Comic Strip's 'Bawdy Language'
The syndicated comic strip Luann has broken another taboo. A few weeks ago, two characters in the strip could be heard having a robust sexual encounter on the other side of a closed bedroom door. And now, on November 2, Luann became the first daily 'toon (that I know of) to close with an obscene hand gesture! Here's how it plays out. 

Two young women (Stef and Tiff) wind up competing for the attention of the same young man on the university's football team. When Stef tells Tiff that Kip is her boyfriend—and that's a lock because she's a cheerleader and she knows something about "body language"—Tiff responds with some body language of her own. 

In the final panel, she appears to be holding her iPhone out to snap a photo of her rival. On closer inspection, it's not a phone in her hand—it's a black rectangle covering her hand as Tiff gives Stef "the finger." A different kind of "body language," for certs! 

Colbert vs. Kimmel vs. Trump
Two of our leading late-night TV satirists, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, are in the habit of choosing dicey titles for each night's episodes. In the competition for the most enjoyably salacious stints as Trump-roast show-hosts, Kimmel's writers once again take the lead in tagging Trump with memorable descriptives. Here's last week's round-up of Trump-tweaking titles: 

Colbert: Crowd Pleaser, Dump Scare, Face Palmer, Read My Ellipse, Madison Square Garbage
Kimmel: Dumpster Führer, Getting Serious, Whiny Little Bitch, The Turd Reich, Rignoramus 

Continued on the Next Weblink
The October 30 edition of the East Bay Express featured some eye-grabbing cover art for its lead story, "Billionaires on Mars." The colorful cover featured a montage that looks like an AI-generated image of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and a third passenger (not Jeff Bezos; not Richard Branson) peering from the open moon-roof of a rocket-ized Tesla cruising through the cosmos. 

But it turns out that the article isn't about billionaires colonizing Mars. It's about "The Radicalization of Elon Musk'—which is to say, a study in how a left-leaning Trump-dishing entrepreneur morphed into a potential cabinet member in a possible Trump administration. 

The article is informative but it would have been more so except for what readers encounter following the third subhead on the essay's second page. In an editorial experiment that may be totally unprecedented in the history of print journalism, the cover story abruptly ends in mid-sentence with a three-dot ellipses followed by a short italicized sentence instructing readers to; "Read more online at eastbayexpress.com." 

Alas, there are guardrails involved. In order to finish reading the cover story, one needs to be older than 21 and must sign up for an online account/subscription. 

Fashion Plates 

Personalized license plates spotted around town. 

AUTAN
KOALEH
L084CO
D007TL
METRPOL (Metropol? Meter Police?)
NOTAPL8 (Not Appellate?)
THX2GOD (Thanks to God) 

Bumpersnickers 

Lollygagging
I Used To Be Cool 

If You're Rich I'm Single
Tell Your Dog I Said "Hi"
Horn Broken. Look for Finger
This Is the Back of My Car
We're Proud of Our Tadpole Wizard
I Had a Life… But My Job Ate It
I Hate Bumper Stickers 

Robert Reich: Beware Trump’s Election Night Trick  

Surviving War: A Day in the Life of a Gaza Orphan