Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

It is the year 2040, and Donald Trump has been in Hell since that fateful day in 2017 when his arteries, stuffed full of steak and ketchup, suddenly seized up when he came upon Anthony Scaramucci showing his penis to Melania and Barron. The national outpouring of grief for the fallen President was short-lived—in fact, then-President Pence had to veto a bill passed by both houses of Congress that would have replaced the Star-Spangled Banner with “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead.” Satan has come by to turn the spit upon which Trump is roasting personally, which the Prince of Darkness likes to do for his most important guests.

SATAN: Everything cool here, Donald? (Laughs. It is one of Lucifer’s favorite jokes). Seriously. We’ve got nothing but the best for you. The fieriest fire, the brimmiest brimstone. Nobody gets tortured biglier than you. Are you hot enough? Just kidding—you must be happy that you don’t have to use tanning spray to make your face orange anymore. Of course, eternity is the same length for everybody. Wish I could make yours longer, but…

TRUMP: That’s okay.

SATAN: Are you enjoying looking at this beautiful piece of cake? How about this pussy, right out of grabbing range? And your weekend trips to Hell’s golf course? It was my idea not to put any holes in it. Best I could come up with. I realize it makes it only marginally more boring and endless than regular golf. I hope you’re not disappointed with it.

TRUMP: Could I get a cart with a regular seat cushion instead of a bed of nails next time?

SATAN: (Cheerfully) No.

TRUMP: How about a different foursome? I’m tired of playing with Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell.

SATAN: No, it’s part of their eternity of torment to play with you. They all hate it, too.

TRUMP: I’d even golf with John McCain.

SATAN: If he ever shows up here. You know he beat the brain cancer. Then he had both kidneys fail, but got a transplant from Kid Rock in return for his endorsement for Rock's Senate run. Then he got re-captured by the North Vietnamese. Fortunately for him, they released him in time for him to win his twelfth Senate term. He’s still going strong.

TRUMP: How about my people? Kellyanne?

SATAN: Interesting story there. Nobody thought it was possible to lie your way into Heaven until she did it.

TRUMP: How about Reince? And Sean? And Jeff?

SATAN: An angel of the Lord appeared to them the day they all of them quit and gave them a Get Out of Hell Free card. I was as pissed about it as anybody, but God really treasures major ass-kissers. The whole worship thing, you know.

TRUMP: What about my base? I could really use a rally one of these days.

SATAN: They trickle in, but hardly enough to fill an arena. They’re all living longer, because they still have Obamacare.

TRUMP: What about getting my picture on the money? I heard it was going to be on the hundred.

SATAN: There have been some developments there. (reaches into his robe, pulls out a C-note. On it is the face of Barack Obama. Grins evilly, which is plenty evil—remember, they don’t call him the Prince of Darkness for nothing. Loudly) NOW YOU KNOW YOU’RE REALLY IN HELL!

TRUMP: (whimpering) Have you no mercy?

SATAN: No. What a stupid question. Well, I can’t spend all eternity with you, much as you deserve it. Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Putin are next on my list, then I’m going to play with my Pope collection. Any messages for them?

TRUMP: Tell them all I’m sorry I didn’t make them Attorneys General. Especially Putin.
 

One of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge from the last session of the Texas Legislature was a law permitting the hunting of feral hogs from hot-air balloons.

Feral hogs are a big problem in Texas, destroying crops and property. It has long been legal to shoot them from helicopters. This column has noted before that senior citizen gun enthusiast Ted Nugent has bragged about engaging in the practice of gunning down hogs from the sky and leaving their corpses to rot on the prairie, a hobby that well may put a dent in the feral hog population, but also supplies ample food for coyotes and flies, two other species Texans are not so fond of.

Hunting from helicopters has its issues, though. Feral hogs, not being nearly as stupid as Ted Nugent, quickly learned to run away from the sound of a helicopter, and pursuing them at speed made it difficult to take aim. Thus, the hot air balloon solution. A hot air balloon is very quiet. Even the hissing of its propane burners cannot be heard from the ground once it gains a few hundred feet in altitude. It’s also very stable, since it goes with the wind instead of into it. A man can relax with a sandwich, a six-pack and an AR-15, and bullet hogs all day long without fear of his aim being spoiled by the buffeting of his aircraft. When he is out of ammo or propane, all he needs to do is find a flat spot (of which there are many in Texas) to land on and hope that his wife remembers to come out and pick him up.

The surprising thing about the Texas Legislature legalizing hot-air balloon feral hoggin’ is that it was not illegal in the first place. Nobody was doing it, but not because it was against the law. Texans were using their hot air balloons like we Californians use ours, to rise a thousand feet into the sky, enjoy a bottle of champagne and a purty sunset, put it back on the ground and go have sex with our date, because that’s one of the unwritten rules of romance in our era—if you take a date on a hot-air balloon ride, they more or less have to put out when you’re back on terra firma. If you don’t believe me, ask Abby.

So, what the Legislature was really doing was reminding the hot-air folks of Texas that they could be up there shooting hogs as a prelude to romance. Nothing says “I love you” like dispatching a few new souls to Hog Heaven in between sips of bubbly and your date, who was probably quivering in terror at being way up in the sky without being surrounded by a nice safe airplane, will probably forget her fears and join you enthusiastically on your mission of killing a few of God’s perfect creatures, and then not even making bacon out of them.

Or she might not—girls can be tricky that way. Even if you have to go out ballooning on your lonesome, though, you should be doing your duty by the state of Texas. Kill some of those damn hogs. As long as the wind blows you towards them, instead of towards El Paso.

Oh yeah, there is that. Next thing the Legislature will legalize will probably be importing and restoring Stukas so Texans can just strafe the hogs like they were Russian infantrymen.

Why doesn’t the Nuge own one already?

Now that the entire weight of the Press Secretary for the White House has fallen on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, what do we really know about the main spokesperson for the shit show? Sure, we know her standard biographical details--Father Mike's a famous homophobe and her brother earned the dog-killing merit badge while a Boy Scout--but nothing says more about a girl's inner thoughts and yearnings than her Ashley Madison profile. Fortunately, this column was able to log on the cheater's web site and dig it out.

In further remarks on the profile, the suspected Sanders says:
"The men in the office where I work are a bunch of pencil-d*cks, and all my husband wants to to stuff his face with Cheetos and yell at the kids. I really need some fresh salsa on my taco, if you know what I'm saying. And bring a friend, if you have one."

She admits to being "a little bit c*ck-eyed," but adds "That's a good thing, lol." She brags that she's "built to take a pounding," and says her ideal man would "last longer than Sunday Bible school." But the most important thing she's looking for in a discreet lover is "A GUY WHO DOESN'T ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS!" (caps hers).

If you do decide to dally with her, and you are the inquisitive type, you'll probably get lied to, though.  It's tough to break old habits. 

You and I are now being encouraged to become ecosexuals, who are loosely defined as people who have sex with the earth.

No, I did not absentmindedly put down “with” instead of “on," although ecosexuals having sex with each other (which also happens) do prefer to do it in the mud, weeds, brush or forest, rather than some mundane indoor location.

This is understandable—go back along any of our ancestral trees and you’ll come to a branch where all of its members were doing it on the ground, because for sure people were thinking about sex long before they were thinking about making furniture. And despite the invention of the many, many things that modern people have sex on—the bed, the hotel bed, the kitchen counter, the coffee table, the steps going down to the basement, the scungy old sofa in the rec room, the back seat of your grandma’s Buick, the massage table at the House of Joy, the bondage rack and the spinning sex chair, some of us may still experience the atavistic urge to enjoy the afterglow of sex with a little gravel still stuck to our backs.

But actually sexing with the earth and the things that sprout on its surface is what sets the tribe of ecosexuals apart from the merely desperately horny. What this consists of is left intentionally vague, although much of it seems to deal with pollen. Look at the pics yourself.

In any case, when someone tells an ecosexual to “go hump sand,” the ecosexual can become legitimately aroused. Unlike traditional green movements, the ecosexual is not a tree hugger. He is a tree fucker. When an ecosexual complains of being caught between a rock and a hard place, he is probably just letting you know where his penis is situated.

Ecosexuality has its opponents, of course. Conservatives, for whom sex means only missionary-position with the wife, or getting spanked by prostitutes when she’s out of town, are predictably against it. This hit piece in Breitbart places ecosexuals a few rungs lower on the you-disgust-me ladder than LGBTQI’ers, whom they find massively disgusting. But they bravely throw the LGB-etc. folks a lifeline, in the form of allowing that ecosexual passions are even harder to understand than theirs. This is the closest the right gets to tolerance, so we need to commend them for it.

What they fail to consider is that ecosexuality might just be a put-on, that all these people taking pictures of themselves rolling in fields of pollen are doing it just  to freak the straights out, and when they actually have sex with each other they do it in the conventional way, by having a massive multi-sexual orgy in someone’s dimly-lit porn den. The joke's on us. Now I feel better. I’ll make myself lunch.

Hey, what's this on my cucumber?

After reading a pundit’s complaint that the great rumbling Trump-Russia scandal still has no generally agreed-upon name, I threw the naming open to my Facebook friends, and they responded enthusiastically. It’s Sunday morning as I write this, and who knows what Tweets and treachery the day will bring before I upload it on Monday, but one thing is sure: Hillary’s 33,000 alleged deleted emails may have cost her the Electoral College win, but if Don Jr. had just deleted one, his dad might still be in the White House long enough to get thumped in 2020. As it is, President Pence will have to endure that thrashing.

But what to call the scandal that promises to be the most noteworthy in American history, at least so far? After all, Nixon was brought down by just one “smoking gun,” a tape in which he waxed enthusiastic in favor of obstructing justice. At the rate we’re going, the Trump thing is going to have more smoking guns than Iwo Jima. So, let’s get on with this. “Russiagate” is just not going to cut it, otherwise everybody would be using it by now. I personally came up with “Putincanoodle,” “Espionageageddon,” “Ivankadonkadoodle,” "Urinetrouble," and the one I’ll be using from now on, just because it sounds so prescient when said aloud: “TRUMPALOOZA!”

"Shit Sandwich Shop" also sounded good. But you guys had other ideas. Here are the best:

BRETT EVANS: “Putin-scootin’ Boogie.”

GWEN LESLIE WILSON: “TNT” (for Traitor and Treason)

JOHN SIMPSON: “Oligarchs ‘R Us”

DIANE BERMUDEZ CHETELAT: Both “Trumpnado” and “Trumpleputinskin.”

KARLOTTA MYERS: “Red Puppets.”

MIKE ROSE aka MARK ROE: “Clusterfuckingghazi.”

RICHARD PORTER: “Twitler Wars.”

SARAH RIVERA: “Juniorgate.”

BETTY YETTA: “Trumpets and Strumpets.”

The participation award goes to NANCY PARRISH RANDLEMAN, who offered up “Judas Goat (Trump)Gate!
Russian Doll COLLUSION!(matryoshka dolls)
GREED IS GOOD GATE!
PUTIN 'S SOLUTIONGATE !
REPUBLICAN/FASCISM/ THUGGATE!
REPUBLICAN GENOCIDAL GATES of HELL !"

I don’t know if these are going to catch on, Nancy, but you took your assignment seriously. Thank you.

But the winner, who also came up with the nearly equally worthy “Kremlin Gremlin” and “Pedal to the Meddle,” is WENDY MCDONOUGH, for “DOLT 45!”

Thank you all for your support. A link to the post is here:

Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments section.

While I wasn’t really thinking about making a career move, the booming economy has tossed a number of opportunities my way. I keep a resume on Monster, just to see if anyone is willing to pay me to flip wisecracks and drink beer all day. So far no one has, but the other day I received this email:

Hi Richard,

I have an opening for a (sic) Animal Shelter Manager with National Cat Protection Society in Spring Valley, CA that I thought may interest you. If you'd like to proceed or learn more about this opportunity please follow the link below:

 
Animal Shelter Manager

National Cat Protection Society

 

• This position is for a working assistant manager who is responsible for supervising the kennel, supervising and training of the kennel personnel, ensuring the humane care of all cats at the shelter, and other tasks leading to full manager after six months.
• ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include, but not limited to the following.
• KENNEL - Oversee the medical care of all cats housed at the shelter
• Oversee and maintain the general cleanliness and sanitation of the shelter
• Instruct kennel personnel in proper and humane handling techniques of animals

Thanks for taking your time with this. If you feel this would be a better fit for someone you know please pass this message along.
Regards,

Dave Johnson
1112 Montana Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Not Interested. Unsubscribe Instantly
 
I was completely unaware of the Cat Protection Society up until this point. I thought the interests of cats were represented by the SPCA. But no—someone long ago once decided that the welfare of felines should not be commingled with that of common dogs, hamsters and bunnies. A separate power center had to be established, one that ignored puppy mills and racoon coats and other crimes committed against non-cat creatures and devoted itself solely to making sure every cat was fed, cleaned up after, and had at least one toy mouse and the opportunity to chase a laser dot for at least part of its life.

At first, I was intrigued. I liked the name—the Cat Protection Society. It sounded like an organization you could make an animated Disney film about—brave dogs, mice and parakeets, wearing cartoon detective hats or even capes, all consumed with the fervor to make the world better for cats, fighting a monstrous enemy, a Cruella de Kitties who lived only to make dire trouble in feline lives.

That’s for me, was my first reaction. Maybe I would even get a badge, a gun and a free hand to mess with people, like all the other cops have. Then I read the “duties” part of the communication. Overseeing the medical care of the resident cats would be tricky for me. I have no veterinary training and a serious aversion to touching sickly animals. The second task means scooping poop, pure and simple. Anyone can figure that out.

​Instructing kennel personal would mean, first off, finding people who knew even less about cats than I do, in order for the crumbs of cat wisdom I could impart to them to have any useful impact. In this era of cat videos collecting billions of views on YouTube, that might be a challenge. I could hire uncontacted Amazonian tribespeople, I guess, but then there would be all kinds of immigration and language difficulties.

So, I decided against going into the cat protection racket. Then one of my gay friends sent me a text complaining about a week-long cat-sitting chore for which he had volunteered.

“I haven’t been this focused on pussy in a long time,” he groused.
​
So I forwarded the email to him.

​The Chicago Board of Education, together with Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who was the most hated man ever to win a major election before Trump, have come up with a sensational new requirement for the high school seniors of the Windy City.

All high school graduates will now have to have a “plan” before they are allowed to pick up their diplomas. The plan can be going to college, joining the military, or being accepted into a “gap year” program, whatever that is. If you don’t have one, you don’t get your piece of parchment.

The beauty of the plan plan is that it comes down equally on the mindless poor and the unimaginative rich as well. No matter if you were just planning to go to Europe and spend your parent’s money drinking French wine until you were old enough to drink wine in Illinois, or if you were merely thinking of doing bong hits in your mom’s basement until you blacked out for a couple of years, you will have to pursue both passions without the benefit of a high school diploma.

When I graduated from high school back in the Pleistocene, I remember I had a plan. I planned to have sex with all the women who would let me. Sure, I went to college, but that was only as an adjunct to my main purpose. In the glow of youthful optimism, I did not realize how many women in the world did not want to have sex with me. Yeah. Learned that the hard way.  So, gradually, my plans changed.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t have gotten my diploma if I had whispered my plan into Rahm Emmanuel’s ear. Other, similarly large ambitions, like achieving the world’s highest score in Minecraft or becoming an Instagram model, dreams possibly writ large in the minds of today’s high school seniors as they sit suffering through another civics class, wouldn’t pass muster under the Chicago rule. The kids of the Second City have to have more mundane goals, like joining the military while knowing full well that they will eventually be sent to some Muslim country where the citizens are already eagerly strapping bombs to their toddlers to welcome them, or go to college.

College is not what it used to be, now that everybody goes, and if you pursue an arts degree because thinking about numbers is something you had had enough of back in Algebra II, you count on being offered a job as a salesman when you graduate.

Loftier goals do not qualify. This is my main objection to the Chicago scheme. Putting down “Sleeping my way to the top in Hollywood,” or “Porn goddess,” or “Feared leader of a ruthless prison gang,” will not cut the graduating mustard.

Critics of the decision have pointed out that it is inherently unfair to deny someone a diploma that they have earned, the product of countless hours of looking over classmates’ shoulders during tests, of furtive glances at notes written in ballpoint pen on one’s wrists, or paying, or threatening, other, better students to write papers for his or herself, even if he or she cannot formulate a plan for the next five minutes, let alone a life. They also point out that you can still be a high school dropout in Chicago without showing any capacity for foresight at all, and more kids might choose this option.

But Rahm has spoken. My advice to you Chicago students is to do what I’m going to do next.
​
Google “gap year.”

SCENE: The G-20 private meeting between Trump and Putin in Hamburg, Germany. The two men meet, as promised, without aides or translators.

PUTIN: Comrade Trump! It is so good that we finally meet! Congratulations on your enormous electoral college victory!

TRUMP: I don’t get enough credit for that, Vladimir. People say that you deserve the credit for it.

PUTIN: Sad. But down to business. You have the list of CIA assets I requested?

TRUMP: Sure. (passes over a folder)

PUTIN: And it will be just as I said. The Russian government just wants to reward these brave citizens for their service. They will be given the traditional Glory of Spying medal, which consists of a small bit of lead worn in the back of the head. (Opens folder, glances inside) Hey! This is a list of the 2012 Academy Awards winners!

TRUMP: It’s what the head of the CIA gave me. (takes it back) Huh! Who would’ve thought Jennifer Lawrence was a spy?

PUTIN: You have been tricked, Mr. President. In Russia, this would be punished by years in the Gulag.

TRUMP: In America, we punish by Twitter, President Putin. These losers will pay, I promise you.

PUTIN: I hope so, comrade. In the meantime, the missile retargeting?

TRUMP: All carried out, Vladimir. You didn’t really say where you wanted the missiles to go, so we pointed most of them at Mexico. Saved a few for Canada and France. I hate countries with boyish, charismatic* leaders, don’t you?

PUTIN: Indeed. That will be fine. You have the “football?”

TRUMP: (complaining) I have to carry it everywhere. Lucky it fits in a golf cart.

PUTIN: May I see it? (Trump hands over a black, rectangular object) Where are the launch codes? (presses a few buttons)

TRUMP: Some of those grandstanders in the Pentagon told me to be careful with the buttons, Vlad.

PUTIN: Hey! This is an xBox!

TRUMP: It is? I must have accidentally switched it with Jared. He loves carrying the nuclear codes. Busts in on Sean Spicer all the time, points a finger at it, and says "Boom!" One of the few things left that still makes Spicer crap his pants.

PUTIN: (sternly) I don't want an xBox! I have already achieved the highest score possible in Resident Evil while playing with my shirt off! This is useless to me!

TRUMP: A bigly bad on my part, President. I will get the other one for our next summit. In the meantime, you have the tapes?

PUTIN: (passes over a DVD. Trump fits it in to a computer. He calls Rex Tillerson in to show him how to play it, then dismisses the Secretary of State by handing him five dollars and saying “Go get yourself a hot dog, or something”)

TRUMP: (staring at the screen) Hey, this a recording of Miss Universe Moscow!

PUTIN: Yes, and you can clearly see you sneaking into the dressing room while the girls are putting on their swimsuits.

TRUMP: But that’s not the tape you promised me!

PUTIN: Gotcha, Comrade. It has been a good summit. It is the best time I have had in Germany since I worked for the KGB, selling steroids to their Olympic team.

TRUMP: But the real tapes!

PUTIN: Unfortunately, we can’t give them up, my friend. We force the ISIS fighters we capture to watch them until they beg us to cut their eyes out. A blind terrorist is a helpless terrorist. You are helping us win the war on Islam, comrade.

TRUMP: But what if they all get put on YouTube?

PUTIN: If that happened, and I were you, I would tell them it was the secret plan you had all along.


*This is satire. The author does not mean to imply that Trump actually uses the word “charismatically,” or even knows what it means or can pronounce it correctly.

Everybody’s aghast at Trump’s latest Tweet, the one accusing Mika Bzrezinzki   of begging for an audience with the germaphobic  Leader of the Free world while bleeding from facial surgery. The popular feeling is that the President should have more important things to do than carry out a mindless, gory feud with a TV show host. Also, he's probably lying again.

The opinion here is that they are no doubt right about Trump having more important things to do, but ignore the fact that we’re probably better off if he’s not trying to do them. Tweet away, Tangerine Tyrant! Keeps you from getting Trumpcare passed and turning NATO into a collection of used tank parts.

Here are some sample future Trump tweets, following the potential event that would generate them:
 
If the Senate screws up on screwing up health care: “Mitch McConnell’s prostate is the size of a Wendy’s double stack. OUCH!”

If Megyn Kelly’s new show continues to tank in the ratings: “Told NBC not to hire her. Nobody wants to watch a show by a known menstruator. Bad decision!”

If Steven Hawking ever criticizes him again: “Loser Hawking can shut his squawk box. I like scientists that can move their arms and legs!”

If Al Franken decides to run against him in 2020: “Unfunny Al Franken would be easy to beat. Everybody knows he’s a Jew, right?”

If Angela Merkel wins re-election in Germany:  “WRONG! Germany proves again it is a BAD country! Glad I keep all my money in Switzerland.”

If Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2020: “Pocahontas smells a bit musty, I hear. Nobody’s been inside her teepee for years! Know what I mean? OLD!”

If Mar al Lago starts to sink into the ocean because of climate change:  “This is the fault of WEAK Obama! He owes me for the sandbags BIG TIME!”

If Sara Huckabee Sanders finally replaces Sean Spicer as WH Press Secretary:  “Now at least failing Melissa McCarthy can impersonate another FAT CHICK! YOUR WELCOME!”

If he ever holds a rally and nobody shows up: “A friend told me that people were too busy enjoying AMERICA BEING GREAT AGAIN to leave the house! They’re still losers, though. “

When Putin surreptitiously  invades another small, weak nation on Russia’s borders: “FAKE NEWS! Russia not invading anybody! Believe Putin! Especially when he says there are no pee tapes! Strong leader! Bigly!”