The British humorist P.G. Wodehouse once explained his writing process thusly: “I usually just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.” My process is similar, but is more along the lines of, “I sit at my laptop listening to Electric Wizard, wondering if I can slip another one by the editors.” I once spent over 500 words trying to describe what exactly it is that I do for this paper, IN THIS PAPER. That would be like the two Jean Claude Van Dammes from “Double Impact” playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots with a third Jean Claude Van Damme, and it would end the same way: in stretched metaphors and Belgian grunting.
On the other hand, it’s almost more difficult to conjure something out of the blue. Sometimes my interest is piqued. Sometimes I’m inspired. Sometimes I spend more than one night on this thing. Tonight, after wracking my brain and drinking something called Bengali Tiger, the most interesting things I could think of were “I got a new pair of shoes” and “I just watched ‘Boogie Nights.’” Don’t get excited. I don’t know what you readers (all six of you) come to this column each week expecting, but I’m saving the “Fake Celebrity Dongs” article for Thanksgiving.
And so I turn to politics, encountering the same problem. It’s tough to find a hook, especially since I already used the best one (GOP frontrunners as UFC counterparts). Instead, I’m just going to run down a list of the three stupidest things Mitt Romney has done during this election cycle. It may not be original or timely, but for pissed-off joke-mongers, Romney is like Christmas, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and “Predator 2” all rolled into one.
3. Courting Trump
You could say that Donald Trump is like the combination of both Ron Paul and Ross Perot’s crazier parts, but that would be giving everyone involved way too much credit. He ran for president last time to give the new season of “The Apprentice” a ratings bump. It ended up working stupidly well, so he just figured he’d do it again.
Everything Trump does is a well-calculated, though often hilarious, lurch of self-marketing. It’s why he hasn’t upgraded the Tribble on his head in years: any press is good press to Trump, and that hairpiece has given birth to so many late night punch-lines, fertility doctors keep Conan O’Brien’s writing staff on retainer. And his properties? If you told a homophobe to produce an oil painting of San Francisco circa 1997, it would be less garish than any of Trump’s hotels.
Look, I understand that Romney — or any other nationwide GOP hopeful, for that matter — has to court the occasional lunatic. It’s why his criticism of Rush Limbaugh following Whoregate stopped at semantics, and why most Republican internet comment-hounds believe that Obama’s CIA killed Andrew Breitbart over a bro hug. But Trump is crossing a line, even for the party’s contemporary iteration, because it associates Romney with…
2. The Birther Movement
Like I said, Trump does anything that he thinks will get him more attention. The only reason he hasn’t released a sex tape yet is because the director of “A Serbian Film” wept openly while watching the dailies. And when you’re that much of a publicity whore, you tend to attach yourself to exponentially increasing levels of crazy.
If you live in Georgia — and you do, or else you wouldn’t be reading this — it may seem like the Birther movement has something of a foothold. Hell, every time I drove from Milledgeville to visit my family in Fitzgerald, I passed a billboard on I-20 emblazoned with “Where’s the birth certificate?” It was amazing. Never before had I seen someone so proud of his extra chromosome.
In truth, though, it’s largely seen as a fringe movement, mostly populated by individuals eager to find a conspiracy behind anything they don’t agree with. Yeah, Limbaugh, Hannity and Dobbs have perpetuated the notion on their shows, but those guys are such GOP shills that Kid Rock won’t friend them on Facebook.
But Trump is by far the biggest name to associate himself with the movement, even though he obviously knows it’s a crock of s**t. So, to recap: Romney has not only associated himself with a cadre of nutbags so insane that the national party won’t court them outright, but he’s done it through a man whose own principles and sense of self-worth are so eroded that he does it all for the sake of ratings.
1. Opposing Gay Marriage
People — mostly college students — like to talk about how this nation will eventually transcend the two-party system and, like, freedom and stuff, man. First of all, the last time this country had a political party free for all, we got the Bull Moose Party.
Now, I don’t want to denigrate Teddy Roosevelt, and not just because his ghost can kill me with judo in six different languages. I can’t do better than Dave Barry’s take on this, so I’ll just quote him and say that the Bull Moose Party “evokes the majestic image of eating ferns and pooping all over the landscape.” With the current state of hipsters and indie music, the dyke is going to break wide with insufferably clever party names, most of them with the word “Deschanel” in the title.
Second, and more importantly, the two parties are not going to fizzle simultaneously. Let’s be clear: the current version of the GOP is not long for this world. National polls recently found the nation as a whole turning the corner on gay marriage, by about a five-percentage-point margin. There is widespread oppression, yes, but the expansion of support systems for newly uncloseted homosexuals in America have more than kept pace.
As a result, more individuals are coming out to their families who, in turn, find it impossible to denigrate and repress a loved one. True, gay marriage with continue to be defeated by referendum in individual states for a while now — Alabama is going to bring up the rear on that one, methinks, and pun definitely intended. But even the Mormons had a contingent in the recent Seattle Pride Parade, and Catholic parishes are breaking nationwide with their gay-bashing archbishops. More and more, the citizenry is discovering not how to turn their backs on faith, but how to merge it with a socially progressive, humanitarian worldview: the way it was originally intended.You Might Also Like:
News Flash
The wide-open parameters of this column’s subject matter are both a great asset and maddening liability. On the one hand, I can write about pretty much anything I want. That’s why subjects have ranged from Rick Santorum is a Poop-Face to Beers I Like to Floyd Mayweather Explains the 21st Century Zeitgeist.
The British humorist P.G. Wodehouse once explained his writing process thusly: “I usually just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.” My process is similar, but is more along the lines of, “I sit at my laptop listening to Electric Wizard, wondering if I can slip another one by the editors.” I once spent over 500 words trying to describe what exactly it is that I do for this paper, IN THIS PAPER. That would be like the two Jean Claude Van Dammes from “Double Impact” playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots with a third Jean Claude Van Damme, and it would end the same way: in stretched metaphors and Belgian grunting.
On the other hand, it’s almost more difficult to conjure something out of the blue. Sometimes my interest is piqued. Sometimes I’m inspired. Sometimes I spend more than one night on this thing. Tonight, after wracking my brain and drinking something called Bengali Tiger, the most interesting things I could think of were “I got a new pair of shoes” and “I just watched ‘Boogie Nights.’” Don’t get excited. I don’t know what you readers (all six of you) come to this column each week expecting, but I’m saving the “Fake Celebrity Dongs” article for Thanksgiving.
And so I turn to politics, encountering the same problem. It’s tough to find a hook, especially since I already used the best one (GOP frontrunners as UFC counterparts). Instead, I’m just going to run down a list of the three stupidest things Mitt Romney has done during this election cycle. It may not be original or timely, but for pissed-off joke-mongers, Romney is like Christmas, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and “Predator 2” all rolled into one.
3. Courting Trump
You could say that Donald Trump is like the combination of both Ron Paul and Ross Perot’s crazier parts, but that would be giving everyone involved way too much credit. He ran for president last time to give the new season of “The Apprentice” a ratings bump. It ended up working stupidly well, so he just figured he’d do it again.
Everything Trump does is a well-calculated, though often hilarious, lurch of self-marketing. It’s why he hasn’t upgraded the Tribble on his head in years: any press is good press to Trump, and that hairpiece has given birth to so many late night punch-lines, fertility doctors keep Conan O’Brien’s writing staff on retainer. And his properties? If you told a homophobe to produce an oil painting of San Francisco circa 1997, it would be less garish than any of Trump’s hotels.
Look, I understand that Romney — or any other nationwide GOP hopeful, for that matter — has to court the occasional lunatic. It’s why his criticism of Rush Limbaugh following Whoregate stopped at semantics, and why most Republican internet comment-hounds believe that Obama’s CIA killed Andrew Breitbart over a bro hug. But Trump is crossing a line, even for the party’s contemporary iteration, because it associates Romney with…
2. The Birther Movement
Like I said, Trump does anything that he thinks will get him more attention. The only reason he hasn’t released a sex tape yet is because the director of “A Serbian Film” wept openly while watching the dailies. And when you’re that much of a publicity whore, you tend to attach yourself to exponentially increasing levels of crazy.
If you live in Georgia — and you do, or else you wouldn’t be reading this — it may seem like the Birther movement has something of a foothold. Hell, every time I drove from Milledgeville to visit my family in Fitzgerald, I passed a billboard on I-20 emblazoned with “Where’s the birth certificate?” It was amazing. Never before had I seen someone so proud of his extra chromosome.
In truth, though, it’s largely seen as a fringe movement, mostly populated by individuals eager to find a conspiracy behind anything they don’t agree with. Yeah, Limbaugh, Hannity and Dobbs have perpetuated the notion on their shows, but those guys are such GOP shills that Kid Rock won’t friend them on Facebook.
But Trump is by far the biggest name to associate himself with the movement, even though he obviously knows it’s a crock of s**t. So, to recap: Romney has not only associated himself with a cadre of nutbags so insane that the national party won’t court them outright, but he’s done it through a man whose own principles and sense of self-worth are so eroded that he does it all for the sake of ratings.
1. Opposing Gay Marriage
People — mostly college students — like to talk about how this nation will eventually transcend the two-party system and, like, freedom and stuff, man. First of all, the last time this country had a political party free for all, we got the Bull Moose Party.
Now, I don’t want to denigrate Teddy Roosevelt, and not just because his ghost can kill me with judo in six different languages. I can’t do better than Dave Barry’s take on this, so I’ll just quote him and say that the Bull Moose Party “evokes the majestic image of eating ferns and pooping all over the landscape.” With the current state of hipsters and indie music, the dyke is going to break wide with insufferably clever party names, most of them with the word “Deschanel” in the title.
Second, and more importantly, the two parties are not going to fizzle simultaneously. Let’s be clear: the current version of the GOP is not long for this world. National polls recently found the nation as a whole turning the corner on gay marriage, by about a five-percentage-point margin. There is widespread oppression, yes, but the expansion of support systems for newly uncloseted homosexuals in America have more than kept pace.
As a result, more individuals are coming out to their families who, in turn, find it impossible to denigrate and repress a loved one. True, gay marriage with continue to be defeated by referendum in individual states for a while now — Alabama is going to bring up the rear on that one, methinks, and pun definitely intended. But even the Mormons had a contingent in the recent Seattle Pride Parade, and Catholic parishes are breaking nationwide with their gay-bashing archbishops. More and more, the citizenry is discovering not how to turn their backs on faith, but how to merge it with a socially progressive, humanitarian worldview: the way it was originally intended.You Might Also Like:
The British humorist P.G. Wodehouse once explained his writing process thusly: “I usually just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.” My process is similar, but is more along the lines of, “I sit at my laptop listening to Electric Wizard, wondering if I can slip another one by the editors.” I once spent over 500 words trying to describe what exactly it is that I do for this paper, IN THIS PAPER. That would be like the two Jean Claude Van Dammes from “Double Impact” playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots with a third Jean Claude Van Damme, and it would end the same way: in stretched metaphors and Belgian grunting.
On the other hand, it’s almost more difficult to conjure something out of the blue. Sometimes my interest is piqued. Sometimes I’m inspired. Sometimes I spend more than one night on this thing. Tonight, after wracking my brain and drinking something called Bengali Tiger, the most interesting things I could think of were “I got a new pair of shoes” and “I just watched ‘Boogie Nights.’” Don’t get excited. I don’t know what you readers (all six of you) come to this column each week expecting, but I’m saving the “Fake Celebrity Dongs” article for Thanksgiving.
And so I turn to politics, encountering the same problem. It’s tough to find a hook, especially since I already used the best one (GOP frontrunners as UFC counterparts). Instead, I’m just going to run down a list of the three stupidest things Mitt Romney has done during this election cycle. It may not be original or timely, but for pissed-off joke-mongers, Romney is like Christmas, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and “Predator 2” all rolled into one.
3. Courting Trump
You could say that Donald Trump is like the combination of both Ron Paul and Ross Perot’s crazier parts, but that would be giving everyone involved way too much credit. He ran for president last time to give the new season of “The Apprentice” a ratings bump. It ended up working stupidly well, so he just figured he’d do it again.
Everything Trump does is a well-calculated, though often hilarious, lurch of self-marketing. It’s why he hasn’t upgraded the Tribble on his head in years: any press is good press to Trump, and that hairpiece has given birth to so many late night punch-lines, fertility doctors keep Conan O’Brien’s writing staff on retainer. And his properties? If you told a homophobe to produce an oil painting of San Francisco circa 1997, it would be less garish than any of Trump’s hotels.
Look, I understand that Romney — or any other nationwide GOP hopeful, for that matter — has to court the occasional lunatic. It’s why his criticism of Rush Limbaugh following Whoregate stopped at semantics, and why most Republican internet comment-hounds believe that Obama’s CIA killed Andrew Breitbart over a bro hug. But Trump is crossing a line, even for the party’s contemporary iteration, because it associates Romney with…
2. The Birther Movement
Like I said, Trump does anything that he thinks will get him more attention. The only reason he hasn’t released a sex tape yet is because the director of “A Serbian Film” wept openly while watching the dailies. And when you’re that much of a publicity whore, you tend to attach yourself to exponentially increasing levels of crazy.
If you live in Georgia — and you do, or else you wouldn’t be reading this — it may seem like the Birther movement has something of a foothold. Hell, every time I drove from Milledgeville to visit my family in Fitzgerald, I passed a billboard on I-20 emblazoned with “Where’s the birth certificate?” It was amazing. Never before had I seen someone so proud of his extra chromosome.
In truth, though, it’s largely seen as a fringe movement, mostly populated by individuals eager to find a conspiracy behind anything they don’t agree with. Yeah, Limbaugh, Hannity and Dobbs have perpetuated the notion on their shows, but those guys are such GOP shills that Kid Rock won’t friend them on Facebook.
But Trump is by far the biggest name to associate himself with the movement, even though he obviously knows it’s a crock of s**t. So, to recap: Romney has not only associated himself with a cadre of nutbags so insane that the national party won’t court them outright, but he’s done it through a man whose own principles and sense of self-worth are so eroded that he does it all for the sake of ratings.
1. Opposing Gay Marriage
People — mostly college students — like to talk about how this nation will eventually transcend the two-party system and, like, freedom and stuff, man. First of all, the last time this country had a political party free for all, we got the Bull Moose Party.
Now, I don’t want to denigrate Teddy Roosevelt, and not just because his ghost can kill me with judo in six different languages. I can’t do better than Dave Barry’s take on this, so I’ll just quote him and say that the Bull Moose Party “evokes the majestic image of eating ferns and pooping all over the landscape.” With the current state of hipsters and indie music, the dyke is going to break wide with insufferably clever party names, most of them with the word “Deschanel” in the title.
Second, and more importantly, the two parties are not going to fizzle simultaneously. Let’s be clear: the current version of the GOP is not long for this world. National polls recently found the nation as a whole turning the corner on gay marriage, by about a five-percentage-point margin. There is widespread oppression, yes, but the expansion of support systems for newly uncloseted homosexuals in America have more than kept pace.
As a result, more individuals are coming out to their families who, in turn, find it impossible to denigrate and repress a loved one. True, gay marriage with continue to be defeated by referendum in individual states for a while now — Alabama is going to bring up the rear on that one, methinks, and pun definitely intended. But even the Mormons had a contingent in the recent Seattle Pride Parade, and Catholic parishes are breaking nationwide with their gay-bashing archbishops. More and more, the citizenry is discovering not how to turn their backs on faith, but how to merge it with a socially progressive, humanitarian worldview: the way it was originally intended.You Might Also Like:
Posted in Ruffin' It