According to Kristi Noem—Department of Homeland Security Secretary and world-renowned Puppy Killer—Renee Good was a “domestic terrorist” who “weaponized” her vehicle and deserved to get shot, but don’t forget Kristi also thinks her puppy was just asking for it.

According to people who aren’t batshit crazy, Renee Good was a protester who tried to drive her Honda Pilot away from the scene of confrontation with ICE agents and one of the agents was telling her to leave and the other agent was telling her to stay and when Rene tried to leave, one of the agents shot her.

Sounds like a confusing situation that the ICE agents made worse and here’s a piece from USA Today that says Trump wants to deport 1 million people annually, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t have enough officers to do that so they’re frantically recruiting and lowering their standards to make sure they have enough heavily-armed and lightly-trained agents roaming our landscape:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/12/03/ice-hiring-border-patrol-jobs-immigration-agents/87483770007/

Google “did Rene Good threaten ice agents” and Google says there are conflicting stories:

• The federal government says yes.

• Eye witnesses say no.

So on one side you’ve got a group of people who you absolutely know for sure will lie to us and do it every day and on the other side you’ve got a bunch of people who are saying the government is lying to us once again. Either way I felt OK about calling the government and its minions ICE cold because they don’t seem overly upset about shooting an unarmed citizen and then blaming her for getting shot.

And while they’re at it, the government is redefining some words to justify their actions and you might want to write these down because they might come up again. From here on in:

Driving = Weaponizing

Protester = Domestic Terrorist

Later, I’m going to weaponize my vehicle to the grocery store and since I disagree with the Trump Administration and their Gestapo tactics I must be a domestic terrorist.

Let’s hope I make it there and back without getting shot by an 18-year-old ICE agent (that’s right, they’re taking them at 18 now) whose ideas about law enforcement are based on Grand Theft Auto.

In yet another of those “this stuff just writes itself/through the looking glass” incidents that are happening with increasing frequency: the Kansas City Star had a story about Rene Good getting shot by an ICE agent on the front page and on page 6A there was a story about Donald Trump threatening the leaders of Iraq with dire consequences if they used violence to stop Iranian protesters.

Either:

• The Trump administration has its head so far up its own ass they can’t see the hypocrisy…

• The Trump administration thinks we have our heads so far up or own ass we can’t see the hypocrisy…

• The Trump administration doesn’t give a flying fuck what we think.

I’m guessing this is a combo meal and it’s a little bit of all three depending on who you ask and what day it is.

And Now, Let’s Talk History

• When James K. Polk needed an excuse to invade Mexico in 1846, he sent U.S. troops into a disputed area, provoked a skirmish, then claimed Mexico had invaded U.S. territory and “shed American blood on American soil.” That started the Mexican-American War and we took more than half of Mexico’s territory, including California, Arizona and New Mexico.

• When Woodrow Wilson needed an excuse to invade Haiti in 1915, he claimed we needed to restore political and economic stability after the assassination of their president—Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam—and forgot to mention U.S. banks wanted control over Haitian revenues.

• When Adolf Hitler needed an excuse to invade Poland in 1939, he used the Gleiwitz Incident; a staged attack on a German radio station by Nazis disguised as Poles, claimed Poland was the aggressor and Germany needed to invade Poland to protect itself.

• When Joseph Stalin needed an excuse to invade Finland in 1939, he ordered the shelling of a Russian village (the Mainila Incident) and blamed Finland.

• When George W. Bush needed an excuse to invade Iraq in 2003, he claimed Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

• When Vladimir Putin needed an excuse to invade Ukraine in 2022, he claimed Russians in the Donbas (a region in Ukraine) were facing genocide and Russia needed to invade to protect fellow Russians.

So it’s right there in your Imperialistic Megalomaniac’s Handbook: when you want to do something decent folk will frown on, you claim things are out of control and you need to step in and restore order or someone else started a fight and you’re just protecting yourself.

Recent events indicate not much has changed…

Without evidence, the Trump Administration has claimed the Chinese and/or Russians are about to take over Greenland (the Chinese called bullshit, the Russians appear to have their hands full taking over Ukraine) which means we need to take Greenland first.

The Trump Administration also claimed the five states depicted (they just happen to be run by Democrats) were granting child-care benefits to people in the country illegally so the Trump Administration cut off child-care funds because if a few kids suffer, they don’t really give a damn.

That’s what led to the cartoon you just looked at.

And don’t be surprised if in the very near future you hear the moose of Canada are getting kind of uppity and holding secret meetings and planning on attacking a Labatt’s brewery and holding Celine Dion hostage, which means we need to invade Saskatchewan ASAP and if want to hear something really unbelievable, I just spelled Saskatchewan right without looking it up.

Today’s Lesson

One of the problems with surrounding yourself with a bunch of ass-kissing sycophants, is they keep telling you all your ideas are terrific and pretty soon you start believing all your ideas are terrific (everybody says so) and you might make the mistake of sharing some of you terrific ideas with people who aren’t ass-kissing sycophants.

That appears to have happened to Donald Trump when he recently gave an interview to the New York Times.

The Times asked Trump if there was anything that could stop or limit him and Trump didn’t mention international treaties, Congress, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Constitution, the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule or the Boy Scout Handbook. Trump said the only thing that could stop him was:

“My own morality.”

Which means we’re all on some pretty thin ice because, as I point out in the above cartoon, there’s not much evidence Trump has any.

And Now What Might Be an Ill-Advised Rant, But It’s Kinda What I Do

I owe a great deal to the Kansas City Star; they brought me to KC in 1981 and employed me off and mostly on for the next 36 years and that “off” part refers to a bad week in 2008 when they fired me (technically, I was “laid off” but as I later told the publisher, I really felt “fired”) for about a week. But then the Star brought me back at a much-reduced salary, which was still a much better deal than stocking shelves at my local grocery store which, when your main job skill is drawing funny pictures while making smartass remarks, was the only other employment possibility on my very limited horizon.

And when they “fired/laid me off” the second time (that one took) I publicly thanked them for the years of employment and encouraged people to support the Kansas City Star because I thought and think newspapers are incredibly important and nothing in the past eight years has changed my mind.

For decades newspapers have driven the information engine and now more than ever we need accurate information from trusted sources and here’s how I decide who to trust: if someone gets caught lying, making shit up and providing inaccurate information, do they get fired or become Secretary of Health and Human Services?

I’ve been a Star subscriber since 1981 and plan on being one for the foreseeable future.

Having said all that…

In the past few years the Kansas City Star seems somewhat-obsessed with restaurant openings and closings (turns out every restaurant that closes was “beloved”) and maybe people really want to read about a new Chick-fil-A or maybe it’s because restaurants are easy to cover and you can just rewrite press releases and the Star’s got way fewer reporters than they used to.

I get all that, but the Sunday paper’s front page story was:

“ON THE WAY: 30 new restaurants we’re looking forward to in 2026”

And the story about the President of the United States announcing the Constitution doesn’t apply to him was on 10A.

Newspapers are important to democracy; restaurant guides aren’t.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/

In this age of Instant Miscommunication I’m getting a lot of emails about offers that are about to expire and discounts way too good to pass up and these emails also warn that I’m going to lose out on these incredible offers and discounts if I don’t act fast.

The following essay is about the people who email me offers and today we’ll start with…

The AARP

According to the AARP, by not causing a 20-car pile-up on I-70 or running my car through the back wall of my garage or attempting to jump the Snake River Canyon in my 4-cylinder 2011 Toyota Matrix, I have earned a Smart Driver Insurance Discount of 26%, but I have to act quickly to get the discount, which seems pretty impetuous for someone with my well-deserved reputation for cautious behavior.

In the AARP fine print (always check the fine print, just ask every Black blues artist who ever signed a recording contract) it says I have to take an online driving course to get my 26% discount which pisses me off because just like Dustin Hoffman, I’m an excellent driver:

Unfortunately for the AARP, it turns out I’ll gladly pay 26% more for my car insurance to avoid taking an online driving course.

A lot of these offers assume your time and effort isn’t worth anything and the AARP Gullible Driver course takes 4-to-8 hours depending on how many Irish coffees you drink while taking it and in 4-to-8 hours I’m good for at least two with a 20-minute nap in-between.

BTW: People who allow insurance companies to put a device in their car that monitors their driving so they can get a Safe Driver Discount often find their insurance rates go up because that monitoring device is a goddamn stool pigeon and reports all those close calls we have that nobody else knows about.

Which reminds me…

My elderly mother once bragged that she’d never had an accident and did it immediately after entering Highway 50 going approximately 32 miles an hour and people behind us were locking up their brakes left and right, trying to avoid rear-ending my mom, at which point I asked:

“So you’ve never had an accident, but how many have you caused?”

Southwest Airlines

Because I’m such a good customer, I’m now being offered “30% OFF THAT DREAM TRIP!”

But in teeny tiny type it says “Up to” before “30% OFF” and “base fares” after “30% OFF” so I look up “base fares” and turns out it means you get no choice where you sit even though Southwest has started assigning seats. You also board last so you’re definitely going to have to climb over somebody to get to that shitty middle seat between a 350-pound woman and an Albanian goat herder who showers once a year whether he needs it or not and if you say fuck this and the email it rode in on and cancel your DREAM TRIP, that 30% off ticket is nonrefundable.

But you do get credit for yet another shitty middle seat if you cancel at least 10 minutes before departure which you might think about doing when you find out you’re being assigned a seat between a Louis Vuitton suitcase and a Walmart duffle bag in the luggage compartment.

Also, on base fare flights, Southwest—whose big selling point was “two bags fly free, so bring your wife and her mother”—is charging $35 for the first bag and $45 for the second bag and you have to use your flight credit within six months.

Southwest advises that their base fare is best for travelers who don’t check bags and travel light and tend to show up at the airport wearing nothing but flip flops and a Speedo.

Opendoor

So I’m out in California dealing with my mom and her ever-increasing load of bullshit and talk to my brother about her house and what we’ll do with it once she’s gone. (We’ve been wondering about that for the last two decades and all indications are that we’ll go first.) Bottom line: the lot is valuable, but the house isn’t.

Picture trying to sell that mansion after the Beverly Hillbillies lived there: “Let me get this straight: you let goats swim in the cement pond?”

Being a curious guy in every way imaginable, I go on one of those sites that tell you what your house is worth, but they want way way too much information like “Have any Satanic Rites been conducted on the premises?” so I say to hell with this because nobody needs to know exactly how many Virgin Sacrifices I’ve been involved in.

(In my case the answer is one when an older high school girl made a sacrifice and took my virginity. Way more memorable for me than her, although I hope she looks back on those 32 seconds fondly.)

Anyway…

The Opendoor house people keep sending me “new offers” on my mom’s house and I’m guessing they haven’t actually been inside my mom’s house because the offer that would make the most sense would include being over-insured and arson.

True Story:

I’m staying at my mom’s house and in the middle of the night there’s a resounding BOOM and turns out a guy living about 10 miles away decided to burn down his house for the insurance.

Having a poor grasp of science…

He takes his family to Santa Cruz for a “vacation” and gets up in the middle of the night and drives back to his house, soaks the rugs with gasoline and now his house if filled with gas fumes and Mr. Everything I Know Comes From Bad Movies lights a match: his house explodes and he does too.

But every cloud has a silver lining and now I know me and my brother need to come up with a different plan for my mom’s house because that “vacation in Santa Cruz” alibi was looking like a good option.

Uber Eats

They’re offering me $15 off my first two food orders which means unless I can think of two meals that cost $7.50 each, the Uber offer will cost me money and last time I want to Taco Bell I thought I mistakenly ordered Peasant Under Glass and Half-baked Alaska because the bill came close to $40 for two people. (On the other hand, I ordered enough food for three people, but let’s not quibble about unnecessarily accurate details that fuck up a good anecdote.)

Anyway…

Didn’t Taco Bell used to be the cheap fast food you ordered on the way home after one-too-many tequila shots?

Which is an accurate description because generally speaking, one is too many and you know your evening has crossed the line into alcoholic debauchery when someone says “Let’s do tequila shots!” and you think it’s a great idea.

OK, just realized I have revealed that when I was young and foolish (and I’m only one of those things now) I’d go out drinking and then drive home aided by a metric shit-ton of Taco Bell carbohydrates because we thought “It will suck up the alcohol” and I’ll thank you not to repeat this story because if the AARP hears about it I’m going to lose my Smart Driver Discount.

Budget Car Rental

Two rules for my yearly visits to California:

1. Stay in a hotel so when I feel like I’ve had my daily dose of craziness I can get up and leave.

2. Rent a car so I have something to leave in.

Ignore these rules and you wind up sleeping on someone’s couch, 72% of which appears to be made of cat hair and when you’re ready to get the fuck out of Dodge you have to wait on someone else.

For example:

My mom has been trying to save what’s left of my soul since grade school and she won’t shut the fuck up about her version of heaven and hell even though I’ve repeatedly pointed out I don’t ask her to go drinking with me, so she shouldn’t ask me to go to church with her, although these days she never leaves the house so now she gives her long-winded sermons from the dining room table.

On a recent trip I said I’d stay and talk with her until she said the word “Jesus” and on that occasion she made it an hour and when she finally couldn’t bear not talking about her favorite subject—her, and how much God loves her—and said “As Jesus says…” I stood up and said, mom, you made it for 60 minutes, I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll try for 61.

An awesome exit line as long as you have a rental car to leave in.

Anyway…

Budget is offering me a free upgrade if I’ll book right now this minute and that includes SUVs, but the last thing I want is an SUV because they have way too many seats and now I’ll be nominated to drive everywhere and give everyone a ride and now that I think about it, next time I’m in California I’m going to see if Budget rents Vespas.

True Story:

So I’m in LA to see my son and it’s raining so hard animals are walking two-by-two down Hollywood Boulevard and the Budget rent-a-car guy says all they have left is a giant-ass pickup, the kind with four doors and more accessories than Inspector Gadget, which I foolishly think is a good deal…

Right up until I try to park it.

The thing was longer than the Queen Mary and after a day of trying to squeeze into parking spots designed for those aforementioned Vespas, I parked it at my hotel and took Ubers everywhere.

Budget giveth and Budget taketh away.

That’s from the Book of Job (man, there’s a guy with a bone to pick with the Almighty) and I know that because my mom told me before I could make it to my rental car.

Clark’s Shoes

So I buy a pair of Clark’s desert boots because I wanted something in-between sneakers and dress shoes and the lady in the store says their printer’s busted, but she can send me my receipt by email and being a fucking idiot I give it to her.

Now I receive a constant barrage of offers for shoes I either:

A. Already have and…

B. Don’t want.

Which brings us to:

Today’s Lesson

I usually delete these promotional emails, but knowing I was going to write this rant I’ve been letting them build up and I currently also have offers and sales pitches from:

Blick Art Supplies, Mission Liquors, Tiki Taco, Meddy’s Mediterranean Restaurant, Hilton Hotels, Stripe (the people who handle the money for Substack blogs), CNN, the Associated Press, Etsy, Samsung, Best Western, the Kansas City Royals, Peacock, Wyndham Resorts, Expedia, Optum, Starlink, HelloFresh, Vanguard, Commerce Bank and Lululemon even though I haven’t bought a pair of yoga workout pants in years because they make my ass look big.

(Actually, people’s asses make yoga pants look small, but if you point that out don’t expect anyone to thank you.)

Anyway…

As you may have already noticed, everyone wants your email address and restaurants urge you to order online to get it and I once bought a pair of windshield wipers in an auto parts store and the guy asked for my email address. So I asked why do you need my email address to sell me windshield wipers and he said so we can send you offers and discounts.

No thanks, my email’s Standing Room Only already.

So Today’s Lesson is be cautious and stop giving out your email address willy-nilly (a phrase I’ve never used before and hope to never use again) because giving out your email address is like leaving a window open in a bad neighborhood; next thing you know your den is party central for a bunch of sketchy salesman.

Businesses want your email address so they can try to sell you shit for the rest of your life and, if my mom is right, possibly beyond.

P.S.

If you enjoyed this article and found it entertaining and/or useful, be sure to recommend my blog to your friends and if they act now they can get these essays at a 100% discount, but they’ll have to take a Safe Readers Course and bring their own Irish Coffees and if they decide my blog is not for them and cancel within the next 10 minutes, get credit for another blog they don’t like…

But I’m going to need their email address.

Under the heading “some of these things write themselves”…

Donald Trump has repeatedly and insistently whined about not winning a Nobel Peace Prize because in his opinion it’s not given out fairly and the Democrats probably rigged the voting machines and I can’t believe Trump hasn’t told his followers to “fight like hell” to get him a Peace Prize.

But when “experts” were asked if Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, they laughed so hard chocolate milk came out their noses, even though they weren’t drinking any at the time. As the experts pointed out in the following article, Trump has:

• Withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization

• Withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord

• Threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO

• Started a trade war with friends and allies

• Threatened to take Greenland from Denmark

• Suggested using economic force to pressure Canada into becoming our 51^st state

• And violated international law by attacking boats suspected of drug running.

On the other hand…

Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize during the middle of the Vietnam War so apparently committing war crimes doesn’t automatically disqualify you.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/10/09/nobel-peace-prize-trump/86439187007/

Meanwhile…

Being aware that Trump has whined like a six-year-old who doesn’t understand why he doesn’t get presents on his eight-year-old brother’s birthday, FIFA (the soccer organization that was involved in bribery, fraud and money laundering) decided to create their very own Peace Prize and give it to Trump.

The FIFA Peace Prize has all the validity of a “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee cup, with none of the sincerity.

Nevertheless…

Trump called it “one of the great honors of my life” ranking somewhere behind getting away with grabbing women by the vagina and being convicted of 34 felonies, serving no jail time, paying no fines and not being on probation.

OK, so there’s fact Number One.

Then Mr. Peace Prize invades Venezuela, abducts their president and if you’re wondering “Is that legal?” here’s an article quoting international law experts who say probably not because it violates article 2(4) of the UN charter which says states must refrain from using force against other countries and respect their sovereignty.

The article also says Trump is likely to argue that drug traffickers threaten the United States and the problem with that argument is there isn’t any clear evidence that the drug traffickers were from Venezuela or that President Maduro controlled them if they were.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/is-there-any-legal-justification-for-the-us-attack-on-venezuela-trump-maduro

And while we’re at the intersection of War Crime Boulevard and Bull Shit Way, don’t forget Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras, who had been convicted in 2024 of conspiring to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

As I believe we’ve already established: Donald Trump thinks he can do whatever he wants and so far he’s been pretty much right because nobody here in the U.S. wants to stand up to him.

We’re about to find out if the rest of the world is just as intimidated.

After invading their country and abducting their president, Trump announced we would “run” Venezuela and let’s hope that goes better there than it has here because, according to a variety of articles on the internet, the United States ranks:

• Near the bottom or last in healthcare when compared to other high-income countries.

• Somewhere between 36^th and 125^th when it comes to literacy.

• 22^nd in quality of life.

• 30^th in life expectancy.

• Between 18^th and 30^th in IQ.

• 33^rd or 34^th (out of 38 countries) in infant mortality.

• 24^th when it comes to overall “happiness.”

• Between 8^th and 14^th in GDP per capita which is somewhat surprising because GDP stands for “Gross Domestic Product” and right now our Domestic Product is pretty fucking Gross.

On the other hand, I believe we’re Number One when it comes to bragging just how awesome we are.

And now Trump is talking about other countries we might want to take over and Denmark is saying if Trump takes over Greenland it will end NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which includes 32 countries committed to collective defense and security. Once again, according to the internet; while NATO has its problems, it’s largely worked. Here’s an article from our own newly-and-poorly named Department of War that says NATO’s worth is “unquestionable” and you might want to read it now because once Trump gets done building his ballroom and putting infantile captions under the other presidents’ pictures, he’s probably going to delete this essay:

https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3825855/us-officials-agree-natos-worth-is-unquestionable/#

So here’s the headline from last Tuesday’s Kansas City Star:

• “A diminished Congress weighs whether to reassert its power”

Which is lot like reading a headline that says:

• “Doctors weigh whether to treat sick people”

Or…

• “Ballplayers weigh whether to hit baseballs”

Or…

• “Porn stars weigh whether to have sex for money”

It’s pretty much what those people do and the reason for their employment and the fact that Congress isn’t totally sure whether they should use their power means these “people” (a collective noun which might be giving them too much credit) have completely lost their way and forgotten why they were sent to Washington, D.C. in the first place.

Apparently, once your liver gets used to all the mandatory cocktail parties, you start thinking cocktail parties and banging interns is why you’re in Washington and you’ll do anything to keep from going back home to some two-horse town and dealing with your boring family and unsuccessful law practice.

And Congressmen (and/or women) being deathly afraid to rock their own political boat is how Donald Trump got away with renaming the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, withholding funds Congress had approved, tearing down a big chunk of the White House, enacting tariffs, imprisoning and killing people without trials, invading Venezuela and abducting its president.

Y’know, Congress used to think it should get involved in this kind of thing, but these limp dicks are now debating whether that’s their role and now I’m fucked because I can’t think of a female equivalent of “limp dicks” that isn’t highly sexist and at least somewhat disgusting.

Anyway…

A Republican—Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb)—recently suggested maybe it would be better for Trump and everybody else if the Congressional Republicans pushed back even a teeny tiny bit because as it stands Trump has surrounded himself with a bunch of ass kissers who tell him all his ideas are terrific and we should go ahead and invade Ottawa and force the Canadian Mounted Police to sing “The Lumberjack Song” at Carnegie Hall while Trump and the rest of his Brownshirts sit in the balcony and shoot them in the crotch with BB guns.

Just in case you don’t get that last reference, here’s “The Lumberjack Song” as performed by Monty Python and friends. Enjoy the next two minutes and forty seconds:

If you’re thinking Rep. Don Bacon (and if his nickname isn’t “Bring Home The” he missed a great campaign opportunity) is just the kind of guy we need in Washington because he’s talking sense, the only reason Don feels free to talk sense is he’s not running for reelection.

Meanwhile…

The Republicans who are running for reelection have tried to sell the idea that Congress hasn’t been weakened, it has actually successfully carried out the president’s agenda, which is a lot like trying to take partial credit for the Roman Empire because you let Augustus Caesar sodomize you.

Today’s Lesson

Maya Angelou famously said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

We should have seen this coming.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/

So here’s the deal: I normally try to post twice a week and most weeks that’s a snap because Donald Trump is a hyper-active 79-year-old with the brain of a chicken, but some weeks he chugs a six-pack of Red Bull and puts it into Warp Speed and I can’t draw the cartoons fast enough. And now that we’ve started invading countries and taking their oil, I’ve got my hands full.

Fact two: when I started this blog in 2019 I had very few readers and some of the early posts had single-digit readership and even if you were one of the nine people who read one of those early essays, I’ve edited and updated them and added new jokes. Here’s an early one about my lack of attention and focus and how it’s all your fault and while you read this essay I’ll get started on a new one about our impending invasion of Nova Scotia.

And awaaay we go…

They say confession is good for the soul and I’m currently hoping the same is true of page views.

So here it is:

I confess, if we’ve never met before, there’s a very good chance you haven’t even finished telling me your name before I’ve already forgotten it. By the time we finish shaking hands, I’m thinking: “What was this dude’s name again?”

I’ve spent an entire lifetime feeling bad about my lack of attention, but I’m entering a new phase of my dwindling time here on Earth in which I’ve decided to blame others for my faults and I gotta say it’s working out pretty well for me.

If I don’t remember your name I’m now blaming you for not being interesting.

If you tell me your name, followed by, “I sell life insurance” you’ve got no shot of me remembering your name. If you tell me your name followed by, “I’m the Ultimate Fighting Middleweight Champion” or “I pay the bills by robbing convenience stores” or “I just set a record for porn videos produced in a single week” I’ll probably ask for your name one more time and commit it to memory.

Bottom line: it’s up to you to hold my interest.

If you start telling me about your trip to the dentist, you lost me, I’m going on a mental vacation. But if you say, “And then we decided to pick the next VP of Sales with a Philippine Stick Fighting tournament” I’m all ears.

And yes, that’s an actual thing and now that I think about it, a lot of corporate decisions should be made using this method:

You might lose an assistant manager or two, but what the fuck, we have way too many of those anyway and the employees down the totem pole would enjoy themselves immensely watching Bob from marketing, who has always been kind of a dick, get the living shit beat out of him.

So if you’re thinking of ways to improve your office morale, I think you now have the answer.

Paying Attention for Others

Now that I’ve confessed I don’t really listen for myself, people who expect me to listen for them are clearly going to be disappointed. I cannot have a phone conversation or visit with friends without getting a grilling about the questions I should have asked, but didn’t.

I recently had a couple beers with some ex-baseball teammates and when I returned home was asked about their current jobs, if they were still married to the same women and what their kids were up to.

Which made me think: they have kids?

Just in case it hasn’t occurred to you previously, there are differences between men and women and most men are never going to come back with all the information women seem to require:

“Well, Timmy got married to that dental hygienist and they moved to Denver, but didn’t like the suburbs so they moved downtown into a condo and went through a rough patch so they saw a therapist and things seem to be better now, although Timmy doesn’t like his job and wants to move up in the corporation so he’s currently studying Philippine stick fighting.”

OK, actually I would remember the shit about Philippine stick fighting and would also fly to Denver to see Timmy’s next job interview.

But that’s an exceptional case.

The above picture is from The Princess Bride and in this scene Westley is being tortured because Christopher Guest wants to know if Steve and Melinda’s daughter got into Yale or had to settle for her second choice; DeVry University’s School of Tattoo Artistry.

Most of the time I think if someone wants to know this stuff, then they ought to meet those people and bring along bamboo shoots to stick under their victim’s fingernails until they get all the information they require and I have three solid arguments to support my position:

1. Not my job…

2. Don’t know…

3. Don’t care.

Now if you want to know about the time me and my baseball buddies were taking batting practice and someone fouled a ball off into the crowd and we all scattered and one of my teammates jumped up and said, “that almost hit me in the dick” and another teammate jumped up and said, “that almost hit me in the face” and we all laughed our asses off, I got you covered.

(BTW: At the end of every season we held a Kangaroo Court and fined players 25 cents for goofy things they did or said and both these players got fined 25 cents for having a dick and a face in the same vicinity, which I’m generally not opposed to, as long as you can control yourself and wait until we finish batting practice.)

Where Creativity Comes From

I often get asked where I get my ideas and from whence my creativity springs and I think I gotta 50-50 shot that I used “from whence” correctly and now I’m thinking maybe I didn’t need the “from” but I’ll throw it in for free, so don’t say I never did anything for you.

Well, since I just pretended you asked: at least some of my ideas come to me when I’m standing there pretending to listen to you.

I’m guessing Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were much the same, so odds are they were lousy at cocktail parties because they were mentally preoccupied with inventing the light bulb and iPhone. (Jesus, that first light bulb was fucking huge wasn’t it? Must have been a pain in the ass finding a socket for it.)

Put it that way and I gotta say you seem pretty selfish if you’d rather Tom and Al remembered your name and the rest of us spent our life cursing the darkness and communicating by carrier pigeon, which as I seem to remember are extinct so we’d all really be shit out of luck.

Is that what you want?

Geez, the self-centeredness of some people. (See? This blaming-others-for-my-bullshit thing is working great, but if you decide to use it yourself, I expect royalties.)

So in conclusion, if you ever enjoyed one of my cartoons or anything I’ve written you should be glad I’m not paying attention because there’s an excellent chance those things were created for one simple reason…

You lost me.  

Every year millions of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions they fail to keep and in the past I’ve been one of those millions, but I’ve failed often enough to realize I’m flogging a dead gelding, so this year I’m going to—at long last—wise up and make some New Year’s Resolutions I know I can keep.

And we’ll start with…

Get Less Exercise

My mom just turned 100 years old this summer and when my doctor heard that and asked: “Does she have a special diet?”

I responded: “Is bacon a special diet?”

Because my mom has never eaten anything remotely healthy or gotten any exercise on purpose, with the possible exception of doing the jitterbug in the 1940s, which makes me think this whole longevity crapshoot has a lot more to do with genetics than eating food that has less flavor than the cardboard box it came in.

When someone (and I forget who because my memory’s going, probably because I haven’t eaten enough bacon) was asked about longevity, he said all he knew is Paul Hornung was still alive (at that time) and Jim Fixx was dead (at that time and probably still is).

Just in case you don’t know…

Paul Hornung (nickname: “The Golden Boy”) was a former Norte Dame and Green Bay Packer halfback, quarterback and kicker, who gambled, got suspended by the NFL for it (these days he’d be doing promos for Draft Kings) served in the Army, got weekend passes so he could play in the NFL on Sundays (which let’s face it, is fucking awesome) was sued by the IRS, smoked, drank and partied like it was 1899 and still made it to the enviable age of 84.

Jim Fixx was a guy who made a living promoting the health benefits of jogging and died at 52—while jogging.

P.S. Just looked it up and Hornung eventually developed dementia, possibly from getting hit repeatedly in the head while playing football, so there’s yet another reason to avoid exercise.

Eat Worse

As you get older you can’t enjoy the same things you enjoyed when you were young—like waking up with an erection you could use to split kindling—but one thing just keeps getting better and better and that’s food.

Face it, we’re all going to die of something and if we can’t pull off a Nelson Rockefeller (Nelson died from a heart attack at 71 while alone with his “young assistant” Megan Marshak, who didn’t call for help for nearly an hour, possibly because putting pants back on a dead guy is harder than we think) we might as well die from too many servings of Rocky Road ice cream or Meat Lover’s pizza.

As someone—and it might have been me—pointed out: eating right might not make you live longer, but it will definitely make it seem longer.

Gain Weight

If you follow my example and eat whatever you want and avoid exercise, you’re going to gain weight, but if you live long enough, people no longer want to have sex with you anyway so that’s not a problem, but if you should still get lucky in your twilight Fat Elvis years, just remember:

God created nighttime for a reason.

(Man also created God for a reason, but that’s a different essay.)

A young man wrote Ben Franklin and said he was considering marrying an older woman who had a shit ton of money, so he’d be set for life, but the young man was worried about sexual attraction as she aged, so Ben (who was a lifelong horndog) wrote back:

“All cats are gray in the dark.”

So instead of watching what you eat, exercising and making yourself miserable, get yourself a good set of curtains.

Use Profanity

Some people are offended by the use of profanity and get the vapors when they hear (or read) some and for a while I decided to curb my language, but then decided the offended people had a large stick up their ass and said: “Fuck it.”

Life’s tough: get a helmet.

Spend More Money

Through no fault of my own (because I don’t pay attention and buy whatever I want and I think the key to this profligate lifestyle is mostly wanting cheap shit) I have managed to save some money, but don’t plan on leaving any to my kids.

I mean when does this fatherhood shit end?

My kids lived off me while I was alive, do they still get to live off me when I’m dead?

One of my brothers (a chain-smoker who drove a propane truck, so long-range planning might not be his best thing) once remarked that he wasn’t going to buy life insurance because he wanted everyone to be really sad at his funeral and the somber mood might be disrupted by his kids jumping up and down at the back of the church yelling:

“WE’RE RICH, BITCH!”

My mother’s parenting has been compared unfavorably to the behavior of wolves (just looked it up and wolves don’t eat their young, but don’t mind eating yours) and my mom once told me that during my childhood I seemed to be doing OK so she mostly ignored me. I immediately thanked her for my insecurity complex and lifelong need for attention.

Having said that…

I did learn to take care of myself because it was abundantly clear nobody else was going to. So after decades of free pizzas—picked up, paid for and delivered by me—if my kids have to start buying their own pizzas after my demise, I’m pretty much OK with that.

On my last day on this earth, I hope to write a check that bounces.

Now also seems like an ideal time to take out loans I won’t be around to repay and they could try to collect from my kids, but my kids will inform the bank that I didn’t leave them any money and, by the way, could they borrow enough to buy a large pepperoni pizza and would the bank’s loan officer mind picking it up and bringing it back to whatever rent-due apartment they’re currently living in, because even though they’re middle-aged, they have no idea how to do any of that.

Start Bad Habits

If you think about it—and I just did—your Golden Years are an ideal time to start bad habits like smoking or drinking because you’re not going to live long enough for those bad habits to kill you. (You’re going to die from all those Meat Lover pizzas I advised you to eat 20 paragraphs ago.) And if you decide it’s also a good time to try heroin and you screw up and die from an overdose, no complaints:

After three score and ten we’re all playing with house money.

Refuse to Learn Anything New

As I enter the Home Stretch of Life, my brain is already full of mostly useless facts so it’s Standing Room Only in my cerebral cortex and apparently any new fact I learn pushes an old fact out the back door, which is why I suddenly can’t remember where I left my car keys or when my dental appointment is or precisely how many pizza-addicted children I have.

And you don’t get to choose which Old Fact you’re going to throw overboard, so learning New Facts is always a gamble and anytime you forget to do something, blame whoever (maybe that should “whomever” but I forget the rule because I learned that new fact about wolves) forced you to learn something new.

“Fine, I’ll pick a half-gallon of skim milk on my way home, but don’t expect me to remember to pick up the kids after school.”

Make Fewer Friends

People, as you may have noticed, are often a disappointment (just ask any of my friends) and it can take decades for them to reveal the flaws they’ve been hiding and I marvel at those lonely souls who turn to online dating in their Golden Years because they’re not going to live long enough to figure out exactly how batshit crazy their new boy/girlfriend is.

On the other hand; going online might help you find someone who is batshit crazy in the same way you are, which explains this photo from San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair:

If you’ve always wanted to drag someone’s ass around San Francisco while wearing nothing but a leather corset and you manage to find someone who always wanted someone to drag their ass around San Francisco while you wear nothing but a leather corset, I’m happy for both of you.

Barring that kind of freaky-deaky luck…

In my personal opinion, when the lights go out, if you’ve got enough Old Friends you can still count on to carry your coffin, you did OK. (You’re going to need at least four Old Friends—six if you follow my advice on food—and I’m currently one coffin corner short.)

Spend Less Time with My Family

As regular readers already know, every August I go home to California for my mom’s birthday because every year I think it might be the last time I see her and I started doing that when she was in her 80s, but being incredibly self-centered she refuses to die and now she’s 100, probably because of her Special Bacon Diet.

And every year I’m reminded just how nuts my California family is and why I live 1,500 miles away, which prevents brothers, nieces and nephews from “dropping by” and borrowing money or asking to sleep on my couch because their wife got tired of their Judge Family bullshit.

Avoiding his family is probably why Henry David Thoreau went to live by himself in the woods:

That, and he also wanted to write a book, aided by his totally platonic assistant, Megan Marshak.

And my final 2026 New Year’s Resolution?

Not Give A Fuck

There are people who say you’re going to regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did and in my personal opinion, those people clearly didn’t do enough. Because if you act impulsively and do a large number of things—and I’ve done more than my share—you’re going to regret a lot of them.

They all seemed like great ideas at the time, which is probably how Custer decided to go kill a few more Indians before going back East and running for president; George thought killing a few more Indians would look good on his presidential resume and thank God we got over that period in Our History. (These days slaughtering a bunch of Indians might keep you out of the Oval Office, but probably land you a spot as the Secretary of the Interior under Donald Trump.)

Anyway…

A sizeable percentage of my bad decisions were motivated by trying to make other people happy and as you may have noticed in your own life, that doesn’t work.

Abraham Lincoln has been quoted as saying people “are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” and if you hitched your wagon to someone who’s decided to be unhappy you can’t fix that.

Solve one of their problems and they suddenly develop three more. And if you’re eventually going to wind up pissed off at me anyway, why not cut to the chase and get pissed off at me right now before I blow any more time attempting to solve one of your unsolvable problems?

Today’s Lesson

Look, dying sucks and I say that as someone who thinks the lights will just go off and if I’m wrong about the Afterlife and Richard Nixon is going to be there poking me in the ass with a pitchfork while I do the breaststroke in a Lake of Fire and listen to Metallica’s Greatest hits, dying’s really going to suck.

But accepting you are eventually going to die NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO is a license to do whatever you want in the meantime (hurting other people excepted, because maybe I’m wrong about the Hereafter and it will go on your permanent record, plus we should at least try not to be dicks) and in 2026 I’m going to behave in the way that makes me happiest.

I mean who am I to disagree with Abraham Lincoln?

(BTW: Just looked it up and wouldn’t you know it; Abe went to Ford’s Theater to see Our American Cousin because his wife wanted to and he wanted to please her and look how well that turned out for him.)

Good luck in the coming year and if sometime in the next 12 months you want to drop by or borrow money or sleep on my couch or need me to pick up a pizza and bring it by your apartment, feel free to contact my personal assistant…

Megan Marshak.

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