Horcruxes

I've been thinking a lot lately about the commonalities between Der Furor and the Dark Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter stories, in particular Voldemort's attempt to gain immortality by splitting his soul into seven parts and storing them in horcruxes. Granted, Der Furor sold his soul long ago, as did most of his far-right Republican enablers and hangers-on, but the issue of horcruxes as a device for ensuring physical, if not political immortality is fascinating nevertheless.

If Der Furor decided to split the dried and shriveled remains of his soul into seven pieces (as did Voldemort), what things would he use as horcruxes in which to store them? Here are my thoughts:

Horcrux #1: A Golf Club. He spent more time playing golf and soaking the taxpayers by having the Secret Service pay exorbitant rates for the privilege of staying at his facilities while protecting him than on actually governing. A golf club seems like a good choice for Horcrux #1.

Horcrux #2: A Big Mac. Given that he actually catered a White House reception for college football champions from fast food restaurants, why not a Big Mac (since he likes bigly things) as Horcrux #2?

Horcrux #3: A MAGA Hat. Nothing says “America First” like wearing a bright red MAGA hat while storming the Capitol and beating up the police with an American flag. It’s a shoo-in for Horcrux #3.

Horcrux #4: A Top Secret Document. Voldemort’s horcruxes were always made from items with special meaning to him. Since Der Furor stole so many classified documents when he left the White House, it’s clear that a nice Top Secret document – especially one with lots of special handling caveats – would make a great Horcrux #4.

Horcrux #5: Lindsey Graham. Although Professor Dumbledore told Harry Potter it’s not advisable to use a living creature as a horcrux, Voldemort did it with his snake Nagini, and so a snake like Lindsey Graham (with no soul of his own to crowd Der Furor's piece) would serve as a good Horcrux #5.

Horcrux #6: A Lawsuit. According to an ongoing analysis by USA Today, Der Furor and his businesses had been involved in more than 4000 lawsuits, either as plaintiff, defendant, bankruptcy seeker, or as a third party. He and the Republican party have filed dozens of lawsuits attempting to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, prevent investigation of his business practices, or protect himself from responsibility for the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. A lawsuit is a very appropriate choice for Horcrux #6.

Horcrux #7: A Bible. That a man as famously unreligious and morally challenged as Der Furor could capture the support of evangelical Christians is one of the wonders of the age, and so choosing a Bible as Horcrux #7 would allow him to store part of his soul as a reminder of his subjugation and emasculation of the religious right.

Those are my choices for Der Furor’s seven Horcruxes ... do you have any better ones? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Naughty or Nice - How Does Santa Really Know?

As we all know, Santa Claus traditionally keeps two lists: the "naughty" list, identifying children who, on the basis of past performance, are less likely to have their Christmas wishes granted; and the "nice" list, identifying children who have behaved in an acceptable fashion during the previous year and are, thus, more likely to enjoy a materialistically positive visit from Santa.*

There are many hundreds of millions of children in the world, and keeping track of who's naughty and who's nice is a daunting challenge. How does he do it? How does he keep track of all those deserving (and undeserving) children? There are many ways to look at how Santa makes his naughty and nice decisions, but you may not have realized that at least some of them have been the subject of (quasi-) scholarly study.

Each year at Christmas, the esteemed British Medical Journal (BMJ) publishes an issue that features a number of satirical articles alongside the real ones. In this year's Christmas edition, the BMJ offered this article: Dispelling the Nice or Naughty Myth: Retrospective Observational Study of Santa Claus. This excerpt from the introduction to the study explains the basis of the study -

It has long been thought that Santa Claus visits children depending on whether they have been naughty or nice in the past year. This belief finds textual support in the popular holiday song “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” written by Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie and published in 1934. The Christmas classic goes on: “he sees when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” Yet no empirical evidence exists to support the assertion that Santa Claus rewards children based on good behaviour or to establish whether this is the only factor determining the likelihood of a visit from him. We chose to study paediatric hospital wards because sick children are the most deserving of a visit from Santa Claus at Christmas. We evaluated the relative importance of children’s behaviour, distance to the North Pole, and contextual socioeconomic deprivation on the likelihood of a visit from Santa Claus.

Please don't share this with any Republicans, because they'll reflexively think it's a real study and their heads will explode at the waste of money.

Anyhow, we now see that a review of Clausian visits to pediatric wards can serve as a potentially source of information on Santa's naughty/nice decisions; nevertheless, there are any number of other sources of information available to The Big Man as he makes his assessments.

For instance, it has long been known that Santa Claus assigns senior liaison elves to America's National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6), and their sister agencies around the world**. This means it's a good idea to always be nice on the phone, and not to act like a despicable troll online.

In addition, investigative journalists have uncovered indications that Santa has long-term contracts with major private investigation services to provide physical surveillance to complement the data provided by NSA and GCHQ.

And it has also been reported that Santa's North Pole Naughty/Nice Operations Center (known to insiders as the NPN2OC) has recently installed a new computer system that allows it to access - in addition to the information from NSA, CIA, GCHQ, MI-6, and other intelligence services - video feeds from traffic cameras, automatic teller machines, security cameras in banks and other businesses, as well as real-time text and video feeds from Facebook, Twitter***, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

Given the state of the world, with rampant religious intolerance, political chicanery, greed, corruption, anger, and general hostility, Santa needs all the help he can get to keep track of the naughtiness ... but he's up to the challenge. He really does know if you've been bad or good.

And a whole lot of naughty people out there are well and truly screwed this Christmas.

Have a good day. Be nice, if only for a little while.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* It's a little-known fact that Santa doesn't just track the naughty/nice statistics of children ... there are a lot of adults looking at a pretty bleak Christmas, too.

** This explains why a traitorous twit like Edward Snowdon will be on the naughty list in perpetuity.

*** There's a whole separate server farm at the NPN2OC specifically dedicated to Donald Trump's Twitter feed. He'll be on the naughty list for a long, long time.

The Latest Appointment

SATIRE ALERT!*

In a late-night tweet issued from his headquarters at Trump Tower, president-elect Donald Trump announced that he has selected The Mouth of Sauron as his Press Secretary.

Since the fall of Sauron and the relocation of the Dark Tower of Barad-Dûr to midtown Manhattan, The Mouth of Sauron has been working as a senior advisor to Alex Jones at Infowars.com. Asked whether his ability to serve as president-elect Trump's press secretary would be adversely affected by the fact that Aragorn cut off his head, The Mouth of Sauron denied that a functioning head was a requirement for service in a Trump administration. He will assume the position following the inauguration of the new president on January 20th.

Have a good day. More thoughts - satirical and otherwise - coming.

Bilbo

* Apologies to those of you who already saw this on my Facebook page. I decided to push it out to a larger audience.

Enforcing Discipline in Government Service

You may recall that North Korean overlord Kim Jong Un has been in the news from time to time for allegedly devising new and brutal methods of executing those with whom he has significant disagreements. The latest example of this flair for personnel management with extreme prejudice came when he recently had his minister of defense executed by a firing squad armed with antiaircraft guns; a year or two ago, he also supposedly had his uncle and mentor eaten alive by a pack of savage dogs.

Now, if you think this is a bit of an extreme approach to enforcing discipline among senior government officials, you're not alone*. It seems to me that the prospect of being eaten by dogs is not conducive to attracting top talent to government service, even in a workers' paradise like North Korea. Nevertheless, one must wonder if we might be able to improve the performance of our own government if there were more creative punishments available for those guilty of graft, corruption, nepotism, sexual misconduct** or other sorts of first- or second-degree ass clownery. Here are a few of the sentences that come to mind ...

- Take away their chauffeured cars and require them to take public transportation to work. The horror of having to rub elbows with Real People would be a terrifying punishment.

- Reassign them to Detroit ...

- Force them to listen to loops of Ted Cruz speeches.

- Require Republicans to reconcile GOP tax and economic policies with reality, using only data provided by the Congressional Research Service - not by a conservative partisan think tank.

- Require Democrats to explain how to pay for Democratic social programs, using only data provided by the Congressional Research Service - not by a liberal partisan think tank.

- Make them watch a "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" marathon; number of hours dictated by the severity of their misconduct.

What are your ideas? How would you discipline the obstreperous children of Capitol Hill? Leave a comment and let the rest of us know.

Have a good day. Demand more from your elected reprehensives, even if you end up continually disappointed. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Although I'm quite sure that such measures have a certain appeal to the most rabid anti-Obama wings of the extreme right.

** A marvelous euphemism, that.

Political Perfumery

There are a million different overpriced scents available nowadays for ladies to use in attracting helpless men. Some of them are known by their manufacturers, like "J'adore" from Christian Dior, or "Obsession" from Calvin Klein, and some bear the names of individual sponsoring celebrities, such as "Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds" or "Fantasy Britney Spears," by you-can-guess-who.

This got me to thinking about new perfumes that might be developed or existing ones that might be licensed by various political parties or special interests to advertise their candidates or highlight their particular issues. After all, the foul stench of present-day politics could certainly benefit from a little brightening, and a suitable perfume would certainly be a change of pace from tired old advertising methods like buttons, yard signs, and apocalyptic television and radio spots. Here are a few of my suggestions for political perfumes ...

"Unforgivable Woman" is currently available from Sean Jean Scent. I'm quite sure that the GOP would love to distribute this as a backhanded slap at Hillary Clinton. There's no shortage of ethically agile lawyers available to arrange an appropriate licensing agreement.

The True Religion company, makers of jeans and other articles of clothing, also produces a line of "True Religion" perfumes. Perhaps the company could license the name to the GOP to underscore the party's claim of Christian exclusivity*. It could also develop a new scent** to license to the so-called "Islamic State," one with a powerful base note of rotting flesh combined with overtones of self-righteousness and raw power.

Elizabeth Arden already produces a scent line called "Red Door," but a new perfume named "Revolving Door" could honor those members of Congress and senior federal officials who leave public service and hire on as shills for special interests. The business opportunity is almost too good to pass up.

Gucci already markets a perfume called "Envy Me," but a suitably high-priced scent targeting the 1% and called "Envy Us" would surely sell very well, and help to set the wearers apart from the Great Unwashed. And for those who might bend the rules a bit too far in their quest to enter the 1%, Gucci also makes a scent called "Guilty," available for both men and women.

Davidoff could spin off a version of it's "Cool Water" scent, targeting wealthy contributors (both male and female!) to political campaigns and special interests, and marketing it as "Cool Million." More than a scent, it could serve as a subtle reminder of the preferred donation amount.

And finally,

Lancome could market it's already-existing line of scents called "Miracle" to the economic wizards of both parties: to those on the right who believe that stacking the deck for the wealthy will solve all economic problems; and to those on the left who believe that soaking the rich to artificially spread the wealth is the answer to those same problems.

Any other suggestions for perfumes to cover up that lingering foul odor of politics? Leave a comment with your ideas.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* They might want to pass on the True Religion Hippie Chic Eau De Parfum Spray for Women, though, as it might not send an appropriately conservative message.

** Perhaps called "Die, Infidel" or "Absolutely the ONLY True Religion."

A Worthwhile Investment of $2588.25

If I had extra money to spend frivolously (and who does, nowadays, outside of the 1%?), I think I know how I'd invest $2588.25 of it.

I found this wonderful product advertised at the Neatoshop this morning ...

Yes, Dear Readers, it's Doctor McPhee's genuine Snake Oil Soap, made with genuine cobra oil and delivered in a collectable tin ... only $5.95 per bar!

So, let's see ... $5.95 per bar, multiplied by 435 members of Congress, comes to (scratches head and furrows brow) ... $2,588.25*. Think of the advantages:

- Encourages members of Congress to clean up their acts!

- Pays homage to Republican economic and Democratic social theories!

- Makes it easier and more convenient for our elected reprehensives to wash their hands of the results of their ineptitude and intransigence!

Buy it now! Do your part to help clean up our political system. You'll also benefit the economy**.

It couldn't hurt.

Have a good day. Be clean. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* For a mere $23.80 more, you can add a bar each for Donald Trump, NRA mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre, anti-tax gadfly Grover Norquist, and all-purpose blowhard Al Sharpton.


** Probably the Chinese economy.

Worshiping the Weapon of Your Choice

Despite what some far-right zealots would have you believe, the United States was not founded as a "Christian nation," but as a nation in which all people of all faiths might freely exercise their beliefs without having them imposed by a king, imam, Pope, ayatollah, or other figure marinated in religious righteousness. The Founders lived in a world which had recent experience of religious wars, and weren't interested in bringing this to the new country they were establishing.

But that's not to say that we don't have a national religion here in the good old USA - we do!

It's worship at the festooned altar of firearms, of course.

Devout adherents of the First Reformed Church of the National Rifle Association (everybody shout "amen"!!) have their holy scripture (the Second Amendment to the Constitution), and have worked hard to elect their chosen candidates office in spite of the Constitutional ban on religious tests for office (Article VI) ... in 1997 for example, The Onion reported that Texas voters had elected a .44 calibre revolver to the Senate.

Devout gun worshipers work hard every day to ensure that you can exercise the freedom to worship your firearm of choice, regardless of caliber or magazine size ... recent court cases have beaten back shameful attempts to limit freedom of gun worship, including a crucial 5-4 Supreme Court decision (National Rifle Association v Mercy Hospital) upholding the right of a Tennessee citizen to carry a concealed howitzer in a hospital maternity ward.

Exercise your freedom to maintain your own Holy Arsenal ... worship the gun of your choice, say "hallelujah!"

Have a good day. Honor Saints Glock, Smith, Wesson, and Colt. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo