News post – Catch-23 No. 950 Totally recalled

A couple of days ago, news sites started covering the recall for Ford Focus (2011-2015) due to an issue with the fuel tank. Words like ‘safety risk’ and ‘fire’ were tossed around, so I got in touch with Ford to find out if my little Focus was going to try and kill me.

I was told to wait for a letter from Ford, which would cover the recall and possible repair.

This is not the first issue with my car – earlier this year the clutch was replaced as it suffered from the same problem that the ACCC are taking Ford to court over.

I love my little car, and the fuel tank thing is unlikely to be an issue for me as it’s only worrisome when driven in dusty in environments, but how dusty is too dusty.

Time to check the letterbox again.

Mat

 

 

News post – Catch-23 No. 949 Voting postal

A plebiscite for marriage equality is an expensive scam – if Australia votes yes, the Libs are going to consider allowing a free vote in parliament. They could do it now without the postal vote, but they don’t want to and the people will have to make them.

If you’re having trouble figuring out if the plebiscite is a good move or a bad move, look at the supporters and detractors. Trumpist bible-bashing buffoon Tony Abbott thinks it’s a great idea and pro-equality groups don’t. Equality groups would rather see the money spent elsewhere, and the vote will give a voice to all the close-minded morons to shout and scream about how this will ruin the sanctity of marriage and won’t somebody think of the children, on our dime no less. Some same-sex marriage campaigners are even encouraging a boycott.

I think you should absolutely vote Yes for marriage equality when the material comes in the mail, but know that this is the government’s $160 million Get Out of Jail Free card – a way to defer a decision about same-sex marriage without looking like, well, old white homophobes.

How is that working out?

Mat

News post – Catch-23 No. 948 Really Real News

Lara Trump really is doing a Facebook news show called Real News to cover all the great things that Trump’s doing and the real fake news media aren’t talking about.

As my comic strip Trump said that Orwell’s ‘1984’ had some terrific ideas, it made sense that if someone was speaking for him, that person would be the Minister of Truth. The Ministry’s slogans tied nicely into the North Korea comments and saying he’s more Presidential than all previous Presidents (except Lincoln).

Mat

News post – Catch-23 No. 947 Wild Winds

Melbourne has been a little windy this weekend – 109kph gusts in the city and 130kph gusts up in the alpine regions. Some international flights got diverted to Sydney and The Age did, in fact, have photos of fallen bicycles to show how windy it was. They weren’t attached to the building, that part I made up.

Sadly, the bike photo appears to have been replaced by a couple of fallen tree photos.

Mat

News post – Catch-23 No. 946 Spicing Doors

Poor Sean Spicer – he put up with so much for Trump and then gets treated like this? I thought that in hindsight, he may wish he took a leaf out of the Japanese Prime Minister’s wife’s playbook and pretended not to speak English.

Mat

 

 

News post – Catch-23 No. 945 Calving

The iceberg that came away from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica in the week is twice the size of Luxembourg (or as big as Delaware if you’re in the U.S.) and weighs in at a trillion tonnes.

The experts are not directly linking this particular iceberg to global warming but say there are a lot of other ice shelves that are coming apart quicker than they should be.

Mat

News post – Catch-23 No. 944 Snoozed

This comic strip began with Kate saying something different (and lifted from real life) but I’m going to keep it to myself as I may use it in another strip.

Hitting snooze is indeed bad for you – it can leave you groggy for longer and can break the association between your alarm going off and actually needing to wake up. The grogginess – also known as sleep inertia – affects your decision-making, your memory and the performance of even simple tasks and can take hours to shake off.

The solution to chronic snoozing? Put the alarm clock out of reach so you have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Mat

 

News post – Catch-23 No. 943 Environmental paradox

Knowing how to take the best care of our natural resources is not always straightforward – disposable vs reusable plates, for example. Often protecting one is done at the expense of something else.

Bagel’s heart is in the right place, though.

Mat

 

News post – Catch-23 No. 942 Winter is here

In the Game of Thrones, winter has been coming for quite a while now. Now that this prophesized winter is finally wintering, it stands to reason that summer must be well on the way. What better way to celebrate the murder of every single person in Westeros than a sunny summer beach party?

Mat

News post – Catch-23 No. 941 Duck Pond

This strip was inspired by seeing a whole piece of white bread floating in a duck pond near our house. There are signs asking you not to feed the ducks, and there is the no shortage of info on the internet telling you that bread, especially modern highly-processed white bread, is just not good for Daisy and Donald, but the urge to feed bread to ducks is obviously strong on the genetic level for some.

That thing about birds and rice, though, not true. Birds like uncooked rice and it doesn’t make them sick or explode. Hashtag birdfacts

Mat