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Assorted Ideas, Opinions, Musings, and Other Drivel
With all due apologies to my high school English teachers, I’ve just written a post that has no thesis, no overarching theme, and no signs that its writer has a clue what a thesis is, let alone a theme, and how to overarch it. A lot of thoughts and observations clog up my brain and I just gotta unload.
That the unloading is going to be inelegant is unfortunate, but it’s not like I’m being paid (it’s not too late to start). The only connective tissue between these ideas is my own insanity … I mean inanity. You know what, both words apply. Just read:
• They say it’s illegal to shout, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but what about a sparsely filled theater? Like if it was five dudes watching a Pauly Shore retrospective, I bet it would be illegal to yell, “Fire!” even if there was one, because those are people we’d rather were dead.
• A broken clock is right twice a day and a clock that is 10 minutes slow is never right, but the latter is more useful. There’s a lesson in there, I’m sure. (By the way, your clock isn’t slow. You’re too damn lazy to adjust it.)
• At a Donald Trump rally, one of his adulators was photographed wearing a handmade Trump dress with a horror vacui design, which is fitting. Vacui describes what’s in her head and horror describes the candidate she supports. If I ever appear in clothes bursting at the seams with Scott Walker, you have it in writing that you may exercise your second amendment right to relieve me of my head. The only politician that’s excepted is Chris Christie, and that’s only because you can’t fit his image on an article of clothing without filling up the whole thing and even then you’ll need to recruit some friends to wear apparel featuring his extremities, which is unlikely to happen because no one would want to wander off from the group and have to explain to strangers why they’re wearing a shirt with a picture of the pudgy hand of a New Jersey governor.
• Being called a grammar Nazi offends me, not because of the attack on my personal character, no, I’m offended on behalf of the millions of innocent comma-splicers, infinitive-splitters and Oxford comma deniers who were sent to tragically die in concentration camps.
• Scientist Melissa Harris-Perry has made a major breakthrough in the making-everything-about-slavery front. All my marbles being intact, I’m not qualified to speak to the veracity of Harris-Perry’s statements. Saying that this is Progressivism jumping the shark doesn’t suffice. Perhaps if we lived in an alternate universe in which Fonzie had launched off the ramp, cleared the shark and stayed airborne for an additional 24,901.55 miles, circumnavigating the globe until he landed in the eager jaws of the selfsame shark he was initially jumping, then the idiom would capture the, er, magnificence of Harris-Perry’s words.
Harris-Perry also revealed that she keeps a picture of people working in cotton fields on her office wall as “a reminder about what hard work looks like.” If only more people were this thoughtful. As a sufferer of Crohn’s Disease, I’m printing up photos of a diseased colon to plaster on restaurant tables, that way when you go to your favorite Indian place, you’ll be reminded that for some of us, that curry dish you love is a culinary Holodomor.
• When asked who his favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan is, Marco Rubio refused to answer. This is unacceptable for any moderately educated person, let alone one seeking the highest office of the land. The correct answer is Ol’ Dirty Bastard, which is conveniently also the right answer if asked to describe Bernie Sanders in three words.
• The Jeb Bush apologists can squawk all they want about his remarkable terms as governor of Florida, but it doesn’t matter because Florida sucks. Fiscal policy this, tax cuts that — nobody cares! We’re all ashamed of Florida, not as Americans but as human beings. Nothing of value has been produced by the suggestive peninsula … except the most brutal of music: death metal. Florida wasn’t the birthplace of the subgenre, but it was home of many of its trailblazers: Morbid Angel, Deicide, Atheist, Death, Malevolent Creation, Obituary.
If Bush is to have any chance of winning he must capitalize on this and not with the usual lame attempts candidates make at being hip, like playing “Stinkupuss” when he walks on stage for a speech or whatever. Wearing an Altars of Madness t-shirt would be a step up, but Indonesian president Joko Widodo has already done the politician-wearing-death-metal-band-t-shirt thing, and besides Gateways to Annihilation is the superior album.
Bush needs to show true devotion. My recommendation: he should start wearing a large hat, and wait until Terry Schiavo is brought up at a debate at which point he will calmly say, “After years of contemplating this sad case, my views have evolved. Seeing that woman in the state she was in, I realized to stay like this is what I fear. Life ends so fast so take your chance and make it last. If I’m ever in her condition I know I’ll be thinking end it now, it is the only way. Too cruel, that is what they say. Release me from this lonely world. There is no hope, why don’t you…” and here he’ll tear off his hat to reveal a luxurious skullet, fling away his blazer, shred the shirt off his torso and step away from his lectern so that the audience can see he’s been wearing leather pants and a studded belt the whole time. Doing his best demon impression he’ll then growl:
Pull the plug
Let me pass away
Pull the plug
Don’t want to live this way
Learning to play the guitar is unnecessary as long as he makes the requisite hand motions and approximates the shredding and chugging sounds with his mouth. How well he headbangs will be the best gauge of his competency to be President. The last thing this country needs is another weak-necked indie rock listener like Carter. Lastly Bush should change Jeb! to JEEEEEEBBB!!! which must always be vocalized in a guttural bellow or at the very least a raspy shriek.
• The only way to save professional sports is to make steroids mandatory. If I spend $100 on a ticket to a sporting event, I want to see the biggest, strongest, fastest, best freaks science can create. There will be hand-wringing over side effects as if charging headfirst into one another for an hour is no biggie, but a few zits are too much to handle. Some delicate blossom will pipe in with, “Okay, so acne and body hair aren’t that bad, but what about, well, you know … downtown?” The only proper response to such wimpitude is, “You sure worry a lot about shrinking testes for someone who doesn’t have a pair.”
• I predict that in the year 2088, the foremost historian of television will describe Homer Simpson thusly, “He was a man with an inhuman appetite typified by his love for donuts. So strong was his affection for the snack food, that he would start up conversations about the history of microfilm and when boredom set in and his interlocutor’s eyes glazed over he would pluck them out and devour them.” Even in the future, this will be considered a really weird thing to say.
• We are told how terrible it is that so many men think with their crotches, but there is conspicuous silence about the epidemic of hermaphrodites thinking with their spleens.
• The Pudgy Hand of a New Jersey Governor is the title of a short film I submitted to Cannes.
• It warms the heart knowing that at least one person watched “Breaking Bad” and when Walter White shaved his head, pointed excitedly to the screen, and shouted, “Look! It’s Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri!”
• Genghis Khan reportedly sired 1,000 children. If you think that’s impressive, think about his wife. Giving birth to a 1,000 babies puts a lot of stress on a woman’s body. And this was before epidurals! I’m joking, of course — that’s absurd. What isn’t a laughing matter is the financial strain this put on the Khan family. Even for the ruler of the largest empire in history, those child support payments must’ve been rough. Not to mention the nagging. “You know you wouldn’t have to conquer so much if you kept it in your pants.”
• “SEX! Now that I have your attention…” is something I often say when addressing my friend Julian Sex.
• Recently, Kevin M. Schultz wrote a book about the friendship of leftist novelist Norman Mailer and conservative icon William F. Buckley. People love hearing about the unlikely friendships of political rivals: James Carville and Mary Matalin, Bill Maher and Ann Coulter, Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell. Yet no one brings up Josef Goebbels and his longtime pen-pal, Shlomo.
• For whatever reason, it’s popular to assert that apples and oranges can’t be compared. Criminy, they’re both fruit. The saying should “comparing ocelots to carburetors” or something. It doesn’t have to be ocelots and carburetors specifically, so long as it’s two things that don’t serve the same purpose. Cuticles and scabbards would work. As would mnemonic devices and ICBMs. You get the idea. Besides, apples are better than oranges, but orange juice is better than apple juice, a fact that you should ponder the next time you toke up, for hours of your mind being blown.
There it is. You’ve made it through my ramblings. Considering the trajectory of our culture, that will be considered a mighty feat someday. What did you think? Sorry, I’m being presumptuous. Do you think? (This is the internet after all.) If you’ve ever had a thought, let us know. If you have yet to contemplate, muse, consider, ruminate, ponder or mull over, then what’s holding you back? Don’t worry, we’re not judgmental.
Published in General
Alrighty then. You did get me laughing.
Free this literary masterpiece from the shackles of the Member Feed!
Main Feed Now!
#inelegantrantsmatter
We can’t do that, Brent. She neglected her Oxford commas.
I don’t even own a pair of Oxford commas.
Cat III and I are being oppressed over a lack of footwear?. This deservers Main Feed recognition and adulation.
I think you need to write a response to it first, in similar vein, and then the pair can be promoted to show that we truly do allow just anyone to join Ricochet. >;^D
However they did NOT produce White Chapel, which is a product of Knoxville, TN. :)
Florida does however give us many enjoyable “dumb criminal” stories that begin with the phrase “A florida man…….”
Hysterical! Thank you!
Thomas Sowell titles his columns that follow this format “Random Thoughts”
See, you share similarities with one of the great thinkers of our time!
Man, I’d love to see that. I mean, I still wouldn’t vote for the guy. But if your campaign is gonna implode, and you’re not going to survive the race anyway, why wouldn’t you go out in a blaze of glory?
Not just anyone. Only the righteous elite with a valid credit card!
Oooh. Well, it’s been good knowing y’all!
Failing on being righteous? Or on the credit card thing?
Don’t make me say “both”
I’ll have what she’s having.
Play the woman some Patti Smith.
Just to nitpick a bit – he only allegedly sired 1000 kids. At least 10 of those are still disputed in court, though sadly the court in which they were disputed was, entirely coincidentally, burned to the ground by Kublai Khan.
I see this and mentally picture a long “e” sound, i.e. a long “jeeb”. This is, undoubtedly, somehow racist on my part.
Okay Cat III, from now on you may show up on my doorstep for a visit at no notice. Just – talk while drying the dishes.
Of course you’re not… I am.
TL;DR
This was the laugh I needed this morning. Strong work, Cat.
On the bright side, this qualifies you for a job at Gawker.
I wish I had been that guy sitting there when she said this. I would have responded, “you have a picture of my Grandpa on your wall?!?!?”.
My mom grew up on a Mississippi cotton farm. I daresay that puts me closer to cotton fields than her.
C3,
Wisdom beyond your years. I salute your sagacity (whatever that is). I especially like the bullet. Anyway, just the thought of the demise of Pauly Shore has made my morning more endurable. Thanks.
Regards,
Jim
Cat III vs Fred Cole in a Daily Shot showdown.
Sounds like the slowest duel ever.
Like a chess game by mail, but still worth it.
C3, PO’d?