73 Comments

Tour de force, brah! Toor day fuckin force!

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I think Jeet Heer put it best when he said that defense statement was more incomprehensible than Finnegans Wake, LOL.

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Okay, so you definitely hit the marks with the whole peroration in a mishmash of literal and poetic bathos. But I do have this niggling criticism, that your character would never have known Haryhausen's name.

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I think these guys are weirder than we imagine

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I think he would have thought the name was Ray Harry Hausen, and continually referred to him as Mr. Hausen

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Like the great modern writer Roy Ed Roso?

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Exactly that Mr. Roso, he's a great satyrist?, satirist? one of those

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Are you saying he was a satyr or one of them observant Jews? Because I don't want anyone saying I just sat here while someone poked fun at either classical myths or the Chosen People. It's funny until they come for you with bear spray and zip ties!

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Well, we've saturated these puns, I think.

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To be fair, if called upon to defend Trump before the nation, I too would veer off into a discussion of the great Ray Harryhausen.

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Respect to you for staying awake through that. I happily went back to some spreadsheets rather than continuing to listen to that clown.

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I'm pretty sure that statement was generated through spreadsheet

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Definitely created by committee.

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Who listens?

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This makes way more sense than the actual arguments.

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This kind of sums up what I heard today while reviewing scientific data when this was on the radio (online). When he got into the niggling punctuation, of the punctuation in a handwritten document wherein "a comma yadda yadda yadda and I thought "Here's where Jefferson took a short nap." To deny where they got the ideas that they did (originalists seems to believe that the "founders" pull this document straight (out of their asses) from divine inspiration after much debate for being rich, they were the smartest in the room (a debate was held from there as to who really should have belonged to "the "smartest" although some did dress rather nattily for the day) as opposed to building upon the foundations they understood. So the "We rejected English Law while ignoring a base they used, granted, applied at that time by noblemen against the king, then became granted to those considered "deserving" at that time. I don't think there was an editor in the room but they did leave room for one for "a better union".

I suspect, upon the upcoming Lunar New Year (and a hopefully good one personally for you all), that we will continue to live in "interesting times" as the old proverb says and most likely, given history, it will be to the end of mine. I saw a rise of these times, may I live to see the denouement.

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Bostonian barrister version: "Those Foundin Fathahs wuha wicked smaht"

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OK, let’s go to Dunkins!

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Great Moments in Second Trump Impeachment:

When the House impeachment managers pointed out that the majority of impeachments carried out during the lifetimes of the very men who wrote the Constitution were impeachments of officials who had already left office.

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Oh, sure, historical facts. Meh, what else have you got?

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" -what do you pound when you don't have the table?"

What is sand up your ass Alex?

Ursula Andress in "The Blue Max" was responsible for my initial stirring of the loins.

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Ugh, Longfellow -- the worst fucking American poet ever. An affront to glories possible in meter. A Manifest Destiny nut-wrench who baits his venom'd hook in sentimental glurge & inoffensive trochees. He makes the "Trump Inauguration" poet seem like Whitman.

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Against his poems you rage and bellow!

What have you got against Longfellow?

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This lad does claim he's called Longfellow

With dactyls clipped & iambs yellow.

His papers reveal his real name's Fred:

This fellow's no length, but short instead.

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Hate his meter? Sure you do!

But at least it's not some damned Haiku!

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Swamp Thang, t’will be demonstrated

Shall never be well-remonstrated

I got no recourse

But to repeat with remorse

I told you we shoulda defenestrated!

I'mo send this right over to the house managers for their poetry slam...

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Rodney Dangerfield: 'oh, you're a poetry major? want to help me out with my Longfellow?'

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I promise I can do a Thoreau job

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Longfellow had a decent sense of humor, but John Greenleaf was wittier.

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Swift was Swifter

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Pope had the authority, though.

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How about that Dickie Greenleaf? Who let Patty Highsmith in here? Talented Ripley, less talented mom!

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Next week in Weaponized Nostalgia we're talking about early USian appropriations of the "Anglo-Saxon" as rationale/mythic structure of colonial & post-Revolution identity. So to have Longfellow just jump into the boat, so to speak, is serendipitous (his meter feels like a pretty lame imitation/stereotype of ideas of early Germanic oral poetry, represented as a Volksgeist). Also, I think American Gothic writers like Charles Brockden Brown fit nicely into this paradigm (thinking of "Edgar Huntley" in particular).

[odd note: my not-fully-wokened up hands just now mistyped "American" as "Anemerican," which Brockden Brown would definitely claim is a significant repression spilling out unconsciously... :D ]

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You made me look up Brockden Brown! Any works you can recommend?

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Edgar Huntly is one I like best -- it's obviously a big influence on Poe, Bierce, Algernon Blavkwood & HP Lovecraft. Also there's Wieland, which is well-regarded. These two novels are cool in their exploration of alternate/deviant psychological states, and Gothic af. My ex-wife was a scholar of his work so I had time to look through them. I never heard of his last novel Stephen Calvert, but it looks like something I should read.

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Huh. He sounds a lot more compelling than our acknowledged first novelist, James Fenimore Cooper (per wikipedia anyhow). His sleepwalking idea makes me think of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which I loved back in the school days. I might look into this after my current read (Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas, so far a fun stylish mashup of Lovecraft and Kerouac).

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Cooper's too much into "realism" for my taste. But CBB's the real deal, and was supposedly way into Wollstonecraft & Godwin-style radical politics

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See what Twain thinks of Cooper’s “realism.”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm

Cooper was also a massive misogynist and delighted in “punishing” Bad Women.

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Yeah, I always thought him sus. Never read more than a kid's abridgment of Mohicans

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Don't forget the fink Noah Webster, bowdleriser of the Bible, Tayloriser of our historic spellings.

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“ Our great founding document says in Article 1 Section 3 [holds up book with red cover reading “Old Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide”]”

..nearly choked to death with laughter here...

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When you don't have the table, you pound the counter--like the Council of Trent. Expecting a Diet of Worms reference next time around. Failing that, the Edict of Nantes, the Treaty of Utrecht, the Defenestration of Prague, or the British Invasion.

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I tried the Diet of Worms. Didn't work. Then I tried the Japanese Diet, but it was too boring. Turns out I need a more Catholic diet.

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maybe try Atkins

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a Catholic lent diet -- you eat little Mon-Sat, but eat whatever you want on Sunday

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The last time a Catholic Lent me anything, it took forever to pay it off.

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Cut to the chase, I say: "Ladies and gentlemen, my client believe he was right. Thank you".

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Wow, I don't think I have ever, in my entire life, seen anyone bend themselves into such a twisted pretzel-logic of non-morality as what you have accomplished with your 'comment'. You could literally substitute 'Manson' for 'Trump', change a few of the outcomes and nothing in the piece would change. You are a very disturbed, immoral jerk. I feel genuinely sorry for your family and acquaintances (the word 'friends' can not possibly apply here)...

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Change the subject and the outcomes and nothing would change? How does that work?

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Seriously? Like you truly, honestly don't understand that I can take a statement like "Donald Trump can not be found guilty of insurrection because he was just using his First Amendment rights when he allegedly told his supporters to storm the capitol", change the subject and outcomes (i.e. "Charles Manson can not be found guilty of murder because he was just using his First Amendment rights when he allegedly told his supporters to invade homes and kill the pigs") and be using the same basic (i.e. wrong) underlying argument???

Really? That doesn't seem possible. You must actually know how it works and are just trolling, right?

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Not trolling. I see your point, but in general, in argumentation, changing the subject and outcome invalidates the argument. Changing one or the other may be offered as a counterfactual, but changing both? I wouldn't try it in a court of law or debate class.

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Can you clarify who you're talking to and what you're talking about?

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Every day I go to two satirical websites & prove that I am unaware of the genre. Afterwards I write angry letters to Dr. Seuss for making up animals that don't exist.

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well, you probably do more Horatian satire, when the users of the websites are probably more Juvenalian

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I had originally written Juvenilian, too

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"Hah!"

- Nathan Poe

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Quthentic Frontier Gibberish

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“ yesterday, for example, he affected not to recognize his own name on a contract he signed with my law firm.”

Ahhh-hahahahahaha!

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Actually, that is, as we know, entirely plausible.

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