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Friday, September 27, 2024

The Clump / Headless Debate

Admit it, I came awfully close to predicting "Harris"

I apologize for my relative silence lately. Oh, I'm fine (other than an upcoming hip replacement surgery) but the "news" is so stupid and aggravating that I risk an aneurysm any time I give it more than 30 seconds of attention.  I swear, if I hear Kamala bring up her "middle class background" one more time, my head will explode.

Which is more or less what happened to the protagonist of my 2009 novel "CLUMP: An American Splatire." A huge, heavily-muscled mystery of a man with no head and no awareness of his surroundings. His headless condition doesn't keep his handlers from making him into a huge celebrity entertainer (while hiding the little secret that he'll beat to death anyone who touches him). And eventually (spoiler alert!) the headless, clueless Clump runs for President.

With obvious parallels to the brainless Kamala Harris, let's look at what a Clump campaign add looked like:

Emotionally stirring music played as the camera tracked up a grassy hill where Americans of every type were standing, looking directly at the camera. The old and young, the rich and poor, the black and white.


"Most politicians," said a warmly accessible voiceover, "don't care what we the people have to say. They make promises, then break them. And they tell lies. But one candidate is different. Very different."


At the top of the hill, the camera finds a lone man wearing a well-tailored suit and an American flag pin. A man with no head. 


"Clump never lies," said the voiceover announcer. "Clump never makes promises he will not keep. Clump is not against anything that you are for, or for anything you are against. And because Clump is entirely poll-driven, his voice is..."


"My voice," said an elderly black woman.

"My voice," said a uniformed policeman.

"My voice," said a goth chick.

"My voice," said a bank president.

"My voice," said an attractive Latina.


"Your voice!" shouted the hillside of people, pointing at the camera as it zoomed past them to find Clump standing tall and proud, fists on his hips like Superman.


"Clump," said the announcer as the music climaxed. "Sticking his neck out...for you."

Okay, that already sounds more substantive than anything Harris is airing. But of course, handling the media is a job that both Harris and Clump delegated to sneaky specialists...

It was Heidecker who had created a war-room of bloggers to secretly feed misinformation and rumors to Internet chat rooms. 


Heidecker's bloggers planted damaging lies about Clump's opponents, weaving lurid accusations from a Heidecker-approved list of words which included incest, lubricant, chickens, cocaine, kiddy-diddler, transvestite, felch, hooker, ball gag, traitor, coprophilia, snuff film, anal fistula, wide stance, murder scene, smegma, raincoat, kickback, sheep, Thailand, fisting, fishhook, nipple, vomitorium, gerbil, flesh-eating syphilis and, most damning of all, "big pharmaceutical companies."


But above all, the true genius of Heidecker's campaign strategy was that it offered what voters prized above all else: simplicity. No confusing points or platforms. No moral shades of gray. No lectures about economics, geography, or history. No matters of life and death.


"We are living in post-intellectual times, yes?" Heidecker said to his campaign staff.

But surely a literally brainless candidate would never get very far, right? Right...?

Pundits and politicos who dared to bring up Clump's headless condition were pilloried as being insensitive by advocacy groups for the differently abled. Angry speeches on Clump’s behalf were even made in Congress by members who had lost limbs in various wars, and resented the notion that a man's merit should be judged by his number of extremities.


Clump's history as an entertainer was also taken off the table as an attack point because the Republicans had previously elected actors like Ronald Reagan, Fred Thompson, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sonny Bono. 


On the Democratic side, they couldn't criticize a “brainless entertainer” without alienating 99% of their all-important Hollywood donor base.


Thank goodness in our current election, we have valuable real world methods for sorting out our candidates and testing their knowledge and mettle. Debates, for instance, could never favor anyone who was dead from the neck up. Then again...


At the televised Presidential debates, Clump absolutely destroyed the concentration of his opponents. 


Each time Clump was asked a question, the camera sat on him for three interminable minutes as he gasped, swallowed, drooled, and rolled his tongue.


This made the other two candidates into nervous wrecks who stammered during their own answers and actually jumped away from the lecterns if Clump took a step in their direction. Which Clump frequently did, thanks to the remote-controlled shoes operated by a campaign assistant.


Whenever one of the other candidates actually made an intelligible remark of any kind, Clump was given 90 seconds for rebuttal. On the few occasions Clump produced audible bon mots like "Gaaa!," "Akkk!," or an explosive fart, he received thunderous applause from his supporters in the audience.


In all seriousness, none of this is more ridiculous or frightening than the spectacle unfolding in front of our horrified eyes right now. I'm certainly not the first to observe that satire has gotten very difficult to write because reality, such as it is, has become so preposterously stupid that it's hard to top. Harris and Walz are blithering idiots, media-wrapped in the Emperor's New Clothes. 


I wonder if this is how George Orwell felt?


stilton’s place, stilton, political, humor, conservative, cartoons, jokes, hope n’ change, Clump, Kamala


Monday, September 9, 2024

Word War II

stilton’s place, stilton, political, humor, conservative, cartoons, jokes, hope n’ change, trump, harris, kamala, debate
Apparently, the rule about "one bottle of water" had some wiggle room 

On Tuesday, September 10, we'll finally see the great debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. An epic confrontation which will at last answer the question on everyone's mind: is it even possible for that whiny, nasal, cackling female hyena (with the sporadic Stepin Fetchit accent) to get out a cogent sentence that makes sense? At least when her boss was onstage, he made it damn clear that he beat Medicare.

Kamala's people are already laying the groundwork to explain her likely failure by saying that the debate rules, which were specifically demanded by Joe Biden, will disadvantage her. For instance, she'll be handicapped by the fact that Trump's microphone will be turned off while she's speaking, raising the very real danger that people will hear what she's saying. Additionally, there will be no studio audience to cheer riotously when Kamala mentions her love of Venn diagrams, yellow school buses, the difference between being strong and being a bitch, soaking collard greens in her bathtub, and her promise that someday children will be able to see the moon with their own eyes.

Still, it's likely that Harris will get an eensy-weensy iota of help from the ABC moderators when it comes to the questioning. Having previously stated that she intends to confiscate guns, pull the plug on free speech, and outlaw fracking, we'll all be leaning in to our TV sets when she's finally put on the spot and asked what her favorite color is. Trump, on the other hand, will be asked if he's given up rape during the campaign, why he wants to destroy democracy, and how long it will take him to grow a little Hitler mustache. There is also an unconfirmed rumor that while he's answering, the moderators will take shots at Trump's ear with BB guns.

And speaking of shots, let's each knock back a drink every time Kamala uses the phrase "convicted felon" on Tuesday night and see if we're still conscious by the end of the debate. Or want to be.

FROM THE 2020 VAULT: AGING RACIST TEAMS WITH SKANKY WOMAN OF COLOR!

History was made Tuesday afternoon when Joe Biden's hand, resting limply on a Ouija Board planchette, was aggressively guided to a picture of Senator Kamala Harris - thereby making her the official Democrat candidate for vice president of the United States.

Of course, when drummed out of the actual presidential nomination process, Harris said it was because Democrats (those misogynistic racist bastards) just weren't ready to vote for a "strong woman of color" - a trend which we hope to see repeated in November.

She also wasn't shy about accusing Biden himself of a long, long history of racism...



While none of the finalists on Joe's potential VP list were any good, we have to admit in complete honesty that we find Ms. Harris the most odious of the lot. Even her nomination is a sad day for our nation.

Friday, August 30, 2024

Reading Club (With Spikes On It)

Don't panic, it's just another pen name

I've been remiss about commenting on the news lately because it's all so exasperating, preposterous, and staged. Truthfully, I don't have the emotional stamina to put up with it. And yet, I love talking to everyone here and I need to post something. And so today is the day I'm finally unveiling my one-and-only novel and, for a limited time, making it free on Amazon kindle (or any computer, tablet, or phone with the free Amazon Kindle reader app).

Here's the book description from the Amazon page:

Clump is a man with no name, no past and, most importantly, no head. The huge, heavily muscled giant is unaware of the world around him, but improbably becomes the most popular entertainer in America. Clump's unscrupulous medical and media handlers work desperately to manage his skyrocketing career and wholesome, family-friendly public image...while concealing the inconvenient fact that the headless man is homicidally dangerous when touched.

A so-called "splatire" owing to the mix of razor-sharp comedy and graphic violence, CLUMP's satiric targets include the entertainment industry, medicine, journalism, mega churches, corporate greed and ineptitude, politics, and a morally vacuous culture that increasingly and enthusiastically embraces the brainless.

This scathingly hilarious novel is not for the faint-hearted, the thin-skinned, or the unadventurous but is an all-you-can stomach buffet for those who like their comedy dark and their social commentary barbed.

Wow! Sounds great, huh?! But the buying public hasn't managed to discover the book in the past ten years (and some readers who did discover the book were appalled). So "CLUMP" is buried so deep in the Amazon algorithms that it usually won't turn up even if you search for it by name. I'm hoping to change that by having a bunch of people download the book for free. And I'd love honest reviews, too (that don't mention this blog or "Stilton" or other clues that would lead the FBI to my door).

But fair warning: despite being a very funny book, it's also sporadically horrifying and politically incorrect in a spectacular variety of ways. If I was big enough to be cancelled, this book would do the trick!

It wasn't my goal to shock, but I absolutely was willing to shock in pursuit of truth. Because that's what satire does, and "splatire" even more so.

"CLUMP" has F-bombs the way Colonel Sanders has fried chicken: an unending supply in spicy and extra crispy varieties. There is violence, rape, cruelty, sexism, and other sins galore. But all in the interest of (my) truth and dark humor. Very, very dark humor. And despite being a decade old, you'll find it surprisingly timely in the context of current events.

So let me be very clear: I'd really appreciate it if you download the book (and feel free to share the link with friends who won't know what hit them) but you don't have to read it. Obviously, I'd like people to read it and hopefully enjoy it or even write a short review. But if you're already reaching for a barf bag in the first 20 pages, just walk away slowly - it only gets more intense. And better.

Here's a quick taste test - the opening paragraph: "Rita Romero Gonzaga Gonzales had fabulous breasts. They were large, natural, mocha brown, and not covered in blood yet."

The e-book of CLUMP: An American Splatire is FREE for Kindle (and devices using the free Kindle app) from Friday, August 30 until Tuesday, September 3rd. (Discount begins at 12 am Pacific time) Make sure it says "$0.00" before hitting the buy button, and make sure that it's not just showing "$0.00" for Amazon Unlimited customers, which is a whole different deal. There's also a beautiful paperback edition suitable for classing up coffee tables, bookshelves, and bathrooms!