sundaes and octopi

 Sundae, I know that word back from Gerties by the Colony Theater. both at 59th and Kedzie, where if you had a hot date for King of Kings say, you would drop by Gerties afterwards to further impress her with an ice cream concoction.  

Always a little puzzled by the spelling, but not enough so that I wanted to drop everything and look it up, and back in the old days I would have to haul out one of the books of that encyclopedia set that I slowly bought from the High Low, one book a week for a buck, and then if my information wasn't there I would not have a stack of other sources on the screen to check.

Life was tough then, but that's the way we liked it.

Sunday is a no brainer, it's an after church refreshment, but what of the spelling?  Wiki casually sez to protect from copyright infringement.  Lawyers, they make everything boring.

I came kind of close to becoming a lawyer.  Was all set to take the LSAT, but that morning I was woken by martial music and soon discovered that it was High School Marching Band Day.  Teenage girls in boots carrying wooden rifles.  I made my choice and I never looked back.  Lawyers, a lot of work, and you have to wear a suit like every day.  It seems like all other professions have made the jump to business casual or shorts and flip flops, but lawyers, who make the laws for Chrissake, are still wearing those damned monkey seats.  Go figure.  

Octopi, kind of the flavor of the month, they are everywhere these days, documentaries, books, articles in magazines, on the internet, just everywhere, and the 8 legs and the several pretty big brains, and likely the smartest animals south of the vertebrates, but other than that a little boring.

Except for that plural, and I can almost see The Scourge about to strike (though that would take about a month and a half), but who wants to say octopuses?  One syllable longer and trudging, without the gay elan of octopi.  

 The boringly pedantic guys in those other ivy towers (not to be confused with the bold free thinkers of The Institute) say, in their nasal voices, octopus is a Greek word, and the 'i' ending is a Roman thing, and therefore we should just use the English plural 's' because, because, we say so.  Well fuck em.  They should be made to give up their shorts and flip flops, and business casual and get back into those damn itchy monkey suits because this idea, that they can tell us how to speak English, is way lawyerly.       

April Fool

Now is a good time check in since the Institute is showing some signs of life but I'm not getting sucked into the nonsense that is the current socio-political reality despite its high entertainment value.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, and the beat goes on.

Thousands of years of wisdom, passed through many cultures, and look where we're at right now; pitiful, no?  It almost validates one of my crackpot notions that since human beings have no predators to keep the population in check Mother Nature has given us the tools to winnow the male population.  Unfortunately things have gotten out of hand with technological advances in modern warfare leading to needless collateral damage but that's a theory for another time.

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Maybe you'll find this interesting, maybe you won't.

https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-evolution-of-stupidity-and-octopus

What a world we live in

 I thought the two impeachments of Trump were misguided because there was no way they were going to get ten republican votes in the senate.  I was more favorably inclined towards the second because it was such an open and shut case, that even if it failed the exposure would sway some independents in the election.  We did win the election but I don't know that the second impeachment was much of a factor.

I happened to be watching tv when the reps presented the Mayorkas impeachment.  A bit of a solemn affair, about twenty of them including MTG who surprisingly was not screaming or anything.  Two days later the whole thing was in the dustbin and aside from a little whining by Mitch and Ted, the whole thing was forgotten.  Kind of like the impeachment of Biden and the investigation of Hunter Biden, no longer the shiny play pretties that they once were.

And anyway the republican congressfolk are much more interested in fighting among themselves, and now they can get back to what their voters sent them to congress for which is to bump off their speaker and fight to find a new one and then bump him off, and the beat goes on La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-da

This Mike Johnson is a bible thumper and a Trumper to the max, but maybe not such a bad guy for us dems, not shutting down gummint just for larfs like a drunken teenager, and letting Ukraine getting the aid it so desperately needs.  

He was edging towards getting rid of the rule that it only takes one person to initiate the proceedings to dump him, but he backed off at the growl of Greene and Getz (the greasy grimy gopher guts twins).  But you know if it comes to that I am sure that there will be enough dem votes to keep him at his post.  

Of course there will be things that we will want of him, but we know we will have to give him some stuff too.  I would rather have us dems running things on our own, but bipartisanship is better than the reps running everything on their own, which lately consists of them running off their mouths while Ukraine burns.

And strangely we have the greasy grimy gopher guts twins (just had to say that again) to thank for this.

What a world we live in.

What Were They Thinking?

 I'm not exactly on Cliven's side, I'm just surprised that he can openly flout the law with impunity and get away with it.  It makes me wonder what we are paying the government people to do if not to enforce the law.  I said at the time that they were ill advised to try to round up hundreds of free-range cattle to satisfy Bundy's debt.  Why didn't they just slap a lien on his house or something?

Then there's Trump.  If he did half the things that they say he did, he should have been locked up a long time ago.  For instance, why did they wait three years to prosecute him for all that election crap?  I said at the time that the impeachment thing was a waste of time because they knew they didn't have the votes in the Senate to convict him.  They should have waited until the day after he left office and then charged him in a regular court.  That insurrection thing might have been hard to prove, but I'm pretty sure they could have easily convicted him of inciting a riot.  It might have been difficult to seat an impartial jury, but the same can be said about any high-profile case with all that pre-trial publicity. 

 Then there's all those other January 6ers.  Last I heard, they were trying to convict them under some obscure law that was probably intended to protect government documents.  They have these guys on video tape busting doors, windows, and climbing all over the Capital like a bunch of monkeys.  That should be enough evidence to convict them of something more tangible.  

draft

 I can't say that I ever thought much of Clive the deadbeat who grazed his mangy herd on federal land without paying for it as any good law abiding citizen would.  Nor do I have much sympathy for gun-toting Jan 6 types.

Of course I wasn't at the trial and the articles are short and sketchy as to what happened.  Maybe there were technicalities that I am not aware of, but more likely these guys just didn't like the gummint.

This may be an omen of something that I dread, a Trumper sneaking himself onto the jury in that Stormy Daniels case by covering up his tracks.  One monkey can stop the show.

Of course Trump may well end up in the hoosegow for just not keeping his trap shut when it comes to bad-mouthing the judge, the prosecution, family of the judge, family of the prosecution.  

Our buddies against Putin, the Ukrainians, are not doing so well of late, partly due no doubt to the Trumpers not wanting to give them any dough.  A sad and sorry state.  You know the Dems would be sending them plenty of arms.  Actually so would some of the republicans if they were allowed to vote on it.  

And now it looks like that may happen despite, or perhaps because of the shenanigans of the nuts of the freedom caucus.  They have forced Mike Johnson to go over to the dems for votes otherwise nothing would pass and bingo we have that heralded goal, bipartisan leadership.  The dems and the reps banging heads together and coming to some kind of agreement.  The way it should be instead of those endless tantrums of the Marjorie Taylor Green types.

This just in 4 or 5 hours after I wrote this it is announced that one of the jurors was likely a Trumper was caught lying about his history.  

 

Cliven Bundy Revisited

 Remember this guy?  Has is really been ten years?  Seems like only yesterday.

I find it hard to believe that he actually won his case.  Is this a great country or what?

Bundy family standoff: 10 years on, cattle graze disputed Nevada land | AP News

Jury refuses to convict 4 in Nevada ranch standoff retrial | AP News