That’s Gonna Leave A Mark

In our last thrilling installment of “What’s Trump Done Now?” I explored the possibility that our 45^th and 47^th president suffers from ADD (Aggravating Dipshit Disorder) and because of his condition he keeps churning out bad ideas like invading Greenland or renaming the Gulf of Mexico or putting the guy who ruined Twitter in charge of Government Efficiency, so when everyone in the media wrote about Trump’s First One Hundred Days, I responded with a cartoon that said it felt a lot longer.

Time is an elastic concept and as you may have noticed Time gets weird when you go on vacation because you cram so many new experiences into so few days.

A week can feel like a month or Time seems to fly by (depending on how you think about it) unless you vacationed at my mom’s house and then Time Will Stand Still because whatever she was bitching about last year she’ll still be bitching about this year, so if you want to live forever become my mom’s roommate.

(You won’t actually live forever; it will just feel like forever.)

And now that I’ve ridiculed a defenseless old lady that gave me life, (don’t worry, she doesn’t read this blog, but I’m guessing my brother who actually lives with her really enjoyed that last bit) let’s move on to an explanation of why time seems to go by faster each year and I didn’t think of this theory so it might actually be right:

When you’re five years old and someone says “a year from now” that seems like forever because a year is one-fifth of everything in your brain, but when you’re 50 and someone says “a year from now” that seems much shorter because it’s 1/50^th of what’s in your brain.

And when you reach my age your brain is like a cluttered attic where you stowed all that useless crap you thought you might need someday, which is why I know George Brett’s lifetime batting average without looking it up (.305), but struggle to remember birthdays and anniversaries and the exact location of my garage door opener.

Now here’s an explanation for that conundrum and I did make up this one, so caveat emptor which I believe is Latin for “that jar of caviar is empty”…

I think our brains can only hold so many pieces of information and when you shove a new piece of information into the front of your brain an old piece gets shoved out the back, so go ahead and remind somebody that you need a quart of skim milk, but accept responsibility when that somebody forgets he promised to attend your niece’s 8^th grade graduation ceremony this weekend and bought tickets for a Royals game instead.

That’s clearly on you and your ill-considered skim milk request.

No idea how any of this helps you, possibly because it doesn’t, and now we’ll move on to a completely unnecessary diatribe about the media:

In my experience and possibly yours, people praise innovation and outside-the-box thinking, but then freak the fuck out if you believe them and give them something innovative or outside-the-box and now that I’m on this subject, the people who praise outside-the-box thinking usually sit in cubicles.

(If you’re currently high—and there are way worse ideas—I probably just blew your mind, just like the first time someone pointed out G-O-D was D-O-G spelled backwards and you had just finished off a big fat doobie and were working your way through a Family-Size box of Cheez-Its.)

In any case…

Google “Trump’s First 100 Days” and you get stories from CNN, AP, NPR, CBS, NBC the NFL and AFL/CIO and I threw in those last two just to see if you were still paying attention.

If a journalist says screw it, everybody else is writing a “First 100 Days” story, so I’ll be innovative and write something else, some editor is sure to have a Holstein and ask where’s our “First 100-Days” story because everyone else has one and frankly, most people don’t really give a rat’s ass about being innovative, their real goal is covering their ass so they don’t get blamed for anything.

Which is a cynical point of view and reminds me when novelist Robert B. Parker’s detective Spenser was accused of being cynical, Spenser responded:

“Or well- informed.”

According to the people who spend their free time putting questionable information on Wikipedia, the United States of America has been in 132 military conflicts, including five which are “ongoing.”

Meanwhile, Canada has been in just 26 military conflicts, two of which are “ongoing” and one of those conflicts is to help the Ukrainian military and the other one, we drug them into; a joint operation (which might be what everyone was smoking when they came up with the idea and I wouldn’t be surprised if Cheez-Its were involved) to fight ISIS.

Generally speaking Canada has always been our cool neighbor to the North; the kind of neighbor who helps you shovel your driveway after a big snowstorm even though you turn out the lights and pretend you’re not home when he’s shoveling his.

All in all, we got along great with Canadians until we elected Donald Trump a second time and since Trump can’t run a third time (unless he puts the Constitution through a paper shredder which I’m sure he’s considering) Trump’s now acting like he got a terminal cancer diagnosis, so fuck it, he’ll do whatever he wants to while he’s got the chance to do it and now he’s managed to piss off the Canadians with threats of tariffs and making them our 51^st state and pissing off Canadians is a lot like pissing off Mr. Rogers:

You have to be a tremendous asshole to do it.

So they have an election in Canada and Trump’s an issue and the Liberal Party wins because their leader Mark Carney said the old relationship with the USA is over and he isn’t going to let Trump take over Canada and here’s an article all about that if you really want to read one:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2y7969gyo

And Now A Warning About Bucket Lists

That bit about Trump having a cancer diagnosis so he starts in on his Bucket List of Bad Ideas, reminds me that when Hawaii got that false warning that Russian missiles were on their way, the week before the warning Jason Kendall and I had been in Hawaii for his wedding and I asked Jason what he thought would have happened if we’d still been there when they issued that “You’re All About to Die!” alert and Jason said:

“We definitely would have wound up in jail.”

Because if you’re going to be dead in 20 minutes, why not jump over the bar and start mixing your own cocktails or rob a liquor store or organize a sexual orgy with everyone who wants to go out with a bang and then – time permitting – send everyone that ever pissed you off a “FUCK YOU FROM THE GRAVE!” mass email?

But when the government says “Oops! Our bad!” and it turns out you’re not going to die in the immediate future, both Jason and I thought that should be an acceptable excuse for all the bad shit you crammed into what you thought were your last 20 minutes; a piece of legal reasoning which probably explains why neither one of us have been appointed to the Supreme Court, although considering what’s been going on lately, I’m pretty sure either one of us would be an improvement.

Today’s Lesson

If you want to live forever, move in with my mom (my brother could use the break), if someone wants you to remember something new you now have an excuse to forget something old (choose wisely) and if you think you’re going to die in 20 minutes don’t do anything you can’t explain if you have the bad luck to survive.

Now have a nice weekend.

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