And now a request from the audience

Prompt: Brag

Hi Wednesday,

Here I am, laptop in lap, watching Stephen Colbert on TV, wondering why I am so completely and utterly bored by superhero movies, and why Trump doesn’t seem to understand we notice his extreme vanity; i.e. the long ties to make him look taller and less wide, the poofy yellow comb over, the orange tan with reverse raccoon eyes. And more importantly, that he doesn’t seem to know that those vanity strategies don’t actually work for him: we know he’s fat, bald, old, and pasty. None of that would matter a whit if he was a decent and competent man, of course. But that he tries so very hard to be something he is not, and tries so unsuccessfully… well I can’t help but wonder, as I sit here with my laptop.

I don’t have a lot to brag about. I’m aging, I get grey hair, I would like to be less wide and have an impossibly lustrous mane of hair, a dewy youthful complexion. I just never occurred to me to take bad advice about those things. We all see people who have their personal vanities— usually these are harmless and sometimes even endearing. Many women (and men) succumb to inadvisable surgeries and other augmentations. But how many people do you know who go the the transparent and ineffective lengths that the Donald does? Exactly how insecure is he? And should such obvious shallowness, vanity, and cluelessness have alerted voters?

Yes, me and my laptop wonder.

Meanwhile, may I present a few of my favourite cartoons, the first of which is the only one that relates to today’s prompt, “brag”?

cartoon that-s-the-last-time-we-brag-about-our-kids-new-yorker-cartoon_u-l-pgpmlt0