One must acknowledge the day, or the night, and Monty rose above the many "trick or treating as Trump" cartoons to put little Montague in a Milton Friedman costume, which is much more frightening because so many in Congress snicker at the one but truly believe -- against all experience and logic -- in the other.
Meanwhile, over at Brevity, Dan Thompson indulges his insatiable appetite for puns. He was not only able to drop two R's to create a double-pun within a standard phrase, but, as a single panel, he doesn't need to show a response: The somewhat confounded homeowner is neutral enough to let the joke rise or fall on its own.
Probably personal -- and it probably helps that I have a very weak brain-to-mouth filtering system -- but I hate when someone apologizes for a pun.
If you can't stand by it, don't say it.
And, specific to cartooning, you can't use the excuse that it just tumbled out: There's time to think it over in the writing, penciling, inking, submitting process, and besides, if you stick an apology in the last panel, you obviously felt it was beneath you all along.
You'll commit enough unintentional stupidity. Don't apologize for stupid things you do on purpose.
Which, shifting from silly to serious, brings us to Jen Sorensen's latest reflection on intentional or unintentional sexual stupidity, and at least one answer to the question in the second panel.
I subscribe to the theory that you learn more in the campus coffee shop than you do in the classroom, which, in this case, could suggest that students who spend too much time grinding in the academic sense don't spend enough time grinding in the other sense, and emerge at the top of the class with excellent grades, wonderfully employable and socially unformed.
Which is a particularly attractive theory, given that I graduated in the top 85% of my class, but I'll admit I knew poor students who weren't very adept at learning outside the classroom, either.
Still, there are a lot of guys in nice suits who are utterly clueless when it comes to sex and sexual relations and women and relations with women, and, if you combine that with the kind of got-to-score ego drive that propels them to the top of the heap in the first place, you might do better to date a guy who cleans swimming pools.
It's entirely possible that he writes poetry and plays guitar in his off-hours. Or at least that he did a lot of apologizing as a young man and thereby learned how to behave around women.
And, in your non-spare time, when you're working among guys you wouldn't date, say something to whoever insults your dignity.
If that doesn't work, say something higher up the chain.
If this #MeToo business simply encourages women to speak up, that will be one hell of an improvement.
Not Funny Story: I had a male assistant whom I cautioned against hanging around in the customer service section of circulation, where, when things were slow, the jokes began to fly and most of them were tasteless, despite the 80/20 ratio of women to men.
I warned him that all it would take would be for a new hire to be offended and all hell would break loose.
He didn't listen, but he did quit working for me and took a job over in the newsroom.
Where the women apparently had stiffer spines, because, within a few weeks, we all had to troop into the conference room and watch PowerPoint presentations, which taught most of us nothing new and apparently didn't teach him a damn thing because, a few weeks after that, he repeated his folly and was handed the cardboard box and given five minutes to GTFO.
"Please don't do that" might work, and is worth trying, because some guys can learn.
But, if it doesn't work, you've got to drop the hammer, if not for yourself, for someone less strong.
Speaking of powerful, clueless men
Over at the New Yorker, Brendan Loper harks back to the OJ Simpson slow-motion chase, substituting a golf cart for the white Bronco.
The look back over the shoulder sells the gag, and the fact that a golf cart couldn't outrun much of anything seals it. This is wonderful stuff and could have been a cover.
Tom Toles comments on the defense against that gathering storm.
I said yesterday, in reference to a L'il Donnie strip, that the "But ... Hillary" defense would be trotted out by cartoonists who support Trump and they'd already begun but they're continuing now.
People keep citing "1984," but this is straight out of "Animal Farm," in which, having driven Snowball from the grounds, the reigning pigs continue to blame him for anything that goes wrong, notably the collapse of their windmill project.
And the sheep believe it, and believe that the slogan has always been "Four Legs Good; Two Legs Better."
Let's not forget the outcome of that slow-motion chase: Despite overwhelming evidence, OJ walked free.
As for any hope that we'll have a public discussion of the issues on Facebook, Joy of Tech puts that in perspective. Between Russian trolls and delusional nitwits, Facebook has become, as they suggest, a pit of idiotic delusions.
And here's a Shannon Wheeler comic which would be a little bit funny if we weren't putting our Buffs back on ready-alert for the first time in over 25 years, which of course we aren't.
We're just doing some routine maintenance.
Just in case. But not.
Y'know. We're not.
And here's a Civil Defense poster from back then. Perhaps not exactly an official one, but, then, today's Moment of Zen wasn't exactly official in 1952, either.