​“President Trump used to tease former Vice President Biden by wearin those spiral X-ray glasses you can buy from Marvel Comics, uh, claiming he could see right through clothes and bathroom doors?  It was terrible: it wasn’t just the Biden family that was traumatized but, um, whole neighborhoods, towns, cities.  As this peeping plague went viral, many people, having felt that they’d lost their privacy, stopped havin sex, so no babies were born.  Schools went out of business, so did Toys R Us.  Planned Parenthood debates died down for a while.  Gerber’s Baby Food switched to making light beer and reduced calorie salsa for the over-fifty crowd just to survive the shocking bambino drought.  Of course, once the scientific properties of x-ray glasses were exposed -- there were none -- life returned to normal.”

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edited 4/29 (fiction)
The Blacklist :
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Otto found himself on a super-secret international blacklist of toilet paper buyers/users for undisclosed secret reasons that may have been about his penchant for wearing a London Fog raincoat and Stetson fedora in Midwest sporting supply outlets specializing in croquet equipment and related acrobatics, or because he was an independent.  After he found himself being followed around by nondescript men also wearing raincoats and fedoras he started wearing Bermuda shorts.  That’s when this happened: no matter where he attempted to buy a roll of toilet paper the vendor was either out of stock or didn’t know what it was.      

After a couple of weeks without toilet paper Otto started to drag his, uh, you know what.   After months of dragging his "you know what" and he still couldn’t break the bathroom tissue blacklist -- not in Rio, Bonn, Toledo, Darwin, Mumbai, or Bangor -- he grew desperate.  Obviously, given the situation, he had to adapt (and quickly).  
           
So, he tried newspapers: the New York Times, the Klondike Sun, the Fresno Bee.
            
This, of course, is where things got interesting:
           
While newspapers aren’t as form-fitting-cuddly as Charmin, Otto did notice that they had printed words on them.  This discovery led to another discovery, and another; in fact, there were stories, headlines, columns, cartoons, exposes, all kinds of information, and other cool stuff in the freakin newspapers. 

So, Otto started reading the papers before he used them.
           
No matter what armchair philosophers say: that which doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger -- it can make you crazy, catatonic, or married -- but as an avid newspaper reader Jack became more erudite, wiser -- learned -- and a better haggler when buying fish (wrapped in newspaper) than he had ever been before.
           
Huh?   
           
Despite this, the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down a “person’s legitimate right to fair and equitable access to purchase toilet paper from any vendor or source that sells or provides toilet paper to anyone, unless the seller doesn’t freaking feel like it for any arbitrary reason of prejudice, hatred, or speculative slander,” was a real bummer.  I mean, hell, once you’re on The Toilet Paper Blacklist you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.    -end- 

Unless noted, all material on this blog, this website, are original.  Some are for sale, t-shirts, cartoons; you can donate for downloads.  If you do, thank you...  


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A hero can be a migratory cheer of the heart before being shot down in flight by second thoughts, a hero one day a dead duck the next.  (posted earlier)
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Please give to the Veteran's Assistance Foundation, Incorporated: 304 E. Veterans Street/ Tomah, Wisconsin  54660/ 608-372-1280.

April 24th was the 103rd anniversary of Medz Yeghern, the Armenian Holocaust, considered the first modern-era genocide, wherein up to 1.5 million* Armenian children, women, and men were systematically murdered by elements of the Ottoman Empire, and were executed or died on a death march from Armenia south through Turkey and from there down into the Syrian desert.
The Ottoman Empire ceased to exist at the end of World War I and the subsequent Greco-Turkish War; what physically remained of the Ottoman Empire became the Republic of Turkey in 1923.   *Wikipedia/New York Times   (adapted from 2016 post) 



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Please give to Human Rights Watch: 350 Fifth Ave., 34th Floor, NY, NY, 10118, 1-212-290-4700

Today is Patriot's Day (Massachusetts and Maine)*, the fifth anniversary of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing, and the 122nd running of the Boston Marathon.   - Headline News/ * ​timeanddate.com

“The United States and European allies launched airstrikes on Friday night against Syrian research, storage and military targets as President Trump sought to punish President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical attack near Damascus last weekend that killed more than 40 people.”  -- Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, & Ben Hubbard/ New York Times (4/13/18)

“Western allies warned Syria on Saturday that they could launch further attacks if chemical weapons are used again, even as Syria’s powerful backer Russia denounced the missile strikes but gave no signs of possible retaliation.
“The flurry of statements after Friday’s coordinated strike of U.S. cruise missiles — along with launches from French and British forces — suggested a tense holding pattern.”   
-- Anne Gearan & Missy Ryan/ Washington Post (4/14/18)


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“Today -- among all of the other things that they do -- the Company makes Binky pacifiers in fourteen colors, er, to ascertain what connections exist between Iran and Syria.  President Hassan Rhouhani in Iran loves the shit outta them, especially the turquoise double sucker.  He sends all his used Binkies to Assad in Syria.  Assad goes through two a day.  Syrian rebels are tryin to cut the Binky supply line between Iran and Syria.  I heard an expert on Meet The Press say: cut off Assad’s Binkies and he could be in real trouble.”  (a version post earlier on Carbuncle Moon) 



​Please give to the World Vision-Syrian Refuge Crisis: PO Box 9716/ Federal Way, Washington  98063/ 1-888-511-6443/ worldvision.org ​   ​

​James Foley found the truth of ISIS within the savage murder of a noble human being who was in pursuit of the truth. ​ (toon posted earlier)


Please give to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society for Aleppo: Abu Rummaneh Shakib Arslan Street/P.O. Box Damascus - 3790/ Damascus, Syria/ 00963 11 332 7691/332 7698/3327645/332 7646/ sarc@net.sy/ infor@sarc.sy
​Please give to Doctor's Without Borders USA: 333 7th Avenue/ New York, NY 10001-5004/ 212-679-6800/ donations@newyork.msf.org
Please support Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Sans Frontiers, 47 Rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris - France  + 33 1 44 83 84.

Have a good Passover...

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​“Passover or Pesach from Hebrew is a major, biblically derived Jewish holiday. Jews celebrate Passover as a commemoration of their liberation by 
God from slavery in ancient Egypt and their freedom as a nation under the leadership of Moses. It commemorates the story of the Exodus as described in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Book of Exodus, in which the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. According to standard biblical chronology, this event would have taken place at about 1300 BCE (AM 2450).’“   - Wikipedia
Passover 2018, began on the even21/ing of Friday, March 30, and ends the evening of Saturday, April 7.   - Google


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"In the debris and rubble of war I see a woman caked in heavy dust, face wiped clean in streaks, tear stains sacrificing grief to gravity.  She has long black hair, um, covered in gray powder.  The woman is holding the empty body of a small child with her head unsupported, small legs and arms drape boneless from outstretched hands and fingers.  The toddler is barefoot, dirty, bloody, broken.  Sobbing, the woman’s dark inset eyes are, uh, focused on her child.  The mother and child have the same desert-brown coloring of Moses, Jesus, Mary, Mohammed.  We don't know if the mother and child are Israeli or Palestinian: we can’t tell -- the camera pans and we move on…"  (toon posted earlier)




Please give to the Jewish World Service: 45 West 36th Street, 11th Floor/ New York, New York, 10018/ 212-792-2900​

“I was a croquet player in the Northern California Attenuated Association of Professional Croquet, the NCAAPC.  Under Sir Charles Barkley's leadership -- the only NBA star knighted by the Queen of England, the big man saved the Isle of Man from drowning after a an Irish fishing boat collided with the island -- the league became extremely popular in Northern California, Italy, Moldavia, Corsica, and Lapland, among other places.  Barkley established a style of croquet uniform utilizing kilts and French Foreign Legion hats making the uniforms extremely cool, and, ah, the full contact body strikes from stake to stake completely re-energized the sport.  The NCAAPC is now 82% African American -- 2% African-American owned -- but even in my day I was the only white guy on the team.  I played goalie and outside skulker, uh, before the full helmet-era.”  



Please give to the National Urban League: 120 Wall Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York, 10005/ 212-558-5300

"Though surrounded by an internal landscape of devastation, insulation from the pain of lost dreams, a battered though unbeaten fighter will hold on to a pin-prick of hope. In that gray Limbo a spark of hope is the only light to read by."   (for teachers/ posted earlier)



My sister, a teacher, has throughout her career spent hundreds, thousands of dollars every year of her own money, funds her family needed, to provide those things, those learning tools, material, that her students needed that the school, the educational budget, could not afford.  
Her heart, I suspect, is with the teachers in Oklahoma, West Virginia, and elsewhere attempting to create an environment that provides that which both students and teachers need to teach, to learn, to live.
A Navy veteran, a mother of five, a widow, Colleen is still teaching, still unbeaten...


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                                          Wanda taught middle school English.
                           (I had some help with the toon years ago and more recently)



Please give to the National Education Association: 1201 16th Street NW/ Washington DC  20036/ 202-833-4000

Happy Easter:

​“Easter, also called Pascha (Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday, is a festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial after his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD.  It is the culmination of the Passion of Jesus, preceded by Lent or (Great Lent), a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.
“Most Christians refer to the week before Easter as ‘Holy Week’ -- it contains the days of the Easter Triduum, including Maundy Thursday, commemorating the Maunday and Last Supper, as well as Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  In Western Christianity, Eastertide, or the Easter Season, begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks, ending with the coming of the fiftieth day, Pentecost Sunday.  In Eastern Christianity, the season of Pascha begins on Pascha and ends with the coming of the fortieth day, the Feast of the Ascension.”  - Wikipedia
 
“Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In the New Testament of the Bible, the event is said to have occurred three days after Jesus was crucified by the Romans and died in roughly 30 A.D. The holiday concludes the ‘Passion of Christ,’ a series of events and holidays that begins with Lent—a 40-day period of fasting, prayer and sacrifice—and ends with Holy Week, which includes Holy Thursday (the celebration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his 12 Apostles), Good Friday (on which Jesus’ death is observed), and Easter Sunday. Although a holiday of high religious significance in the Christian faith, many traditions associated with Easter date back to pre-Christian, pagan times.”  - History.com  

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                           He was born in a barn to impoverished migrant parents.                                                             (a version of this toon was posted ealier edited 4/2)



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Please give to the Samaritans Purse, U.S. and International Disaster Relief: P.O. Box 3000, Boone, North Carolina  28607/ 828-262-1980