Your Friday Gruel:
Criswell, Bush and CCSers

I have friends who worry about the time they think I waste.

Like, blogging. Like, just doing nothing. Like, reading. Like, watching movies. Like, staying for all 172 minutes of David Lynch's exterior dreamscape Inland Empire. Like, reading comics. Like, drawing comics. Like, writing instead of drawing comics. Like, teaching. Like, having a family and raising kids. Like, getting married. Like, getting a divorce. Like, getting remarried. Like, drawing, instead of doing something useful, like plumbing. Like, working as I did co-managing a video store instead of drawing.

You name it, something I do, one of my friends hates, and thinks I'm wasting my time, doing something my other friend thinks is worthwhile, and wishes I would just do more of, and wishes I would quit doing that other thing they hate, 'cuz it's a waste of time.

Well, my friends, rest easy, now.

And if you're "a very dear friend," you could really benefit.

You see, Criswell had it aallllllllll covered, way way back in '69.

Criswell Predicts!

I predict that it is entirely possible for you to bequeath and will to someone your unspent time at your death!

A new insurance policy soon to be issued, will permit funds to be paid to someone you wish to honor after your death, with full expenses on some trip which you could not take!

This insurance policy will be listed in your estate as top priority, and cannot be cancelled by the whims of your relatives or the executor!

It will be pre-paid out of your estate... a most wonderful gift... of your unspent time... plus expenses... for a very dear friend! You can bequeath your unspent time!

___________________

Ah, but Criswell didn't predict Bush. He and his may spend everything. The massive debtload these motherfuckers are generating daily has spiraled into the realm of the cosmic, and that ain't the half of it.

It's been a one-two-three sucker punch week from the White House, and it's only Friday. TGIF.

The whole veto dance has been quite a spectacle, with the most outrageous demonstration yet of the 'blame game' in recent memory

(duh -- the President vetoes, he denies the funding). Amid all that, most Americans miss the

Bush shenanigans that really hit home -- like, the very air we breathe --

-- which of course the superficial "news" that passes for news for most citizens considers beneath notice.

and demonstrating once again how well "Georgie plays well with others" and is "a uniter, not a divider" (another of his campaign promises that rings magnificently false)

This Pentagon leak surfacing the same week President Bush blasted the Democrats (threatening just this kind of consequence -- sorry, already in place, folks!) is a brutal blow to military families.

Just a little Easter gift from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and our beloved Prez.

Better beef up those vet hospitals, and fast, Congress.

With what's left of his term in office promising to only escalate all this madness into a high-density concentration unimaginable today, hang on, America!

The fiscal hits everyone outside the elite continue to endure are taking a real toll, without a whisper of the consequences Katrina, annual wildfire season, and natural disasters play as a component of that toll. We're amid tax season, after all, wherein the Alternative Minimum Tax is delivering unexpected bodyblows to many middle-class families, the inevitable implosion of sub-prime lending and mortgage scams are gobbling up vulnerable family homes like Pac-Man, and the credit load of most Americans has no historical precedent. Gas prices hereabouts have soared over 30-cents-per-gallon in less than four weeks, with the promise of climbing higher (over $3 per gallon) with spring 'driving season' a-comin' in.

For our part, Marge and I have battened down the hatches as best we can in pragmatic, day-to-day ways we can live with. None of us can displace these lunatics in office, though a fresh election season is coming 'round the bend -- but we can focus on our own corner of the asylum. We lucked out with the risk of relocation -- the purchase, the sale, the move went surprisingly well, it all played out in our favor despite the collapsing real estate bubble (thanks to the unusual real estate market Marlboro remains). We're working on our wills, we've eliminated our credit card debts, we've relocated to a place closer to our respective dayjobs, minimizing our driving and gasoline consumption, and we've finished our annual income tax ordeal (more fun guaranteed next year!).

So it goes. Good luck with your own corner of the asylum; it's worth the effort cleaning up, I can now say.

______________________

Time for more Center for Cartoon Studies student sites, man!

Jiffy Joe Lambert is a one-man comics band with a pen-and-brush line slippery as black ice, graceful and playful and mesmerizing -- check it out.

Joe also posts more photos than anyone at CCS, I think, though I'll be immediately corrected if I'm wrong; anyhoot, if you want an inside look at CCS life and some great art and comics, check out Joe's sublime online submarine.

Some cartoonists inhabit their own interior worlds, and lucky us when they share them so completely. There's a handful of cartoonists in this rarified strata who come to mind, and lo and behold, we at CCS are fortunate enough to have another of this species among us.

Here's your ticket to Planet Dane Martin. I love visiting planet Dane Martin, with its unique lifeforms, social customs, lurking dangers and delirious curiosities. There is no other planet like Dane's, and there are times I wish I could live there.

There are also times I am greatly relieved I don't live there, but those moments make me love it all the more. I can't explain it any better than that.

More tomorrow -- have a great Friday, if you can...