Thank god for that turn towards the end. Because at one point all the Sánchez's were making wonder whether Bezos had 🍆-enlargement (😉) surgery to match the latter's worse-than-FLOTUS' implants.
But then I was distracted.
Who cares; some god should only get off their ass and start a'smiting all of them...
What would I do without you to show me wildly extravagant luxury consumer goods of which I would otherwise be unaware? Sofas that cost as much as cars, real bearskin rugs? (I've never understood why people would want floor coverings they could so easily trip over. Please, in a future offering, have one of the leeching billionaires accidentally insert a toe into the bear's mouth and take a pratfall. )
This morning my cat caught an unfolded king size sheet in his claws and pulled it across the house. What if it had been a Great Dane (or some other Bezos sized extravagantly expensive, overbred dog) dragging the bearskin rug across the mansion?
I'll admit to being deeply conflicted about Amazon. I have canceled all my subscribe and save items with the exception of vitamins, so Bezos isn't making nearly what he could be off of me these days, and I'm about to pay off my Amazon Prime Visa and not use it again. I don't want to think of how much money I've spent on Amazon over the last 5 or 10 years.
I’d love to do the same, but there’s the additional problem of Amazon having captured independent publishing. If I want to read some of the Litrpg books I like, there’s literally no option but to order them from Amazon. (Amazon also sucks at shipping: throw a book into a too-big box and let it slam around until it arrives dinged up and bent.) Otherwise, I use Powell’s whenever possible, or Magers & Quinn when shopping in person in Minneapolis.
I bought some light bulbs and some towels off Ebay, which I've always used for stuff like that because I hate Amazon. The products all came to my house in Amazon boxes. Apparently this is a thing now, list stuff on Ebay, when someone clicks "buy" you go to Amazon and buy the same thing and have it shipped to their house.
I ordered some books from Abe Books, and it all came one at a time from Amazon. Apparently Bezos bought into them too, and if you pick a book that's listed as "new" it will be from Amazon. Hence Abe is off my list of approved vendors.
It's us against the billionaires. Trump is just a lackey.
I find that reassuring. The money men are supposed to keep it in the background.
This new generation wants to be the star of the show. Everyone was shocked, at first, when Luigi did his bit . Then we all started looking around for somebody to high-five.
We made it through one Gilded Age. We can make it through another.
When's the Wall Street sash-weight bomb then? (Except today it would also take down some tourists and hard-working street vendors, which would make it less mediagenic.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing
Investigators questioned tennis champion Edwin Fischer, who had sent warning postcards to friends, telling them to leave the area before September 16. He told police he had received the information "through the air". They found Fischer made a regular habit of issuing such warnings, and had him committed to Amityville Asylum, where he was diagnosed as insane but harmless.
I see the feds eventually decided Italians were responsible. I’m half-surprised we didn’t then invade Italy in retaliation. Or maybe Albania because Albania had dissed Warren Harding’s father.
Never mind the motives; all Italians were always anarchists (Sacco & Vanzetti for example) back then just like all Eastern Europeans were always Bolsheviks.
Biggest immigration restrictions in our history passed Congress sometime around then, targeting southern and easter Europeans (and the Chinese, OF COURSE.)
I admire this, in all its fuckery. Your opening is a great tribute to the Early Modern tragedians, maybe more Webster or Kyd than Marlowe. We shall not discuss Bill Sh.
Not to mention the Greek tragedians. Or the Romans who, I’ve been told, had real gladiator fights to the death between acts to keep the audience engaged.
That furniture exists in a billionaires only universe where it’s important that your ass is swaddled in obscene luxury while others go hungry. I wonder what those furniture makers spend their money on - ridiculously overpriced woodworking tools? Anyway, I didn’t know you could be a successful modern artist by creating knockoffs of 1950’s Chinese Communist Party propaganda posters. I have postcards from the Museum of Propaganda in Shanghai that rival those paintings (our guide was hesitant to take us there because it wasn’t on the itinerary - indeed, she’d never gone there herself; its shabby decor suggested that the current government is embarrassed by the lurid quality of the propaganda of old).
I used to think this country needed American artists like Komar & Melamed* for our time; but then discovered that John McNaughton** has unintentionally already done it.
Yes: seconding rfc: McNaughton is fucking insane. Co-opting the Founders as MAGAts is standard operating procedure. It takes balls to pull in Dr. King and Sojourner Truth..
Ah, so this is how it ends, rich and powerful men down in the mineshafts, ten women assigned to each, the women chosen to be of a "highly stimulating nature."
We could develop a line of said luxury tools and market them at Restoration Hardware. “This adze is hand-forged from pure South African platinum alloyed with gold from melted-down Byzantine jewelry. Finest French enamel adorns the haft, and a cabuchon ruby from a nobleman’s ceremonial katar is inset in the pommel to augment the item’s spiritual sharpness.”
Martha Stewart is one of the few fabulously rich people I think I'd like, because she's never forgotten that she started out as a Jersey girl. I thought she handled her incarceration with real class.
Sort of agree, in that not having used her money to finance a juggernaut of social destruction, she's not a worthy target of contempt.
And I have a soft spot for the recycled copies of her magazine I used to skim. How else could I have learned to brighten those yellowed thrift shop textiles by simply soaking them in Biz? I don't know if Martha came up with this one on her own, but it's invaluable: https://www.marthastewart.com/354061/perfect-hard-boiled-eggs
Our future: Musk, Bezos and a few of their richer pals all watching C-SPAN together (on the LARGEST TV IN THE WORLD, natch) each has a Gameboy controller in his hands.
Oh, I know. Thought you were being pedantic. Sirrah, not Surrah - my Shakespeare is rusty.
And sure, I'm a whore (granted that was not my intent to say, but my dumb ass gets it now). Sho 'nuff. But that has nothing to do with my species, thank you very much, it is a personal choice. Squeel!
Thank god for that turn towards the end. Because at one point all the Sánchez's were making wonder whether Bezos had 🍆-enlargement (😉) surgery to match the latter's worse-than-FLOTUS' implants.
But then I was distracted.
Who cares; some god should only get off their ass and start a'smiting all of them...
Til they are well and truly SMOTE!
🙏🏻
Those choads would only be smitten from the experience…
No need for penile enlargement when all the billionaires have their giant space-cocks.
You made me laugh so hard that I almost had an incontinence event, thanks.
I’ll presume you’re correct, but I’d like to hear from Ms Sánchez for confirmation 😳
I'll let you in on a little secret: The trick is to land the joke on "space-cocks."
Cue Vonnegut. You know which one.
"SPAAAAACE COOOOOCKS!" (said like Space Ghost always says it)
I did give some thought to "cock rockets." It was a close call.
So, between that and maths, what's left in that braina yours?
ZOMG GENDER-AFFIRMING SURGERY 😱
Relax, Pops. Everybody's doin' it.
RE-AFFIRMING, I suppose. Not that I’m curious.
Give your mites to the god that smites!
I'm a little disappointed, Roy. I wouldn't have expected you of all people to whitewash Bezos' character in this way.
Like Renoir said, every man has his reasons.
Cha-CHING! (the man's got wardrobe expenses like you wouldn't believe.)
"and Francisco Franco"
He LIVES!
“Franco is still not dead,” one of the great bits from early SNL.
(Come November 20th Franco will have been dead for *fifty* years. Make of that what you will.)
Um.... I'm gonna make of it "Jesus Christ I'm old."
I make of it
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
What would I do without you to show me wildly extravagant luxury consumer goods of which I would otherwise be unaware? Sofas that cost as much as cars, real bearskin rugs? (I've never understood why people would want floor coverings they could so easily trip over. Please, in a future offering, have one of the leeching billionaires accidentally insert a toe into the bear's mouth and take a pratfall. )
The chairs are sold out, presumably because that is one big-ass room.
Exit, pursued by bearskin rug
https://youtu.be/u_fpCOaTcWs
(Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny)
This morning my cat caught an unfolded king size sheet in his claws and pulled it across the house. What if it had been a Great Dane (or some other Bezos sized extravagantly expensive, overbred dog) dragging the bearskin rug across the mansion?
I'll admit to being deeply conflicted about Amazon. I have canceled all my subscribe and save items with the exception of vitamins, so Bezos isn't making nearly what he could be off of me these days, and I'm about to pay off my Amazon Prime Visa and not use it again. I don't want to think of how much money I've spent on Amazon over the last 5 or 10 years.
I have to wean the missus off Prime, but otherwise ditto
I’d love to do the same, but there’s the additional problem of Amazon having captured independent publishing. If I want to read some of the Litrpg books I like, there’s literally no option but to order them from Amazon. (Amazon also sucks at shipping: throw a book into a too-big box and let it slam around until it arrives dinged up and bent.) Otherwise, I use Powell’s whenever possible, or Magers & Quinn when shopping in person in Minneapolis.
I bought some light bulbs and some towels off Ebay, which I've always used for stuff like that because I hate Amazon. The products all came to my house in Amazon boxes. Apparently this is a thing now, list stuff on Ebay, when someone clicks "buy" you go to Amazon and buy the same thing and have it shipped to their house.
And it was during a strike. I feel so dirty.
They were new boxes? I can't wean my old man off Amazon (unbeatable combination of laziness and infirmity) so I reuse Amazon boxes all the time.
Yeah, I've gotten those before, too. But then there's a mailing label slapped over the original. These looked new, direct from Amazon.
Gettin' so's ya can't trust anyone anymore.
I ordered some books from Abe Books, and it all came one at a time from Amazon. Apparently Bezos bought into them too, and if you pick a book that's listed as "new" it will be from Amazon. Hence Abe is off my list of approved vendors.
Wasn't Ebay how Musk and Thiel made their money initially?
I think that was PayPal? But I'm sure if I looked, I'd find some right-wing asshole behind Ebay too.
If it wasn't Musk and Thiel it was that California woman that ran the demon sheep ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHosX_jvkpw
It's us against the billionaires. Trump is just a lackey.
I find that reassuring. The money men are supposed to keep it in the background.
This new generation wants to be the star of the show. Everyone was shocked, at first, when Luigi did his bit . Then we all started looking around for somebody to high-five.
We made it through one Gilded Age. We can make it through another.
When's the Wall Street sash-weight bomb then? (Except today it would also take down some tourists and hard-working street vendors, which would make it less mediagenic.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing
From the Wiki -- I did not know this:
Investigators questioned tennis champion Edwin Fischer, who had sent warning postcards to friends, telling them to leave the area before September 16. He told police he had received the information "through the air". They found Fischer made a regular habit of issuing such warnings, and had him committed to Amityville Asylum, where he was diagnosed as insane but harmless.
Infinitely preferable to the sane & harmful.
"__________ but he/she is harmless" has to be one of the greatest structures.
Ostriches: Dangerous but armless.
My understanding is that Earth is Mostly Harmless
It's the exceptions to the rule that getcha
"Amityville Asylum" - that was what, the 4th or 5th sequel?
Glad to hear Louise Fletcher was able to find work after her turn as Nurse Ratched.
Man she was good.
I see the feds eventually decided Italians were responsible. I’m half-surprised we didn’t then invade Italy in retaliation. Or maybe Albania because Albania had dissed Warren Harding’s father.
Never mind the motives; all Italians were always anarchists (Sacco & Vanzetti for example) back then just like all Eastern Europeans were always Bolsheviks.
Not to put too fine a point on it, much like now all South Americans are psycho criminals and all Muslims are suicide terrorists.
That short vignette by Hemingway, "WOPs," said Boyle,"I can tell WOPs a mile off." Something like that.
Biggest immigration restrictions in our history passed Congress sometime around then, targeting southern and easter Europeans (and the Chinese, OF COURSE.)
I admire this, in all its fuckery. Your opening is a great tribute to the Early Modern tragedians, maybe more Webster or Kyd than Marlowe. We shall not discuss Bill Sh.
Not to mention the Greek tragedians. Or the Romans who, I’ve been told, had real gladiator fights to the death between acts to keep the audience engaged.
Well, what were they supposed to do without McDonald's ads?
This is pure Jacobean revenge tragedy, and I am HERE for it.
Seems more Biblical: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
To which Bezos answers MUCH PROFIT
That furniture exists in a billionaires only universe where it’s important that your ass is swaddled in obscene luxury while others go hungry. I wonder what those furniture makers spend their money on - ridiculously overpriced woodworking tools? Anyway, I didn’t know you could be a successful modern artist by creating knockoffs of 1950’s Chinese Communist Party propaganda posters. I have postcards from the Museum of Propaganda in Shanghai that rival those paintings (our guide was hesitant to take us there because it wasn’t on the itinerary - indeed, she’d never gone there herself; its shabby decor suggested that the current government is embarrassed by the lurid quality of the propaganda of old).
I used to think this country needed American artists like Komar & Melamed* for our time; but then discovered that John McNaughton** has unintentionally already done it.
*https://slideplayer.com/slide/13449687/80/images/9/(1)+Sotsart+Komar+%26+Melamid%2C+Stalin+and+the+Muses+(from+Nostalgic+Socialist+Realism+series)%2C.jpg
**https://jonmcnaughton.com/patriotic/
Unintentionally?
McNaughton, unlike K&M, is absolutely sincere in his art.
Yes: seconding rfc: McNaughton is fucking insane. Co-opting the Founders as MAGAts is standard operating procedure. It takes balls to pull in Dr. King and Sojourner Truth..
"American artists like Komar & Melamed"
I thought their movie about going to Whitecastle was fun.
They’ll probably sell off everything in the National Gallery and replace it with McNaughton
By "sell off" you presumably mean "appropriate for their apocalypse bomb shelters."
Ah, so this is how it ends, rich and powerful men down in the mineshafts, ten women assigned to each, the women chosen to be of a "highly stimulating nature."
We can only hope – it's the connive most likely to succeed in getting them down there so's we can weld the doors shut behind 'em.
Brilliant! I'll get to work on the props, including a large cardboard box with DOOMSDAY DEVICE spray-painted on the side.
We could develop a line of said luxury tools and market them at Restoration Hardware. “This adze is hand-forged from pure South African platinum alloyed with gold from melted-down Byzantine jewelry. Finest French enamel adorns the haft, and a cabuchon ruby from a nobleman’s ceremonial katar is inset in the pommel to augment the item’s spiritual sharpness.”
(I used to refer to Restoration Hardware as "Martha Stewart's Hardware Store.")
Martha Stewart is one of the few fabulously rich people I think I'd like, because she's never forgotten that she started out as a Jersey girl. I thought she handled her incarceration with real class.
Sort of agree, in that not having used her money to finance a juggernaut of social destruction, she's not a worthy target of contempt.
And I have a soft spot for the recycled copies of her magazine I used to skim. How else could I have learned to brighten those yellowed thrift shop textiles by simply soaking them in Biz? I don't know if Martha came up with this one on her own, but it's invaluable: https://www.marthastewart.com/354061/perfect-hard-boiled-eggs
I've been doing that for YEARS, couldn't remember where I got it from, next time I'll offer up a little prayer of thanks to Martha.
Only took me about 40 years to learn how to cook rice.
Can we all simply agree that lurid propaganda is the best kind?
Reading this, I felt like the guy with his hair blown back in the ‘80s Memorex ads.
Also, while reading it I thought two things:
1) “You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar / When I met you”
2) I want to write something with a character named Skip Ottoman. (I misread the text at first, but I liked it.)
Gosh, thanks for the earworm, it'll be with me all day. I'll try to return the favor sometime.
EARWORM: "Don't you want me, baby?"
OTHER EARWORM: I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar / that much is true
Even then I knew I'd find a much better place either with ir without you
Skip Ottoman – straight to Divan!
My wife decided to play the rest of the Technotronic songs. They all sound just like "Pump Up the Jam," except the formula falls flat.
All that’s missing is the Hindu fiend from Gunga Din: “Kill, brothers! Kill for the love of killing! Kill for the love of Kali! Death is sweet!”
Coming right up: next command to Alexa.
Act One, Scene One, Bloody Bezos and the Dirty Sanchezes in "Grindhouse And Grindsenate 2025"
Our future: Musk, Bezos and a few of their richer pals all watching C-SPAN together (on the LARGEST TV IN THE WORLD, natch) each has a Gameboy controller in his hands.
Goddamn kids.
Gameboys don't HAVE controllers; the controls are built in. You might be thinking of the GameCube.
BAH!
goddamn kids, no sense of history, WE had fourteen different PONG GAMES and did you hear us complain, noooooo...
Gee, thanks, it's not often I get mistaken for someone young. Gonna be walkin' around with an extra spring in my step all day.
2 marks for that senate.
Pig? PIG??? Surrah, I object to this slander! It is unacceptable, uncalled for and uncouth
My name is LittePig. You have slandered my heritage. Prepare to.....Well, call a whore a whore, sheesh.
Uhmm...
Wow, could you be a little more vague? :-)
I probly could, but if'n yinz can't see the irony in how you proclaimed yerseff, well then...
Anyway, made me chuckle.
Oh, I know. Thought you were being pedantic. Sirrah, not Surrah - my Shakespeare is rusty.
And sure, I'm a whore (granted that was not my intent to say, but my dumb ass gets it now). Sho 'nuff. But that has nothing to do with my species, thank you very much, it is a personal choice. Squeel!
That's not the chucklepoint.
Well spell it out for my autistic ass, then, and quit dancing.
Qu’est cera, Sirrah?
L'avenir ne nous appartient pas
What's the point, Seurat?
If "pointless" is a word, I don't see why "pointful" can't be.
2 points!
Point taken! Hey, where's my point, it was here a minute ago!