"Sniggerlings: My Perverted Values"

 

My Perverted Values

      My wife bought me a wedding band for my birthday next November. I lost my other one thirty years ago and never had the money or inclination to replace it. She bought herself a matching set of two rings:  diamonds in swirly, girly patterns. When she asked me why I liked the one I chose, I said that it was big enough to give some wise guy a rap in the mouth. Since it's on my left hand, it would have to be delivered with a left hook. My arms are too short to jab with it.  I would wear it like one-fifth of a set of brass(or silver) knuckles. I grew up in the Projects in North Houston, a tough neighborhood.

      By her reaction, I got the sense that women don't have the same reasons to appreciate rings as men. My wife's set has a big diamond in the middle. Her left hook would leave more than a bruise.  Her repertoir also includes a short, violent groin kick.  We've been married thirty-six years.  She grew up near Compton and Watts, in North Long Beach, a tough neighborhood.  She's my best friend.

 

      The other night I told my wife I had bought a carton of salsa and asked her what classic TV show she would like to watch while we made it disappear.  She said CHiPs.   

      Hello, 1976:  Erik Estrada and Disco.  I doubt that the Pearly Gates of Heaven will shine any brighter than Ponch's toothy smile on a CHiP(California Highway Patrol) motorcycle. 

      My grandfather Clyde, who ran with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in South Dallas in the Roaring Twenties, used to have a country way of describing things.  When I looked at Estrada's smile, I thought of Granddaddy's contemptuous simile.  He would have said the actor looked like he had a "'shit-eating' grin".  I had to go to college to learn that the polite way of saying 'shit-eating' was in Greek -- coprophagous.  For example flies are coprophagous.  My granddaddy would have compared them to Estrada's smile.  I don't think that's fair, but the actor did look a little too ... something.  mm

 

 

"Big Brother's Roast Beef Sandwich"

"Big Brother’s Roast Beef Sandwich"

      I recently texted my friend in Calcutta(Kolkata), India, -- Muhammad Lowenstein -- about a trip I took here in Southern California, and was interested to know if the NSA(National Security Agency) had recalled any of my texts from storage to investigate me. Of course, we know the NSA collects communication records from hundreds of millions of Americans and stores them in Washington until that huge warehouse in Utah is ready. When they decide to look at a text, for example, they simply request a surveillance order from an FISA(Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) court judge(telling him or her whatever story is convenient), get her or his Joanna Henry, call it up, grab a roast beef sandwich, and read.

This is what we texted:

MM: Hey, ML, how’s it hanging?

ML: Sure, and just fine. Been busy helping people in the USA fix internet snafus. Snafus, that is a funny word, what does it mean?

MM: It’s an old Marine term that ends with 'FU'. "Situation Normal:  All F---ed Up".

ML: Yes, very good. I am not an old Marine, but I will add that to my vocabulary. What are you been doing?

MM: Hey, I just got back from Morongo Indian tribe casino, where I was bubble boy in a Texas Hold’em poker tournament.

ML: Bubble boy?

MM: Yeah, I was the last person not to make the final table. The final table sat nine players. With ten guys left, I was the Big Blind for 2000 chips, and the guy to my right was the Small blind. He limped in to the bidding by calling me, and I tapped on the option. The board came down with a King and a six and a rag. He went all in and I just couldn’t believe he was serious. Besides, I had a pair of sixes. So I went all in, too. He had another King. That was it for me.

ML: You always have trouble making the final table.

MM: You know it. Woops, got to go. There’s a show on TV about Bradley Manning, Ciao.

      Since my text to ML was international, I decided to contact another friend in Moscow, in the Kremlin(Cha Cha Hidalgova), who knows Edward Snowden personally(isn’t it the quintessence of irony that a guy named ‘Snowed-in’ would wind up in Moscow?  Wait 'til November -- Russian winters 'snowed in' both Napoleon and Hitler) and is responsible for collecting and storing classified communication records in the Kremlin belonging to the NSA. He moonlights as a Stolichnaya Vodka vendor in Red Square. He assured me that, yes, the NSA had read my personal texts and were quite concerned. He sent me a copy of the NSA top secret investigation findings and the requested paperwork that was submitted to the FISA judge.   With Cha Cha, I didn't need a Freedom of Information Act request.

This is what I read:

      Your honor, the National Security Agency hereby requests a surveillance order due to the following suspicious activity:

      1. Overseas individual with a known terrorist name was contacted by a suspicious individual in area code 951 in California. We happened onto this when we were surveiling suspicious calls by authority of a warrant that limited searches to Area Code 815, just outside of Chicago. The agent in charge has fat fingers and it was an honest mistake. He has been directed to take dexterity management classes and attend a two week Rehab to get control of his PBJ compulsion.

      2. Individuals used numerous aliases and code words to describe the likelihood of a major terrorist event, to wit (a) a hanging in Calcutta, India(area code +91-33), at which time the internet would be shut down and (b) the poisoning of the Ganges River.

      3. Probable participants include a group of retired Kashmiri Indian Marines from a place called Morongo, probably not its real name. Maybe Meghalaya state or Maharashtra state in India. CIA thinks they might be Indians from Mongolia.

      4. An agent will be disguised as a bubble on the Ganges River, where certain Texans are being held for ransom. The Texans are both large and small and have been blinded and maimed through torture. The complete plot may include a force of as many as 2000 California Highway Patrol officers, too(CHiPs).

      5. The ultimate financing for this attack may come from two kings, location unknown, possibly in the Mideast, who have invested their entire fortunes in this plot.

      Respectfully request your signature below. Your friendly neighborhood NSA.


      It’s pretty clear that the only ones being kept from classified information is the American people. The good news is, if you want to know what the NSA is doing, I’d give you my Russian Buddy’s number, but you might be better off calling Kremlin, Oklahoma,(Area code 580) or Kremlin, Montana,(Area code 406.) Kremlin, Russia is Area code +7 495. Either way, say hello to the NSA. mm

"Kerry's Last Stand is 'Unbelievably Small'"

 

Kerry’s Last Stand is "Unbelievably Small"

      Recently I was astonished when, in London during a news conference, Secretary of State Kerry characterized the force that the Obama Administration was contemplating sending to Syria as “unbelievably small”. It sounded like America’s options amounted to seeding the clouds over Damascus in hopes of a surprise rain, letting a herd of camels loose in the President’s bedroom(a small herd … two or three … little … baby camels … in diapers), or sending the CIA in to the Syrian capitol in a cloak and dagger effort to stick used chewing gum wads under each of the benches in Saladin Park(Special Forces third graders from Mr. Rogers‘ Neighborhood would be assigned the task of masticating the “unbelievably small” plastic weapons, which would then be couriered to Istanbul and mule-packed through Kurdish Syria to the Park, thus avoiding sneakers on the ground.)
(Washington Post Postv, Sep. 9, 2013)

      He said the strike would be not only small, but “unbelievably” so. As it turns out, letting the Russians control the Syrian chemical weapons is indeed an “unbelievably small” use of the American military. So he did not misspeak. This is not to rag on Secretary Kerry, who probably would have made a better President than Secretary of State(especially under the current conditions), but it is to poke a little fun at the mistakes public figures sometimes make. In that spirit, I thought back over my American history and imagined what would have happened if some of its leaders had chosen to respond to challenges in “unbelievably small” ways.

       Secretary Kerry was in London when he made his verbal stumble, so I’ll start my survey with the redoubtable Admiral Nelson, who played an “unbelievably small” part in American history. At Trafalgar in 1805, the English commander attacked head-on the superior force of Napoleon’s navy, won, and lost no ships to a combined loss of twenty-two for the enemy. As a result, Napoleon’s invasion of Great Britain never took place. Had the Admiral chosen an “unbelievably small” effort -- such as blowing bubbles from surf boards -- Kerry might have begun his news conference with, “Mesdames and Messieurs”.(Wikipedia, “Trafalgar“)

       What would have happened at Lexington and Concord, in Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts, if the orders had been, “Let us bring to bear our ‘unbelievably small” arms on the Redcoats”. All the Minutemen had were small arms. What would constitute “unbelievably small arms”? Sling shots? Thumb-propelled cats’ eyes and aggies? The Massachusetts governor halting the British invasion by taxing the soldiers to death, as is reportedly happening to the indigenous population today?  “No taxation without an invasion” might have been the British soldiers’ response.

      Or what if this had been Pearl Harbor? Remember Jimmy Doolittle’s Raid on Tokyo in April of 1942? I doubt FDR had planned an “unbelievably small” bombing, as the Obama administration intended for Syria. In response to the sneak attack on December 7, 1941, Doolittle led a bombing raid on Japan’s capitol consisting of sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet.(Wikipedia “Jimmy Doolittle“)

      But was that overkill(pardon the pun)?  What would an “unbelievably small” response have been today? Perhaps a comedian insulting the Emperor of Japan over Armed Forces radio:

      “Who is stronger, Chuck Norris or the Shinto Incarnate Deity, Emperor Hirohito of Japan? Chuck Norris, of course. He can chew a chimichanga and fart a frog.”[Chuck Norris was two years old in April 1942]

      So America now enters an age of “unbelievably small” “shots across the bow” when someone crosses a red line. I don’t know about you, but I remember drawing a line or two in the sandlots I shared with bullies when I was a kid. I don’t remember anything crossing those lines back at me that could reasonably be called “unbelievably small“. I think someone with an “unbelievably small” brain thought up this ploy. mm

"Sniggerlings"(Sects and Sex)

“Sniggerlings”(Sects and Sex) 

      1.  I was watching Power Play on Fox.com live(it was recorded.) I learned the following astounding fact: The President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, of the Shia Alowite sect, is married to a British-educated Syrian named Asma al-Assad, a Suni. Guess they didn’t believe in same-sects marriages in those days. Actually, I think they would generally have preferred homo-sect-ual unions(homo- as a prefix is Latin for "same or similar", The American Heritage Dictionary 1991)


      2.  I saw Miley Cyrus’ “historical” dance on the VMA awards show. Pitiful. She should wait until she grows up. I have two other problems with it. It wasn’t sexy; it was more like a Mouse Club cheerleader wannabe rooting for a zipper, with a foam finger too large and limp to deal with it. If you want to see a sexy dance, see either of two Red Skelton family movies of the Forties: Ship Ahoy or I Dood It!(1942.) They feature the sexiest dancer doing the sexiest dances I ever saw: Eleanor Powell(however, I'm not an expert in this area.)  They also feature some wonderful G rated comedy from the master, Red Skelton(I know quite a bit more about comedy.)  See, especially, the dream dance sequence set on a Polynesian beach. Eleanor Powell!  Now there was a grown woman with much to reveal of what God gave her. And beautiful and a great, powerful dancer.  In one famous scene in I Dood It!, Skelton does a ten minute physical comedy bit where he has his hands all over her (without compromising her dignity), trying to get her into bed(she was asleep.)  By the way, that movie also features another sexy woman of the Forties -- Lena Horne.

      As far as Cyrus’ claim she’s making history, I would invite her attention to the reputation of Messalina, the third wife of Roman Caesar Claudius, who -- according to Book X of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History -- engaged in “an all night sex competition with a prostitute”. Her score was twenty-five partners. She won. That’s history.(wikipedia)

      P. S., Pliny the Elder, A Roman science writer in First Century Rome, might have been an early editor for The Guinness Book of World Records.  (Note to Miley:  Larry Flynt knows who has Messalina's record today.)

      3.  If you want a sexy singer with an incredible, soulful voice later than the forties, try Tom Jones singing the title song from the Bond film Thunderball(1965.)  Wowee!  "Thunderball" has grade school lyrics, but what a voice!  "Wrecking Ball" or "Thunderball"?   I vote for that Jones boy.  I note that the the thunderball to which the movie title refers is a threatened nuclear explosion over Miami, with which evil organization Spectre, spoofed by Mike Myers in several Austin Powers movies, is blackmailing the world.  Sounds prophetic 49 years ago.  Can you say Al Qaeda?mm