The Roof Over Our Heads

This one's about cryptocurrency, laughter and - of course - "shrinkage"...

This is one of those Two-Stories-Collide cartoons and the first story was about the housing crisis (according to the internet, we haven’t built enough of them) and the second story was about the looming Second Trump Administration and their plans to promote cryptocurrency which might convince some states, public pension funds and treasuries to start using it.

Now here’s a quote from the Associated Press story about cryptocurrencies: “But the risks are significant. Critics say a crypto investment is highly speculative, with so much unknown about projecting its future returns, and warn that investors should be prepared to lose money.”

Sounds great, how soon can I give someone all my savings?

Here’s more from the AP: “Only a couple public pension funds have invested in cryptocurrency and a new U.S. Government Accountability Office study on 401(k) plan investments in crypto, issued in recent days, warned it has “uniquely high volatility” and that it found no standard approach for projecting the future returns of crypto.”

An investment policy based on the same financial principals that govern a roulette wheel led me to imagine a neighborhood Built By Hoyle. (To get that joke you have to know Hoyle made playing cards and we’ll have a lot more about “getting” jokes before we’re through.)

This cartoon was also inspired by two stories, the first from the New York Times that said Eric Trump had promised that his dad Donald would be “the most pro-crypto president” ever and that he and his dad were going to push crypto, despite the fact that it’s a business the Trump Family is directly invested in.

Eric made his remarks at the Bitcoin MENA (Middle East and North Africa) conference and while he was at it, promoted his family’s new business, World Liberty Financial, which just happens to be a cryptocurrency platform.

An apparently over-caffeinated Eric also said: “Think about a president who isn’t going to allow bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to be over-regulated and stifled.”

Because, let’s face it, when you give someone your life’s savings in exchange for some magic beans, the last thing you want is for the magic-bean market to be over-regulated or stifled.

And Eric said all that despite his dad’s promise to keep his business and government decisions separate, but I’m guessing it’s not the first or last promise Donald Trump didn’t and/or won’t keep.

The story also quoted Lawrence Noble, who was general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and Larry said the cryptocurrency announcement was a Historic Political Moment because it was a direct conflict of interest and it was taking conflict of interest to a whole new level and added:

“We have moved so far away from the ethical norms of past presidents, where they divest themselves of financial interests.”

The second story was from the Associated Press and it said Trump also wants to eliminate Daylight Savings Time which I frankly don’t give a flying rat’s ass about because I’m going to continue my Semi-Retirement Policy of getting up and going to bed whenever the hell I feel like it, but it added to the image of norms being thrown out a metaphorical window and everything being up for grabs and cats marrying dogs and the sun revolving around the Earth and Hatfields being put in charge of the Department of McCoys and now that Trump doesn’t have to worry about getting reelected, I’m guessing we should brace ourselves for a lot more of this.

Just in case you’ve already forgotten, we recently elected a convicted felon president and if you google “can a president pardon himself?” you’ll get contradictory answers because apparently the Founding Fathers never thought we’d be dumb enough to make a criminal with 34 felony convictions Our President.

Guess again, guys.

Skimming the articles – which is all time and my sense of commitment allowed – apparently nobody is precisely sure if a president can pardon himself and one of the articles said it might be Constitutional or might be Unconstitutional, but for sure it’s A Really Bad Idea, which I don’t think will stop Donald Trump from doing it anyway because that describes about 93% of what he’s done since birth.

In any case…

Joe Biden has almost reached the end of his term in office and is currently taking care of unfinished business, like pardoning people and commuting sentences and using Marine 1 to fly over the Washington Mall and drop water balloons on tourists and I made up that last one, but that’s precisely the kind of thing I’d do if I was leaving the Oval Office with no chance of returning.

If Biden’s handing out pardons I imagined our Felonious President showing up to get one.

As I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion, jokes and cartoons are often structured around leaving something out that the audience has to mentally supply and when they mentally supply that missing piece of information, that’s the feeling of “getting it” and to demonstrate we’ll use the old Henny Youngman joke:

“Take my wife…please.”

In the first part of that sentence the audience thinks Henny is saying “Take my wife” (as an example) but then Henny adds “please” (which makes us realize Henny wants us to literally take his wife away and right now I’m wondering just how funny Mrs. Youngman found that joke and might explain the high-divorce rate among stand-up comedians).

Another example of the audience having to supply some information and mentally adjust their point of view is the Ron White joke (and you might want to brace yourselves for this one) about Ron telling his wife he’d like to try anal sex and her refusing and Ron trying to talk her into it repeatedly until she finally says:

“Ron, I don’t care how many times you ask, I’m not putting that thing on.”

Suddenly you have a very different image of what Ron wanted to try and when I saw Ron’s Netflix special and he told that joke, the audience – which appeared to be filled with MAGA hat purchasers and future January 6^th rioters – busted a gut laughing.

According to the Associated Press, Trump has been picking people “who distrust or even disdain the agencies they’ve been chosen to lead.”

Which is why I depicted Trump trying to pound a square peg into a round hole (which is an uncomfortably close description to what Ron White wanted to try) and I thought about labeling the peg “peg” and the hole “hole” but decided that made the joke too obvious and readers needed to figure it out for themselves and once again if one of my cartoons is too obscure, I’m going to blame you.

Why We Laugh

Now here’s an article about laughter and how it works:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/laughter.htm#:~

Assuming you didn’t read it and odds are you didn’t, the article says typical adults laugh 17 times a day, the rest are Republicans. (Insert imaginary rim shot here.)

Laughter consists of physical reactions like facial muscles lifting your upper lip and the epiglottis half-closing your larynx and, in extreme cases, tear ducts producing moisture and in cases involving some dude getting hit in the nuts, milk shooting out your nose. (I added that last one because they somehow overlooked it.)

Real laughter is spontaneous, which is why – after we send someone a funny text and they respond “Ha-ha” – it doesn’t seem spontaneous and we immediately suspect they forgot to add “and fuck you, asshole.”

Face it, texts are great for some things, but there’s no context or tone and if someone doesn’t respond to a text immediately, our minds (and yes, us usual, I’m dragging you into this with me) immediately conjure up the worst possible explanation like they didn’t find your text funny and it made them mad and they don’t want to be friends anymore, so now you get pissed off and send them a Beat-The-Holiday-Rush preemptive “fuck you, too” text, but it turns out they didn’t text back immediately because they were ordering coffee at Starbucks and had one of those overly-complicated orders involving soy milk, double shots of espresso, bourbon, vermouth, a dash of orange bitters and a Luxardo cherry and if you could actually order that at Starbucks it would definitely be a best-seller.

So where were we before I revealed the recipe for a Caffeine-Hattan?

Right, laughter and its causes.

Turns out, there are three main theories about why we laugh and the first one is the “incongruity theory” which is based on things that don’t normally go together like this guy being married to her:

And her:

And her:

Next up is the “superiority theory” which means we laugh at the misfortune of others like people who aren’t rich enough to marry their granddaughter’s best friend or afford health care insurance or put fast food on the table and while it seems mean-spirited, Superiority Theory Laughter is extremely important because without it Donald Trump Rallies wouldn’t be possible.

And finally we have the “relief theory” which is a reaction to built-up tension, like being at one of those Donald Trump rallies and thinking the crowd might turn on you because you didn’t arrive in a pickup and are wearing loafers with tassels and secretly think Halle Berry is smoking hot, but then to your relief, find out you’re all going to ridicule poor people, immigrants and disabled people instead.

“Ha-ha.”

Why Do We Think Some Things Aren’t Funny When Other People Do?

My first guess was “Because you’ve got a college degree and wandered into a Donald Trump Rally” but according to the article the most common laughter factor is age.

Toddlers like simple jokes involving chickens and street crossings and teens like jokes that challenge authority and piss off their parents, but as we get older and more mature and have a deeper appreciation of other people and the world around us, many of us have a stick surgically implanted up our asses and we’re constantly crabby and negative and don’t find anything funny because laughing out loud might make us pull a hamstring while simultaneously pooping our pants which, once you reach retirement age, is a bi-weekly event.

I hope to avoid that stick-up-the-butt fate through superior Smart-Ass Genetics because while my brother and I discussed what needed to happen upon our mother’s demise with her sitting right there with us, I said:

“Mom, maybe you shouldn’t listen to this.”

My 99-year-old mother replied:

“I stopped listening to you guys a long time ago.”

Give her credit, she’s going down swinging.

Turns out, regular laughter has physical effects and can help you fight off diseases like racism, homophobia and xenophobia, which is fear of attraction to Lucy Lawless, because she was the star of Xena: Warrior Princess and she came across as Pretty Damn Gay and Life is confusing enough without admitting that you find someone who swings from both sides of the plate highly desirable.

I, on the other hand, am not threatened by gay or bi women because if I turned into a woman overnight (probably through one of those Freaky Friday body-switching events that Hollywood assures us happen all the time) I’d definitely be a Lesbian.

At least theoretically, I am currently a man so I’m pretty aware of our bullshit, including the balky and unreliable sexual equipment we’ve been given to work with and my reaction is much the same as Elaine’s when she was informed about “shrinkage”:

Today’s Lesson

If you live in a state that doesn’t have legalized gambling, invest in craptocurrency, if you don’t laugh at my jokes it’s your brain’s fault and, men, if you’re about to have a sexual encounter of any kind, don’t go swimming first.

You’ve been warned.

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