If You Say Zach Wamp Three Times, Jefferson Davis Appears in the Mirror

Stinquey lawyer types: Secession doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on at all, does it? Would the attempt to secede constitute an act of treason?

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg:
As someone who lives in a nation that has it’s own brand of separatistes
I would think so especially if done without a vote, um, referendum.

Again, considering how a lot of the folks from states who cry session “give” to the Feds, this would (economically wise) work for the better (for the blue states.)

Please let them leave. Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!

The short answer is no legal leg to stand on.

The only possible basis would have to be derived from the terms under which a state joined the union. That’s where Gov. Goodhair’s maunderings regarding Texas come from. Texas got an odd deal when it came in.

Whether it is treason is a different and harder question. I’ll leave that to anyone who really knows that flavor of criminal law.

There is a commonplace maxim that revolution (or secession) is treason unless it succeeds. See our past unpleasantness with King George III and his peeps.

On the other hand, I’d be happy to let Zach Wamp secede, preferably with a boot to the butt to assist him out the door.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: Related question: Is is constitutional for us to just kick them out and be done with it?

as Zack Wamp I think the poor schmuck started out at a disadvantage.

TJ/Guess who’s coming to San Diego for the Comic-Con! Guess who wants a pint at Shakespeare’s Pub with any available Stanques?

@nojo:

And when would be the best time to get that going?

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: Ummmmm…… Harrison Ford?

Personally, I wish Manhattan would secede to become an off-shore tax-haven/banking colossus like Hong Kong or Monte Carlo. Then they would immediately invade the Catskills to ensure their water supply and occupy us as a satrapy with special citizenship rights. They would levy a commuter tax plus congestion tax plus salt tax plus trans-fat tax. It would be awesome. It would be like living in The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Bloomburg can be king. It can be a new Florence. The national sport would be Bitching followed closely by Musical Theatre. They could charge extra to get in from New Jersey.

@Benedick:

Bebe Rebozo.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: Favorite of presidents.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: Guess who’s coming to San Diego for the Comic-Con!

You poor soul.

Guess who wants a pint at Shakespeare’s Pub with any available Stanques?

Name yer time.

@nojo:

5-Ish? I’ll send my cell number through the clubhouse…

@Benedick:

It is the best political name evar.

/after darque/

So initially this wasn’t gonna be an after darque update, but it went darque pretty damn fast. I had my grad student orientation at the (cough) Cathoholic(cough) university I’ll be attending in September, and I was especially interested in the gym, where I’ll likely be spending as many hours as I will in class rooms. The facilities were fine, built in the 60s, but with modern equipment and tons of rec options… and then I walked around the corner in the mens’ locker room and saw the largest gang-bang shower I’ve ever even heard of. The fully-tiled and lined shower room is approximately 20 feet by 25 feet, with two rows of three large, metal, equadistant columns, each ringed with six shower heads. We’re talking no curtains and not even so much as a towel hook within 20 feet of this place, so buh-bye modesty. Honestly, I only thought such places existed in hardcore porn, feverish, lust-fueled daydreams, and the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. It was breathtaking, and I had to take a moment to pause and reflect on this awesome Monument to Homoeroticism, with its mindblowing history of countless thousands of sweaty young men who’ve arrived to wash off after strenuously pumping, grunting and thrusting. Why is it not in the guidebooks?

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: 5-ish is good. And you can always, y’know, email me.

The last statistics available are from 2005 – TN got $1.27 for every dollar of federal taxes paid. If they secede, not only will we shed millions of ignorant people, we’ll save money. Let ’em go.

I have several times humorously presented some phrases and sayings from movies and comedians, and stated, all mock serious, that these things constitute true wisdom, and worthy life-lessons, things one must know to understand the world. But most of the time, my mock-seriousness is a cover for real seriousness, there is wisdom in the words of the fool, in comedy.

So I am going to come back to a pivotal moment in Risky Business, when the man I know as Booger is talking Tom Cruise into the whorehouse business venture, its a major moment in the movie, and Booger gets very serious, and repeats the line several times, “If you can’t say it, Joel, you can’t do it.” And that is true, and also true, is the converse, if you can say it, you can do it, or, at least, you are on the way to being able to do it.

And this is the fucking danger, the very real and serious danger, of the incredibly shocking things the teabaggers and the GOP hard lunatic fringe are saying now, more loudly and more frequently every day. At first, a few loons start talking about secession, and about assasination of a muslim foreign-born president, and about locking and loading, and about taking aim, and “taking out” liberal politicians, and about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants, and about an armed populace being a check on government, with the implied message, that the populace should take up arms against the government.

And these things keep being repeated, and suddenly, they are being said by “mainstream” people, officeholders, people held in respect by segments of the public.

And this is the lesson of Risky Business, because, if they can say it, and get away with saying it, then they start to believe they can get away with doing it. And the more it keeps being said, by more and more people, the more doing it becomes a reality, to the loons.

Insane rhetoric, violent rhetoric, does not necessarily lead to insane, violent actions, but, the insane rhetoric is a necessary prerequisite to insane acts, because, if they can say it, they can do it. The more they say it, without their being any pushback, without being reviled and vilified for their rhetoric, the more they come to believe they will also get away with doing it. Stable and peaceful societies do in fact fall apart and turn to violent division, it has happened all through history in every society, we have been lucky in the US, it has only happened once here, but the wounds of that divide have never healed, and as in the middle east and the balkans, it seems that with each generation, the memory of that conflict is becoming more fetishized and becoming more of a rallying cry for more division and hate.

I am very seriously alarmed by this kind of talk. It is a reflection of the fact that the divisions of the civil war are being resurrected, in a real way, a way that once again represents a possibility that our society will be rent by a serious, major, and violent division once again.

History may one day mark that the GOP “southern strategy” had as its ultimate outcome, the rekindling of secession, the rekindling of the civil war itself.

Already, the GOP openly reviles the civil rights leaders and the movement and the era itself. They are now openly rejecting and repudiating the greatest moral movement in our society, they criticized Kagan openly on the grounds that she clerked for Marshall, the hero of civil rights who argued Brown v. Topeka, on the grounds, that he was the man who argued Brown v. Topeka. This is simply shocking.

And now governors, and sitting congressmen, are openly talking secession.

This is not good, its very very very bad.

We are fucked, is what it means.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: >:-/ ::green:: See if they have any New Mutants. Lost those in the divorce, too.

@Original Andrew: I gots to tell you, maybe I am old, but thats the only kind of shower-room I have ever seen. Thats why the gym shower thing was such a serious trauma for my generation, starting at about 10 or 12, in public school, I had to shower in facilities like that every day after gym class. Thats why I won’t go near a gym on a bet to this day.

@Original Andrew: Once upon a time, open showering was an American Tradition!

@Original Andrew: I have to take the dark tale a little further, when I was in 8th grade, I had just moved to a new school, new guy, no friends, and I was large, tall, so I was someone the established tough guys felt the need to pound the local pecking order into.

And that gym shower was my daily hell, absolute hell, thats where I would be attacked, every fucking day, by the jock bullies, there in the shower, while naked. While vulnerable, naked, scared, alone among a hostile crowd.

And it was all about humiliation, they would sidle up next to me, and then hawk a huge loogie on me. They would hold my head down and shove their asses in my face. Ridicule, and the constant use of the word “faggot,” I have said this before, I truly believe I may have been called “faggot” more than some of you men who are homosexuals. They would spit on me, and then yell, “whatchagonna do, faggot.” You faggot, fucking faggot, yes, they would shove their cocks in my face and yell “blow me, faggot.”

And I was not at all effeminate, or, at all, homosexual, that was just their word for anyone they wanted to break, destroy, put in their place.

And I was not small, or weak, or effeminate, as I said, I was only friendless, so it was always me against a mob.

And I was not passive, and I did not take it passively, I fought, I fucking I fucking fought, but it was a mob, and five of them would hold me down, and the ringleader asshole would shove his asshole in my face, and they would yell “faggot, faggot.”

One time I was leaning down low to get my clothes from my locker on the lowest tier of lockers, and the asshole, he came up to me, and did the “asshole in my face” thing, they had a word for it, I forget the term, but he did this, and I was crouching down, and I just turned and grabbed his legs, I was in the blowjob position, my mouth in his crotch, but, I had the advantage, I got him by the legs, and I stood up, and suddenly, he was 3 feet in the air, his head hitting the ceiling, and I was doing my fucking best to throw his body down so his head would hit the tile floor from a height of 7 feet, and crack his motherfucking skull, but the rest of the mob held him up and saved him, and even though I overpowered the motherfucker and could have killed him, if it were just him and me, he was applauded as the winner of that fight. There were many incidents like that, I would fucking put some hurt on my tormentor, but the rest of the mob would then close in and save him, and I was always considered the loser. The faggot.

It was one semester, when I was 12, or 13, but it fucking destroyed me, it made me what I am, I fucking hate most hetero males, cannot, will not, be friends with them. One semester, but, what is that, 50 days of daily fucking physical, and yes, dammit, sexual humiliation.

It didn’t matter that on two or three occasions, I was on the verge of fucking beating the shit out of the alpha male, my chief tormentor, the one the others followed, it didn’t matter, they would save his ass, humiliate me, and I was the loser, even though, I know, and I think he knew, I fucking owned him.

I once or twice spoke of this person, Michael Millar, before, I have spoken of meeting him 12 or 13 years later, in a bar, and he had the fucking clueless nerve to walk up to me and try to speak to me as if we were old friends, and that was all just fun hijinks. And by that time, I was 6 inches taller then him, and he was chubby and pathetic, no longer the king of Junior High, and I spoke here, about spending a whole hour, very bemused by the fact he was talking to me and expecting me to accept him as an old friend, and the whole time, seriously considering, very seriously considering, killing him. I was thinking specifically about picking up a barstool, I am good with a barstool, and fucking just bringing it down on his head, I seriously wanted to do it, I wanted to so bad, but, I didn’t want to go to jail.

I wish I did. I was young, that crime would be expunged by now.

@Promnight: They are indeed neomedievalists, enemies of the enlightenment. They seek a new dark age, ruled by fear, hate, ignorance and tribal war.

Let them have it.

Let them go and set border guards out to shoot them at long range should they ever set foot again in the US.

@Promnight: You did the right thing, though it might have been fun to explain to him why it would be entertaining for you to make a jerk off’s life like his interesting by tearing off his arms.

Mother fucking fuck, I have been in therapy for 5 years for my low self esteem, and I have never brought this up with my psychiatrist, I have to do this. Yeah, there is such a thing as repression and denial, I rarely relive that shit, and now that I have, I am fucking blind angry again.

And I am seeing some things, like, why I reject almost everything that most typical males regard as the ideals of success, hell, is this not why I feel more comfortable here, among you all, a majority of homosexuals and fag-hags?

I fucking hate most heterosexual males, and thats why all my friends have always been women, and why I have much in common with the women who like to have homosexual male friends.

this has been painful, to remember this shit, all it took was a description of a typical gym shower, and it all came back, like a brick in the face. Like an asshole in my face, like I had to endure, for half a year.

Motherfucking fucking fuckers.

@FlyingChainSaw: dude, can you really understand what I went through? Most intelligent people are “different,” and fucked with, in school, but you need to know, I was the fucking scapegoat, and had to absorb the hate for all the losers, they would not fight back, but I would, so I got singled out, and made the example. My parents were just like migrant farm workers, we moved constantly, from one horrendous welfare apartment complext to another, I was always the fucking new kid, every fucking year, god, my fucking childhood was fucking horror, but I never hated my parents for it, and my psychiatrist tends to lead me to blame them, but really, isn’t it the fault of these sociopaths who tormented me?

@FlyingChainSaw: whats your deal, man? I wish I knew you. Like, in real life.

@Promnight:

I am so sorry–I’d no idea that bizarre, insane shower would be so upsetting, or that you went through any of that. (sympathy hug)

I just found it exceedingly unusual that anyone would feel comfortable showering while simultaneously facing five other guys in a shower built for thirty-six. If it’s any consolation, you weren’t the only one who hated those kinds of showers–I’ve never seen anything like that in high school or college.

@Promnight:

w/r/t Civil War

Don’t sweat it. Our far-white population, for all of their whining and racist hissyfits, is too ignorant, authoritarian, and lazy to do anything thing other than bitch constantly. And when they do try shit, such as America’s Best and Brightest that’ve been busy running the nation into the ground, they fail horrendously. Civil War? No. An horrifically socially and economically unequal dystopian kleptocracy? Probably.

@Original Andrew: I don’t want expect or need any pity, or commiseration over all that happened, and I am glad you brought it to my mind, as I said, I have repressed this and now I want to raise it with my shrink, I don’t want pity or an excuse for my assholinesss, I do know I am an asshole, I never learned how to interact normally with normal people in my life, but I do throw it out there, to you all, because I like and respect and trust you all, and you all have given me feedback, through the years, that has at some times made me understand how to be a better person. But more than anything, you all, I feel less afraid to open myself up to you all, all you stinquers, because, I feel, know, that more so than any other group of people in my life, you people will understand completely what I am saying, you guys won’t judge.

@Original Andrew: I just want to let you know, I am not upset by it, by the memories, I am not traumatized, or anything, not much, anyway, except that I want to kill my primary tormentor, but its a cathartic feeling, so its good. Its just that I never even thought of it at all, for so many years, and now that it has been brought to mind, it enlightens some of the things I have been working in on therapy. I realized that I have not been dealing with something that has been a major influence on me, and what I am now, and dealing with it, and understanding it, will make me more “normal.” If I can do it. I am kinda excited, and hopeful, that bringing this episode of my life to the surface, in my therapy, may be really good for me.

@Benedick: If the Bay Area goes, I want to include the coast down to at least Big Sur and up to at least Humboldt. While we’re at it, let’s keep Napa and Sonoma for the wine.

We’ll have some water problems, so maybe we need a beachhead around Shasta, but I don’t want the Central Valley.

@nojo: Kicking them out probably does a bit of violence to the 9th, 10th, and Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th amendment.

Still, I’m game. Border fence around Texas anyone?

@Promnight:

::HUGE BEWBIE HUG:: i can relate. though in my case i was ostracized by teachers! i also was shuffled around quite a bit as a child, and my coping strategy was to be funny. i was always embraced by my fellow students by spending a lot of time in detention, and eating lunch one memorable year in the principals office. i was smart and popular, but always a loner. i didn’t belong to one clique, i was a rotating member of all of them because i always felt like an outsider.
here’s a story i never told any shrink that makes me furious to this day.
6th grade. mrs brown for english. i was in an AP class and had these cards that were not to be written on as part of the rules of this lesson plan. well, someone, NOT ME, wrote on one. i was taken out into the hallway and belittled and berated for something i didn’t do. i was punished in school and at home. when i face any adversary, in any situation, the opponent is mrs. brown. there are many examples of this. few get out of school unscathed in some way. the class clown is not the teachers favorite person. oh, and before this incident, when i loved school and wanted to LEARN everything i was called, ‘baked question mark’ for waving my hand around for some clarification on something. i was an annoyance. a young impressionable child belittled for seeking answers and immersed in the subject matter. i think boys have it rougher with all that testosterone flying around, but i didn’t even have a safe place to go when i wasn’t in school, til my grandparents rescued me. so i lived in the library, where i could fly to fabulous places or find commiseration. i hear you proms, and these early experiences have long memories and affect us as adults.

@baked: i don’t have to tell you, you don’t have to tell me, my dear. You know and i know that we know.

@baked: You speak of the good times, I escaped like you, to the library, and books, and quality drugs. It was lonely, but I was happy, in the world of the mind.

But seriously, Catch-22, can we make that a book club reading?

@Promnight:
yes, i forgot the drug part…the quaalude era!
i think i’m going to name one of my exotic amsterdam plants “mrs. brown”

@Promnight: I am so glad I didn’t have to go to school here. The pressures to conform are so much greater than in the UK. And children police the boundaries ruthlessly. But there’s another way to look at this: you got through it and have achieved much. You have a beautiful family and work which, while it often seems to frustrate you, is worth doing. You’re adventurous, passionate and imaginative. Some things that happen cannot and should not be forgiven but they obviously never managed to intrude on the important inner-promness of you. You didn’t capitulate and try to be one of them. Though it left you open to all kinds of torment you kept true to yourself. I know it doesn’t seem at the time like one has a choice but that’s because you did it. Cold comfort perhaps, but you did do that. Young Prom fought his way through and that’s a not inconsiderable achievement.

@baked: My teachers ridiculed me for reading. So I showed them. I left school at 15 and came to NYC while they stayed in Dulwich and rotted in their stinking yellowing underwear sweating into their only decent tweed jacket which got cleaned once a year whether it needed it or not as their teeth fell out and the endless drizzle crumbled the bricks of their dismal, dank, bedsits. All of which left me not at all bitter. Not. At. All.

@Benedick:
i’m in such great company here. thanks for that my dearest mum.
i’m not at all bitter either. because i just came back from spitting on mrs. brown.

@Promnight: Your shrink is a fucking brat. Your parents did the best that they could and you did the best that you could and more than anyone in your affected population at that time. He or she should place himself in your parents’ situation first before deciding culpability. I am sure your situation would have been different if your folks had gone to medical school or the shrink program at ITT tech or wherever the fuck your therapist went – but not by much. You’d still be you and likely had a lot of the same aspirations. Biologically, what comes in the box is what gets used and there’s not a lot we can do about that except have fun with it. All that stuff happened to you and mattered then but what is most important now is pestorking the everloving bejesus out of wife on the deck of your boat while tot slumbers blissfully below and the wine cools in the fridge.

@baked: @Benedick: @FlyingChainSaw:

I need to thank you guys, and others, I have been away, I get away from the computer, saturdays and sundays, and just bask in the living world, its been insanely, unbearably hot and humid here for a month, but this weekend, the worst, temps around a hundred, but not a southwest, dry 100, a northeast, dripping wet the minute you walk outdoors 100, but I am very very lucky, live on the water, I have a boat, and I spent the last two days on the water, and most of that time, in the water, it was the only place where the heat was bearable, in the water.

Thank you, you guys, I had a sudden return, sudden, vivid memories, of that time in my adolescence, Friday night. I threw it out there, and your responses were wonderful, great, really, I so appreciate it, baked, FCS, you softy you, and benedick, you wise soul.

I have to tell you all some happy things, so I won’t be just a crying pity-monger.

The best thing from this weekend, Ethan came within 2 inches of catching the family’s dinner Saturday. In my little area of the world, people fish, they are insane about fishing, and in the summer, the fish of choice is “fluke,” our name for summer flounder, its a flatfish, like flounder, sole, but its not one of the most choice. It has a fantastic flavor, not a great texture, but the fishermen around here, its the fish they are most into catching for the table. There are severe restrictions on catching it, a size limit, a bag limit, the regulatory agencies are trying to rebuild the stocks, so the size limit is 18 inches, thats a big fish.

Well, I really am not that into fishing, I do it for Ethan, and we went out Saturday, and tried seriously to catch some fluke, and Ethan cought one, the biggest we have caught this year, 16 inches. Oh well, I was just glad it was not hurt, and we succesfully released it, but as I said, he came within 2 inches of catching us dinner, that was special. I didn’t want to be fishing, I wanted to float in an innertube in the water and slurp Leinenkugel Berry weiss, but, I was happy, to see it, there is nothing better than seeing your 10 year old catch a nice fish and be so happy.

Thats the first big plus of the weekend.

The second, we saw pelicans. New Jersey is as far north as Pelicans ever get, they are not common, but you see them, and its special, it makes you feel like you are in the caribean, when you see pelicans, that was nice.

The third thing, we had a dove visit, and spend time with us. I have a thing about birds, I think that close interactions with birds, are omens, visitations from the souls of lost loved ones. Saturday was so fucking hot, so hot and humid, we got back home in the boat, and went and sat in our little tiny 8-foot instaset pool in the backyard, and we did the FCS iced Lienenkugel Berry Weiss thing, and we were in the pool, and we noticed, that sitting on the fence, only 10 feet from the pool, there was a dove. Just sitting there, and looking at us, it was very very close to us. Just sitting there, and looking at us. It was not even 10 feet away, and sitting on top of a 4 foot tall fence, it was just at eye level. It had no fear, we got in and out of the pool, we even forgot it was there, it stayed for an hour, just sitting on the fence so close to us it was strange, surprising, we were afraid it was sick, or hurt, but no, it was fine, after an hour, our dog noticed it, and started barking and it flew away.

But both Laura and I have this thing, like the ancient Romans, about birds, they are omens, we felt that the bird was the spirit of someone lost, one of our deceased loved ones, visiting for a while.

So, anyway, I shared my angst with you all, and I wanted to share my little joys with you too.

And I want to share some of these joys with you all in real life, too. I so want to host a party, a weekend party, with any and all of you who could come, and share this little part of the world with you, and share my cooking, and share the beautiful and little-known natural treasures of the Jersey shore. Any of you all, who has any possibility of getting to the Jersey shore, please let me know if thats something you could do, I want to share the treasures of my little part of the world, with all of you.

I feel great joy in experiencing the beauty of the world, the small, and the great, beauties of the world, the beauty of a thunderstorm approaching and coming over you, on a summer afternoon, the beauty of the stars at night, the beauty of the sun on the water and the waves on the beach, the beauty of a sunset, of a full moon on the water, the beauty of life, of life, of the world and the teeming life around us, but its empty to me, unless I can share it. Every time, every time, I see beauty, experience joy, I want nothing more than to share it, I just want to share it, its empty and sad to me, unless I can share it.