“Whatever Mike Moon does with a chicken in the privacy of his home is his own business. But we will not let him use the rights of women across Missouri as some kind of political prop. His call to ban abortion is disturbing and dangerous, no matter what he does with that chicken.”
Some days, the best you can do is a heap of clichés:
• I got nothin’.
• Do you really want to know?
• Blame Adam.
See what I mean? There are other jokes, of course, but this is a family blog.
Oh, wait. Not really. I mean, I wouldn’t preclude it outright, but neither is it difficult to imagine the complaints.
The only reason I’m running with a juvenile, insensitive, obviously overused joke for a headline like that is because there just isn’t much to Jason Dick’s note on Beltway colloquialisms insofar as quoting enough of it to tempt you to click and read would pretty much require reproducing the post. Nonetheless, if you ever felt screwed like punch-line livestock for taking part in our civic process, well, nobody can actually answer the question, though there are certainly table scraps in the trough of the public discourse.
At least I didn’t say, “Don’t let it get your goat.”
Oh.
Damn.
Right. Anyway … I mean … never mind.
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Dick, Jason. “HOH Word of the Week: Goat, Goat Food”. Heard on the Hill. Roll Call. 28 December 2015.
“To talk to the government, you fill out a form―getting married is no different. Until today, only marriages comprised of a “husband” and a “wife” were eligible to fill out the papers, so the forms will be gender coded. It can be an uncomfortable moment when you’re standing at the clerk’s counter, pen in hand, one looking over the other’s shoulder, and that’s the moment you have to decide which name goes over “husband” and which goes over “wife.” In advance, flip a coin, have a heavy talk, allocate a gender between the top and the bottom. But, work it out on the way. Our clerk in Toronto picked for us, and I still disagree with his choice.”
No, really. This is a moment to lighten up and enjoy that this is really happening. HuffPo blogger Coco Soodek offers some advice to red-state gay couples as they prepare to celebrate their love, and justice as well.
It’s almost enough to make me want to go get married, like in Kansas, or something. You know, just because.
And, no, nothing goes here about the sanctity of marriage. Rather, we might simply mutter something about how stupid the proposition of me getting married could possibly be, and still be making sense. But that’s the fun part; we wouldn’t have to fiddle around or flip coins over gender.
Good luck, everyone. And remember, we might chuckle at the thought of Justice Scalia insulting his own wife, but he does have something of a point. That is to say, you know, just not a useful one for a Supreme Court dissent. Still, though, I used to joke that all feminists were asking was that women be treated like shit in the same way as everybody else. And, you know, that’s kind of a joke we can make about gay marriage. What we won in Obergefell is the right to be just as miserable as our heterosexual neighbors. And, yeah, you know, don’t analyze that point too much; it’s a joke.
Be well, friends.
Congratulations.
And, you know, I owe generations who came before me an eternal debt. Thank you so much.
But, yeah. Here we are.
Stand. Speak. Love. Live.
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Image note: “Her plan is to penetrate us ....” Commander Amaro explains the trouble with Raharu. (Detail of frame from FLCL episode 4, “Full Swing”)
Soodek, Coco. “Open Letter to Same Sex People Getting Married in Red States”. The Huffington Post. 2 July 2015.
Prokop, Andrew. “Scalia’s same-sex marriage dissent blasts judicial ‘putsch,’ Ivy Leaguers, fortune cookies”. Vox. 26 June 2015.
“It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”
This is a stupid joke: I almost thought Mr. Rubio was an atheist until the flying spaghetti hit the wall.
What? I said it was stupid, but when it comes to rhetorical innovation, randomly sticking clauses together with no regard for their functional compatibility is also pretty damn stupid.
Ladies and gentlemen, Marco Rubio.
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Walker, Hunter. “Marco Rubio just made another confusing comment about his Middle East policy”. Business Insider. 4 June 2015.
So … right. This is … er … ah … well, you know. This is hardly news, but any time we get to sit around and chill with Xenu is time well spent, right?
Something about priorities goes here, I’m certain. Then again, the unresolved implication would be whose priorities.
Or should I try the political joke about how we need to be careful to not achieve such equality that our Christian neighbors ruin themselves fighting for their supremacy? After all, next up is, well, the Xenubites.
Certes, we can do better. Right?
Oh, wait, that’s probably not as good of a joke as its temptation suggests.
Too bad ’bout that.
Nor was the joke worth it.
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Bolling, Ruben. “Xenu, Intergalactic Overlord, returns to Earth”. Daily Kos Comics. 9 April 2015.
No, that’s not a Chick tract savaging the Virgin Mother.
Rather, that would be Matt Tarpley, and just what has Mary gotten herself into?
Which is a far better question than … er … right. Not gonna do the divine moneyshot joke.
Oh.
(sigh)
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Tarpley, Matt. “Mayday”. Mary Death. 10 April 2015.
“Was I supposed to say that, despite my best efforts, the power of gay porn was too strong for me, and I was asked to step down because of it? Was I supposed to go into detail about the guys I ended up blowing in the bathroom at Splash that summer in New York? Though there may seem like an obvious “yes” answer here, at that point, there was still a part of me that wanted to hide that from her. A part of me that wanted there to still be a chance with her.”
Sometimes the idea of “conversion therapy” seems more like an exercise in self-deception. Then again, those are the good days. From what we hear, most days were a bit like the Spanish Inquisition, minus the Comfy Chair.
Then again, there are those of us who tried self-therapy, and it is possible to find something positive amid the years of lying to ourselves. I got a daughter out of the attempt, and she is a result I will never resent or regret. (more…)
No, really, any excuse to post another picture of a Bug flipping the bird.
Two birds.
And something about women and rainy days, except it’s snowing.
Never mind. Four-tier metajokes, as a rule, should be considered axiomatically bad ideas.
You’d think the same thing about eating disorder jokes, perhaps, but remember, this is the twenty-first century.
And, you know, it’s all in how you say it.
And, yeah, any ex post facto excuse for Tommy Shaw, too.
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Huber, Adam. “If You Snow What’s Good for Ya”. Bug Martini. 27 January 2015.
There are those who would readily suggest that laughter is the best medicine, but we’re told that doesn’t apply to appendectomy recuperation. Nonetheless, perhaps there would be some benefit in considering the potential of laughter as a public health issue.
That is to say, it really is not appropriate to wish ill onto others. That is to suggest one ought not hope their inverse-favorite hypocritical Congressman or U.S. Senator who wailed and cried about how the president had too many policy czars and even went so far as to introduce legislation to sunset every appointed czar on a timetable and regardless of conditions on the ground and then went on to demand an Ebola czar because it was easier than explaining why Republicans refuse to confirm the nominated Surgeon General should actually have to come face to face with an ebolite suicide bomber wearing Daa’ish colors, while also acknowledging that yes, there are actually people in the world who would laugh if that happened and it’s not exactly hard to understand why.
I don’t know, is that sentence going to collapse on itself like the World Trade Center?
What’s that? Too soon? Okay, okay, okay. But it’s true that some sort of unfortunate, ghoulish, cruel joke really does seem needed here. So … er … ah … right.
Or maybe chuckling over the idea that, say, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA1) wants a promotion to the U.S. Senate.
Actually, that’s a pretty fun joke right now; he took out Rep. Paul “Pit of Hell” Broun (R-GA10), who is vacationing away the waning months of his Congressional tenure while fearmongering ebola in order to pitch for a conservative super PAC. And polling averages show Kingston trailing his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, by two points.
Still, though, wait ’til November to laugh. The polling data is thin, and this is Georgia, after all.
Oh, right. Jokes. Humor. Laughter. Public health.
You know what would be great for public health during this ebola crisis? If everyone just laughed at people like Jack Kingston. You know, break the tension, blow some steam, so we can get back to serious considerations.
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Huber, Adam. “You Can’t Spell ‘Pandemic’ Without ‘Panic'”. Bug Martini. 16 October 2014.
Maddow, Rachel. “GOP forgets anti-czar nonsense, calls for Ebola czar”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 17 October 2014.
Haberkorn, Jennifer. “Rep. Paul Broun: Send money, stop Ebola”. Politico. 17 October 2014.
This Is 