Accurate and lovely. If it wasn't Trump, I'd probably feel sad for this old man.
I think Roy hit it on the head with the concept of the world as a green screen. Trump never really quite recognizes others as real, unless he admires their wealth/power/brutality and wants to emulate them. So he stumbles around in the world he's always lived in, where he vaguely registers all the NPCs will nod and smile at him.
Oh, the things I learn here! And I never thought I'd find myself saying something nice about Nicolae Ceaușescu, but what followed the destruction was massive apartment blocks, which - however shittily constructed - people could live in. This real-estate-developer-President would never build something people could live in. "Sir, the people have no homes!" "Eh. let 'em live in a UFC fight cage."
A recently acquired term. Sure, there've all along been our regime's parallels to making HIV/AIDS a state secret, outlawing abortion and contraception, plus the guy being married to someone with a comically false resume. But does the Master Designer shtick ever fit!
The Mrs and I have a recurring dispute. She wants you I shan’t name to die slowly, painfully and, I suppose, messily — long drawn out and nasty. She wants he should pass only after much suffering.
Me, I want it as fast as possible so he’s shut up once and for all; the ultimate cancellation.
But to go all on brand, I’m compelled to note that running this piece is likelier than not a jinx and, as a result, he’ll be with us (and in power if not in office) for another couple of decades.
whether the body is alive or dead however much longer, the accomplices are having a mean job, as trump's head, more and more everyday, turns into slop.
It's an odd world that we daily ponder possible extinction by nuclear bomb or state agent at the whim of what is obviously already a decomposing corpse's gray matter.
The accomplices have taken on the tasks of not just robo-signing but also robo-thinking, robo-conniving, robo-conspiring and robo-usurpingthepowersoftheelectedpresident.
As far as I can tell, Brainworm was initially meant as a reward to yoga mom voters. But he's 100% accomplishing Vought's goals, and has joined the other two in the significance of his contribution to destroying a civilization. The unpredictabile results of his lookout are in a different realm from contracting concentration camps, or ending professional civil service. As we haven't yet experienced a full-blown plague, who knows which of the three will end up with the highest body count.
In my family this is known as "The Unspeakable Rule", and I think it came out of watching the Cubs. Take the usual practice of not ever saying a no-hitter is happening until the final out and extend it further: If the Cubs have a one-run lead in the third one must not speak of it. Basically, the only time you're allowed to speak is when the Cubs are losing, which is most of the time.
"Basically, the only time you're allowed to speak is when the Cubs are losing, which is most of the time."
I always say that Jack Brickhouse (who I consider my original babysitter) probably watched and announced more losing baseball than anyone else in history. (He started doing Cubs games in 1948; they would finish last, which they hadn't done since 1925.)
The baseball stat I love the most is the number of games Cy Young lost. Winningest AND losingest. Were he not such a great pitcher there is NO WAY he would have been allowed to lose 316 games.
My husband turned me on to baseball by pointing out that the greatest hitters failed to get on base approximately 2/3 of the time. It had never occurred to me that a sports hero might be a "loser" in terms of numbers.
Mmm… I wonder if I can put money on it on one of them “prediction markets” soldiers and I suppose low level Trump administration toadies and of course the young are using to get rich…?
this hits me with a sweetness RE The Imminence about my own little journey, but also something something something German word something something that shows how innately just life is on a certain level of description.
a Pratchett fanfic of the heavenlies, if i may be so bold:
"What the hell is this?"
"THIS IS YOUR NEW HOME. A BIGLY BEAUTIFUL GOLF COURSE. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL YOU EVER SAW."
"But it's dark and it's just desert as far as i can see."
"YOU'RE IN THE SAND TRAP. YOU'LL ALWAYS BE IN THE SAND TRAP. FOREVER."
This is like most of the dreams I have. Last night I dreamed I had an airplane, but I lost the propeller, I found the guy who had the propeller, but he spoke only Spanish and I do speak some Spanish but it wasn't up to the task of persuading the guy to give me back my propeller.
I sat up late last night watching " The Magician" Brilliant, grim Bergman film . Then, The algorithm offered up
" Torment" Bergman's first screenplay. The title pretty much sums it up . (Alf Sjöberg directed- obvious influence on Bergman. We don't do black and white very well any more.)
This morning Roy offers up a sharp meditation the way we'll see death. Turns out, it's got a lot to do with the way we see life.
I hope You Know Who spends his last minutes wondering why no one answers the call button.
I need to go photograph some flowers . Cute animals. And not in some cemetary
I know people a generation behind me who dislike and, in one case, refuse to sit through a film in B&W. Perhaps it is indeed a generational thing. because I never feel, as these people apparently do, the violent disconnect between those flickering shadows—you know, Victor Sjöström in 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, Monica Vitti in 𝘓’𝘈𝘷𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢 and—“real life,” such as the various MCU franchises. Absent some late in life Damascene conversion, such people will ever remain blind to the wonders (perhaps I should tell them “marvels?”) of midcentury European art house cinematography.
What's that old joke, a guy complains to Picasso that his paintings of women aren't "realistic", Picasso asks to see a picture of the man's wife, the guy pulls a snapshot out of his wallet and Picasso says, "Isn't she rather small and flat?" Like, dude, it's ALL artifice.
"Nothing redeemed his life like the leaving of it."
I mean, I can fantasize about Donnie receiving a karmic death that befits his crimes: or having some kind of amazing public meltdown, revealing just what a heinous bastard He actually is in some broadcast environment.
But I would be thrilled if like Marvin K Mooney, he would just go, and we could move onto the next thing,the horrors of Vance presidency.
At 6s and 7s with him, though. Dressed to the 9s, no doubt. Far from 7th heaven or otherwise. I'll give you five next time we cross paths. Put in your pocket till I get back!
This reminds me of a brilliant book on the subject I read as a young man, "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. It had a profound impact on my perception of life, but only for about twenty minutes because I was even more of a schmuck back then. Your essay is beautifully written (it's a pleasure to see "gutter" used as a verb so appropriately) and insightful for a certain kind of rich man coping with his own "imminence," or, in this case, his black hole. But I doubt this particular specimen has ever given a thought about the meaning of life or death, his or anybody else's, and any manifestations of his impending demise are an illusion. He's really just an old rich scumbag from Queens, with all the virtues of a pinky ring, who will never stop being an ignorant, classless asshole until the day his night swallows him whole. (If the night had any self-respect, it would spit him right out.)
I have no doubt that Trump (like Putin, supposedly) is terrified of death. Remember when he got COVID and was hysterically asking everyone in the ambulance on the way to Walter Reed "Am I going out like Stan Chera? Am I?" (Chera was an old friend and another Manhattan real estate billionaire -- notice he didn't mention Herman Cain for some reason). I'll admit I'm so biased against the piece of shit that I can't imagine him having any human attributes -- if he was mumbling about heaven he was probably wondering if Stan Chera or Bernie Madoff could get him a deal beforehand.
In my cruelest fantasies about Trump and his creatures end in the same place: Inconsequential.
Melania spending the rest of her days in Lima, Peru because that's where the money ran out.
Miller returning from decades of exile in Africa, and nobody bothers prosecuting him.
A pair of elderly men each claim to be the real Baron Trump. They earn a small income by publicly debating their respective cases at Rotary Club luncheons in Northern New Jersey.
In my latest Donald daydream, he fades away in his crumbling Florida compound, alone but for the remaining staff. In the aftermath of the destruction he's wrought, the Secret Service is more than happy to leave his security to some shady private contractors.
Once the vessel of his soul has emptied, a long standing plan is set in motion. Friends and family of the staff descend upon Mar-a-Lago and strip it bare. Only then are the authorities notified. As the EMT crew pulls up to the gate, a rusty pickup truck full of Guatemalans, and some last bits of copper pipe is leaving. The Guatemalans wave as they pass the ambulance. They do not stop.
His faint last word, heard only by the Haitian LVN attending his sickbed: “Bitcoin…”
Nobody can be found who knows what he intended with this cryptic utterance. The best guess is that it might have been the name of his childhood Lego set.
What was the title of the movie in which the young woman gives the impromptu eulogy over the corpse of some scoundrel? From the 1980s.
Her chanting, accompanied by rhythmic beating of her hands on the floor, begins, "You're dead, you're dead, you're gone to Hell! You're dead, you're dead, it's just as well! You lied..."
May have been a David Lynch film. Or not. That seems like an appropriate scene. Maybe the chanting could be a chorus composed of top-tier hookers and Epstein victims, the Me-Too Chorus.
I don't remember that scene but definitely remember the movie. It was a favorite at the time and for some reason I thought it part of a kind of movement in subversive low budget films along with Variety and Stranger than Fiction and some art and literature like Laurie Lipton and Cathy Acker.
Beautifully written.
Accurate and lovely. If it wasn't Trump, I'd probably feel sad for this old man.
I think Roy hit it on the head with the concept of the world as a green screen. Trump never really quite recognizes others as real, unless he admires their wealth/power/brutality and wants to emulate them. So he stumbles around in the world he's always lived in, where he vaguely registers all the NPCs will nod and smile at him.
Yes - green screen
"Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV."
He's never lived in the real world, not even as a small boy throwing rocks at a baby in a baby carriage. No consequences, no reality.
This old man, he won't die
We all hate him, that's no lie!
With a knick-knack paddy-whack, roll another bone!
This old man ain't going home.
Damn. I had this same tune in my head about an hour ago. Specifically, I was fearing the possibility the old man would play knick-knack on Roy's knee.
The social media are the ONLY inlets/outlets that work for him. That's where he lives now.
And playing Albert Speer to DC.
Or, thanks to the Trump v. United States decision, is it Ceaușima? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99ima
Oh, the things I learn here! And I never thought I'd find myself saying something nice about Nicolae Ceaușescu, but what followed the destruction was massive apartment blocks, which - however shittily constructed - people could live in. This real-estate-developer-President would never build something people could live in. "Sir, the people have no homes!" "Eh. let 'em live in a UFC fight cage."
News to me - thanks!
A recently acquired term. Sure, there've all along been our regime's parallels to making HIV/AIDS a state secret, outlawing abortion and contraception, plus the guy being married to someone with a comically false resume. But does the Master Designer shtick ever fit!
The Mrs and I have a recurring dispute. She wants you I shan’t name to die slowly, painfully and, I suppose, messily — long drawn out and nasty. She wants he should pass only after much suffering.
Me, I want it as fast as possible so he’s shut up once and for all; the ultimate cancellation.
But to go all on brand, I’m compelled to note that running this piece is likelier than not a jinx and, as a result, he’ll be with us (and in power if not in office) for another couple of decades.
Oops
You know my criticisms are bullshit, mean nothing and are just the acts of a retarded old fart.
To be fair, a lotta that goin' 'round these days...
I’m laughing though I shouldn’t be.
whether the body is alive or dead however much longer, the accomplices are having a mean job, as trump's head, more and more everyday, turns into slop.
It's an odd world that we daily ponder possible extinction by nuclear bomb or state agent at the whim of what is obviously already a decomposing corpse's gray matter.
The accomplices have taken on the tasks of not just robo-signing but also robo-thinking, robo-conniving, robo-conspiring and robo-usurpingthepowersoftheelectedpresident.
"meet russell vought, Satan's answer to Ward Cleaver"
June, with the cleaver, in the Shotstraightintothe sunroom.
Except the deal all along has been that -- aside from the signing -- all the other stuff would be Vought and Miller.
Reminder that Trumpov doesn't believe that anything Biden signed was legal because "he used an autopen".
I see A.I. Trumpov signing for the camera. Behind the scene, autopen inscribes the pattern of Klan hoods.
Wait! So that week that Donny wasn’t seen in public they were cloning him and that’s who you saw?!?
Vought, Miller and RFK Jr. He fires others, but those three will be there to the end.
RFK constantly giving him health advice?
We can only wish.
As far as I can tell, Brainworm was initially meant as a reward to yoga mom voters. But he's 100% accomplishing Vought's goals, and has joined the other two in the significance of his contribution to destroying a civilization. The unpredictabile results of his lookout are in a different realm from contracting concentration camps, or ending professional civil service. As we haven't yet experienced a full-blown plague, who knows which of the three will end up with the highest body count.
Government by Roomba. It sucks.
In my family this is known as "The Unspeakable Rule", and I think it came out of watching the Cubs. Take the usual practice of not ever saying a no-hitter is happening until the final out and extend it further: If the Cubs have a one-run lead in the third one must not speak of it. Basically, the only time you're allowed to speak is when the Cubs are losing, which is most of the time.
Sounds like Mets fans!
"Basically, the only time you're allowed to speak is when the Cubs are losing, which is most of the time."
I always say that Jack Brickhouse (who I consider my original babysitter) probably watched and announced more losing baseball than anyone else in history. (He started doing Cubs games in 1948; they would finish last, which they hadn't done since 1925.)
The baseball stat I love the most is the number of games Cy Young lost. Winningest AND losingest. Were he not such a great pitcher there is NO WAY he would have been allowed to lose 316 games.
My husband turned me on to baseball by pointing out that the greatest hitters failed to get on base approximately 2/3 of the time. It had never occurred to me that a sports hero might be a "loser" in terms of numbers.
I'm with the missus. My g.f. is with you. That's what makes horse racing!
Mmm… I wonder if I can put money on it on one of them “prediction markets” soldiers and I suppose low level Trump administration toadies and of course the young are using to get rich…?
I am team quick and soon as possible with you, my man.
The wisest of men…
this hits me with a sweetness RE The Imminence about my own little journey, but also something something something German word something something that shows how innately just life is on a certain level of description.
a Pratchett fanfic of the heavenlies, if i may be so bold:
"What the hell is this?"
"THIS IS YOUR NEW HOME. A BIGLY BEAUTIFUL GOLF COURSE. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL YOU EVER SAW."
"But it's dark and it's just desert as far as i can see."
"YOU'RE IN THE SAND TRAP. YOU'LL ALWAYS BE IN THE SAND TRAP. FOREVER."
"Damn. Well then, hand me my gap wedge."
"YOU'LL HAFTA GET IT YOURSELF."
Hell indeed.
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.
Understand what?
YOU’RE THE BALL.
(Giant wedge swings in, whacks ball screaming into the dark)
I feel like I've seen something like this predicted in a Hieronymous Bosch detail.
Alone, no one to cheat against.
Pink, that is COLD.
Corrected for locale: HOT.
But he'd work it, no? "I've made this sand trap THE HOTTEST!!!! Signed, Hell's Favorite President, DJT"
"You're playing with left-handed clubs, and the tires of your golf cart are flat. Forever."
This is like most of the dreams I have. Last night I dreamed I had an airplane, but I lost the propeller, I found the guy who had the propeller, but he spoke only Spanish and I do speak some Spanish but it wasn't up to the task of persuading the guy to give me back my propeller.
hélice, next time you need it
Oh sure, NOW you tell me
Inspired writing, on the most loathsome subject.
And from Roy's fingers to the universe: Please bring on the black hole, pronto.
Back in his first term I used to wish for Giant Meteor. I guess it's a sign of progress I can wish for his extinction without wishing for ours.
Baby steps!
I sat up late last night watching " The Magician" Brilliant, grim Bergman film . Then, The algorithm offered up
" Torment" Bergman's first screenplay. The title pretty much sums it up . (Alf Sjöberg directed- obvious influence on Bergman. We don't do black and white very well any more.)
This morning Roy offers up a sharp meditation the way we'll see death. Turns out, it's got a lot to do with the way we see life.
I hope You Know Who spends his last minutes wondering why no one answers the call button.
I need to go photograph some flowers . Cute animals. And not in some cemetary
I know people a generation behind me who dislike and, in one case, refuse to sit through a film in B&W. Perhaps it is indeed a generational thing. because I never feel, as these people apparently do, the violent disconnect between those flickering shadows—you know, Victor Sjöström in 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, Monica Vitti in 𝘓’𝘈𝘷𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢 and—“real life,” such as the various MCU franchises. Absent some late in life Damascene conversion, such people will ever remain blind to the wonders (perhaps I should tell them “marvels?”) of midcentury European art house cinematography.
What's that old joke, a guy complains to Picasso that his paintings of women aren't "realistic", Picasso asks to see a picture of the man's wife, the guy pulls a snapshot out of his wallet and Picasso says, "Isn't she rather small and flat?" Like, dude, it's ALL artifice.
Oh well. Fuck 'em.
I'm particularly fond of Japanese film stock from the same period.
"Nothing redeemed his life like the leaving of it."
I mean, I can fantasize about Donnie receiving a karmic death that befits his crimes: or having some kind of amazing public meltdown, revealing just what a heinous bastard He actually is in some broadcast environment.
But I would be thrilled if like Marvin K Mooney, he would just go, and we could move onto the next thing,the horrors of Vance presidency.
At least the spell would be broken.
"having some kind of amazing public meltdown, revealing just what a heinous bastard He actually is"
Every Scooby-Doo episode ends like this, is it too much to ask that we see it in real life just ONCE?
Ruh-roh!
George Saunders and “Magnolia.” Not bad company for a meditation on the process of dying. Take a bow, maestro, you done good.
Thanks!
Top tier hookers?
9s at least!
At 6s and 7s with him, though. Dressed to the 9s, no doubt. Far from 7th heaven or otherwise. I'll give you five next time we cross paths. Put in your pocket till I get back!
Also, 23 skidoo!
This reminds me of a brilliant book on the subject I read as a young man, "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. It had a profound impact on my perception of life, but only for about twenty minutes because I was even more of a schmuck back then. Your essay is beautifully written (it's a pleasure to see "gutter" used as a verb so appropriately) and insightful for a certain kind of rich man coping with his own "imminence," or, in this case, his black hole. But I doubt this particular specimen has ever given a thought about the meaning of life or death, his or anybody else's, and any manifestations of his impending demise are an illusion. He's really just an old rich scumbag from Queens, with all the virtues of a pinky ring, who will never stop being an ignorant, classless asshole until the day his night swallows him whole. (If the night had any self-respect, it would spit him right out.)
Guttering candles—
I burn the candle at both ends;
You sicken at the sight.
The toxic smoke that it extends
Will leave behind a blight.
—𝘌𝘥𝘯𝘢 𝘚𝘵. 𝘝𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘷𝘧𝘦𝘧𝘦
And forever after then
Those places that are blighted
Will darken deep your lifelong ken
For certain you'll benighted
–𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘩𝘭 𝘛𝘸𝘰 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴
Remember him talking, weirdly, about heaven some months back? That's about the depth of his insight.
As a humanist I believe the evidence and the opportunity it provides will be made available to him; as a satirist, though...
I have no doubt that Trump (like Putin, supposedly) is terrified of death. Remember when he got COVID and was hysterically asking everyone in the ambulance on the way to Walter Reed "Am I going out like Stan Chera? Am I?" (Chera was an old friend and another Manhattan real estate billionaire -- notice he didn't mention Herman Cain for some reason). I'll admit I'm so biased against the piece of shit that I can't imagine him having any human attributes -- if he was mumbling about heaven he was probably wondering if Stan Chera or Bernie Madoff could get him a deal beforehand.
The true indicator of Denial of Death is Herman Scobie, coming at you (or some random stiff, like, say, a president) with big long pin...
In my cruelest fantasies about Trump and his creatures end in the same place: Inconsequential.
Melania spending the rest of her days in Lima, Peru because that's where the money ran out.
Miller returning from decades of exile in Africa, and nobody bothers prosecuting him.
A pair of elderly men each claim to be the real Baron Trump. They earn a small income by publicly debating their respective cases at Rotary Club luncheons in Northern New Jersey.
In my latest Donald daydream, he fades away in his crumbling Florida compound, alone but for the remaining staff. In the aftermath of the destruction he's wrought, the Secret Service is more than happy to leave his security to some shady private contractors.
Once the vessel of his soul has emptied, a long standing plan is set in motion. Friends and family of the staff descend upon Mar-a-Lago and strip it bare. Only then are the authorities notified. As the EMT crew pulls up to the gate, a rusty pickup truck full of Guatemalans, and some last bits of copper pipe is leaving. The Guatemalans wave as they pass the ambulance. They do not stop.
Oh, to be Guatemalan again…
Guata way to go
His faint last word, heard only by the Haitian LVN attending his sickbed: “Bitcoin…”
Nobody can be found who knows what he intended with this cryptic utterance. The best guess is that it might have been the name of his childhood Lego set.
LVN = Licensed Veterinary Nurse?
(in the unlikely event you’re not being droll, that’s V for Vocational, a step down from an RN.)
Pretty good!
A black hole, sucking all the air out of the world on its way out.
In other news, I notice REBID has been mentioned by Wonkette Tabs this morning.
No kidding!
What was the title of the movie in which the young woman gives the impromptu eulogy over the corpse of some scoundrel? From the 1980s.
Her chanting, accompanied by rhythmic beating of her hands on the floor, begins, "You're dead, you're dead, you're gone to Hell! You're dead, you're dead, it's just as well! You lied..."
May have been a David Lynch film. Or not. That seems like an appropriate scene. Maybe the chanting could be a chorus composed of top-tier hookers and Epstein victims, the Me-Too Chorus.
Liquid Sky (1982) about 40-odd minutes into the film. Doesn't look like there's a clip with just this little chant. Yet.
I don't remember that scene but definitely remember the movie. It was a favorite at the time and for some reason I thought it part of a kind of movement in subversive low budget films along with Variety and Stranger than Fiction and some art and literature like Laurie Lipton and Cathy Acker.
Kathy Acker! Listen to you, urban sophisticate! And I thought you were a hard-handed son of the soil.
I liked Knut Hamsun a lot back then as well. I have range.
Amana? Radar?
If you're on FB. https://www.facebook.com/678466017/videos/1539032987940681/
(closing the account info prompt should work)