Better Living Through Chemistry

According to people who were there, Donald Trump has now fallen asleep at least twice in the courtroom which as previously noted is a bad look for someone who likes to call his opponent “Sleepy Joe.”

But to be fair…

Sleepy Joe Biden recently claimed his uncle was “shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be – there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”

For some reason Joe felt compelled to tell that story during a speech on steel and aluminum tariffs in Pittsburgh.

On the other hand, if someone said could you give us a riveting 30-minute speech on steel and aluminum tariffs, you might think that sounded incredibly boring and decide to spice things up with your terrific story about your uncle being eaten by cannibals.

Whatever the reason…

It kinda seems like Joe wandered pretty far off the beaten path and I say that even though I recently wrote about the Israel/Hamas conflict and managed to work in a side story about me getting hit with a baseball, but at least I’ve got video and witnesses so you know it actually happened even though at the time it happened one irate analytics fan questioned the story and said how did people know the pitch was really going 92 MPH?

Maybe I made the whole thing up.

I replied that Jason Kendall was there as a witness and if that fan would show up at Kauffman Stadium I’d introduce him to Jason so he could call Jason Kendall a liar to his face.

Trust me, I (and probably you) would buy tickets to watch that.

Unfortunately for Joe the military keeps records and Joe’s uncle was actually a passenger on a transport plane that lost power in both engines and crashed into the ocean (surprisingly, it wasn’t built by Boeing) so it’s really unlikely cannibals ate Joe’s uncle unless one of the cannibals was Lloyd Bridges.

And yes, that was a Sea Hunt joke which reminds me of all the shitty TV shows of my youth that had a weak premise and week after week they had to come up with a story in which someone needed something incredibly important done underwater or a dolphin played a key role in stopping a bank robbery or a grizzly bear broke up an international spy ring.

Sea Hunt was on for four seasons and had 155 episodes and Flipper was on for three seasons and had 88 episodes and Gentle Ben was on for two seasons and had 58 episodes and right about here I’m reminded of Seinfeld and Larry David being depressed whenever they renewed the show because then he’d had to come up with 24 more episodes based on things like close talkers, man hands or puffy shirts.

So where were we?

Right, in Pittsburgh giving a speech on steel and aluminum tariffs and without provocation tossing in stories about cannibalized uncles and if you’re like me, some stories you’ve told so often you can’t remember if that’s how it actually happened or you’re just remembering things the way you want to so I probably ought to confirm my family stories with some of my teammates from the 1927 World Series Champion New York Yankees.

In any case, the coverage of the Trump Hush Money Trial reminds me that the media tend to obsess over certain news stories and we’re currently being treated to daily reports about Donald Trump’s moods, facial expressions and what he had to say on social media and I think most regular Americans just want to know if he’s found guilty and how much money he’ll be fined and what tactics he’ll use to avoid paying it.

This past Monday was Earth Day which reminded me of all the days we stop and appreciate something like Mothers or Fathers or Administrative Professionals (we don’t call them Secretaries anymore even though we still get away with treating them like crap) and then go right back to ignoring them and abusing them and being highly insensitive assholes:

“Hey, we gave you your own day, now shut up and quit whining and by the way, I want a cheese Danish and a coffee, two sugars — Dad.”

The people who make Boeing airplanes are experiencing Congressional Turbulence and enduring Senate hearings because chunks of their airplanes keep falling off and I don’t know about you, but generally speaking I like to arrive at my destination with 100% of the airplane I departed on.

I can’t remember where I read this and 30 seconds of internet searches failed to corroborate this story or the one about Joe Biden’s uncle being a dinner entrée, but somewhere I read that during WW2 they’d ship airplanes to the Pacific in crates and the planes had to be assembled in a hurry after they arrived and the pilots of those planes came up with a brilliant idea:

They’d make the mechanics who put the planes together jam their asses into the back of the cockpit and go on the plane’s first test flight. (Which may or may not be true, so it’s just like everything else you ever read on the internet.)

But accurate or not, the concept could solve Boeing’s current problem because if they made a factory worker fly on every Boeing flight, I’m guessing the factory workers would double-check every bolt before takeoff.

The Correction Department

In my previous post I told a story about me calling Donald Trump The Worst President Ever and my son correcting me and saying that was inaccurate because at least Trump didn’t start an unnecessary war, which meant Trump wasn’t The Worst President Ever, he was just the Worst Human Being To Ever Be President.

So yesterday I told that same Smarty Pants Son I had used his Trump observation and instead of saying thanks he reminded me that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.

Good point even though I wish it weren’t.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

Which I originally thought was from the Bible, but was actually said by King Lear and every parent everywhere and we don’t appreciate fully our parents until we become one and I’ve told my kids I changed their diapers in their early years and I expect them to do the same for me in my final ones, and one of my sons assured me that wasn’t going to happen, but he’d be willing to visit me once a year in the urine-soaked old folks’ home he plans to stash me in.

(All my kids are smartasses and I have no idea where they got that from.)

So maybe Donald Trump isn’t the Worst Human Being To Ever Be President and this time my son said, “He’s just the dumbest” which may or may not be true because that’s a very competitive category and I’ll wait for my son to make further observations that might contradict his previous observations and I’ll let you know what opinions I hold after my son informs me what they should be.

And now that I’ve explained all that, how would you like to hear about the time my uncle was burned at the stake by the Comanches?

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