Happier than a dog with three balls
Posted: March 18, 2013 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Books, Food, Music 1 Comment »Hello, dears. Just popping my head up above the water to say hello and bring you a quick dump and run of delights.
First, I’m popping out the oldies with Lenny Bernstein’s slick version of Exultate Jubilate. The recording is very Lenny – a big church filled bombastically to the formerets with an orchestra consisting of every single fucking person in Bavaria who can play an instrument (cute violinist alert at 5.04) and a deathly silent audience, stunned into submission by the music and the stark staring terror that they might cough and Lenny would gut them with his baton. However, Arleen Auger’s voice is lovely, and this recording is the one I hear in my head if I happen to think of Lenny. It was playing one night at one of his parties, and he was serving drinks and bopping around like he usually did when he got to hear his own performances, like a drunk bullfrog that has been connected to the mains, and at the height of one particularly spastic conniption he managed to tip an entire jug of margaritas over Nancy Reagan, so it always makes me laugh. The recording of the Great Mass in C minor that goes with this on CD is a cracker, by the way.
Next, following on from Cole’s mustard abduction, a charming little story by Theodore Sturgeon called “Yesterday Was Monday” which was pointed out by KBS, and which explains everything.
Random food blogness: Fat Yu, who apparently IS FAT YU! (and also a tiny little bit racist on the Japanese), but who writes otherwise entertainingly of his eating exploits around Shanghai.
If you like a bit of tentacle in your tale and can “Ïa! ïa! Shub niggurath!” with the best of them, you might enjoy Innsmouth Mazazine. I have been working my way through them very happily, even if they do give me odd dreams.
Last, and then I am off to bed in my upside-down down-under bed, I suggest you go and see the website of sculptor Thomas Doyle to see the coolest things ever.
Goodnight my dears. Sleep well and dream of Ted Cruz slowly slipping down a slavering and drool-bespattered maw. Ïa! ïa! Cthulhu fhtagn!
It is an unnecessarily time-consuming demand to expect anyone to provide you with proof
Posted: January 30, 2013 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Monkeys flinging poo Leave a comment »
I’ve been here in Australia for about six weeks, and if it hasn’t been been piss-steamingly hot, it has instead been dumping cockloads of cold rain on my head. I was shat on by a koala that looked more stoned than I did. I had to go to a cocktail party attended by both Rose Fucking Porteus [Youtube] and Gina Bitchface Rinehart. Thankfully they kept them on opposite sides of the ballroom, pointed Rose at the gin buffet and distracted Gina by waving Fairfax share certificates at her. I went to dinner at Parliament House, all done up in my best soup-and-fish, and got stuck next to Christopher Pyne – the stupid person’s idea of a clever poodle. [Also Youtube]
Now there’s going to be an election. In September. Which will be all the media here will talk about for the rest of my stay.
What a fucking country.
Anyhow, I realised that I have fallen down on my duty to you all. It has been a long time since I last fished a gleaming urinal cake of stupid out of the piss trough they call the Corner, and then held it up for your delectation. Thus, I remedy my fault.
For today’s bagetelle, I thought I might use Obamacare Punishes Smokers: Why not the Promiscuous? By Wesley J. Smith, in which Wesley J. Smith responds to an AP story which reports that health insurers will be able to charge higher premiums to smokers buying individual policies.
Living unhealthy lifestyles has become the new Scarlet Letter. That’s what happens with centralized health care. But once we go down that road, it won’t end there. Smokers today, the obese tomorrow.
This financial stick is entirely political. Notice we never hear experts wanting to “punish” the promiscuous for the cost burden they inflict on the health care system. Yet people who sleep around, like smokers and the obese, cost the rest of us plenty–what with promiscuity leading to sexually transmitted diseases, some cancers, HIV, unwanted pregnancies, mental health issues, etc. Why isn’t what is good for the goose also good for the gander?
That won’t happen because society celebrates promiscuity and the popular culture glamorizes licentious lifestyles the way it once extolled smoking. Consider: Girls. We applaud basketball players who sleep with 20,000 women. We ooh, and ah over Reality TV celebrities, with no talent other than living provocatively before the camera, who sleep around and get very publicly pregnant. We even tend to think something is wrong with virgins who are older than 18.
If we are going to outlaw underwriting, it should apply across the board. But if we are going to punish unhealthy lifestyles with higher insurance premiums, that too should apply across the board. After all, “equality” is the new buzz word, right?
Now, the title had promise and, aside from the fact that Wesley J. Smith and I agree that penalty pricing insurance is wrong, there’s a lot of stupid in there to mock. However, most of it boils down to a smug and slightly sweaty man in his basement typing “hoors” over and over again with one palsied hand. Which is disappointing.
However, let us forge ahead, for today, today it is in the comments that the real gold lies. Read the rest of this entry »
Sympathy for the terrible
Posted: September 21, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement Leave a comment »
I feel for Mitt. My tax returns are complicated too.
I have investments scattered all over the globe, the odd bit of this and that, here and there – two box factories in Chicago, a couple of floors in the One57 (Bob Costas wanted to buy one of the apartments off me for twice what I paid, but I told him to go fuck himself in the ear (it’s going to be bad enough living next to the fucking Beckhams)), a couple of ad agencies, cattle ranching and wool in Argentina, gold and uranium mining in Australia (I pay my workers three times market rates, just to piss off that bitch Gina Rinehart), a little discreet organ harvesting in China, a pile of gold in a safe in George Town (along with some very salacious photographs of Joe Biden and a ski bunny, complete with two sets of bunny ears), three coffeshops in Amsterdam, assorted trusts (family, blind and “going on”) and a nifty little Swiss Verein that owns more Apple shares than I am allowed to admit – all of them with their various profits and deductions and capital losses and tax amnesties, across seventeen tax jurisdictions with 92 different filing dates.
Then there’s my charitable and political donations – my church (we’re trying to rebuild the steeple after Father Eustace drove a dumptruck into it three weeks ago while under the influence of too much altar wine), the greenies, the godbotherers who want to go to Africa, the saving of various endangered fluffy things, no less than fifteen young men in Brazil and Botswana whose villages have access to clean drinking water and modern gymnasium equipment on my purse, sundry donations and purchases for local council members, two mayors, three governors, fifteen reps, seventeen senators, two cardinals, one president and a sizable annual bequest to the St Filbert’s Home for Wayward and Orphaned Boys in New Orleans, of which I am the founding patron.
Each month, when I get to the Spokane offices of my accountants, Bumble, Curtin and Run (an English firm which has handled my family’s finances since just after the Battle of Flodden Field), I have a coffee and perhaps a little eclair in the client drawing room while the young Mr Bumble (the great to about twenty grandson of the original Mr Bumble) tries to find his pants and my file. Each month, I am ushered into his office – the poor man always looks thoroughly flushed – and I am confronted with a pile of about thirty two hundred pages, all of which I am supposed to have read, all of it festooned with red and purple and yellow stickies denoting various levels of importance, bound together with a summary file which has a summary memo clipped to the front, which has a section marked “Conclusions” right at the very top, which is printed in big print and short soothing words, and which essentially reads just like Mitt’s PWC memo.
Let me tell you, that fucker is the only bit I have ever read. I pay five hundred bucks an hour for Senior Clerks to read that shit for me. I just flip to the “sign here” stickies and sign away.
Still, small sympathy aside – after all, I am not running for President – I am filled with a feeling not too dissimilar to schadenfreude (if I weren’t 93 I could get away with a Mittelschmerz joke here) seeing Harry the honey badger getting his teeth right back into Mitt’s trouserleg.
Reid has been quick to dismiss the PwC letter, calling for Romney to release the full returns and saying in a conference call with Nevada reporters that an “outline by some accountant about his blind trust, that’s not going to do it.”
The lovely Imani (is that what we’re calling you now, dear?) has picked on one of my favorite bits – that Mitt admits on the record that he didn’t claim $1.75 million in charitable deductions in his 2011 return, with all of the contradictions and ability to get his money back that that entails.
Benjy Sarlin at TPM (via Sullivan, I think) goes even further:
Did Romney artificially inflate his tax rate using the same strategy in other returns? That’s the biggest question raised by the disclosure of his move to take fewer deductions in 2011.
The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to questions over whether Romney amended any of his previous returns
Ryan Grim at Hufflepuff (from whence that first quote came) has a great round up of other glaring holes in Mitt’s letter. For starters, Grim notes:
According to the letter from PwC avowing the number, it is based on Romney’s adjusted gross income. That means that, for instance, if Romney made investment profit of $20 million, but had losses of, say, $19.9 million, his adjusted gross income would only be $100,000. Paying 20.2 percent of $100,000 would cost Romney just over $20,000.
If Reid’s comment is interpreted strictly — that Romney paid literally $0 in taxes over 10 years — then the PwC letter undermines that charge. But if Romney paid only a very small amount — say, $20,000 on $20 million — it would be hard to award Reid many pinocchios for calling that nothing.
Hee. Glenn Kessler will forever be a punchline. Life is just sometimes.
Grim (who is doing sterling work) notes that:
Romney’s claimed rate is misleading in another way. Boston College tax law professor Brian Galle noted that Romney’s IRA has grown since 1999 at a rate of roughly $9 million to $10 million per year. Yet he pays no taxes on those gains. Adding $10 million to his 2011 income of $13.8 million, for instance, nearly doubles it, meaning his tax rate is roughly half of what his real gain was.
while over here Grim quotes Mr Galle on Mitt’s takes backsies charity bit.
Grim points to Greg Sargent, who has an interview with Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center about PWC’s claim that “Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.”
“Let’s say you have 10 years in which you paid 13 percent in taxes, and 10 years in which you paid 27 percent,” Williams told me. “If you average those rates, you’ll get an overall rate of 20 percent. But if the 13 percent years were high income years, and the 27 percent years were low income years, then his total taxes paid as a share of total income over the 20 years would be less, perhaps significantly less, than 20 percent.”
I warn you, don’t click on these next links. This sums up the mood at the Corner:
Mitt Romney’s tax release shows that he is rich, that he makes most of his money from investments, and that he gives a lot of it to his church. Politically aware people knew all of these things already. So unless there is a big surprise in the fine print (e.g., a contribution to the National Association of Puppy Stranglers), the release is unlikely to have much impact on the race.
while there’s radio silence on the whole thing at Red State, although Erick who was Begat by Erick does have time to point out that Hopey McChangeburger is a loser and a crook and a terrorist, and to solicit funds to buy Mountain Dew and porn and paintball billboards.
The time has come for us to launch our National Billboard Campaign. We have invested in the printing of 24 “Get Hope, Fire Obama” billboards, 2 per swing state; we just need you to find a home for them. For $1,500 you can put up one of these billboards. You get to pick which key swing state you would like your billboard to go in. We are targeting these 12 key swing states:
SELECT HERE TO PUT UP YOUR BILLBOARD!
Florida Ohio Virginia
North Carolina Pennsylvania Wisconsin
Iowa Colorado Missouri
New Hampshire Nevada New Mexico
And Mr Krugman hasn’t even posted about Mitt’s tax returns yet.
I suspect this is another Romney fail. Oh, happy day.
Tampa? I hardly knew her!
Posted: September 1, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement Leave a comment »Well dears, the convention is over. I had intended to write so many posts keeping you up to date on what was what, but what with this and that, and that and this, I somehow could not find the time. I’m writing you a long post with all of my adventures, from the minor Paulite revolution I fomented to the rather odd orgy I ended up at in the Bachmann’s suite. It was remarkably like the video above.
I blame grindr. More on all that later.
In the meantime, I note that I also omitted to follow up on my thread to find the best personal ad from the convention. I checked on my gays every day and, frankly, I was a little disappointed. The boys of Tampa just didn’t seem to be putting in much effort to snare some Republican arse, and the Republican Youth seemed to be keeping it indoors at the convention. I popped into one toilet at the Times Forum and all the lightbulbs had been removed. Thankfully I had my little torch. I’ve never seen so many lily white white arses moving quite so quickly before.
Anyway, aside from the Gay Joe Cool that JGabriel found, the only ad that really made me laugh was this one:
Much love. Have a drink on me. I’ll be back to you once I’ve managed to get Michele Bachman out of my closet so I can check out and get on my plane out of this shithole.
I’m in love with a married man (NSFW)
Posted: July 8, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Monkeys flinging poo 2 Comments »The boys over at the Corner have made themselves nice, dimmed the lights, gotten out the lotion and the scented candle, and have settled in for a quiet night giving Vice-President Paul Ryan the tongue bath of his life.
To be sure, each of Romney’s finalists or near-finalists has merit. But Ryan would benefit Romney’s candidacy in unique ways. Here are just a few:
* Picking Ryan would excite and unite the party.
* By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney would add the party’s single best spokesman on three huge issues: Obamacare, the budget, and the debt. Imagine Ryan debating Joe Biden — or Hillary Clinton.
* By adding such a heavyweight to the ticket, Romney would convey to the electorate how high the stakes are in this historic election.
* The pick would also show strength. By making it, Romney would (rightly) indicate that he’s not afraid of being overshadowed by anyone.The 23-year age difference between Romney and Ryan makes them seem more like natural complements than like rivals, and by all accounts the chemistry between them is excellent. Moreover, younger voters are increasingly disillusioned with Obama, and putting the 42-year-old Ryan on the ticket would encourage many of them to give Romney a second look.
Because the only thing that would excite the young peoples more than one smug lying merchant wanker with helmet hair is two of the fuckers sitting there, looking like an outtake from the Chuckles and Bozo Variety Hour.* Read the rest of this entry »
Book thread
Posted: June 15, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Books, Pat and Dick Leave a comment »
I saw quite a bit of Jacqueline Susann (take that how you will) during the war. Jack and I had been rewarded by our respective agencies with a cushy temporary assignment keeping an eye or two on a rather dishy German agent who was trying (and failing) to seduce Truman Capote.
Now, failing at seducing Truman is quite an achievement, given that young Fritz (for that was the German’s name) was available, adorable and Aryan, and that Truman would bang a duck if you slapped some Bay Rum on it and stuck a bottle of poppers under its wing.
The failure was none of our doing, I must add. Our bosses didn’t particularly mind if Fritz rogered Truman blind and legless and then extracted everything that Truman knew during the post-coital guilt. If Hitler wanted to know about the divine boy that Truman had sucked off at the Y last night and how yellow was Truman’s favorite color and how war was so, so sad, it was none of our concern.
Nevertheless, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances (including a dodgy curry, a spurned Sicilian-American dancer with a flick knife, an amusing misunderstanding about the meaning of the English word “submissive”, and three separate bouts of herpes), Fritz never quite got into Truman’s pants. Jack and I spent most of the time drinking gimlets and spiking Truman’s drinks with Pervitin when he wasn’t looking.
None of which is the story I originally set out to tell you, by the way. And yes, I will get to the book thread. I’m old and my mind wanders. Fuck off if you don’t like it.
Jack and I lost track of each other in the fifties because I was spending so much time in Cuba. I didn’t hear from her until 1969 when she wrote to invite me to dinner at her DC apartment – just (as Jack put it) a small dinner with close friends, a dinner with some meaning to it, a dinner that would be a celebration of something. She was, apparently, trying to get over her abortive affair with Ethel Merman, and had embarked on a rather less public dalliance with Pat Nixon.
Pat, of course, had become a lesbian the year before, more I suspect as a reaction to Dick’s chronic flatulence than any real desire for the love of a good woman. Or indeed a bad one.
Bitsy Trump and I cadged a lift from Gloria. She always served spectacular champagne, so by the time we arrived we were all several under the pump. Truman came in a little later with a brasileiro rent boy called João, who immediately began flirting with Pat, which caused Truman to retreat in tears to the bathroom, so we spent the afternoon drinking gimlets, getting baked on a pan of particularly fine double-fudge rum-n-raisin brownies that Pat had whipped up, and lying around drawing monster eyebrows and a lazy eye on all the pictures of Sally Quinn in the society pages while listening to Brahms and the gentle sounds of Truman whimpering.
Gloria, Pat, João and I played a lengthy game of Twister, and at one point I came out of a quick nap for long enough to see Pat poking Truman with a broom handle while shouting “Cry it up, Streckfus!”, but most of the rest of the evening is a blur.
I do remember that one of Pat’s security detail brought burgers and fries and shakes, and Jack turned the news on so we could throw our pickles at Nixon. Just as Bitsy got Dicky fair in the gob with an onion ring, Jack looked across at me, raised her glass and declaimed “Nixon. Capote. I hate both those fucks. I hate their beady eyes and their stupid noses and their lying fucking mouths. Those fucks will ruin us all.”
At which Pat laughed like a drain and had to be heimliched after her olive went down the wrong way.
I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m scared to think what Jack would have said about Mr Romney or the Twilight books.
Now, it’s been a while since we had a book thread, so here you go.
My reading has been all over the place this month. I’m halfway through David Wong’s John dies at the end, an odd and disconcerting little story about small town kids, sex, drugs and the malevolent forces that live beyond the bounds of our universe and watch our world with hungry eyes. Wong is very funny and ably handles a plot in which the peace can be broken at any time by the abrupt appearance of a cloud of flying flesh eating worms or a golem made of slaughtered deer parts.
Gareth Roberts’ novelisation of Douglas Adams’ Shada was particularly good, both as an evocation of the book that Adams might have written and of Tom Baker’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana. Getting those things right without veering into pastiche or, on the other hand, bland unrecognisability is hard – just ask Michael Moorcock. Roberts pokes happily at some Gallifrey Base obsessions, including the argued overuse of the sonic screwdriver, the gay agenda and this (which is just cruel):
As Skagra watched, he learnt of the Doctor’s early history, academic achievements, his family ties on Gallifrey and elsewhere, and the exact reasons for his first flight from his home world. But all of that was irrelevant.
There’s even a very fine Monty Python joke about halfway through.
I also read The Time Travellers by Simon Guerrier, which I thought was an exceptional book. The first Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara are stranded in London in a 2006 in which Great Britain is at endless war after being devastated by the evil computer WOTAN, who will later (or earlier, depending on your level of wibbliness) be defeated by the second Doctor in The War Machines. All four leads are beautifully drawn, and Guerrier’s description of a conversation between the Doctor and Barbara about changing history towards the end of the book is passionate and tender and quite masterful.
I love The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. The book is divided up by flavours, with each flavour cross referenced against most of the others to see what memories or recipes or random thoughts the combination brings to Segnit’s mind – from bacon and chicken (the proper number of bread slices in a club sandwich), to bacon and clove (a recipe for barbecue baked beans), clove and vanilla (which meet, along with coconut, in wine stored in French oak) and vanilla and cherry (Cherries Jubilee!). Fascinating enough to read from cover to cover, and perfect for dipping into for ideas if you happen to have a surfeit of oranges or cucumbers that you need to use up.*
The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer made me laugh, and the divine Phryne Fisher mysteries (this month, Murder in the Dark) make me wish that I had been born 20 years earlier so I could have hung around in Melbourne between the wars – although I do suspect there wasn’t quite as much cocaine and shagging as Ms Greenwood describes.
Well, kiddies, that’s me. What have you been reading?
* I’ve been making pickled oranges and a French orange wine aperitif and bread-and-butter cucumbers all week. I smell like vinegar and booze which, frankly, isn’t unusual. Let me know if you want recipes.
Bookmark it libs
Posted: June 8, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Rare sincerity 2 Comments »
Well, my dears, I’m back from my little jaunt over to London for Betty Windsor’s Jubilee.
I haven’t seen that much mindless fawning and avid slobbering over one woman since the time I got stuck in a lift with Megan McArdle and Tina Brown. Mind you, that was only about three weeks ago, so it’s been quite a month for the brown-nosing.
I did enjoy the Jubilee flotilla. I was delighted to be invited onto the Royal Barge (although I was confused for a while because that’s what Phillip always used to call Fergie).
However, after a few glasses of bubbly and half an hour listening to Kate wittering on about how big her castle is, I did consider taking a fire axe to the bottom of the boat and drowning the whole bloody lot of them (except Harry, of course, who is such a dear and who hooked me up with some smashing coke (but then the sweet thing doesn’t have a Saxe-Coburg gene anywhere in his little ginger body)).
Thankfully I was distracted by a lustful look from a particularly dishy Gurkha, so a major international diplomatic incident was averted for the time being.
Anyway, I arrived back at Shady Pines to find that the righties at the Corner have been smoking the post-Wisconsin crack pipe and worked themselves up into jittery, pock-marked frenzy and are now wandering the streets muttering Halperin quotes:
“With five months until Election Day, Barack Obama faces a grim new reality: Republicans now believe Mitt Romney can win, and Democrats believe Obama can lose…”
in between trying to cadge subscriptions from the punters so Kathryn Jean can buy her own blow-up Timothy Dolan doll.
Nooners, never one to turn down a passing bandwagon (particularly if it has a Smirnoff logo on the side), is actively crowing about how Obama has lost the election six months out because he doesn’t lie and dissemble like his opponent. I shit you not:
Mr. Obama has become actively bad at politics. Here is an example of how bad. Anyone good at politics does not pick a fight with the Catholic Church during a presidential year. Really, you just don’t. Because there’s about 75 million Catholics in America, and the half of them who go to church will get mad. The other half won’t like it either.
If you’re good at politics, you quietly allow the church what it needs to survive, which actually is no more or less than what’s long been provided by the U.S. Constitution.
If you’re good at politics but ideologically mean, you string the church along throughout the election year, offering “temporary full waivers” or some such idiotic phrase—politicians love to make up idiotic phrases—on conscience, and then revoke all protections in 2013, after you’ve been re-elected, and have the fight then.
Even worse, Obama is apparently a loser because he’s attacking his opponent:
A more important example, and then we’ll move on. The president opened his campaign with a full-fledged assault on his opponent. This is a bad sign in an incumbent! An incumbent should begin his campaign with a full-fledged assertion of the excellence of his administration—the progress that has been made, the trouble that has been avoided, the promise that endures. You’ve got to be able to name these things. Then, once you’ve established the larger meaning of your administration—with wit and humor, and in a tone that assumes fair minded Americans will see it your way—you turn, in late summer, to a happy, spirited assault on the poor, confused, benighted and yet ultimately dangerous man running against you.
All of which means, in the warm haze of Nooners’ post-Wisconsin bender, that
The Obama administration suddenly looks like a house of cards.
The collective Tarantos are also excited. You can almost see the desperation oozing off the page as they try to paint Wisconsin as the penultimate victory in a string of Republican triumphs, which will culminate in the crowning of King Mitt in January.
To be sure, it’s possible that Obama will stage a comeback and defeat Mitt Romney. Only time will tell. But it’s not as if time took a vow of silence in January 2009. The other day Commentary’s John Steele Gordon provided a helpful list of events that “sure looks like a trend to me”: the emergence of the Tea Party in early 2009 and the town-hall confrontations that summer, Republican victories in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s governor races in November 2009, Scott Brown’s upset in January 2010, the Republican landslide in November 2010, and Walker’s vindication Tuesday, along with the approval of ballot measures curtailing public-sector pensions in California’s second- and third-largest cities. …
“If Republican Mitt Romney is inaugurated as president in January, history may look to June as the month in which President Obama’s fate was sealed,” writes National Journal’s Reid Wilson. If so, we would argue history will be wrong. The crucial month was March 2010, when ObamaCare became law. Obama’s determination to push it through despite overwhelming public opposition was the apotheosis of his contemptuous approach to governing. Pundits who took until this week to notice that Obama is out of touch were themselves out of touch.
Now, I know there are no sure things in politics, and the stupidity and self-destructiveness of a major part of the American electorate is never to be underestimated.
Nonetheless, I think Obama is going to win and win handily.
The more the electorate sees Willard, the more they will dislike him (particularly that part of the electorate which is brown or gay or has a vagina and/or something functioning above the level of their brainstem). The debates are going to be more of a disaster for the Republicans than that time when Uncle Cranky McCain wandered around the stage looking for his doggy mid-debate.
My money’s on the smart black guy that most of the country likes, rather than the dull, awkward, unpleasant, unprincipled trull who thinks that cops, firefighters and teachers are parasites holding back the American economy.
Bring it on.
[Image: Hans Makart (1840-1884) - Der Triumph der Ariadne]
BREAKING – The illusion of FDR’s War Room leadership
Posted: May 23, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement Leave a comment »This photo is going to blow the lid off, sheeple! VICTORY!!! !
Next up: how the cloning tool was used on George W. Bush’s codpiece.
Good Friday Grifters
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Domestic Affairs 4 Comments »I quite like Good Friday. The chants at the morning service at the Convent of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen down the road are always so lovely. Although I’m Catholic, and therefore not particularly religious, I do find the stark dignity of that empty tabernacle quite stirring.
Neverthless, we did get our praying out of the way pretty quickly this morning, so we could get on with the important business of gossip, showing off our new hats and handing round pictures of the grandkiddies, interspersed with the odd bit of actual business so that we didn’t have to deal with it at morning tea. There may well have been some man or another up the front of the chapel, wearing a dress and yammering on, but none of us was paying much attention except during the hymns.
This morning we worked out who was bringing what to the next bring-and-buy – I’m doing Cherry Bakewells and a caraway seed cake – set the date for the next Convent Fair, and managed to find a nanny job for poor Mary McKenzie.
While she was on holiday in New York a few months ago, she got rather too excited in a nightclub toilet with one of the boys from Jersey Shore. She’s not sure which one. All she can remember is muscles, big hair and a cloud of Axe body spray which really isn’t much help. Now she needs the work to pay for a nice new pram and some DNA tests.
We aren’t missing out on much by not listening during mass, as we do have a rather uninspiring roster of priests thrown our way each week.
Father Seamus, who I seem to recall lead the service today, is a nice and pretty young man. Unfortunately he’s frightfully stupid and exceptionally fond of the Virgin Mary, if you get my drift. He can speak about her pure, forever untouched femininity for hours. The poor dear will come crashing out in a few years and be much more entertaining, but for the moment he’s a dreadful bore.
Father Flarety only ever talks about birth control, homosexuality or and the environment (he’s against all of them), but in the heat of his oratory the poor sot usually forgets which of them he is denouncing. It doesn’t seem to make much difference anyway. He also has a tendency to wander off during communion and not come back, which makes for a nice early mark. Last Sunday he got his hip flask mixed up with the communion wine. The blood of Christ had a kick to it that day, let me tell you. We had to take old Sister Luigi out into the vestry and fan her for a while.
And Father MacDonald is now so old and so wizened that he can’t be seen over the altar or the lectern, even when standing on a milk crate, so no one has any idea what he talks about.
Anyway, I really just wanted to wish you all a happy non-denominational Easter/Passover for this weekend and share with you a personal email I received from Marcus Bachmann reminding me that it is Michele’s birthday today. How lovely that the day of her birth falls on Good Friday this year, the day when Jesus died for us, the day when the tabernacle is as cold and dark and barren and empty as Michele’s heart.
Dear Sarah,
This Friday, April 6, is a very special day in the Bachmann household – it is Michele’s 56th birthday!
This past year has flown by, and Michele has spent the year working incredibly hard fighting day in and day out across this country for the conservative values we hold near and dear. In addition to being the voice in Washington we always know we can count on to tell the truth, Michele has worked extremely hard as a wife, mother and conservative activist.
I really want this birthday to be special for Michele, but I know that what would mean the most to her is if she was able to hear from you.
I’ve put together a special online birthday card for Michele and I hope you will follow this link to sign the card. On Friday, I will compile the messages to show her that people from every corner of the country appreciate the hard work she does.
Michele is facing a formidable election this year, and the Democrats would love nothing more than to see Michele be defeated. Please sign the card to show you stand with Michele, and afterwards you’ll be given the opportunity to make a special donation to show Michele just how much you support her work.
Please consider making a $56 – one dollar per year, or even $112 – two dollars per year, contribution. But, if you can’t afford to give that much, a gift of $10 or even $25 is greatly appreciated. Every donation received is one step closer to ensuring Michele’s campaign is victorious this fall.
On behalf of the entire Bachmann family, I want to personally thank you for your continued support of Michele. It is not easy to stand up to the liberals and mainstream media who attack her and our values, but I know that your support means the world to her.
Michele and I are blessed to have your friendship.
Sincerely,
Marcus BachmannP.S. Not much time remains until Michele’s birthday, and I need your help to ensure she has a great day. Please sign the birthday card for Michele and afterwards make a donation to her campaign. Thanks, Marcus.
I hope that Marcus has found a nice present for her. Perhaps a stepladder and some nails so she can climb on up there next to Jesus and show him how a martyr really dies. I must send her a basket of muffins.
I will leave you with two things to properly sweeten your day after Marcus’ dish of saccharine and suffering.
First this song, which I have linked to before, but which I play for myself almost every day. It’s dedicated to the Senegal national football team, the Lions of Teranga, by a Swedish girl of Senegalese ancestry called Mary N’diaye. It’s so joyous, it has a great beat, she has such a lovely voice and the video has awkward straight boy dancing, so it always brings a smile to my face.
Secondly, if you will indulge me, I’m going to link to one of my old stories, which I reread the other day and which I think deserves another whirl. It cheered me up anyway. It involves Bill O’Donoghue, an adorable baby, cake, lesbians, graphic vengeance and a rather sweet ending.
Happy Easter weekend to all. I hope you have a pleasant weekend and that you find an opportunity, on this Good Friday, to reflect upon the importance of sacrifice and self-denial.
Now I’m off to buy a cheeseburger and a quart of gin.
Hot Swedish Girls…
Posted: March 16, 2012 Filed under: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Music Leave a comment »I have no idea where I am. This happens quite frequently and, I suppose, is to be expected after about 80 years or so of intemperate dedication to the pharmacopoeial pleasures. However, there is loud music and I have a 40 dollar cocktail in one hand and Brad Pitt in the other, so wherever I am it’s fancy.
Brad keeps bitching because Angelina got turned away by the bouncer for wearing open toed shoes, although I suspect it had more to do with the fact she smells like a civet on heat when you get up close. Brad, frankly, looks like shit. Nineteen kids and a girlfriend with both daddy and brother issues will do that to you. However, I’ve given the poor thing a pill, so he should perk up soon.
Gloria and Anderson are off trying to find coke, if they can stop arguing for five minutes about which of them is taking home the twin Albanian sailors who Gloria picked up earlier at Katie Couric’s party. Leitenant Prek and Leitenant Preng (for those are their names – what can you expect from a place that had a king called Zog?) are on shore leave for a few weeks and on the make in New York, and Katie hired them to serve as shirtless waiters because (apparently) “it’s my party, and I want it to be special”.
Prek and Preng were the highlight of the party, as half naked, bemuscled men bearing cheesy lobster tarts so often are. Otherwise it was just the usual for one of Katie’s parties – non-vintage champagne, too many bankers and media types with powdered noses, Katie complaining all the time because there’s not enough coke at her own damn party, and Dan Rather passed out in his own sick in the bathtub. People tend not to admit they have coke in Katie’s presence because she gets quite grabby if she thinks the lines aren’t being dispensed fast enough. Every time she heads in the general direction of the bathroom, there’s a brief stampede as everyone tries to hide in the kitchen.
Anyway, we escaped from Katie’s apartment by tossing a baggie into the spare room and leaving while she was still tangled up in the duvet, grabbing the lieutenants on our way, and then ended up here, whatever it’s called. I gave up remembering the names of nightclubs years ago. My drink is good. Brad’s pill is so good that he’s started eyeing up Prek’s tattoos, while Prek and Preng are currently gazing into each other’s eyes in a manner which would, if weren’t a filthy old thing, be quite shocking.
Oh, I forgot. At Katie’s party we ran into Gore Vidal who, I’ll be frank, I had thought was dead. At our age it’s often easier to assume.
He looked very well, and we spent a most enjoyable half hour chatting about whether Santorum would be more entertaining to watch under the influence of mushrooms or ketamine, and a great new technique that Gore developed for hiding laxatives in battenberg cake. Hint – it’s in the jam. Just before he left with one of the other waiters, Gore told me a positively eye watering anecdote about Onassis and Jackie and a cucumber that I dare not repeat. Such an old charmer.
Well dears, there’s still no sign of Gloria or Anderson, so I’m going to take these three boys back to the safety of my suite at the Plaza before they make a scene on the carpet. I hope you have a lovely weekend too.
Music in this post, as often, with thanks to the invaluable Alfitude.
