Joemala: Episode 86

by | Oct 5, 2022 | Joemala | 145 comments

 

“I’ve always felt like a Puerto Rican,” Joe mumbled. “Dancing street gangs, switchblades, really loud parades. These are my heritage.”

Finnegan placed a hand on his arm. She said, quietly, “We’ve moved on to Ukraine, Grandpa.”

“Has Putin invaded Puerto Rico?!?” he asked, distressed.

“A hurricane hit Puerto Rico,” she said quietly. The Joint Chiefs of Staff shifted in their seats like delicate tapeworms were wiggling out of their anuses. But this was only true of two of them.

“Not my beautiful island!,” Joe said, his eyes shiny with tears.

“Sir, Putin and his proxies are threatening to use low yield nuclear devices in Ukraine if the annexed regions are invaded by Ukrainian forces,” Mark said. He paused to rub his lips together to make sure his lip-gloss was still applied evenly.

“Why would Putin nuke Puerto Rico?” Joe asked.

“Sir, I believe the implication is that he would use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine theater,” Mark said.

“Oh, I had a fantastic meal at a Sizzler in Manatí, Puerto Rico,” Joe said. “It was just like an American Sizzler, but with more Mexican food.”

“Yes, sir,” Mark said. His eyes implored Finnegan to help him.

“Grandpa, you need to listen to the General. He has something important to discuss with you,” she said.

“I know that,” Joe snapped. “I’m not stupid. Putin is a bad man.”

“Yes, sir,” Mark said. “Putin bad.”

“That’s why we bombed his pipeline,” Joe said.

“Not officially, sir.”

“Remember, Grandpa,” Finnegan said, “We’re not supposed to talk about that to anyone.”

“Why not?” Joe asked. “It was a tough decision. I made it. I’m the President, dammit.”

“We just can’t admit to it, sir,” Mark said. “It’s a secret.”

“A sexy secret?” Joe asked, suddenly interested. “Ashley and I have…”

“No!” Finnegan shouted. “No, no, no.”

“Ashley’s my daughter,” Joe said.

“Don’t make me get the squirt bottle,” Finnegan said sternly.

“We need to decide our policy in case Putin does use a nuclear device in the Ukrainian theater,” Mark said quickly.

“We nuke back!” Joe said. “We drop enough bombs to make the rubble bounce.”

“But, sir…” Mark began.

“I have decided!” Joe yelled.

Finnegan raised a hand when Mark went to speak again.

“It’s a bold decision, Grandpa,” Finnegan said. “Very Presidential.”

“I’ll wipe Putin Rico off the map if I have to!” Joe said, pounding his fist on the desk. Everyone winced at the audible snap of a bone breaking in his hand.

“Russia, Grandpa. Russia,” Finnegan said.

“Do they have Sizzlers?” Joe asked. “I love the salad bar. All the olives and cottage cheese you want. Paradise!”

Everyone around the table lapsed into embarrassed silence as Joe made munchy-snacky noises as he pretended to be eating.

Finally he said, rolling a dozen Rs, “Puerrrrrrrrrrrr-toe Reeeeco.”

About The Author

SugarFree

SugarFree

Your Resident Narcissistic Misogynist Rape-Culture Apologist

145 Comments

  1. DEG

    The Joint Chiefs of Staff shifted in their seats like delicate tapeworms were wiggling out of their anuses. But this was only true of two of them.

    🙂

    • The Other Kevin

      Thankfully nobody else is home. I laughed quite loudly at that one.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      This one made me shift in my seat as well.

  2. DEG

    “A sexy secret?” Joe asked, suddenly interested. “Ashley and I have…”

    “No!” Finnegan shouted. “No, no, no.”

    “Ashley’s my daughter,” Joe said.

    “Don’t make me get the squirt bottle,” Finnegan said sternly.

    I laughed out loud at this

    • ron73440

      I laughed out loud at this

      #metoo

      I had to clean some of my food off of the monitor.

      So many great lines, but that one got me.

      • R.J.

        That is a great line

  3. DEG

    “I’ll wipe Putin Rico off the map if I have to!”

    Nice

  4. Tundra

    Everyone winced at the audible snap of a bone breaking in his hand.

    I really look forward to this feature every week. Somehow it always makes me feel better about the fucked up world.

    SF > Mr. Rogers.

    • Lackadaisical

      Hits too close to reality, kind of like a dirty, funnier Babylon bee.

      • Lackadaisical

        When I say it’s too close, I mean it’s too close to reality to make me feel any better about things. I still really enjoy it, of course.

  5. Lackadaisical

    “It’s a bold decision, Grandpa,” Finnegan said. “Very Presidential.”

    Damnit Finnegan, you’re not helping!

  6. MikeS

    shifted in their seats like delicate tapeworms were wiggling out of their anuses

    hahahahaha!!! *deep breath* hahahahahahaha!!!!!!

    /goes back to finish reading

    • MikeS

      “Don’t make me get the squirt bottle,” Finnegan said sternly.

      😂

    • ron73440

      But this was only true of two of them.

      What the hell?!?!

      • MikeS

        Oh damn! I was laughing so hard at the preceeding line I missed that. hahaha

      • ron73440

        I caught it on the second read through.

        Absolutely hilarious SF, still laughing.

      • Swiss Servator

        I am betting the Navy CNO and the CoJCS

      • Bobarian LMD

        Given that Space Ops and NGB have a seat now, I’m thinking the number is too low.

  7. Tonio

    “I’ll wipe Putin Rico off the map if I have to!” Joe said, pounding his fist on the desk. Everyone winced at the audible snap of a bone breaking in his hand.

    Now that’s how you do comedy, folks.

  8. MikeS

    This has to be in SF’s top 5 for humor. Fucking hilarious. Would read again.

    • R C Dean

      Agreed. Everybody already called out my favorite lines. And I, too, had to clean up my monitor.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      I wonder if the people who designed the shirt did so because they find it inspirational, or because they are mocking her.

      • ron73440

        I assumed they were mocking her.

        I hope they’re mocking.

        Please let them be mocking.

        Most people probably don’t know she said that, I don’t see how you could hear that and not mock it, or at least ignore it because she’s on the team you cheer for.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        She used to be my Senator. I believe there are people that find statements like that truly inspirational.

      • ron73440

        there are people that find statements like that truly inspirational.

        That’s disturbing.

        I do try to work it into conversations with my wife whenever possible, maybe she finds it inspiring?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Where would one find such people? So I know whom and where to avoid.

      • ron73440

        Twitter?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I withdraw my question on the grounds of vagueness.

      • ron73440

        My answer was vague too, but I’m not wrong.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Berkeley. SF. Oakland. The local SF media.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Yeah, locally the problem does seem particularly acute in the cute old pre-war neighborhoods, dag nabbit.

  9. Drake

    “Remember, Grandpa,” Finnegan said, “We’re not supposed to talk about that to anyone.”

    Holy crap, that hits close to home. When your President has the mind of a 4-year-old, he can randomly blurt out dangerous shit in the ice cream line.

    • The Other Kevin

      Oh please let him blurt that out in a press conference, and give us the joy of a week of his entire staff trying to explain “what he meant to say.”

  10. JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

    I approached this one with dread after last week’s horror show. Thankfully no Velcro this week.

    Did Putin actually threaten to use nukes? I haven’t seen an exact quote of what he said, just media characterizations of what he said.

    • Swiss Servator

      He threatened to seize Darth Cheney’s weather machine… the hurricane was just a foretaste of what is to come!

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Well it makes sense that he’d invade Alaska to seize the HAARP arrays.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        So, he threatened to weaponize the… (looks around)… the Jooze?

  11. mikey

    I just recovered from laughing and then I read:
    “But this was only true of two of them“

    JFC SF does comedic timing with the written word.

  12. Gender Traitor

    “Don’t make me get the squirt bottle,” Finnegan said sternly.

    ::cat owner servant laughs knowingly::

  13. slumbrew

    Finally he said, rolling a dozen Rs, “Puerrrrrrrrrrrr-toe Reeeeco.”

    Bravo! Author! Author!

  14. CPRM

    “A sexy secret?” Joe asked, suddenly interested. “Ashley and I have…”

    SF is the one who bought the diary!

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      He might have written it.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        SugarFreeAshley? I thought it was OdorFreeAshley.

  15. Yusef drives a Kia

    I laughed all way through,
    Bravo! SF!

  16. db

    Bravo!

    I, too, hold out hope that Joe will accidentally slip out some juicy details of our covert involvement in these events.

    • R.J.

      He probably already did, and the press was told to say nothing. Even if he says it irrefutably in public his staff will walk it back.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        I think he made his comment threatening the pipeline because it was an option they had discussed behind closed doors.

    • hayeksplosives

      He does like to brag…

    • slumbrew

      Like his handlers would ever tell him what they’re doing.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        They probably have in sit the corner wearing a funny hat during the meetings.

      • Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

        Him, damnit.

  17. grrizzly

    This report from the White House is truthier than anything you read in newspapers. I should book tickets to Buenos Aires, stat. It will take awhile for radiation to reach it.

  18. hayeksplosives

    This episode has a little something for everyone. The tapeworm bit was particularly unexpected and hilarious.

  19. Zwak. who's suit is as ragged as his nerves.

    “…and all the cottage cheese you want.”

    And now SugarFree brings the real, cosmic horror out.

    Brava, bellissima!

    • The Other Kevin

      For some reason I never eat pickled beets, except when I eat at a salad bar. Same thing with tomato juice, which I only drink on airplanes.

      • Tundra

        For some reason I never eat pickled beets,

        Just say no.

      • Mojeaux

        Hey! #metoo! I only drink tomato juice on airplanes, too! And on airplanes, the only thing I drink is tomato juice!

      • The Other Kevin

        LOL We’ve shared this story before. What is your position on beets?

      • Mojeaux

        Heh, I do not remember, but I have the attention span of a gnat.

        I will eat pickled beets if I must, but I FLUV fresh beets lightly sauteed in bacon grease/butter.

      • The Other Kevin

        That sounds delicious. We grew beets this year, and we tossed them in olive oil and roasted them. That was good too.

      • The Other Kevin

        My dad used to just eat them right out of the jar. Somehow I developed a taste for those. I also like sardines.

      • Tundra

        Sardines are great. Mackerel are better.

        Beets are disgusting.

      • Nephilium

        Because the pressure in the airplane depresses taste, and the tomato juice flavor is more muted?

  20. Mustang

    “He paused to rub his lips together to make sure his lip-gloss was still applied evenly.”

    I laughed too hard. I can see it His thing is pens. That asshole blew up our whole schedule while his aide and I ran around Tokyo for two hours trying to track down a specific kind of pen for him. I don’t think we ever found it and I’m glad I wasn’t his aide when he delivered the news.

  21. Tundra

    Mafia.

    Elon in the crosshairs. Never, ever be a prominent person and question endless war.

    • The Other Kevin

      Swing and a miss.

      • Bobarian LMD

        He was right about eliminating the EV tax credit. The average income of an EV purchaser is running about $200K right now.

        But that was the only thing he was right about.

      • rhywun

        This.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Eh, I’d still rather do that than blow people up.

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      That corrupt cunt is up to his eyeballs in Ukraine.

      If you want peace in Ukraine — which we ALL do — simply demand Russian honor the boundaries they agreed to in 1994 and withdraw their forces.

      Bull-fucking-shit. The US was pushing Kiev to shell the living hell out of Donbass. Is that peace? Do we achieve peace by arming a bunch hyper-nationalistic, corrupt assholes on the border of an ancient empire with its own corruption and and paranoia issues?

      Send Graham to the front lines and we’ll see how long he keeps pushing this tripe.

      • R.J.

        Hear hear!
        *Stands, Bangs cane repeatedly on table

      • R C Dean

        The US was pushing Kiev to shell the living hell out of Donbass.

        What Ukraine does in Donbas is none of Russia’s business. Well, it shouldn’t be, except for all the Russian troops, militia, military “advisors”, etc. that they have there, and have had for quite some time now. Which are their own justification for Ukraine to shell the Donbas.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        What Qadaffi does in Libya is none of the US’s business.

        What Assad does in Syria is none of the US’s business.

        Oh, I forgot, under the “liberal rules based order” those things are completely different.

      • R C Dean

        ITS DIFFERENT WHEN WE DO IT!

        Don’t you even WEF?

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        Not very well. I keep forgetting the secret handshake.

      • Tundra

        Refresh my memory – what brought them to Donabas?

      • R C Dean

        Does it matter?

      • Tundra

        Yes.

        Provocation is retarded.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The Russians must be laughing their heads off at using the west’s, really the US’s, justifications for military intervention. Even their Crimean incursion used the same rationale as Operation Just Cause.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        And you skirted my point, that the US foreign policy blob is not at all interested in peace in Ukraine. In fact it’s quite the opposite, by their own admission.

        If Russia doesn’t have any business in Ukraine, then we sure don’t.

      • R C Dean

        I think we are in agreement. I tend to focus on Russia, since they are the ones who have been working diligently to break up Ukraine and annex the good bits.

        I don’t see how Ukraine rules its own territory as providing any justification for Russia to invade or intervene. That “responsibility to protect” stuff is a universal casus belli that I would prefer to consign to the portapotty of history.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Never forget that that Irish clown Samantha Power is married to Cass Sunstein.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        Ah yes, Cass Sunstein and his libertarian technocracy…

      • Gustave Lytton

        Funny how those nudges always end up coming from rifle butts if you refuse to go along with them.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        And I maintain that “international law” is a fiction that only works when strategic national security interests are not threatened. The realist approach to foreign policy that kept us out of direct conflict with the Soviet Union for decades has been abandoned in favor of policies that seek to maintain American hegemony at any cost.

        Never mind that international law has been completely undermined by the West in general and the US in particular over the past three decades.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        And I tend to focus on the US as I see them as the instigator of this disaster and the impediment to its solution.

        Not to mention that I resent being made party to it.

      • Drake

        He had a cameo in one of Stone’s Ukraine documentaries – showed up right behind McCain as soon as the smoke had cleared after the coup – looking for his cut of the kick-backs and money laundering.

      • mikey

        He told the assembled Uke military that the US would be behind then all way. This was in 2016, I think.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Ignore 2014 and go back to 1994.

    • ron73440

      Well, Alex sure has his priorities straight:

      blockquote>_Alex_
      @Alexand14280897
      ·
      21m
      Replying to
      @LindseyGrahamSC
      You need to spend less time on twitter & more time ensuring this BOONDOGGLE doesn’t happen again.

      Which is more important..
      Tax credit or the attack on the capital
      Tax credit of theft of national security documents
      Tax credit vs election interference, wait you’re part of that!

      • R.J.

        Well, that wasn’t the boondoggle I expected Alex to mention…
        But yes, Obama has been a problem since he left the White House.

    • R C Dean

      It could be a good way to help save money by applying those funds to assisting Ukrainians in defending their homeland!

      Sign up they take volunteers

      I larfed.

  22. UnCivilServant

    I absolutely HATE the Engineering intake process. It was designed in a vacuum around a model that doesn’t reflect reality, and it’s enforced with an irrational zeal by people who don’t work on the actual build. So you end up interrogated about every questionable and borderline answer on the forms.

    • UnCivilServant

      Of course there is no room for pre-staging VMs prior to demand so that the very expensive vendor isn’t sitting on their thumbs while we wait for the server builds. So to get those boxes, it’s a dance of half-truths to get past the gatekeepers to the datacenter folks we work with on the actual work (and work with all the time for everything else)

  23. Mojeaux

    You know, I probably don’t NEED to scan all the mortgage and refinancing papers from 16 years ago, but I’m going to anyway. I may not hoard physical objects, but I sure as hell do hoard information, especially when it can all fit on something the size of a deck of cards.

    • UnCivilServant

      You can never have too many backuops.

      • Mojeaux

        I have Carbonite too.

    • The Other Kevin

      These are the kind of people that keep winning elections in deep blue areas. And somehow we’ve got TWO of them now.

    • Nephilium

      Wait… that’s got to be faked.

      The Daily Show did something entertaining?

    • Shiny Nerfherder

      That quickly went from Good! to Really?

    • grrizzly

      They are right at least about one thing. The flu shots are garbage. The are ineffective. The only good thing about them: they are safe (compared to the covid shots, the flu shots still have more adverse effects than any other vaccine before covid).

      • hayeksplosives

        I don’t trust them not to throw in a Covid mRNA “booster” with the flu shot.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        I don’t trust them not to throw in a Covid mRNA “booster” with the flu shot.

      • ron73440

        I don’t trust them

        Me neither.

      • The Other Kevin

        Whoops, out of flu-only shots, all we have left are the two for one shots.

      • SugarFree

        I think that was once a plan, to offer nothing but the combined shots.

      • Sensei

        My understanding is they are looking to make the annual flu shot use mRNA.

        However, one small study they did found that it wasn’t as effective as the one currently produced.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        It’s hard to formulate a response to that proposal that doesn’t end with “and Nerfherder went to prison.”

      • Mojeaux

        You’re already on a list. Prison is the last stop on the way to the grave.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/why-did-the-cdc-hide-the-v-safe-data

        V-safe is a voluntary monitoring system put in place by the CDC to monitor adverse events after vaccination.

        When you get a COVID vaccine, you get a card to enroll in the V-safe program. Everyone is encouraged to enroll to let the CDC know how safe (or not) the vaccine is.

        Slightly over 10M people chose to participate in the program for the COVID vaccines.

        V-safe then reaches out to you on a regular basis to see how things are going.

        If you report a serious adverse event, you get a phone call from a CDC contractor encouraging you to file a VAERS report. I know this because when I reported my insulin requirements shot up after the vaccine to unprecedented levels, I got one of these calls.

        Unlike the VAERS system, the V-safe data is almost “fully reported” because people sign up at the time they are vaccinated BEFORE they have any symptoms. Thus, we know that the denominator is 10.1M. It is not fully reported because even after people sign up, many people will ignore the subsequent V-safe requests to enter their information. Therefore, the percentages reported in V-safe are likely to under-estimate the severity of any problem.

        The events recorded in V-safe are also very generic, with only a few predefined categories.

        The CDC stopped pushing this system around May 2021 after it became crystal clear that it was accumulating data that showed the vaccines were unsafe.

        The V-safe data shows that 33.1% of the people who got the vaccine suffered from a significant adverse event and 7.7% had to seek professional medical care.

    • ron73440

      I thought that was the Bee.

      I’m getting the server error again, this is my sixth attempt.

      • Sensei

        Once that latches on to something in your post it doesn’t like you are pretty much dead in the water.

      • rhywun

        Yeah, I’ve had to give up on several comments recently. No idea what it latches onto.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Let’s check the headline against the story:

      Only 49% of U.S. adults plan to get their flu shot this flu season, according to a survey conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID).

      Eh, technically true.

      A higher percentage of Americans (58%) plan to mask at least sometimes this flu season than intend to get vaccinated.

      I guess also technically true, but also probably close to a 100% overlap in vaccine + mask.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        /end tag.

      • ron73440

        That’s about what I was trying to paste, but it wouldn’t let me.

        I think the maskers are also more likely to get the shot, but the article doesn’t seem to think that’s a possibility.

    • slumbrew

      Perfect.

    • MikeS

      LOL

      😂 My aunt, circa late 1990: “WILL YOU PLEASE STOP SINGING THAT?!”

      Jesus that poor lady. I kept singing “Rrrrrrico….suave” over and over until she lost it.

  24. ron73440

    I thought that was the Bee.

    Oddly, the article barely mentions masks, but has a whole list of why people aren’t getting the flu shot.

    Every time I try to post with a quote from the article, I get the INTERNAL SERVER ERROR.

    • R.J.

      Did that to me recently. I forgot how i fixed it. I think I pasted into a document as “text only” and then moved it over.

    • Lackadaisical

      What percentage of people usually get the shot anyway? I never have…

  25. Shiny Nerfherder

    It didn’t occur to me until this afternoon that the OPEC+ output decrease was a direct response to the new US/EU sanctions on Russia.

    We should probably start a betting pool on how long it is before the CIA offs MBS dies in a tragic Jello accident.

    • Drake

      BRICS is why our overlords are so riled up about Russia. And Saudi Arabia is seriously considering joining along with Egypt.

      It isn’t just a trading group. They are seriously talking about creating a gold and commodity back currency. Remember what happened to the last guy to do that?

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        I don’t even need to click to know what that is.

        And given the current shenanigans with NordStream, I have modified my view of that clusterfuck. It’s looking more and more like the UK and France pushed for the intervention in order to fuck over Italy.

      • Lackadaisical

        How does it fuck Italy of all places?

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        Italy gets a lot of oil and gas directly from Libya. Additionally, destabilizing Libya intensified the migration problems into Italy.

      • Shiny Nerfherder

        I’m speaking of the Libyan intervention, of course.

      • Lackadaisical

        Okay. I thought you were referring to blowing up Nord stream