The Monday Comics

Sunday Comics for 6-12-2011

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So....who saw Weiner's Twitter feed?

Fear the Weenie!

Memorial Day 2011

Welcome to another Memorial Day weekend.

All over the nation, people have flocked to the beaches, or family cookouts, or made roadtrips to see friends & family. That’s all well and good. I personally celebrated my 42d birthday this weekend , myself. Memorial Day weekend has become the traditional kickoff to the summer season of fun in the sun. In many parts of the country, school is already done for the year, and kids have graduated.

Across my television and in my newspaper, I have been deluged with tacky and tasteless screaming advertisements for Memorial Day sales, hawking everything from cars to mattresses to appliances, which makes me reluctant to ever patronize those businesses. Nothing says “DUTY, HONOR, and SACRIFICE” quite like a cut-rate pillow-top mattress for $999.00, today only…..

As I drove down Dorchester Road in North Charleston on my way home Friday afternoon, I spotted a Harley Davidson at a gas station across from the Air Force base, decorated with a large flag. It suddenly hit me that I’d just seen a rider from the Patriot Guard, and remembered why they were in town.

A young man from North Charleston, South Carolina came home Friday afternoon. It wasn’t the homecoming his family wanted or expected when he left for Afghanistan a short time ago.

I never knew Cheziray Pressley, but I consider him a brother still. Cheziray was a soldier, a comrade, a brother in arms. Just 21 years old, barely 3 years out of high school, graduating in 2008 from Fort Dorchester High School. Six months ago he married his longtome girlfriend, Dawn. He had a little daughter at home waiting for Daddy to come home.

Pressley was assigned to 25^th Infantry Division’s 1^st Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Wainwright in Alaska. A couple weeks ago, only three days into his tour in Afghanistan, Cheziray Pressley was killed with three fellow soldiers by a roadside IED explosion in Zabul Province.

An honor guard carries the casket of Cheziray Pressley from the aircraft that brought him to Charleston from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The memorial service for Cheziray Pressley will take place at the North Charleston Convention Center on Monday at 3:00 PM. The public is invited to attend.

I was Cheziray’s age roughly when he was born. Twenty one years ago I myself was a 21-year old soldier, freshly back from a tour in Germany. No, I never knew Cheziray Pressley, not personally, but I know a bit of the young man’s character, of his patriotism and devotion to his country and family. It’s the same sort of character that has called young men and women into the armed services of the United States of America since the inception of our country 235 years ago.

No, Memorial Day isn’t about sales at the mall. It’s about remembering the sacrifices of those who went into the breach and who gave their lives so that you could go to those sales, or eat too much at that barbecue, or soak up the sun at the water’s edge. It’s about all the sales and barbecues and sunny days that those brave men and women will never again see.

I’m not telling you to not enjoy your holiday weekend. I’m not telling you to not spend time with your family. I’m not telling you not to stimulate the economy by checking out the sales.

I am, however, telling you to take some time and reflect upon what you have, and who gave up all of their tomorrows so that the rest of us could have today.

More TSA-related crap

A week or two ago the TSA was in the news yet again with footage of agents searching the diaper of a 2-year old for explosives. The TSA and their lunacy is one of the reasons I currently refuse to fly anywhere. The price of flying is the other. Fear of terrorism doesn't even factor in.

About six months ago a friend of mine shared a photo with me:


The top item is a fold-up corkscrew and bottle opener. The bottom item is the deadly princess snow globe. My friend had this to say about the items:

Fact: The top item was allowed (with full TSA knowledge) to get through security at the Atlanta airport. FACT: The item on the bottom was confiscated by the TSA at the Tampa airport one month earlier. (I bet it was that menacing squirrel inside the princess snow globe that set off alarm bells)

Yeah....the deadly princess snow globe. How many planes over the years have been taken over or brought down by snow globes?


Oh yeah, get them pesky terrorist octogenarians....


And make sure you get those dangerous kids.....



Make sure you grope the firm round ones...



And you absolutely HAVE to have a nun get searched by a Muslim TSA agent in a Hijab...

And this story has been around the Web for a few months but bears repeating...

As the Chalk Leader for my flight home from Afghanistan, I witnessed the following:

When we were on our way back from Afghanistan, we flew out of Baghram Air Field. We went through customs at BAF, full body scanners (no groping), had all of our bags searched, the whole nine yards.

Our first stop was Shannon, Ireland to refuel. After that, we had to stop at Indianapolis, Indiana to drop off about 100 folks from the Indiana National Guard. That's where the STUPIDITIES started.

First, everyone was forced to get off the plane-even though the plane wasn't refueling again. All 330 people got off that plane, rather than let the 100 people from the ING get off. We were filed from the plane to a holding area. No vending machines, no means of escape. Only a male/female latrine. It's probably important to mention that we were ALL carrying weapons. Everyone was carrying an M-4 Carbine (rifle) and some, like me, were also carrying an M-9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren't loaded, as we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs.

The TSA personnel at the airport seriously considered making us unload all of the baggage from the SECURE cargo hold to have it re-inspected. Keep in mind, this cargo had been unpacked, inspected piece by piece by U.S. Customs officials, resealed and had bomb-sniffing dogs give it a one-hour run through. After two hours of sitting in this holding area, the TSA decided not to re-inspect our Cargo - just to inspect us again: Soldiers on the way home from war, who had already been inspected, re-inspected and kept in a SECURE holding area for 2 hours. Okay, whatever.

So we lined up to go through security AGAIN. This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols. So we're in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they're going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can't take those on the plane.

Soldier: What ? I've had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You're not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I'm allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can't use it to take over the plane. You don't have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I'll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

To top it off, the TSA demanded we all be swabbed for "explosive residue" detection. Everyone failed, [go figure, we just came home from a war zone], because we tested positive for "Gun Powder Residue". Who the F**K is hiring these people? This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns - But nothing like a nail-clipper that could have been used as a weapon...

Can someone please tell me: What the F**K happened to OUR country while we were gone?

Sergeant Mad Dog Tracy

Exactly...what's happened to our country. I'll tell you what.....Progressive Liberalism happened.

I am *SO* over Lady GaGa

A couple years back I thought Stephanie Germanotta, better known as Lady GaGa, was a quirky but fairly talented dance music artist. But then I started to get bored with the music and the HEY LOOK AT ME antics. I thought the speech in favor of gay marriage in Maine was nice, but you ruined that with a speech in favor of illegal immigration in Arizona.

After a while, you couldn't escape her. Commercial radio flogged you with her music non-stop. I ignored the inane lyrics and tried to concentrate on the beats, but to no avail. And now with this new album of hers, I'm really just saturated and completely over her.

The first single, "Born This Way" is a blatant ripoff of Madonna's "Express Yourself", and further rips off a portion of her song "Vogue" as well. The followup single, "Judas" (released just in time for Easter...how quaint) is damn near unlistenable.

I can see pushing some boundries, but to be a spectacle for the sole sake of being a spectacle & calling it art as a blanket cover statement is lame.

Over on Facebook, the video game company Zynga is bringing a whole GaGa theme to their Farmville game along with a special offer to buy the new album. Further saturation.

I think the final straw for me was her grotesque appearance the other night on that other grotesque spectacle, American Idol, a show that I thought was on the road to redemption with a looser feel and likeable judges but instead pissed away talented kids before it was time for them to go home while keeping a screecher and a one-trick country pony. With James Durbin, the most talented of the lot since Day One of the auditions, gone I will just hope that Lauren Alaina comes out on top. But back to GaGa...

She couldn't show up to mentor these young people looking like a normal human being. No way. Instead she's moved the shoulder-spike dermal implants she denied having up to her face and wore some sort of idiot clown makeup coupled with a black & platinum hairstyle (a wig? Who the hell knows?) and an outfit with her ass hanging out. She spent most of the sessions with her legs splayed open or rubbing up on the kids and exhorting them to more or less sex it up a little.

I guess the kicker is the fact that she did a national TV show wearing $4500 platforms that had, seriously, glass phalluses for heels. Really. I shit you not. The heel of each show was a glass penis. Millions of kids at home watching, and this paragon of virtue wasted 4500 bucks to show up with dicks on her feet and her ass hanging out. Ya'll know that I'm definitely not a prude, but c'mon....

Dick heels, meat dresses, clown makeup that makes Marylin Manson look like a school teacher, dermal implant spikes, and worn out dance grooves. Sorry, GaGa.....the schtick is no longer funny or even worth listening to.