Do leopards change their spots? Not often. We just forget what their spots have always looked like.

Do leopards change their spots? Not often. We just forget what their spots mean.

This is a no frills series of excerpts from my old “Year 2000 Who’s Who in Ameria.” But it’s still a solid introduction to the leopards who have or have not changed their spots. To save you time wondering, the organization is alphabetical.

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Joe Biting. The most sanctimonious member of the U.S. Senate°, Biting represents the most insignificant state in the union, Dullaware, but achieved national prominence via his tour de force performances as a character° assassin in the Senate trials of Supreme Court° nominees Robert Boink and Clarence Remus. Colleagues marvel at the dizzying level of condescension Biting consistently attains in his political° and personal° discourse, despite being afflicted with the first and worst hair transplant in the U.S. Senate. It is reported by female senate staffers that he can sneer even in his sleep, which is still filled with dreams of a Biting Presdency, though that opportunity disappeared in reality some years ago during a brief campaign which foundered on the disclosure that he had been a devout plagiarist during his academic career. Rumor has it that Bill Broadley’s decision to resign from the Senate was prompted by his inability to wrest the championship from Biting in the chamber’s annual Delusions of Grandeur Tournament.

Paul Boogaloo. The smilingest liar° in the Presdent’s public relations defense team during the Lewiski Scandal°, Boogaloo became justifiably renowned for his uncanny—almost inhuman—ability to beam like a happy child while uttering the most despicable untruths, slanders, misrepresentations, and cheap shots against any and every Republian° who dared to question the Presdent’s integrity° and fitness for office. After the scandal had been overcome, Boogaloo resigned to become a champion for the liberal° cause on the cable TV show Equality Time, where he rebuts the evil° positions of his co-host Oliver Nuke with meticulously reasoned untruths, slanders, misrepresentations, cheap shots, and—of course—his legendary fixed smile.

Al Bore. Candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. Born in Tennessucky as the heir of a famous political° family° made rich by tobacco°, Bore delivered his first speech against the evils of tobacco while still in the womb°, wrote his first opera at the age of three, cleaned up the Love Story Canal when he was seven, invented the UnderNet° on his tenth birthday, and campaigned vigorously in support of Row V. Wade° ten years before the Supreme Court° made its famous decision. His career as a multi-faceted child prodigy culminated at Harvurd University, where he served as the model for the character of Mark Anthony in one of William Shakespear’s plays about history° (“I come not to bury Ceasar but to praise him…”). After graduation he became an army photographer and won the war in Veetnam, for which he was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Upon returning to Ameria, he visited the family home in Tennessucky for the first time and—determined never to return—decided on a career in Wishington, DC, where he served as a Congressman and Senator from Tennessucky, and then as Vice Presdent of the United States under Bill Clitton. As famous for his character° and honesty° as for his fantastic accomplishments, Bore felt a deep revulsion and horror about the personal° misdeeds of the Presdent, and it was only through the exercise of extraordinary professional discipline that he was able to publicly profess his loyalty° to the “greatest Presdent in U.S. history” on the day of the empeachment°. Fortunately, his subsequent campaign for the Democratic° presdential nomination has afforded him the opportunity to resolve any doubts about his own integrity°—for example, he was able to resist the temptation to use Clittonesque tactics (i.e., lies, misrepresentations, and racially provocative innuendoes°) against his opponent Bill Broadley right up to the very moment polls° demonstrated that he was behind in New Hamshire. While critics carp about his wooden personality° and unprincipled° political° conduct, the overwhelming majority of the watchdogs of the press have tacitly approved him as a praiseworthy and appropriate heir to the mantle of Bill Clitton. He is married to a woman named Flipper (the model for Shakespear’s Kleopatra) who used to be upset about gangster rap° lyrics until her husband° taught her about the Afrian-Amerian° vote. (See “Loving Ameria,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999.)

Sid Bummenthal. One of the Presdent’s jackals. Or is he a hyena instead? Let the historians° decide.

James Carvall. A longtime political consultant and member of the Presdent’s public relations defense team during the Clitton Lewiski scandal°, Carvall represents one of the great rags to riches stories in Amerian politics°. He was born in one of the third-wurld southern states (Bama? Missippi? Lousiana?) as the product of a mixed marriage—his father a collateral descendant of the renowned Snopes clan and his mother a six-foot Eastern Diamondback. Having inherited his father’s eternal thirst for vengeance and his mother’s venom, Carvall naturally aspired to a career in politics but discovered early—thanks to his genius for interpreting polls°—that southern voters still retained a prejudice against subhuman candidates. He therefore determined to become the premier political campaign consultant in the nation by electing to the Presdency the most miserable excuse for a human being he could find. His dream was achieved in 1992, and again in 1996, but was threatened with repeal by a vast right wing conspiracy° in 1998. In defending his life’s greatest work, Carvall achieved new heights in Amerian politics, innovating on the fly a strategy of attack defense that brilliantly combined repellent rhetoric, lies, smears, threats, leaks, and monomaniacally focused ad-hominem tirades into a formula for political triumph. Future generations will no doubt look back with awe and gratitude to the man who pioneered a new age in Amerian political discourse.

Lanny Divots. The most earnest and polished member of the Presdent’s Public Relations Defense Team, Divots was also the most alarming because no matter how inane his talking points° were, he always managed to sound so darn reasonable and sincere. If she has a brain in her head, his wife° should divorce him now, before he gets involved in any funny business, because when it comes to telling lies about sex°, Lanny Divots is the best of the best.

Jane Doe. The slut° who made all the nasty allegations about Clitton. Actually, that should be sluts (plural) because there seem to be four or five or twenty of them, but they might as well be the same one because you know how that kind are. They wish they could get hit on by a famous politician° and get groped or raped or treated like dirt somehow so they can peddle their story to the mass media°, get their reputations ruined forever icn about eighteen hours, have mysterious men show up to kill their dog and slash their tires, then flee the country or have a nervous breakdown or something, and maybe cap it all off with a tearful TV interview on MinuteLine, plastic surgery, or a great big bottle of sleeping pills. But why couldn’t they have tried the surgery or the sleeping pills before they went nuts and made up all those damaging lies about the presdent? Yes, it’s okay to lie about sex° but if they knew anything about Clitton (which they obviously don‘t), they’d know that it’s only okay to lie about sex you really have had, not about sex you didn’t have, even if the kind of sex you didn’t have isn’t what everybody, or even the Presdent, would call sex. Even assuming the act you’re referring to is sexual only in the loosest (i.e., right wing) sense of the term, it’s still not permissible (i.e., okay, or right under the circumstances, or heroic in the context of Republian° hypocrisy°, etc) to lie unless you really did engage in the sexual-type act being described. In other words, the rule is confined very strictly to flat denials of acts that occurred and it specifically excludes making things up. It’s all quite simple—why can’t these bimbos° understand it? Why?

Howard Findmore. See Michael Iznotizhe.

Linseed Graham.One of the Presdent’s persecutors in the House° of Representatives, Graham is a congressman from South Carelina and one of the leading hypocrites° in the Republian° Party°. It’s also possible that he has sex°, if you want to interrogate him about it, because he’s been romantically linked to Laurel Ingraham, who’s as loud and abrasive as Linseed is soft-spoken and smarmy.

Matt Grudge. A prime mover in the right wing conspiracy° to empeach Clitton, Grudge broke the news on his website that Newsprint, a major weekly news magazine, was researching a story about Clitton’s affair with a White House intern. Publications and television networks belonging to the legitimate news establishment expressed outrage that some little creep on the UnderNet° would leak such a slimy story to the whole country, then raced to get out their own versions of the Lewiski scandal° with as many lurid details as possible. Grudge briefly joined a legitimate network news organization himself but left hurriedly when one of the network’s executives found out he was there. If Hillery ever discovers where he’s hiding in the UnderNet, she’ll kill him. Or have one of her campaign slaves do it. Either way, he’s not what the intellectuals° have in mind when they profess to be in favor of free speech.

Orange Hatch. The Republian° Senator who wears the tab collars and hails from Utall or some other weird state out west. He’s a Mormot, too, whatever that is. For a week or so, he was also a candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. But he kept getting a zero in the polls°, which is amazing because nobody gets a zero in the polls—there are always a few people who confuse you with someone they know or like the sound of your name or something. Unless your name is Orange Hatch. Of course, Hatch didn’t help himself much in the debates, because since when do Republians want a candidate who keeps telling them that he’s an ordinary, average Amerian just like them and knows what it’s like to be one of the little people, just like them. They don’t want that. It’s the Democratics° who want that—the more average and ordinary the better. Maybe Hatch should change parties and lose the tab collar.

Hillery. (Formerly known as Hillery Clitton, Hillery Roddem Clitton, First Lady, and Co-Presdent) Candidate for the U.S. Senate° in the State of Newyork. Just plain Hillery, as she is now known, has spent her entire life getting ready for her current campaign. Born in 1947, Hillery arrived just too late to witness the Wurld Series in which the Newyork Yankeys defeated the Brookling Doggers four games to three. But despite a surprise pennant win by Clevelin when she was one, Hillery went on to enjoy a blissful youth as the Yankeys won the pennant fourteen out of seventeen years, a period capped by her own victory as a National Merit finalist in 1965. This amazing run by the team so close to her heart unquestionably accounts for her conservative leanings as a young adult, particularly in light of her rapid drift leftward at Whalesey College, which were the dark years in which the Yankeys faded toward the cellar and the Amerian League pennant fell into the hands of pretenders like Minnesoda, Ballmore, Bostun, and Destroit. Matters grew worse during her time at the Yail Law School, when it began to seem that the Ballmore Oreos had supplanted the Yankeys as an Amerian League dynasty. So depressed had she become as a result of the Yankey drought that the move to Newyork she’d been planning from earliest childhood was postponed in favor of a stint in Wishington, DC, where she played a role in dethroning Richard Nixxon, who had been a fan of the hated Doggers since their move to Los Analos, Californica. After Watergape°, Hillery decided to flee the close proximity of Ballmore for Arklahoma and thus agreed to marry an old classmate from Yail. Both her energy and ambition returned in the mid-1970s, however, because a rebuilt Yankey organization succeeded in winning the eastern division pennant in 1976 and repeating the feat for four of the next five years. Although the Wurld Series championship remained stubbornly elusive, Hillery was buoyed enough to get her husband° elected to the state attorney-general’s office in 1976 and to the governor’s office in 1980. But another cruel Yankey dry spell disheartened her in the early 1980s, resulting in her spouse’s defeat in 1984. [More to come](See, “It Takes Me,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999.)

Michael Iznotizhe. The hotshot political° journalist° in spectacles who dug through every White House trashcan looking for salacious details of the Lewiski Scandal° while soberly reporting the Hillery charge of a right wing conspiracy°, the Carvall charge of a runaway independent counsel° indulging his private° sexual fantasies at public expense, and the Divots/Boogaloo charge of a partisan° Republian° “coup” designed to repeal the vote of the Amerian people. And acting faintly superior to the whole circus at the same time. Cool°.

John Kerree. Is this maybe the Veetnam war hero senator with the short attention span? Or is it the tall craggy senator with the memory good enough to hold one talking point°? One of them is from Machusetts. Nobody knows where the other one is from. Or if you do, please let us know.

Chris Mathuse. The blond-haired jack o’ lantern who hosts the cable TV show Hardhead, Mathuse is an intellectual° pundit° and former Jimmy Carper speechwriter whose giant head contains so much knowledge about everything that he can’t stop himself from answering his own questions to his guests, thus explaining why they can never get a word in edgewise. The answer is usually that the only right opinion is the opinion of Chris Mathuse or his wife°, who also knows everything and talks as fast and nonstop as he does, which suggests the possibility that neither of them has ever heard a word the other has said. Even so, Mathuse is a devout feminist° and goes out of his way to tell all his female° guests that they have accomplished more than Hillery and that he would listen to every word they had to say if he could only stop himself from talking over the answers to the questions he asks them. But he can’t.

John McKane. Candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. McKane started out as the son of an admiral, which probably explains why he graduated at the bottom of his class from the U.S. Navel Academy and then got shot down in his fighter plane over Veetnam. The North Veetnamese (i.e., the gooks) held him prisoner for five-and-a-half years, during which time he was beaten up every day and threatened with being sent home to explain to Dad how he got himself captured. When he finally did get back to the U.S., he decided to postpone that little talk with Dad a while longer and moved immediately to Wishington DC , where he got work as a U.S. Senator for the State of Arizonia. While other Veetnam POWs were struggling with flashbacks and personality disorders, McKane was making a name for himself in the Senate° as a Republian° Party° maverick° who never gave up on a point of principle°. When other Republian legislators were kowtowing to the tobacco lobby°, McKane defied party leaders° by organizing a hunger strike in his cellblock and vowing to cut off the head of any slant-eyed, slope-headed gook commandant who tried to tell John McKane what to do. After his reputation for principled° stands of this sort had spread throughout the Congress°, he announced his intention to escape by tunneling his way to the White House with a handmade spoon. The thought of McKane’s departure from the Senate so sorrowed his colleagues that they all gathered secretly in a room under the Capitol kitchen to build him a platform to run on. Using burned-up epaulets from old navy uniforms as writing implements, they drafted a series of policy positions guaranteed to boost the Presdential prospects of their comrade-in-arms, including wholehearted support for Clitton’s tax°-the-rich fiscal policy, a strong anti-Anti-Choice° policy, a promise to put an immediate end to Republian campaign contributions, and a clarion call for making big government work for little people. When they had completed their masterpiece, they smuggled the document into McKane’s senate office by tying it to a friendly rat named Linseed Graham, who persuaded the senator that this was his ticket to defeating George W. in the Republian primary race. Will he be able to sneak past the Senate razor-wire with a little help from his friends? Or will he get tossed in the cooler with the other hardcase mavericks? Who knows? But an old warrior like John McKane is sure to make it interesting.

Brian Millions. The prettiest network TV journalist° in Ameria and the second best-dressed, behind aging prettyboy anchor Peter Jumpings. In fact, if Millions could suck it up and climb to that next level of superciliousness, he’d be a cinch to replace Jumpings, whose producers can’t soften the focus of their cameras much more without causing viewers to phone the TV repairman.

Audrey Mitchell-Greenbacks. TV journalist° and wife° of Alan Greenbacks. It’s a strange thing—she’s married to that guy, but she still seems liberal° enough to be a nonpartisan° journalist°. Is it an act? Or is it another one of those weird new marriages° like James Carvall and Mary Magdalen. have, where they don’t wait for the divorce to start hating each other? Or maybe… hmmm. Has Greenbacks been converted to Democracy°? That might explain why nobody in the best economy in 3 billion years has more than ten dollars in ready cash…

Barbara Mudkowski. Only the second amphibian ever elected to the House of Representatives°, Mudkowski is a member of the toad family. She stoutly defended Clitton during the empeachment° fracas, arguing that our Presdent is our Presdent, warts and all.

Piggy Noone. Former speechwriter for Ronald Regan and perennial loose cannon in the Republian° Party. She is dangerously articulate and, unlike comrades-in-arms like William F. Bugley, she often uses words that people can understand. Many of her sisters in politics° regard her as a tragic case of flawed upbringing. For if she could only bring herself to start believing in good° things, instead of awful conservative° things, she might be a formidable candidate for high office one day. As it is, they’re agreed that she’s just an arrogant, self-important bitch° who needs to be taken down a peg or two.

Camera Paglia. A brilliant feminist° who has nevertheless allowed herself to become confused about the relative importance of thought and feelings°. While her feelings have properly persuaded her of the superiority of her sex, she continues—almost perversely—to engage in thought, which has caused her to discover that no one else is doing it, including the inferior sex which thought up thought in the first place. This discovery, in turn, gives rise to a feeling that there are no men° anymore, which should make her feel proud about the victory of feminism° but makes her feel disgusted, bored, and cranky instead. She has attempted to flee her quandary by becoming a celebrity°, but she would do far better to face her mistakes and correct them. All would be well with Ms. Paglia if she could bring herself to realize that a feeling which arises from thought is not a legitimate feeling of the sort prized in a democracy°, but a passion instead, which is perilously close in its intensity to anger°; i.e., the inferior male substitute for legitimate feelings. Once identified as such, her inappropriate passion can be discarded along with the confusion it inspires, and she will be able to rejoin the glad company of her sisters in promulgating the good° things they all believe in.

Clarence Remus. Member of the Supreme Court° of the United States of Ameria. Nominated by Presdent George The Elder Bush to fill the court’s Afrian-Amerian° seat (recently vacated by Thoroughgood Marshall), Remus caused a crisis in the Senate Judiciary Committee when it was discovered that he was the only Afrian-Amerian in the country who was Anti-Choice°. Faced with the imminent demise of the right to privacy°, which was then being exercised at a rate of 2 million times per year, the Democratic° majority on the committee realized the time had come for drastic non-partisan° political° action; otherwise, countless millions of lives might someday be spared. They therefore sought out an Arklahoma law professor named Anita Hole, who had once worked for Remus and was now willing to remember that he had made off-color remarks to her about pubic hairs, Coke cans, and an obscenely° over-endowed pornographic° movie star. Having dextrously leaked the story to the mass media°, the committee proceeded to hold nationally televised hearings in which Remus was portrayed as a sexual predator while prominent feminists° sat alongside TV journalists° to explain that women who made such charges had to be believed—regardless of how little evidence° they had, how long they had been silent, how much they had benefited by their association with the accused, or how friendly they had been observed to be with the accused. At the end of the hearings, Remus denounced the committee as a lynch mob, the Senate° approved his nomination, and the mass media undertook the long dreary business of subliminally persuading a skeptical Amerian public that Remus had to have been guilty of something. This hard work eventually paid off, and Remus’s reputation has now been destroyed beyond repair. Anita Hole reappears in public from time, most recently to affirm the feminist consensus that in the case of Bill Clitton, the bimbos° who were bringing forward accusations of sexual misconduct should not be given credence without hard evidence It may seem, in retrospect, a tawdry episode in Amerian politics°, but it’s important not to lose sight of the big picture. The next time a Republian° Presdent looks around for an Anti-Choice Supreme Court nominee, he may be out of office by the time he finds one. Meanwhile, individual acts of privacy can be committed at a steady million-some a year, even if the totals are no longer published. Count your blessings, one by one.

Jerraldo Riviera. The cable TV journalist° who discovered Al Capon’s vault, proved Ojay Simson’s guilt, and saved the Presdent from conviction in his empeachment° trial. He is famous for being full of integrity, or principle, or morality, or something that enables him to know, unerringly, the difference between good things and bad things, although he’s not so much of a prig° that he can’t tell lies° about sex with the best of them..

Al the Sharp One. Fat, oily, lying, anti-semitic Newyork politician°. But it’s okay. He’s Afrian-Amerian°. So we love° him.

George Steppinfetchoulos. Former Presdential Adviser and Ace Political Pundit°. (See “Lying for the Presdent,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999).

Donald Trumph. A brilliant financier and real estate developer, Trumph became a one-man encyclopedia of all the 1980s ailments Presdent Clitton has been working so hard to cure. Through a combination of nerve, greed, ego, and more nerve, he managed to leverage the paltry millions left him by his old man into a vast real estate empire consisting of the Trumph Towers, the Trumph Plaza, the Trumph Castle, the Trumph Palace, the Trumph Throne of God, and then the Trumph Bankruptcy Court, the Trumph Renegotiated Loan Building, the Trumph Re-Renogotiated Loan Casino, and finally, the Trumph If-You-Take-Me-Down-I’ll-Take-You-Down-With- Me House of Cards. Through it all, he entertained the nation by marrying a bunch of wurld-class whores° and pretending he had hair. He may have slowed down some since the early 1990s, but he’s still chasing money- hungry hookers and he’s still pretending to have hair. What next? He sounds like a natural for making a new fortune on the UnderNet°, where the ability to lose money and go into debt hand-over-fist seems to be all that’s required to score a titantic equity bonanza on the NASDAQ°.

A tool I remembered.

A tool I remembered.

Odd, you know. The way things get stuck in your head. I thought of this tool and nothing would make me stop.

You slide your hand down there to the hole and there it is.

You slide your hand down there to the hole and there it is.

There’s nothing easy about a certain kind of car in 1960.

You needed a particular,kind of wrench to open the bonnet.

You needed a particular kind of wrench to open the bonnet.

Which got you a look at this.

Four cylinders, gleaming cylinders.

Four gleaming cylinders.

And then this:

Hood up.

Hood up.

Tiny really, but so many incarnations. There was top up.

It had side curtains, like a Jeep. You put them on, and scratched windows slid up. So cool.

It had side curtains, like a Jeep. You put them on, and scratched windows slid up.

With great effort and about 160 snaps, you could put the top down.

You put the side curtains in the garage, and the top in the trunk. Leaving no room for golf clubs.

Put the side curtains in the barn and the top in the trunk, Leaving no room for luggage.

And the tonneau version. Dad in the car with a barely open cockpit for himself.

He looked kind of F1 in that mode.

He looked kind of F1 in that mode.

In the winter he got a hardtop. Also cool.

You think we did all of this for a two seater? no way.

You think we did all of this for a two seater? no way.

We also had a back seat. Leather. My sister and I could almost fit in it.

Capacious.

Capacious.

My parents had nice seats too. Also leather. We always went first class.

They could stretch their legs out. Adults need to do that.

They could stretch their legs out. Adults need to do that.

And we all got to look at the road through the windscreen with the wind blasting our faces and the engine thrumming in our ears. We didn’t need the radio we didn’t have.

Wouldn't trade any of it for all the car seats in the world.

Wouldn’t trade any of it for all the child carseats in the world.

P.S. Oh. The tool up top. The bonnet key. Necessary for getting under the hood, er, bonnet. Like so.

The only way you can get in there to wash and polish the engine.

The only way you can get in there to wash and polish the engine.

What is she singing? Try this.

What is she singing? Try this.

Responding to a post by Ellen Ganapoulos at Greyhound Friends of New Jersey:

I’ll probably expand this into a real post later, Ellen. But what strikes me most is not cuteness but the recognition we all feel for things greyhound. We all know this stuff, have seen this stuff, love this stuff, and wait for it. Saw a serious medical article questioning whether or not sighthounds were really dogs, because they differ from the main in so many ways, physiological and biochemical. Not quite like the rest.

This is the bond that ties us all together, the privilege of being with these amazing creatures, the fastest, the slowest, the gentlest, and in some ways the most mysterious. They do comical things, but they are never without the deepest dignity. They look so much alike and yet they exhibit a dazzling array of personalities, all projected through similar pop eyes and needle noses. If there is a supermodel of the dog world, this is surely it, but they are not mean or vain or avaricious like their would-be human counterparts.

If human, they’d be picked for the jocks and cheerleaders with their big chests and slim waists and extraordinary athletic ability. Being greys instead, they carry around Winnie the Pooh, eye your sandwich, accumulate stuffed toys to cuddle, and find couches to lie on.

I’ve been impressed by the number and range of greyhound fanciers. I wish more people got rescue greys than Goldens. The greys are easier for families than the hyperactive ones. I wish more people knew that this isn’t a breed of dog but a species apart, maybe an angel. And I wish they didn’t die so young. But maybe that’s part of being an angel. You visit for a time, offer a healing of some sort, and then return to heaven.

Don’t know how to think about how that might work? We’ll have to agree to disagree. In the meantime…

Diva.

imageShe’s way hotter than her boyfriend. Thinking neither one of them has ever seen the inside of a quadratic equation.

Schnalkinberg’s Theorem. The theory that the smartest mathematician in the room is always a Jew, until the first Jap walks in. Learned this in Business School 101 at Cornell.

“Set Set” set Theory. The idea that the whole world can be defined by Venn diagrams that overlap MIT, Cal Tech, and the Numb3rs TV show. And a picture of Stephen Hawking beaming blissfully above the scene.

We have Popcorn Diagrammatics. There’s this situation where the plot makes no sense and my mathematician wife says let’s make some popcorn. And we do. Then the plot seems to fix itself while we eat the popcorn and Amita even seems to want to kiss Charlie before the closing credits.

And the Amita Combinatorix. We don’t get to see these exactly and don’t really want to. Who the hell knows what Charlie is like in bed, or Amita either for that matter. But we have these instances where the blackboard is absolutely stuffed with Greek letters and everybody huffs out unhappily, and then the next morning there’s coffee and Larry looks happy, and Charlie and Amita both look Combinatorix.

Oh. Judd Hirschmetic. My favorite. Which is the feeling you get when your two year old son can say the times tables up to eighteen and perform every long division calculation you ever thought of. Judd could always do that. He was always the smartest kid in Hebrew School. It’s just Charlie he couldn’t handle. Little genius bastard. And Don. Nasty hardass Little Bastard.

We’ll be back at you later.

Penn State Matters!

Penn State Matters!

Yeah, we went one year. To the Link. Supposed to be this great intra-state college football event. Not to call it a rivalry. Temple shows up, gets beaten into the ground by the Nittany Pedophiles and endures lots of racial abuse by the fat Penn Staters in their XXX jerseys showing off for their future Penn State bully kids. It’s great.

ESPN has apparently decided that it’s time to forgive the Nittany mob and their capo de tutti capi Joe Paterno.

I’m not there yet. But you can be there. Next Saturday at Lincoln Park Field.

Who is What and a Which is Who?

Who is What and Which is Who?

My wife and I have mirror minds. We say the same thing so often we don’t even comment on it but just do a high five.

Unprompted, we both seem to see ourselves as Don.

Except that neither of us is an FBI commander.

Except that neither of us is an FBI guy. I’ve got the shades; she’s got the posture.

Occasionally (or more often than that), we each see the other as the arrogant know it all Charlie.

Smart, yes, but also with a bad case of Y-pants.

Smart, yes, but also with a bad case of Y-pants.

Sometimes we’re not the same person. I have an annoying habit of being dad…

But not so much the aging hippy.

But not so much the aging hippy.

While she can do a very good impression of the much smarter than everybody else Amita…

The cute polymath.

The cute polymath.

…or as she sees it…

The much much cuter polymath.

The much much cuter polymath.

All of which disguises the fact that we’re both much more like Larry, the genuinely wifty guy who lives in a quantum universe that sometimes beds him down in steam tunnels under the university and sometimes in a Buddhist monastery.

Yeah, we're both this cute in our separate but equal ways.

Yeah, we’re both this cute in our separate but equal ways.

I was going to explain the new math that has emerged from our interactions, our atomic collisions if you will. No time now. We’re on call after all

**********TO BE CONTINUED**********

Sinister place. That one end really does look like serpent's head.

Sinister place. That one end really does look like serpent’s head.

The premise of this Treasure Quest is intriguing. Four guys with more greed than brains think they can find $300 million in gold stashed by 16th century Jesuits on the most uninhabitable dot of land on earth. I mean, the place is totally dominated by one of the most venomous species of snakes on earth.

They're everywhere. On the ground, in the trees, in the caves, every-effing-where.

They’re everywhere. On the ground, in the trees, in the caves, every-effing-where.

It’s pretty good for a few episodes. They find some messages written by the Jesuits on stones. They have close calls with snakes. Did I mention that the snakes are every-effing-where? They are.

You can't even go to the bathroom without checking your feet. I mean your own bathroom. It's that scary.

You can’t even go to the bathroom without checking your feet. I mean your own bathroom. It’s that scary.

So far so good. But there’s a point in reality shows, even on the Discovery Channel, when you start to grow suspicious. Sometime in episode four, after snakes and snakes and still more snakes, when our dimwit heroes realize they are not alone. This is right on the verge, mind you, of exploring a very promising cave in which the Jesuits may have done something incredibly important.

But there are sounds of breaking twigs and stuff, so they go running in pursuit. Who is on the island with them? Rival treasure hunters. Snake poachers? Everything’s up in the air. Wait for the next episode, where the ugly truth will be revealed.

The truth is far worse than the cliffhanger hinted at. The interlopers on Snake Island are even more annoying than the constant snakes.

Clarkson, Hammond, and May.

Hammond, Clarkson, and May. Twiddlers three.

The Top Gear producers had air dropped them on the island with a Rover SUV to prove once and for all the superiority of Brit auto technology. But they were in a bad mood. Because the Rover was wrecked. The prissy Brits were therefore stranded and, well, peeved.

The snakes got it.

The snakes got it.

Maybe not going to watch much more of Snake Island. You?

Reminds us an Agatha Christie title: Murder at the Gallop.

Reminds us of an Agatha Christie title: Murder at the Gallop.

This is by way of thanking the very kind ladies of the Greyhound Friends of New Jersey who responded to my plea for help in getting our greyhound Rikki up the stairs.

We have tried and failed to get Rikki up the stairs. Someone suggested letting him watch another greyhound do it. What we have is a 110 pound deerhound named Raebert with legs nearly as long as Secretariat’s. After meals and other outings, Raebert comes bounding up the stairs like a herd of buffaloes. It shakes the house and when he charges at me on the couch I am always momentarily in fear he won’t be able to stop.

At full speed up the stairs and down the hall to a dead stop three inches in front of my face, he looks exactly this.

At full speed up the stairs and down the hall to a dead stop 1 inch in front of my face, he looks just like this.

And sounds like this:


The first 30 seconds are pretty accurate as to sound. The picture’s not bad either for a while. The guy who pulls up short would be Rikki. So be it.

You see, Rikki is — as a guy, I hate to say it — Bambi.

We're pretty sure his daddy got mixed up in the rackets in Brooklyn and was gunned down. On the second floor.

We’re pretty sure his daddy got mixed up in the rackets in Brooklyn and was hunted down by the Russian mob. On the second floor.

Where was I? Oh. Yes. Thanks to all the kind ladies of GFNJ. We’ve read the advice and appreciate it. Our conclusion is that Rikki is a ground floor dog and we will continue to take him for walks, visit the couch he refuses to get up on, and light candles for his father, Guido the Deer in the Headlights.

Raebert says hi. He thinks Rikki’s cool as hell.

He gets this way. His favorite song is "Song Sung Blue." And he hates flies. But he puts up with the Stones because he loves his daddy.

He gets this way. His favorite song is “Song Sung Blue.” And he hates flies. But he puts up with the Stones because he loves his daddy.

“Say goodnight, Raebert.”

“Goodnight Raebert. And Rikki.”

And for those who don’t acknowledge that deerhounds are the coolest sighthounds of all. We leave you with a deerhound pic not even a greyhound can match.

The Emperor. The late Psmith.

The Emperor. The late Psmith.

He's a menace, right? To all those of you who have never listened to him.

He’s a menace, right? To all those of you who have never listened to him.

Rush Limbaugh is now in his 28th year in broadcasting. Still the top radio talk show host in America.

We’ve agreed and disagreed with him over the years. He’s a blustering, egotistical know-it-all who lives large, consumes conspicuously, and might qualify in some people’s minds for the label narcissist. Sound familiar? We’ve also had fun with his carefully crafted persona. For example, we congratulated him on his 20th anniversary back in 2007.

Sensible Cheek.

What he is, most of all, is the most gifted radio host in the history of the medium. Five days a week, three hours a day, he can analyze the events of the day from a conservative perspective, bitingly, humorously, optimistically, and insightfully. He has an accounting firm hired specifically to track the accuracy of his political predictions. He comes in at 99 point something dead on. He takes calls but he doesn’t depend on them. Doesn’t need them at all. The quasi lefty Imus a few years ago said he’d just listened to a Limbaugh broadcast and proclaimed that he was the greatest radio talent in the business. Imus has sidekicks, props, guests, and schticks. Limbaugh does what he does without any of these. Imus understood the difference.

Limbaugh got lots of national media attention when he became addicted to painkillers. He got no media attention when he went through an ordeal most of us could not imagine.

But we can try. Imagine you’re an NFL quarterback and your throwing arm is amputated at the shoulder. You’re a World Cup soccer star and your leg is amputated at the hip. You’re an Oscar winning director and you go completely blind. You’re a gold medal swimmer and you wake up in a wheelchair. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Rush Limbaugh began losing his hearing in 2001. In bits and pieces over the years he has described the sequence of events that led to him having surgically implanted cochlear devices which simulate hearing, sufficient to enable him to hear most of the words people say, though not music or other sounds we take for granted. But his revelations were mostly to explain his occasional medical absences from the show. He never asked us to spend much time thinking about it and never asked us to feel sorry for him. I do remember one vicious doctor caller who told Limbaugh his implant was already failing and he deserved it. Whereupon the vindictive beast that is Rush Limbaugh thanked him for his contribution and went to a commercial break.

But yesterday was Friday, and the guy who doesn’t really need callers always deems that day Open Line Friday. People can call in and talk about what they want to talk about, not just the topics Rush is talking about on any other given day.

Yesterday, an old black man with a wise voice called in to say he was a long time listener and said he had a serious question. Rush told him to go ahead and ask. The man wanted to know what it was really like to go through the experience of losing his hearing, emotionally, deep down, and what was that like, because Rush had never really shared it with the audience.

Rush replied that he had to go to a break but would answer the question afterwards.

And he did.

As you might expect, the perception of the loss was gradual. Three events stick out. First, he thought the fan in his cigar room was faulty, running at maybe half speed. The technicians checked the fan and told him there was no problem. An interval in which odd things occurred. The TV was never loud enough, people around him were mumbling. Then came 9/11. He was in a cab as the story was breaking on the radio. He couldn’t understand what the announcer was saying and had to ask the cab driver to tell him what the radio was saying. Trouble. He knew he was in trouble, but at that point doctors were still trying to tell him he was getting to be “of an age” and loss of hearing to a degree was in his family’s history.

This phase he readily ascribes to denial. Then came the day, and this back when he did the show all by himself, that he had to make the pre-show call to the syndicator to let them know when to begin broadcast that he realized he couldn’t understand a word at the other end of the line. That day, he couldn’t take any calls at all. Did the show anyhow.

Shortly after that, he was on the air and a doctor called in to say, “End the show. Go directly to the hospital.” So he finished the show and went to the hospital. The final diagnosis was that his own immune system was destroying his inner ears. His hearing declined by ten percent a month. Meanwhile he was taking an intravenous cocktail of prescribed anti-immune drugs, administered by himself with a syringe.

Then he went totally deaf. By then he had hired assistance. A court reporter to transcribe caller questions, and others to help cover his inability to hear network cues, etc.

Rush said he never panicked. He’d been told about cochlear implant technology. He believed he would beat the problem. Once, a doctor told him, “You’re terrified. You don’t want to show it, but you are.” Rush told him, “No, I’m not. I’ll get through this.”

He did his show for two whole months stone deaf. Couldn’t hear anything, not even his own voice. Prior to the surgery, he asked the doctors if he could just go on doing what he’d been doing. They said no. Over time, he would lose his enunciation. Callers would hear that he had a profound disability.

Happy ending? He had a cochlear implant in one ear. Which gradually failed until it became unusable late last year. So he had the second ear drilled and implanted. Right now, he’s only at 50 percent hearing, with no promises about how long he will be able to do his show.

He told his audience all of this without a hint of self pity. It’s just what’s happened.

But there was a revealing segment or two. He confided that even his closest friends cannot comprehend the nature of utter deafness. “You can’t simulate it,” he said. Because he can mostly make out what they’re saying — 15 out of 20 words, with lots of mind racing fill-ins to get it right — they think of him as hearing impaired, like your octogenarian grandfather. Not like that, Rush assures us. His hearing is a prosthetic, not a fix or a booster shot.

He will never again hear a mourning dove or an operatic soprano.

And he did that show for TWO MONTHS without a single bleat or excuse. (When, mind, he was already richer than Croesus.) While he was spending almost all of his off-air time in medical facilities and under treatment.

I listened to him multiple times during that period and I did not detect the problem. And I have really really good ears.

Courage. It doesn't always have a chiseled profile.

Courage. It doesn’t always have a chiseled profile.

MORAL. Bluster is bluster. Character is character. A wise man knows not to confuse the two.

Yes, we love looking up women's skirts. But they should be nice looking women.

Yes, we love looking up women’s skirts. But they should be nice looking women.

Why I don’t watch MSNBC. Rachel Maddow doesn’t have an upskirt. Or even a topless aspect you’d want to look at.

Rachel. Who wouldn't hammer her in a debate?

Rachel. Who wouldn’t hammer her in a debate?

And if she won’t show us what’s under her skirt, there’s nothing we have to look forward to.

But Fox has taken a huge body blow. Megyn Kelly is a pretty version of Hillary, mean, nasty, and equipped with the Fox requirement of great legs and tits.

Trump is enjoying the hell out of himself. He DOES NOT CARE ABOUT FOX NEWS. This is how the mighty are brought to their knees.

Shelley. He was fond of looking up women's skirts too. You know. White men. The greatest poets ever. Something about panties maybe.

Shelley. He was fond of looking up women’s skirts too. You know. White men. The greatest poets ever. Something about panties maybe.

But Fox has taken the same kind of dislike to Trump (or anyone with the nerve to run against Jeb) that MSNBC has had for years against anyone named Bush.

I guess Bush is truly a dirty dirty word in the here and now. Especially now that all the girls are shaved.

I know. You couldn’t read the Ozymandias part.

He like be dead and fallen.

He like be dead and fallen.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Courtesy of Percy Shelley.

Shelley liked looking up women’s skirts too. What’s wrong with the MSM. They’re all gay these days. Nothing better than looking up a skirt. They’ve just forgotten.

Old as I get, I will never ever forget. But Fox seems to have. This is how life and civilization end.

With the earth melting down at this rate, we’ve had a longstanding policy of providing diversions. This is one of our attempts in that direction.

Let’s define terms here. The mystery genre was invented, along with science fiction and horror, by the most overlooked of all American literary geniuses, Edgar Allan Poe. He was his own prototype of the brilliant analytical detective who solves crime by observation rather than brutality, legwork, smart remarks, or seductions.

Meet Auguste Dupin, aka, E. A. Poe.

Meet Auguste Dupin, aka, E. A. Poe.

The three stories Poe wrote about Dupin set the template for the greats who followed. Dupin had a sidekick, unnamed, whose purpose was to make us realize how brilliant Dupin was.

Pierre de Pueur, constant companion of Dupin.

Pierre de Pueur, dense but well dressed companion of Dupin.

Thing is, Poe had other fish to fry. He chose not to make a career out of Dupin. Maybe why he died in a gutter in Baltimore or wherever. But the three great detectives of mystery literature all have Poe’s DNA in their prodigious brains.

The first who saw the opportunity was Arthur Conan Doyle, who gave us a brilliant eccentric genius named Sherlock Holmes. Millions and millions loved the stories, including me (not one I haven’t read at least twice), and then Hollywood moved in to do it badly at great profit until the BBC decided to do it right.

Jeremy Brett was perfect as the great detective.

Jeremy Brett was perfect as the great detective.

David Burke was fine as the well dressed sidekick Watson.

David Burke was fine as the dapper sidekick Watson.

Then, of course, thanks to the Special Relationship that exists between the Yanks and the Brits, both sides of the Atlantic conspired to destroy Holmes in two series called “Elementary” and “Sherlock.” Oh well. Moving on. Just wanted to make clear this crap is no part of the canon. Cumberbunch may be a cute gay Oxbridge Spock, but he’s no Sherlock Holmes. I knew Holmes. From the age of ten on.

Back in time again. Dame Agatha Christie had the most warped mind of any mystery writer ever, God bless her heart. But she also had herself a case of professional jealousy. Like all valiant overachievers she wanted to outdo the competition of the past. You think Sherlock Holmes was eccentric? Try Hercule Poirot. The exact opposite in every respect but the genius of Agatha Christie. Holmes was a slob, Poirot is a dandy. Holmes was always on the go, Poirot stays home unless he has to go out. Who was it, the BBC (?) who actually got this right. Maybe the best detective series ever.

David Suchet is perfect, even more than perfect, as the great detective.

David Suchet is perfect, even more than perfect, as the great detective.

Hastings. The ultimate dimwit sidekick. Brave, loyal, moral, and possessed of a Lagonda to kill for.

Hastings. The ultimate dimwit sidekick. Brave, loyal, moral, and possessed of a Lagonda to kill for.

Would Poe be happy? Thinking he’d like an American heir. Where the third of the great three comes in.

Nero Wolfe. If you think about it, the concatenation of Holmes and Poirot. The third but by no means the least. Rex Stout was the best pure writer of the three. His detective was the most eccentric, a 300 pound orchid fancier from Montenegro who lived in a New York brownstone and only entertained the police by appointment.

Nero Wolfe. The greatest of them all.

Nero Wolfe. The greatest of them all.

He had the best sidekick too. Archie Goodwin was not only as well dressed as all his forebears, but he carried a gun and always tried to save damsels in distress. He also wrote like a gumshoe Hemingway, better (truth be told) than a lot of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, lean clean prose that’s still fun to read. Timothy Hutton followed his instincts and produced a classic series.

Archie Goodwin. Perfect sidekick for the perfect detective.

Archie Goodwin. Perfect sidekick for the perfect detective.

What am I going on about? These three detectives have multi-season series that cycle through Netflix. Look for them. They’re all marvelous, clever, filled with attention to temporal detail. The only one on Netflix at the moment is Hercule Poirot, which is as much monument to the Art Deco period as it is a mystery series. But the same could and should be said of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. The former is a view of Victoriana and the latter of New York in the fifties.

The family I’m talking about is civilization. If you miss it, look for these artifacts of it.

How we rise from the doldrums of Obamatopia.

You know. Those Eagles ESPN is sure be racist.

You know. Those Eagles ESPN is sure be racist.

How is it that we’re for the racist Eagles and also for Lewis Hamilton, the Grand Prix F1 Champion who has been called a nigger in Spain and even in his own country? We love him. He’s a better driver than my Scottish heroes Jimmy Clark and Jackie Stewart. We like him because he’s incredibly talented, polite, and just mischievous enough to firehose a supermodel with champagne.

But he’s in trooouuuble now. Because he broke up with his model girlfriend and has been seen with Jamie Farr. He’s been Partying!

So, after a month off in the middle of the F1 season, the dissipated Champion of Formula 1 returned to the track for the tail whipping he so richly deserved.

He wins the pole and the race. Again.

He wins the pole and the race at the Belgian Grand Prix. Again.

Eagles? Second straight preseason blowout. Must be in good shape indeed to have all those racial fisticuffs in the clubhouse and then come out onto the field to hammer the opposition. In this case the Baltimore Ravens.

What did you think would happen?

What did you think would happen?

E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES… or ducks.

Last week, Drudge was pushing sex at 57 with Sharon Stone.

White girls. Still constipated by false modesty.

White girls. Still constipated by false modesty.

But as the stock market crashed, Drudge advanced his agenda by a full decade closer to the Apocalypse. Sex at 67 features an even hotter one.

Topless Grace Jones, 67, hits the stage in just tribal bodypaint and a basque as she headlines Afropunk festival

Grace Jones still cooks.

Grace Jones still cooks.

So I’m happy. Grace Jones was always as hot as they come.

Always a knockout.

Always a knockout.

Or did you want me to talk about Meet the Press, Face the Nation, George Stephanhillarious, and Fox News Sunday? I still can. If you prefer, I’ll remove the breasts and substitute the beasts.

Pretty funny. The Belgian Grand Prix. My wife has been waiting. She’s a hard mistress. What she wants is cars screaming through the city so hard that the city itself screams. Putt putt putt. Oh that’s the Austrians pouting. What we need is screeeaaaming!

Second Driveway

Second Driveway (click all of these for bigger.)

Because he’s only eleven and has eleven times our energy, Rikki gets to go for a walk every night. We wait till the gun nuts are in bed because he looks exactly, completely, unbelievably like a deer.

When those ears pop up, you can hear every Elmer Fudd in the county cock his rifle. So we are careful.

When those ears pop up, you can hear every Elmer Fudd in the county cock his rifle. So we are careful.

So we march past the second driveway up top and barely even pause at our homestead’s cricket green.

Rikki will pee by the bamboos to the right (where the cobras are), but then he wants to go exploring.

Rikki will pee by the bamboos to the right (where the cobras are), but then he wants to go exploring.

We walk past the mysterious wood along the road.

Pretty sure Harry Potter's in there. Or at least his owl is.

Pretty sure Harry Potter’s in there. Or at least his owl is.

And then we arrive at the gates of Mordor.

Where the shadows lie.

Where the shadows lie.

And then, panting slightly, both of us, because even I am eleven in dog years, we turn around and go back home in our magical elven cloaks, which are proof against all the pickup truck headlights in the world.

That was arduous, sahib. Tikki-Tik-Tikki Tavi.

That was arduous, sahib. Tikki-Tik-Tik-Tikki Tavi.

After which we have a cookie, and curl up for a good night’s sleep.

All the other stands around the league have been empty in this first week. Not so in Philadelphia, the so-called "worst fan base in the NFL."

All the other stands around the league have been empty in this first week. Not so in Philadelphia, the so-called “worst fan base in the NFL.”

Well into the second quarter, the Ducks are leading 13-3, and we haven’t even got the chance to cheer deliriously for Tebow yet.

So. Based on one quarter or so of the first preseason game, it’s pretty clear in Philadelphia that they’re going to the SUPER BOWL!!!

Fly, Ducklings, Fly… On to Victory!

She likes it. She really likes it.

She likes it. She really likes it.

The quote above is by my wife. I don’t wrassle with Muffy. I chase her around, the same way she discos with me at mealtimes, and mostly I let her go. Then, SOMETIMES, I swoop down and scoop her up for a two minute cuddle.

I grant you this picture seems like some kind of homage to Clockwork Orange or innumerable Satanic movies. But I ask you, who’s the Satan figure here? Me or the Scotty who loves me without being able to reveal it to another living soul.

She does rest content in my arms for about two minutes. We’re working on the endurance factor. It’s way up from the 20 seconds we started with in December.

The punditocracy is not amused.

The punditocracy is not amused.

I’ve been having a blast the past week or so, posting and commenting on the subject of Donald Trump and the completely, laughably, hysterical reaction to his candidacy by the MSM in all its forms, including National Review (Kevin Williamson, throat clearing noise), and all the pundits on every side of the aisle. I’ve been struggling to come up with an appropriate comparison that illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of the dudgeon. I finally found it. A sudden lightning bolt of insight that’s just perfect.

Here it is. He’s Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. The outsider who doesn’t care about all the rules he’s breaking and yet understands exactly what rules he’s breaking. He’s enjoying the hell out of himself and the frightened country club members are terrified he will buy the club out from under them and bring in more of the very worst sort, just like him. Enjoy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-enbDAsAg

Think of all the people you’d cast in the Ted Knight role.

You decide.

You decide.

First pic from my wife's new phone.

First pic from my wife’s new phone.

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