Demonitized and A Sunday Cartoon!

Greetings and Salutations!
So the bastards finally shut down my Google AdSense shekels.

What kills me is they say I had “excessive policy violations”

“Dangerous and/or Derogatory commentary”

Excessive? Like I think in the past year I’ve had maybe 5 violations, and surprise surprise… guess what and or who I was critical of and that they probably had issue(s) with?

Yeah…
This is my shocked face.
I appealed it of course and wrote essentially the 1st Amendment still exists, but I’m sure somewhere in the ‘fine print’ there’s a specific rule about criticizing the Jews. I mean more of an annoyance although the $200+/- I made via the ads was a nice padding monthly. One I did NOT count on…

Not these days.
Although this past few months Ye Olde ‘Zon Links for the MREs helped significantly. Or will I should say. The problem with the associates program is it take like 3 months to see a payout. Meaning the few items people clicked on and bought via my links that I got this pay-period (provided I made enough to even get paid… there’s a $100 threshold) well that payment is from March. Which means my April/May June ‘stuff’ won’t pay until like maybe starting in August.

The House ALWAYS wins right?

So not much commentary on the current Middle Eastern Dumbasshattery except to say I personally think Nutjobyayhoo bit off a wee too much this time, and IF OrangeManBad doesn’t jump in to help, then it might get very “canned sunshiny” as they’ve put themselves in a very tight corner. The Izzies are very overstretched right now.

Everyone and their brother thought the Iranians were going to do what they did last time, which was some minor performative tit-for-ta strikes, but instead? They appear to being ‘going for broke’ and the fact that Nutjobyayhoo first begged for US assistance (as they can’t hit the really deep shelters that the Iranians have) AND THEN came out with the “The Iranians directly threatened to Kill OrangeManBad!”

Which is about as transparent as you can get. “Help us do this thing or we JFK you there OMB!” Personally, not our circus, not our monkeys, despite ALL the warmongering that’s being pushed. I will say one thing that people haven’t notcied yet though and it’s this:

Yep.
They either slink back to Tel Aviv, tail between legs OR they lie, and never get to use the “Iranians Got Nukes (or are about to again!)

A Catch-22.

Hence why I think ‘canned sunshine’ might be on the menu, and they’ll spin it as a “Look! The Iranian defective nuclear weapon went off as they were getting ready to fire it at us!!!” as the Israeli DotMil and DotGov are NOT exactly known for stepping down and admitting that they fucked up.

FFS they keep saying that there’s only 7 known dead from ALL them hypersonic missile strikes. Just looking at a few of the post-strike pictures?

Some of those buildings are just wrecked like a motherfucker. Others are far worse. And before anyone tries to say “But but but… they were in Bomb Shelters!~!~!” I’d say maybe but when the Iranians launched the strike, the videos and initial reports were that the Izzies were ‘asleep at the wheel’ and that the “Iron Dome” failed pretty spectacularly. I’d say they’re modeling their bodycount like the Krainian Kasualty Korpse Kount… if’n you don’t count ’em, then they ain’t dead.

Add on that it tunes out a LOT of the ‘civilian buildings’ hit had ‘Iron Dome’ launchers either on top of the building (thereby making it a legit target) or, like their BIG underground Headquarters?

Well, it’s built under a fucking Hospital

JUST like Hamas put theirs under a Hospital, and because of that, the Izzies justified blowing it the fuck up, so no, I do NOT want to hear any kvetching and whining when the Iranians drop their version of a Khinzal on it and waste all the patients and Docs there.

So anyways… that’s MY take on that crap.
And as far as the “No Kings” march here locally?
Geez… it looked like they emptied out all the Geriatric Wards and dropped ’em all off in a BIG parking lot off of Bloomingdale. Nothing but really old has-been Hippies trying to relive the “glory days”… I swear I heard at one point a chant of “Hey Ho! Nixon has got to go!”

Uhhhhh….
Wow… just wow.

Now on a happier note.
Literally!
I found something very important to me that I thought had been lost a waaaays back. A souvenir from my 2004 Baghdad Tour. I had gotten word that there were a bunch of pretty well known (and some not-so-well known) cartoonists that had gotten a tour of the Al Faw Palace while doing the USO thing, and were doing a meet and greet.

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man occasionally puts up one of my favorite cartoonists, Steve Pastis, who does “Pearls Before Swine” This being todays strip:

Now in 2004, Pastis was a pretty new cartoonist. He’d been around nationally for about 2? maybe 3 years at that point? Per the wiki: “On January 7, 2002, Pearls was running in approximately 150 papers.” He started in 2001 so yeah, I was right… anyways…

When I got in the main hall where they were doing the meet and greet, when I saw him, I was pretty pleased as I love his work. His cartoons never fail to crack me up. His line was like non-existent for whatever reason,. so I actually got to go up and shoot the shit with him for a few. He’s a really cool guy IRL. And for that matter, he offered to draw me a cartoon right then and there. Shocked the Hell out of me let me tell you! He asked what I’d like, so the first thing that popped into my head was “A drunk Larry!”

Now for anyone who’s ever read ‘Pearls’ Larry the Crocodile and his son are regulars in the strip. He’s frequently shit-faced and hilariously stupid. SO as we chatted, he whipped this out for me:

As my movie Guy Dan Monroe would say “How cool is that!?!”
BTW go check out Dan’s channel… LOTS of great videos there! HIGHLY recommend if you’re GenX and a bit of a geek like me.

I framed it in that free-floating style because I think it looks best that way. There’s also a wee bit of a blood stain on it down in the lower right… no idea how or when it got a drip on it, but “Iraq” and “My dumbass” means I probably cut myself and was showing off the drawing to a friend. I’m just so tickled to have found it. And it’s still in pretty damned good shape, considering the provenance.

I thought I’d lost it years ago.
Of all places it was halfway behind a door and bureau and positively encased in dust and dust bunnies. So a positive end to an otherwise shitty weekend. Not for nothing we had ‘issues’ around here again with Gretchen’s parents… it’s unfortunate but eh… Old Age comes to us all… we just got to deal with it.

So More Later
Big Country