Category Archives: William Shakespeare

Your Daily Hot Air

Sue Me, Sue You Blues

I realize we’re a litigious nation and the smartest financial decision most of us could ever make is to be hit by a bus, but things are going a bit too far.

◗ George Zimmerman dodges a bullet and rather than being content with his kiss on the cheek by Seminole county prosecutors and that Florida jury, he now wants to sue those evildoers who consider him a gun-totin’, self-aggrandizing, Michelin-Man boob. Or, more specifically, a race-profiling, self-appointed neighborhood marshal who didn’t have the minimum amount of sense needed to avoid getting his beak busted and his head clunked by a guy he felt like stalking on a dark street. All of which, BTW, he is.

Zimmerman

Who, Me?

◗ Same with Asiana Airlines. One of its jets goes down, followed by questions about the suitability of its pilots to actually, y’know, land a 777, and that outfit, too, wants to haul people into court.

What next? Is suspected Boston marathon blaster Dzhokhar Tsarnaev going to shag a process server on the manufacturer of those pressure cookers for making their products explodable?

◗ Oh wait, this is next: some obsessively-fapping doofus is suing Apple in order to force the company to install porn filters on all its home porn theate… I mean, computers. The guy sez he wouldn’ta become addicted to porn had he not accidentally typed in the name of a porn site one day and one of Apple’s finest hunks of machinery actually let him see pix of naked ladies, et cetera.

Shakespeare was right.

Warriors & Peace (And Other Pretenders)

I don’t have a vote but if I did I’d nix Eddie Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Guardian UK Photo

Snowden

Just as I’d have nixed the following prize winners:

  • Barack Obama, 2009: Won because he wasn’t George W. Bush.
  • Yasser Arafat, 1994: Guerrilla warrior who eventually signed a toothless peace agreement.
  • The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, 1988: An army.
  • Lech Walesa, 1983: Won because he wasn’t communist.
  • Mother Teresa, 1979: Rabidly anti-birth control.
  • Anwar Sadat & Menachem Begin, 1978: Longtime warriors who stopped fighting because they got old.
  • Henry Kissinger, 1973: The Dark Prince of Carpet Bombing.

Nixon/Kissinger

“The Peace Prize? Me?”

The abovementioneds cheapened the award for all those who actually led lives of peace.

As for Snowden, it appears he fancies himself the star of an espionage thriller, being played out in real time and in real locations, sort of an Ian Fleming/John LeCarre-inspired reality show.

If we’re so hot to give him a prize, lets just send him a couple of comp tix to the International Spy Museum with a note saying, “Thanks for exposing what any of us with a lick of intelligence could have assumed was going on in the first place.”

[Pencil Update: Early on, when the Snowden affair first broke, I wrote that I might tend to agree with Steve Wozniak that the NSA leaker was the moral equivalent of Daniel Ellsberg. I take that back. Ellsberg had the spine to remain in this country and say, essentially, “Bring your ‘justice’ down on me. I did what I had to do.” Snowden, as we speak, remains hiding in a Moscow airport.]

Blood Money

The human capacity for assholiness continues to astound.

Juror B37, thankfully, has now decided writing a book about her days on the George Zimmerman panel just might not be the most exquisite idea ever conceived.

We have no idea what Juror B37’s real name is; let’s just refer to her herewith as Miss Ghoulish Profiteer Off Murder.

CNN Screengrab

Pulp Nonfiction

At risk of putting myself in a position of not having any books to sell, your faithful bookseller (me) has now added Juror B37’s potential book to the list of tomes he (I) will not sell.

So far, here’s the Go-buy-it-somewheres-else roll of honor:

  • Anything by Glenn Beck.

Book Cover

  • James O’Keefe’s Breakthrough.
  • Anything written by or on behalf of Geo. Zimm.
  • And now, the so-far aborted instant classic by Miss GPOM.

Apparently, a Twitter campaign led to B37’s literary (cough) agent’s office being inundated with messages not to go ahead with the project. The agent responded by saying, Golly gee, maybe I hadn’t oughtta rep this stuff.

I will applaud neither Miss GPOM nor her agent for finally realizing that their first impulse was — shall we say? — majorly fked.

Runaround Sue

The Pencil Today:

TODAY’S QUOTE

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” — Queen Gertrude in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet

Hamlet And His Mom (They’ve Got Nothing On Rick Santorum)

RICK SANTORUM’S PROBLEM

So, now we can go back to forgetting that Iowa exists.

Republicans in the cornstalk state staged their beauty contest last night and, in the end, couldn’t decide who had the prettier face, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum?

Let me ask that again — Rick Santorum?

Rick Santorum Wore This Suit While Decrying Gay Marriage

Sheesh! Talk about good news-bad news. I mean, the vast majority of overall-ed voters rejected the notion of a Michele Bachmann presidency, which will go a long way toward ensuring that I get a sound sleep tonight. That’s the good news.

But Rick Santorum?

Here, in his own words, is the guy whom 30,007 Iowans think ought to be able to name the next Supreme Court justice: “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”

Man, Rick Santorum would wake Hamlet’s shrink from his nap.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when it comes to guys who pontificate the way Santorum does, the “problem” they have is trying to ignore the endless pictures of homosexual acts that crowd into their imaginations every time they turn the lights out.

Rick Santorum’s Problem(s)

IGNORANTIA LEGIS*

Eek. Monroe County Auditor Amy Gerstman has done the right thing by saying she won’t run for another term.

Gerstman

But with the latest revelations about her county credit card use for personal expenses, she might do herself a favor and make an appointment with one of the fine attorneys over at Bunger & Robertson to see if she ought to start packing her toothbrush for a little stay away from home.

Gerstman has purchased gifts, groceries, dinners, and other personal items using at least three of the four credit cards registered under her office’s name. The Herald Times reported this morning that she also paid her kids’ private school tuitions with one of the cards.

The auditor (for the moment) has apologized and says she’s paid back all the money. That’s nice. But if a guy robs a bank and, while being chased by the cops, runs back into the bank claiming he wants to return the loot, the heat still slaps the bracelets on him.

By the way, that fourth credit card? Gerstman claims her office has forgotten the password to access online information about it. She also says the bank lady who normally helps her with the account has been on vacation. Both County Commissioner Marty Hawk and the H-T requested info on that card more than two months ago.

Some vacation.

Oh, and another thing. Bloomington Alternative ran a little piece when she announced her run for the office in 2008. Scroll down to the third paragraph where she’s quoted as saying, “There needs to be a change, restoring confidence is essential.”

Some confidence.

* The legal profession’s shorthand for the Latin, Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse.)

KILL YOUR TV

Make sure you read at least ten books this year.

Here are ten of my faves:

  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
  • Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories by Philip Roth
  • The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

Angier

  • The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson
  • Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris (the science writer, not the entrepreneurial self-help goof)
  • Ball Four by Jim Bouton & Leonard Schecter
  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (a so-far three-volume bio of the 36rd President with the fourth book due out this spring)
  • Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos H. Papadimitriou
  • A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

A simple truth: books make you smart; TV makes you stupid.

FRICTION

The band Television was fronted by the very talented Tom Verlaine along with high school chum Richard Hell. Born Thomas Miller, Verlaine adopted his stage surname from the French poet Paul Verlaine. He said he did it as an homage to Bob Dylan who also renamed himself after a tragic versifier.

%d bloggers like this: