Take The ‘UN’ Out Of ‘Funeral,’ And It’s Feral*

Doop-de-doop, eatin’ some cheese fries. Ding-dong, oh wait, it’s the door. Sign there? Why certainly.

It was the OPPS guy. That’s the parcel delivery service that delivers non-oneself Internet folly such as is produced by other people. The name is pronounced ‘oops.’ You can often, by the way, find their deliverymen intruding on conversations here on the Internet, such as when some other person is posting or chatting, or increasingly Twittering, with some other people entirely, and is interrupted as follows:

DOOP DE DOOP EATIN SOME CHZ FRIES OPPS ONO BRB……..

A bribe? Great, but once you’ve taken her money, try doing a Julian Lennon documentary without including all sorts of Sean footage. No, it only goes to show you how other people are always getting into funny trouble.

Let’s see what’s in this small oblong box marked GOP DER. I think it’s going to be a gopoder, or a vocoder to make Go-Bot as opposed to just plain robot voices for what you might call gip-gop tracks.

Steve Benen, Washington Monthly:
Kennedy’s Unfinished Work

[…] Noam Scheiber wrote over the weekend, before any of us knew any details about the senator’s condition, about the likely political consequences of the Liberal Lion’s passing.

That’s sort of like a robot voice, but it’s actually Steve Benen writing in the plainsong style of the Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal column, as originated by the unrolling red lens-eye of Kevin “Hello, Dave” Drum, himself dismantled as though in reciprocal proof of the maxim, “Keir Dullea, gone tomorra.” Here’s the…wow, that scraping sound was me striking bottom.

Ho, ho, ho, meretricious! Well, inside our present box is not a vial of ‘go powder’ or an opPod with which to sneakily watch vintage kaleidoscope patterns whilst driving, nor a pair of Gomper Stompers such as Samuel Gompers wore, but it is literally GOP DER, because OMG NOM SCHBR WTF!!!

Noam Scheiber, The New Republic:

[…] If Kennedy were to pass away in the next few months, the Senate math on any health care vote would almost certainly get easier, not harder. For one thing, it would single-handedly make the magic number 51 votes, not 60, since it would be suicidal for the GOP to filibuster the culmination of the last Kennedy brother’s lifelong crusade.

Um. At a time in which the GOP is coordinating with mobs of angry talk-radio addicts to disrupt Congressional town hall meetings and health reform events, one in which the level of mainstream conservative discourse includes concocted concentration camp and euthanasia outrages and droned suggestions that the President is literally a Nazi of the Communist variety and/or vice versa, in which the current high mark of right-wing scariness (not counting a rash of uncoordinated shootings) is a display of assault rifles outside the venue of a Presidential visit, and in which conservatives are openly talking about secession, revolution, ‘watering the Tree of Liberty,’ and so forth, and preparing to go Peak Apeshit over Ted Kennedy’s funeral — nay, to open up the Strategic Apeshit Reserves, to drill for Apes in our national parks and zoos and to process profligate tonnage of Ape Shale… Um, it would be suicidal for the GOP to filibuster the what, now?

Beyond that, I suspect the coverage of Kennedy’s death would silence healthcare reform critics and boost proponents in a way that netted at least a couple of wavering moderates — so clearing the 51-vote threshold wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, you might even see Utah Republican (and longtime Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

It reads like comedy, doesn’t it? Or, that is, like ‘comitragedy,’ that bright and often accidental tragedy so naively distinct from the dark and ironic comedy that is ‘tragicomedy.’

Comitragedy is when a man with an expressive mustache goes “Whoopsie!” and falls down a hole marked with a little wooden sign saying “R.I.P,” especially if the mustache is initially left spinning midair and then falls down a little hole marked with a little “R.I.P.” sign. Tragicomedy is when that man helps you feel sorry for yourself — i.e., he is you, and the hole is marked with something poignant, like “So long, sucker.” Or it’s a toilet marked “The Way of All Flush” or “The World, Flush, and The Devil.” But let’s see that passage again:

Beyond that, I suspect the coverage of Kennedy’s death would silence healthcare reform critics

Who, until some TV spots on Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy made them come grudgingly to honor this lion of liberalism, were running around in mobs screaming that Kennedy’s dream of health care reform is actually a DemonKKKcrap Farty plot to mass-murder America’s grandparents.

…and boost proponents in a way that netted at least a couple of wavering moderates — so clearing the 51-vote threshold wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, you might even see Utah Republican (and longtime Kennedy friend) Orrin Hatch back in the reformist camp.

You know, usually when you see a sentence beginning with ‘Heck, [article or pronoun]…’ it’s to signal that a whimsical overstatement is close at hand — the whimsical overstatement being an imagined form of humor used by the non-humorous, who think that jokes should make less sense than serious writing, whereas in my account, serious writing is really a kind of slow, rolling joke with a soft landing. But I digress.

Making self-consciously abrupt digressions in order to create sense in unexpected ways, yes. Heck, we saw that happen a thousand times just now! Whee! But no, Scheiber is serious:

So all the maneuvering around Kennedy’s hypothetical replacement strikes me as unnecessary at best and possibly even counterproductive, since it could only detract from what would otherwise be a powerful (and authentic) emotional outpouring in the event of Kennedy’s passing.

Um, talking about his replacement would…? Because the…? ??? sproing??? Here’s Steve Benen, more clearheaded and as it happens less exploded into a strew of broken clockwork than we:

I would love to believe this is correct. Honestly, I would. And it’s possible that honorable lawmakers are capable of more humanity than I give them credit for.

Well, sure, but it’s the Republicans we have to worry about. Meh, it looks like we’re the OPPS guy this time. Ding-dong. Hi, sign here, reasonable liberals, for this package you ordered, marked POO CANO. It looks like a plastic mountain with a 220 volt electrical plug coming out of it, like for a really large gauge of train set maybe.


* Recurring pun funnel cf.

 

Comments: 36

 
 
 

Strategic Apeshit Reserves

Ell. Emm. Ay. Oh.

 
 

Strategic Apeshit Reserves

Holy shit, they have reserves of apeshit? I surrender!

Oh, they’re also unleashing reserves of Stupid at the same time. Whew! That explains how wingnuts keep getting mangled in their own rototillers.

Now, to prepare for the poo cano.

 
 

This is why we must reduce our Depends on foreign apeshit.
America’s politics has the bulk of the world’s proven batshit, you know.

 
 

so….what comes forth from the poo cano?
poo lava?
apeshit lava?
giant sammiches with poo lava and apeshit spread?

 
 

Argh. The Motels? You really did that to me? And I thought it was going to be a clever next take on …whoever the hell the 19th century American comedic writer was who first anagrammed funeral, in print, as real fun. But I can’t remember anyway so what was that about strategic apeshit reserves again?

POOP, Also.

 
 

You want a powerful and authentic emotional outpouring regarding Kennedy’s death? Go over and check out Redstate or Free Republic and you’ll see exactly that.

They’re emotions I attribute to serial killers and the Elder Gods, but they’re pouring out all over, over there. Tell me again how the people that represent this base are going to sit around in a circle with the Democrats and sing camp songs in honor of the “Liberal Lion of the Senate” ?

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Are we pissing on Benen for being insufficiently “not Broder”? Here’s his closer on that Scheiber post:

I would love to believe this is correct. Honestly, I would. And it’s possible that honorable lawmakers are capable of more humanity than I give them credit for.

Time will tell.

c.f.

 
 


poo lava?
apeshit lava?

I am obligated to note that there is, in southern Washington state, a lava tube called Ape Cave. I did not notice anything that might be ape poo there.

 
 

Ding-dong. Hi, sign here, reasonable liberals, for this package you ordered, marked POO CANO. It looks like a plastic mountain with a 220 volt electrical plug coming out of it, like for a really large gauge of train set maybe.

On the fifth read-through of this paragraph, I remembered that you kids spell canoe with an ‘e’. Suddenly it all makes sense. Relatively, anyway.

 
 

GOP DER

Which I assume is pronounced, appropriately, as “GOP durrrrrrr

 
 

Dude, you gotta read that shit before you sign it!

 
Schuyler T. Colfax
 

To the Hon. Gavin M., esq,
You, sir, are a master of the slow rolling logjam cometragi form. I am laughing out loud, my ass has come off, etc. POO CANO indeed.
Don’t ever stop.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

Of course, if it were a poo canoe it could be used to cross the shit moat….

 
 

This is the Matterhorn of win, but ‘Heck, [article or pronoun]…’ it’s to signal that a whimsical overstatement is close at hand — the whimsical overstatement being an imagined form of humor used by the non-humorous is like a spoon between my ribs.

 
 

Oh what politicized mourning
Oh what a partisan day
I’ve got a baleful feeling
This insult Obama must pay

 
 

That’s sort of like a robot voice, but it’s actually Steve Benen writing in the plainsong style of the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal column, as originated by the unrolling red lens-eye of Kevin “Hello, Dave” Drum, himself dismantled as though in reciprocal proof of the maxim, “Kier Dullea, gone tomorra.” Here’s the…wow, that scraping sound was me striking bottom.

Little Studie can’t come fast enough, eh, Gav?

Strategic Apeshit Reserves

This implies an Apeshit Gap, like the Missile Gap we had back in the 1950s when compared to the (fascist, not socialist) Soviet Union. We worked tirelessly to bulk up our Apesh– I mean, missile production to keep up with the (non-existent) increasing supplies of missiles on the Soviet side.

I suspect the same dynamic is in place in the GOP.

 
 

It’s “Keir” Dullea, not “Kier.”

 
 

It’s “Keir” Dullea, not “Kier.”

Humph!

 
 

Humph!

You big baby!

 
 

Poor Kier.

He was cast in “2002, A Space Oddly”…

 
 

Poor Kier.

SHe was cast in “2002, A Space Oddly”…

fixt.

 
 

It’s “Keir” Dullea, not “Kier.”

My stepfather used to just call him “Queer Dullard.” I’ma go with that.

 
 

Udo Kier Dullea?
It’s all I have.

 
 

Udo Kier Dullea?

I don’t, personally, but I know some women who do.

 
Lady Doctor Missus Marita
 

Little Studie can’t come fast enough, eh, Gav?

Little Studie would be kind to wait another week or more, since we have to move next week, and that will be hard to accomplish if I’m in labor.

 
 

Little Studie would be kind to wait another week or more, since we have to move next week, and that will be hard to accomplish if I’m in labor.

Suck it up, DMM. In Vietnam, they’d drop a litter in a rice paddy then go on picking rice!

 
 

whereas in my account, serious writing is really a kind of slow, rolling joke with a soft landing.

OMG. Now I get it…

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

Teh POO CANO, and Tyler too.

 
 

Back when I was the editor of the “Sluts & Butts” column for Ramparts magazine, back in ’65 (and wrote the food column for “Cumshot Monthly”), they used to say to me (Ed Keating and Robert Scheer), “Dougal,” (not my real name, which is Dougall), “Dougall,” they’d say, “You need to write funnier shit or we will definitely fuck you the fuck up, bitch.” Now this was back when “bitch” didn’t mean I hung around with black people. It was serious insult, like “schlemiel.”

So I started getting serious about humor. I read all the books, and started studying Benchley, Perelman, and Allen, the noted humorists. My stuff got funnier, aided by switching my byline photograph to one of a chimpanzee in a party hat holding a cigar.

Maybe four issues later, Noam Chomsky and Sol Stern were eating these huge ham & rye sandwiches from Itzaks’ Zionist Deli on 42nd as the latest copy was being put to bed (newspaper slang for rubbing it with sesame oil), and I came up the steps to see if I’d left my pipe on Che Guevara’s desk. Noam calls out, “hey, Dougal!” (not my real name) And Sol says, “I hear the boss shitcanned you, asshole.” Well, I laughed, and they laughed, and we set fire to the flag. But when I went in, damned if I wasn’t fired — I made the very first “Bea Arthur’s dick” joke in the gardening column that month, and apparently it enraged Gloria Steinem.

The joke was harmless enough, in hindsight: “I wouldn’t fuck Pol Pot with Bea Arthur’s dick,” I’d written, desperate to amuse. But as Pol Pot was in town that same week getting epaulettes added to his shirts, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Especially as he was trying to score with some psychology major from NYU at the time.

So I lost the gig. And all these years, I’ve wished I could find some really funny stuff that brought back those memories.

I’ve found it, here at Sadly, No.

Thank you.

And penis.

 
 

POO CANO

(insert “Island of Krapatoa” or “Mt. Vepoovius” joke here)

 
 

Mt. Poojiyama. Also.

 
 

Yow, just fixed the misspelled ‘Keir,’ finally. Sorry I didn’t see the correx until so late..

 
 

Mt Shitna

Kilaurea

Pinaturdo

Also.

 
 

(insert “Island of Krapatoa” or “Mt. Vepoovius” joke here)

“Kakatoa” is, I believe, the canonical form.

 
 

“Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow”–Noel Coward

 
 

(insert “Island of Krapatoa” or “Mt. Vepoovius” joke here)

“Kakatoa” is, I believe, the canonical form.

And the Pompeiians called it “Poosuvius”.

 
 

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