozen children hurled eggs at trucks near the intersection of 63rd Street and College Avenue. One member of the People’s Convoy tried persuading the teens not to throw the eggs — to no avail.

“We’re fighting for your freedoms too,” a convoy participant yelled, according to SFGATE.

At one point, some young people told a convoy member to roll his window down. When he didn’t, they launched at least six eggs at the truck and then scurried away, according to video.

At least one protester conceded on a live stream that the egg-throwing children had forced the convoy to leave the neighborhood.

Many future generations of chickens gave their all to humiliate those losers.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

What An Offer

Via The New Yorker, satire from Andy Borowitz.

PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump has reached out to Vladimir Putin to help Russia file for bankruptcy, the former U.S. President has confirmed.

Calling the Russian economy “in very, very bad, terrible shape” as a result of Western sanctions, Trump said that bankruptcy was “quite frankly” Putin’s only option.

“Bankruptcy is scary the first time you do it,” Trump said. “But once you’ve done it five or six times it’s the easiest and most beautiful thing in the world.”

Trump said that “the first thing Putin should do is stop paying his bills, and that’s something I can show him how to do.”

The former President also offered to send his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to Moscow to advise the Russian Federation on bankruptcy.

“No one can get you into bankruptcy faster than Jared,” Trump boasted.

According to sources, Putin replied, “Этот парень сумасшедший.”

Thursday, February 10, 2022

From Soup To Nuts

This is not from The Onion:

It’s becoming clearer by the day that Marjorie Taylor Greene learned nothing from her obligatory visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C., made after she likened the Holocaust to mask mandates – but she may have picked up a soup recipe there.

In an interview Tuesday night, Greene was heard comparing Nazis and Nancy Pelosi. Her remarks here somehow managed to sound worse by sounding better, as the Georgia Republican claimed she and her colleagues were being spied on by the speaker’s “gazpacho police.”

Now, we could say that this is a particularly embarrassing slip of the tongue re: soup nazis, but given the fact that Greene has also repeatedly referred to yellow stars Jews were forced to wear as “gold stars” and admitted she didn’t know the Rothschilds were Jewish, perhaps we can just assume that she was a poor social studies student.

But, then, the case could be made that even if she didn’t say the name of a chilled Spanish soup when she meant to refer to the Nazi secret police, her regular comparisons between the conditions of the Third Reich and CDC-recommended health measures bespeak, at best, a shoddy understanding of world history.

Giving Greene the benefit of the doubt, she could also have meant what she said. Perhaps Pelosi has some strict, militantly-observed hot-soup only policy for members of Congress. Considering the press goes crazy talking about the Senate candy desk and that time Amy Klobuchar allegedly ate salad with a comb, it seems unlikely that this idiosyncratic food rule would go unreported.

While we don’t know the full extent of Greene’s ignorance from soup to nuts (or Nazis), it’s fun to imagine what other malaprops she came up with. Did she once refer to Pol Pot as “Hot Pot?” Has she ever called the gulag (said correctly in her interview yesterday) a “goulash?” Was Mussolini muffuletta and the KGB TCBY? Surely she’d be thoroughly confused that Nazi camps were called lagers.

The mind reels. But, if this newest bit of blooper fodder has made you hungry, we do have a solid gazpacho recipe. It’s made with heirloom tomatoes, and, unlike the Nazi police, will have no effect on your retention of family heirlooms.

Just remember, it’s a cold summer soup – so don’t overdo it with your space laser.

That was real. I had to double-check to make sure that this was a humor column because it does sound real.

TALLAHASSEE (The Borowitz Report)—Joseph Ladapo, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s nominee for surgeon general, stirred controversy by urging the pharmacy chain CVS to carry leeches.

“The ancient Egyptians used leeches in medical treatments more than three thousand years ago,” Ladapo said at his confirmation hearing. “Unlike some quote-unquote vaccines, leeches have stood the test of time.”

Ladapo said that he was dismayed when he recently visited a CVS and found “plenty of masks and test kits, but no leeches.”

“There wasn’t even a leech aisle,” he added, shaking his head.

Praising Ladapo for “thinking outside the box” to combat the pandemic, DeSantis confirmed that he was mulling a leech mandate for Florida’s schools.

I really think that MTG is Louie Gohmert in drag. Prove me wrong.

Friday, January 21, 2022

Happy Friday

Word Is The Word! — Humor from Eli Burnstein in The New Yorker.

Bold and italics are the oils that grace my palette. Cut and paste the strings upon my lyre. Fonts, bullets, columns, indentations—these stubborn materials are no match for the alchemy with which I extract meaning and impose order. For I am proficient in Microsoft Word.

Many are the candidates who come touting their areas of expertise—beginner Spanish, ability to work well under pressure—but none compare to the fluency with which I insert links and align text, add comments and reply to the comments left by others.

When others navigate a .docx, they are like babes lost in the woods. Ask them to wrap text around an image and watch them get stuck in the advanced-layout brambles. Invite them to open an attachment in compatibility mode and watch them fall down a well of version-control despair.

From Windows 95 all the way to 365 Premium, Word has been my parent, my guide, and at times my lover on this journey we call life. My first Valentine’s Day card, for instance, I styled using WordArt, stretching and bevelling and drop-shadowing to new romantic heights. Spell-check and grammar-check carried me through my first book report, with Clippy cheerleading from the sidelines. And how do you think I made this pert little cover letter? By using a template—or, as I like to call it, one of Bill’s greatest hits.

Beyond my disquieting grasp of Word, I am also competent in the broader Microsoft Office suite. Excel’s boundless rectangles yield themselves to my whim as I sort columns and freeze rows like a rational demigod. PowerPoint drapes me in the confidence to tell my story, one majestic fade, wipe, and/or peel at a time. And Outlook I’ve used once or twice.

But only with Word can I claim “proficiency” in the sense of “skilled in doing something to a high degree,” a definition I found using Word’s Smart Lookup feature (which is powered by the world’s greatest search engine, Bing).

In short, I am proficient in Microsoft Word, and I offer my services to your company at your earliest convenience.

Word has made me the writer that I am today. I started out on my own from a Smith-Corona clone from Sears, graduated to a Smith-Corona electric, then a used IBM Selectric, and then AppleWorks on an Apple IIc. But then — ta da! — Microsoft Word. Spell Check and red wigglers, Clippie and photo insert. Templates and Print to PDF. Plays and novels and blog posts!

I’m writing the same old sentimental crap, but at least it looks good.

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Soap Opera

Humor from Nate Odenkirk in The New Yorker.

How dare you steal my tiny soaps and little mints?

My name is Cal Ganson, and I am the C.E.O. of Stayport Hotels. For years, you’ve been pilfering shampoos, conditioners, and body wash from Stayport Hotels bathrooms and senselessly gobbling mints placed squarely on our clean pillows.

There’s just one problem: those were my mini mints and my small soaps, and they were for me!

Who said you could take them? Nobody! I paid for every last one.

Some keep their assets in gold and silver. But I believed my money was safest in the two most secure commodities on the market: soaps and mints. And now it’s all gone. My entire fortune, my millions, down the drain or flushed away. I’m ruined!

It’s not even one of those “steal a mint to feed your family” situations, which I would understand. (In fact, it’s widely known that I give away a portion of my mints to the poor each year. They’d rather I donated my soaps, but it’s charity all the same.) No, all of you did this solely for the cheap thrill of petty theft.

And, when I say “all of you,” I mean every human has stolen from me! Your spouse? They’re guilty. My spouse? Amazingly, yes. The Dalai Lama? His Holiness has but three possessions: an alms bowl, a robe, and my lemon-chamomile conditioner—and he’s bald! Jesus Christ himself probably swiped my mints for an after-Supper snack. Talk about a betrayal!

How did it take me so long to find out, you ask? Some have said that I’m lazy and bad with money, and that the most basic due diligence on my part would have alerted me to the problem much, much sooner. Others might say my heart is simply so big that I could never conceive of such a vicious worldwide cabal plotting to rob me of my treasure. I’ll choose to believe that second group of people, as soon as they start saying it.

At the very least, answer me this: Did you enjoy my mints? Was the blast of spearmint so fresh, so cool, that it overpowered your taste for justice? And what about the soaps? You can work up as much of an ill-gotten lather as you want—the guilt will never wash off. Your stay with us was temporary; the shame lasts forever.

My father came to this country with nothing more than a toothbrush in his carry-on bag. (He forgot to pack his toiletries.) With grit and determination, he built an empire of mints and soaps—the American Dream. He never stole from anybody. Sure, he may have asked for some deodorant at the front desk that he didn’t really need, but who doesn’t do that? Yet now here I am. Mintless. Soap-starved. A total and complete laughingstock in my industry.

So today I’ll be checking out from my position as C.E.O., no later than 12:30 P.M. I refuse to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. You still want my soaps and mints? Fine. But they won’t be in Stayport Hotels suites anymore. You’ll have to come to my house and find them.

I’ll be waiting.

Yeah, but I’m not giving back the little coffee packets.

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Words Not To Live By

From The New Yorker’s Meghana Indurti and Asia Martin:

It’s that time of year again, when every department store, radio station, and hotel lobby is filled with Mariah Carey’s vocals. Although I am happy that the Black half of Mariah Carey is getting her coins, it can be grating. Yes, I do want a lot for Christmas, Mariah! In addition to wanting to never hear that song, I also want to stop hearing these five phrases that make me wish I could take my ears off and put them in my purse until the New Year.

1. “Are you seeing someone?”

Let’s see.

I am flirting with one person that I have no future with, because we’re both bored and need validation. I am leading on three different people in my D.M.s. I currently have fifty-four unanswered messages on Hinge, which I delete once a week to free up storage on my phone. I am still in love with my ex.

So, yeah, if you combine all of those, I am totally seeing someone.

2. “You’ve gained weight.”

Every year my family loves telling me information that I already know. Yeah, I was the one buying the food! I get it!

Maybe you could congratulate me on having a financially good-enough year that allowed me to order in so many meals. Maybe my new antidepressants think that I’d be happier if my booty gave me a round of applause whenever I took a walk. Or maybe you could just mind your own business, and instead worry about your creepy husband and why we have to wear “appropriate clothing” around a grown man.

3. “New rap music isn’t as good as the old stuff.”

If you don’t know how to find the beat, just say that! If you’re white and you want Black people to think you’re cool because you know about Wu-Tang, go chew on a pair of jeans, because we don’t care!

Listen, everything isn’t for everybody. That’s why there is such a vast array of music. I blast Young Thug and Luther Vandross and “Weird Al” Yankovic in my car. I get strange looks from people young and old, and guess what? I’m proud of it.

4. “I’m not vaccinated, but you still wanna come over?”

No, thanks. Actually, you don’t even deserve the “thanks.” No, I don’t wanna come over! I don’t want to be responsible for a new Teenage Mutant Ninja strain. And there is no relationship great enough or sex good enough to justify losing my sense of taste.

I know there are many reasons why people of color should be hesitant about taking anything the government endorses, especially since the vaccine radio ads that they’re using to target our communities are super weird. I think I heard one the other day that was, like, “We’re offering five hundred dollars and a pair of Jordans if you get the vax.” What is this? A back-to-school giveaway?

I got pricked in April, and the only side effect I’ve experienced so far is having to go into work.

5. “People are just too sensitive these days.”

Are they sensitive or tired of being the butt of your jokes? Are they sensitive or making fun of you for being dumb? Hmm . . . perhaps you’re the one who’s sensitive?

Maybe people are just more empowered to speak up about stuff that is wrong. I mean, not just morally wrong but factually wrong. Sometimes it helps to do a Google search before speaking.

Nobody asked you why you’re still holding on to that cul-de-sac of hairs around the edge of your head, so give other people a break.

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Skip The Hard Part

Humor from Andy Borowitz:

PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump will skip the 2024 campaign and go straight to claiming that he won, the former reality-show host has confirmed.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said that campaigning in 2024 would be “a waste of time, quite frankly, because I have already won that election.”

Asked how he could have won an election that is not scheduled to occur for another three years, he said, “People are saying that it already did happen. A lot of very smart people are calling me and saying that.”

Trump said that, although he already won the 2024 election, “there was fraud and corruption like you wouldn’t believe.”

“The 2024 election was so stolen it makes the 2020 election look not stolen,” he said. “The fact that I won in 2024 even though it was stolen from me is amazing, and, quite frankly, fantastic.”

Trump lashed out at a reporter who asked if he planned to run yet again in 2028. “I already won in 2028,” he said. “That’s a stupid question and you’re a disgrace.”

Not that funny.

Monday, May 10, 2021

A Little Night Music

Friday, April 30, 2021

Happy Friday

Time Out, MTG — Andy Borowitz.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene lambasted President Biden’s proposal for free preschool by declaring, “I refuse to go.”

Speaking to reporters, the Georgia congresswoman called preschool “just another form of mind control” and said that she would rather “hold my breath until I turn blue” than attend such a school.

“Joe Biden would like nothing better than to see me sitting on a colorful rug, singing, ‘Do you know what time it is?’ ” she said. “I’ll tell you what time it is. It’s time for him and George Soros to stop thinking that I’m going to preschool, because I’m not, and no one can make me.”

Greene also said that she had “serious concerns” about the indoctrination she would have received had she gone to preschool, as Biden wished.

“Sorry, Joe Biden, but the wheels on the bus do not go round and round, all through the town,” she said. “That’s a hoax.”

Friday Catblogging.

Friday, April 23, 2021

Happy Friday

Cutting Carlson Emissions — Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what might be the boldest initiative of his Presidency, Joe Biden announced that he would strive to cut Carlson emissions by as much as ninety per cent by 2025.

Underscoring the urgency of his proposal, Biden observed that Carlson emissions, even when compared to other notorious polluters like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, were especially toxic.

The President’s ambitious plan, which includes retrofitting the nation’s televisions to automatically change the channel when Carlson appears, is unlikely to garner Republican support, but Biden remained undaunted.

“We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do this,” he said.

Friday Catblogging: “Is that chicken?”

Friday, April 9, 2021

Happy Friday

Friday Catblogging: Behold the boneless cat.

This is what’s known as passive solar collecting.

Humor from Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Mitch McConnell urged the nation’s largest corporations to follow his example and not get involved in governing the country.

Speaking to reporters, the Senate Minority Leader said that he “could have easily used my position over the years to make the country a better place, but I have wisely resisted that temptation.”

“Whether it was giving Americans affordable health care or passing stronger gun laws, I have been careful not to influence the government to accomplish things,” he said. “I wish corporations would follow my lead.”

He urged the C.E.O.s of major companies to spend a day with him in Washington to “see how getting nothing done is done.”

McConnell cut short his remarks to reporters, saying that he had to return to his office to get to work on not improving the country’s infrastructure.

It’s funny because it’s true.

Friday, March 26, 2021

Happy Friday

Humor from Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it a “scandal bigger than Watergate,” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused President Biden of “thoroughly faking mental sharpness” for more than an hour during his press conference on Thursday.

“Doing everything he could to give the appearance of mental acuity, he answered questions in detail, stayed on point, and uttered suspiciously complete sentences,” Carlson alleged. “I’ve seen some shameless stunts in my time, but this one takes the cake.”

Carlson said that Biden’s “desperate charade” extended to “accomplishing concrete things to make himself seem competent.”

“When he said that he would double the number of vaccinations in his first hundred days, my jaw dropped,” he said. “President Trump would never have tried to pull something like that.”

Friday Catblogging: Sombra shows off her retro tailfins.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Happy Friday

Humor from Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Sharing helpful health tips with the American people, Senator Rand Paul said on Wednesday that the secret to social distancing is making everyone despise you.

“People get all worried about whether other people are staying six feet away from them,” Paul said. “The trick is, if you act like a total jerkwad, people will stay much farther away from you than that.”

Paul also questioned whether wearing a mask protects someone as well as saying incredibly asinine things does.

“Airborne droplets can spread by people talking to each other,” Paul said. “If no one ever wants to talk to you, problem solved.”

He urged places of business in his home state of Kentucky to reopen as soon as possible, a process that he volunteered to help safely facilitate. “If you reopen your restaurant and it gets too crowded, I will walk through the door and immediately clear it out,” he said.

Works for me, but even with the mask I’d stay away from him.

Friday Catblogging: Duck, Sombra.