Buffoons and Buffoonettes

I don’t know if other sexual predators have as much of a problem talking to women as Donald Cluck does, but it would seem that beyond telling a female to “Go over there and take off your clothes!” he is limited to spewing a mixture of insults, foolish puns, and unimaginative nicknames he has created for them. To deal with women as equals seems to require a mindset that is beyond his reach.

My suggestion for the Democrats is that whenever possible they put the most “uppity” women they can find in his path and have them uppity the very bejesus out of him at every uppitytunity.

The longer the present-day political grotesquery goes on the less respect that I have for hard-core Cluck supporters. Cult members, nincompoops, a waste of perfectly good oxygen … where do you start? And the looniest of all are the evangelical Christians who have swarmed around a man whose life story is a sordid list of the Commandments he has fractured (and shows no interest in repenting thereof).

Why so harsh, Jon? Come on, they are simply misguided and if you would take the time to sit down with them and have a heart to heart they might very well come over to different ways of thinking.

Nope. They wouldn’t.

As an example of cultic thought processes do you remember the Jonestown Massacre? When more than 900 people either committed suicide or were killed because their leader told them it was their only option? Remember that they gave the cyanide to their own children? Do you think having any one of them over for dinner and a chat would have made a difference?

No … these folks, bless their hearts, are fools because they choose to be and danged if they’re not proud of it.

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From The New Yorker

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Some of the best guitar work in rock today comes out of what would seem an unlikely place – the Sahara. For years I have admired Tuareg musicians like Tinariwen and Bombino and now I have a new group to listen to – Mdou Moctar. My, my, these people kick some serious musical butt.

Yesterday I listened to their album Afrique Victime on headphones while working out on our gym’s walking track and if the time didn’t fly by it at least moved more swiftly. The lead guitarist studied Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix and his playing skills are in that rarefied company.

Bismilahi Atagah, by Mdou Moctar

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From The New Yorker

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It’s a little bit paradoxical but Amazon, which started out selling books and went on to become the order-now-and-it’ll-be-there-in-an-hour colossus that owns US retail is now having trouble getting one line of products to the customer in a reasonable time.

And what would that line of product be? Why, it is books! Our most recent book order is now two weeks late and there’s perhaps another week to go, they tell us.

And this is not an isolated instance. Methinks Mr. Bezos careth less about books these days than when he was a young and callow pre-billionaire.

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One more example of “everything old is new again.” A piece in the Times of New York about the simple motor hotels of the USA, which we’ve been calling “Mom and Pop motels” for-ever. It’s an interesting read.

You know the places. You enter your room from the parking lot without passing through a lobby or having to find the elevator. You come and go as anonymously as anyone can in an era of CCTV. You only have to haul your luggage a few feet before you collapse on the bed, the particular fatigue of a long day’s driving already beginning to wear off ever so slightly.

To read that some of them are being improved and updated brings joy to my heart. Maybe the occasional bare wiring and rain-stained corners of the rooms will disappear altogether. For me the charm of these places is innate, it only needs to be made visible once more. I don’t need to be entertained by my motel room, what I do ask is that it be a clean and comfortable space with the weather on the other side of the door.

Home Motel, by Willie Nelson

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Here’s the deal. If you have to ask, you aren’t. I had to ask.

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