The Sinister Saturday

8 September , 2007

Listed on humor-blogs.com…

Like many of my colleagues at humor-blogs.com, I’ve decided to flag down the week’s blogs I noticed and unlike many of them, I’ve also gathered news items that I took note of, but couldn’t muster the brain wattage to write a full post on. If I don’t get to you, don’t assume that I don’t care; just blame it on my addiction to old-people vitamins.

The Sinister Six


1. Osama bin Laden has released a new video but I couldn’t really focus since I kept wondering :
A) Why is he still alive?
B) How he thought that no one would notice that he had chosen to dye his beard? May Allah, we praise him, bless you in the holy Jihad and here’s some Just for Men. Wait…what? It occurs to me that you probably can’t buy commercial hair coloring in a Pakistani cave, so it’s either shoe polish or the byproduct of a goat.
Further, he spends an inordinate amount of time discussing how Whoopi is wrong for The View.

2. Potentially not a Senator Larry Craig has rescinded the previous retraction of his originally withdrawn resignation – did I get that right? If he has this much trouble quitting a job after being found guilty of lewdness, no wonder he flaps around like a netted flounder when he’s taking a crap.

3. In a chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong, NBC has added noted liberal orator and occasional newsman Keith Olbermann to the regular on air team of Football Night in America. While it is refreshingly obvious that Chris Collinsworth, Bob Costas and Tiki Barber have no idea why he’s there, it’s equally obvious that former wide receiver Collinsworth finds Olbermann to be an unmitigated tool and that this feeling is mutually expressed. Tiki Barber kept looking at his co hosts with the clear intent of not misreading the teleprompter.

4. Fred Thompson has officially announced that he is now a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. In a dreadfully long announcement on his website and an appearance on the Tonight Show, the ursine former Senator tried to look presidential without looking like a district attorney, a fleet admiral or any of the other serious roles where’s he’s asked to imitate a figure of genuine authori…oh, I get it.

5. David Letterman, in a clear sign that he is the real king of late night, made international headlines by agreeing to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. The last time Jay Leno made news was when he announced his 2009 retirement. The next time he will make the news will be when that occurs.

6. Luciano Pavarotti died on Thursday; he was 71. There’s no joke here, of course and I sincerely hope (despite my own atheism) that he finds a corner of the afterlife with comfortable chairs and a good Alfredo sauce.

The Second Sinister Six

Okay, I think that we’re all a little tired of that “Sinister Whatever” thing now – if I weren’t such a lazy, uncaring baboon, I’d go back to think of something better.

Oh well…I took note of these, please check them out;

1. Diesel at Mattress Police has opened up another caption contest displaying not only his skills at Photoshop but his unending need to plaster his head all over his web site. Check it out and enter a possible caption. I understand that the winner gets a sack of Spanish gold. And no, despite having the perfect caption, I’m not playing. So there.

2. Chris C at Nothing to See Here gives us concise analysis of one of the most bizarre products I’ve ever seen. Really, this thing is messed up and, if I might add, an affront to Jeebus.

3. Mark Jabo at Get Incensed not only linked to me (a sign of tremendous wisdom) but also provided a nice series of video links to the late Luciano Pavarotti. It’s good stuff.

4. Over at The Frog Blog, The Frogster reminds us of the long and storied history of the Rutgers football program. I had no idea.

5. In a feature that strikes a chord with my former Catholicism, Joel at Crummy Church Signs reminded us all of the importance of the Blessed Sacraments; most notably, the Sacrament of Barbeque.

6. The ‘other’ Dan (ha!) of humor-blogs.com who runs the immensely popular Dan’s Blah Blah Blog tells us the chilling story of a terrifying encounter with The Beast. The suspense might kill you, so be careful.

Next Saturday, be sure to tune in (can you tune the interwebs?) for the next installment of The Sinister Saturday. There is a good chance slight chance some remote possibility that I’ll actually get off of my ass and write something.

But remember, this is for entertainment purposes only. Please, no wagering.

 

 

 

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Bathroom Sex: A Family Value.

6 September , 2007

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If you must have bathroom sex with a perfect stranger, try to do it in a private residence, secluded hotel or the screening of any Nicole Kidman film. Thus hidden, you know that your privacy is ensured. Unlike most of you, I have never had a sexual encounter with a United States Senator in the public washroom of the Minneapolis airport. While I have long frequented “hot-spot” airports for all sorts of fleshy indulgences (bacon-cheeseburgers, mostly) I have never scored a Senator.

Congratulations, Minneapolis Police Sergeant Dave Karsnia!!

If you own a television, a radio, or a telegraph office you already know that Senator Larry Craig (R-Extremely Conflicted) has recently been apprehended for attempting to solicit sex from an undercover police officer in Minneapolis. The afore-mentioned Sergeant apparently caught Senator Craig through the time-honored police tactic of having feet.

Senator Craig was convicted of misdemeanor lewdness but his charges for felony jackassery are still pending. Senator Craig is another ‘family values’ social conservative who has shown how much he values his family by seeking sex from someone who is not in it.

Craig was taken into custody after having an encounter with the feet of Sergeant Karsnia. According to reports, the Senator was a virtual orchestra of foot-tapping, toe-nudging, intra-potty eye contact and lascivious hand waving. Using their special Minnesota Vice enigma machines, the police deduced that Senator Craig was looking for some one-on-one personal man lovin’ in an industrial green bathroom stall.

This ritual is, apparently, against the law. Although, having watched many episodes of Law & Order, I am at a loss to understand what he was charged with. He did not have public sex; he did not even state that he wanted public sex. In fact, the wordless encounter was ended when Sergeant Karsnia – I’m not making this up - slid a card under the stall that read ‘POLICE’.

“LC: I sit down, um, to go to the bathroom and ah, you said our feet bumped. I believe they did, ah, because I reached down and scooted over and um, the next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says Police.”

In this case it seemed pretty effective, but it must be one of the most ludicrous ways to stop a suspect. In a hostage situation, a similar card should be raised up using balloons. But, since that’s a serious felony, the card should have an exclamation mark on it.

Craig should have responded with a card that said ‘BRIBE?’ Had he, I’m sure that the police would have appreciated his witty retort thus releasing him from the legal hook.

You might be expecting me to point out that Republicans have been very hard on Craig, practically tying him to an airplane in order to get him the hell out of office and out of DC. They’ve been harder on Craig, some might suggest, than on Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who was exposed as the client of DC area prostitutes. There is, you might opine, a double standard…

I won’t waste your time or my typing – Republicans will let you alone if you are caught snogging a hooker or are indicted for campaign fraud as long as you apologize and thank The Jeebus. But don’t be kissing the dudes.

What is of far more interest to me is the fact that after declaring his intent to resign on Saturday, Craig (having pleaded guilty) will now fight the matter in court and intends to remain in the Senate. As a humorist, this is the kind of thing that just makes life worth living. So as repayment to the Senator, I would like to suggest the following legal strategies. Each of these should be sufficient to get you back to sitting oddly in public bathrooms.

1. Toilet Dancing: while listening to the Mannheim Steamroller on his iPod, the Senator was overcome with the need to bust a move.
2. Alien Attack; unknown to Sergeant Karsnia a face hugger like that seen in the Aliens movies had entered the bathroom via an air duct. The Senator was trying to warn the Sergeant without alerting the alien fiend.
3. Struck by The Jeebus; as a deep man of faith (or man of deep facehugger.jpgfaith) the Senator was doing full-body equivalent of speaking in tongues. Sadly, this happened while the Senator had dropped his pants and was on the crapper. Bad luck, Larry.
4. Saw a Spider; these scare the crap out of the Senator, and he was flinching in fear. Fortunately, this happened while the Senator had dropped his pants and was on the crapper.

Thank you, Senator Craig. Despite appearing grievously hypocritical and allegedly getting your bathroom funk on, you’re okay in my book.

Well, actually you’re not, but I’ll put you in Katherine Harris‘ box (oh man, did I actually type that?) and hope that you don’t go away. I’d much rather write about an imploding goo-sack such as yourself than just about anything else. Also, let’s face it, political figures of ridicule such as yourself and My Baby Katy are good for my traffic.

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I Want to Fight Peggy Noonan.

30 August , 2007

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Here’s my recipe for writing a weekly (ha!) blog; ignore, ignore, and then frantically try to come up with a subject in my vain hope of posting every seven days. Last night, when I was reduced to looking through the contents of my kitchen for an idea, I remembered that I had made a list.

I did this at the behest of my friend Paul, who writes a really nifty blog that recently stuck it to the man. Relieved, I went to my PC (Yes, I’m still using my Amiga, damn it!) and opened up the appropriate file.

Apparently, I must have just suffered a head injury on the day that I started this list. It only contained one and it made no damn sense;

“Noonan sez CDN silly.”

Other than my spelling of the word ‘says’ being from The Simpsons, I recognized none of this. My usual remedy of chain smoking while downing generous gulps of Glenlivet didn’t help – but I did beat the crap out of my neighbor. I later asked my wife, the lovely and erudite Mrs. Sinister, but she noted that she didn’t go looking for things on “that part” of the computer since finding my erotic fanfic about The Golden Girls.

Eventually I did what any serious opinion columnist would do and performed the Google Dance, guessing at what my phrase might mean. I eventually found a column from the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal written by Peggy Noonan. Much to my surprise, I had apparently read such a thing. Initially, this just served as a reminder not to surf the Interwebs when gooned on cough medicine, but then I found this:

“In France they speak French, and in China they speak Chinese. In Canada they have two national languages, but that’s one reason Canada often seems silly. They don’t even know what language they dream in.”

What language they dream in? Maybe we should examine what language you write in? To be fair, it’s obviously English, but the kind of English indicating that Peggy is a native of the tiny village Western Rhetorical Nonsense.

I’m going to ignore that since more than 32 million people speak Spanish there, the United States is essentially bilingual already. Spanish is also recognized as an official language or ‘language of government’ to some degree in California, Arizona, New Mexico, the frightening state of Texas and in whatever the hell Puerto Rico is. I will further ignore that in 1794, a motion was presented to the United States Congress asking that laws be printed in English and in German.

Yup, German…and you thought that the French disliked the Americans for no good reason.

Further, the current President of the United States speaks Spanish, and presumably as his first language. Given the regularity with which he turns whatever he’s thinking into serial misspeaking of English, he must have come to it later in life.

In France they speak French – Peg has us nailed there and I’m proud of her. They also invented that language, so I’m even more proud of them. Same for China and Chinese, although they speak about two hundred thousand variations of it according to the number I invented since I couldn’t bother to look it up. Germans speak German – they invented that too, or maybe it invented them. It only makes sense that Peggy should expect that in the United States, they should all speak United Statesian.

What’s that? There is no such language? English is actually a foreign language and merely an accident of the flow of immigrants? English is just a grand coincidence to the American identity?

Damn – don’t tell Peggy. Can I call you Peggy?

Peggy’s oeuvre on language culminated with the following compassionate and charitable statement that in no way made me want to gag;

“We must speak the same language so we can hearten each other.”

Oh, so that’s why?

Hypothetically, I have two situations in my head and I cannot decide which is more heartening;

1. Peggy Noonan Schools for Mandatory Heartening through Forced Education spring up around the country where people can have their potential for heartening increased dramatically. Programs could also include ‘An Introduction to Cultural Assimilation As To Not Make Whitey Uncomfortable’ and ‘Who’s Your Favorite Fifty-Something Former Reagan Speech writer, Pedro?

2. You hearten people by accepting them as they are and agree that both you and they need to work very hard to get on the same page with language, culture and education.

Personally, I think I know which one I prefer but I need someone to help me with the math since I never took Heartening and Discrete Mathematics for Rich White Women.

So when I turn of the klieg lights here in the Sinister Tower and descend into the murky depths of my peat bog for a well-earned sleep, I will think of Peggy. It will occur to me, as a Canadian, that being called silly by such a person may be a blessing rather than a slight.

Then, I will dream…of Peggy…and I will do so in English, French, Franglais and maybe in some dizzyingly forbidden combination of the three.

And I will be heartened.

 

 

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Lights, Camera, Genuine Rage!

2 August , 2007

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Sometimes fake is just as good as real. Splenda works pretty well. Turkey bacon isn’t *that* bad. Women faking orgasms is an unmitigated act of kindness – thanks to all of you. Even tubes of wax that pose as headache remedies can’t actually hurt you, unless you tried to swallow it whole like a dose of Advil.

In 1982, Ricardo Montalban made a dent in the zeitgeist by uttering the fictitious Klingon proverb that ‘…revenge is a dish that is best served cold…” He did this while wearing a fake chest, presumably because his own pecs were not the sweater meat of an evil man.

In a cruel twist of fate (really, it’s neither) it turns out that the presumption that both these things were fake, was itself, fake.

The fictitious Klingon proverb was actually a fictitious French proverb from the novel Dangerous Liaisons. It makes more sense coming from the French, since all dishes are best served cold when you are on the move from constant surrendering. Also, far better to serve someone a tepid Coq au Vin than to engage them on the field of eventual-withdrawal-after-some-moderate-shooting.

Apparently, Montalban’s chest was Montalban’s chest. The prominent and malevolent man-bosom was, according to director Nicholas Meyer, the result of regular exercise. This is in strict contrast to the amazing technology designed to keep William Shatner from overacting, becoming ungirdled and having his hairpiece fly off at the same time. This scientific wizardry would later be modified into high-impact airbags to protect the Mars Rovers from the brutal collision of landing.

Trivia; In 1983 while filming an episode of TJ Hooker, Heather Locklear had the last of her talent knocked to the floor and shattered thanks to Shatner’s hairpiece.

Trivia #2; No one noticed.

This, of course, leads me to the topic of the Arab Street, and the generally widening crisis in the Middle East.

Really, it does.

First of all, I hate the term ‘Arab Street’. It’s insulting to Arabs and typically what most people mean when they write or say it is the ‘Muslim Street’. How ‘Muslim Street’ is more offensive than Arab Street eludes me; certainly, I think if we started calling American opinion polls the ‘Christian Herd’ there would be some blow back.

Also, in this case, the Arab Street is in India.

Since the world-shift that happened after 9/11, we have been treated to various and numerous analyses of the Arab Street, and how this amalgam represents the mood of the Muslim world. Usually, and repeatedly, ‘The Street’ is made up of angry Arab persons cheering when something has exploded or when burning people in effigy. Apparently the ‘Arab Living Room’, where reasonable people sit around and worry about their world doesn’t make for very good copy.

Maybe I’m being naïve again, let’s not forget that I used to think that Skittles came from actual rainbows, but it honestly never occurred to me that portions of the Arab Street were about as real as the production of Sesame Street.

Allow me to introduce you to Rage Boy.

I owe the Ren & Stimpy guy a dollar.Chronicled at SnappedShot.com and by perennial grump Christopher Hitchens at Slate.com, Rage Boy is an actor. Not unlike Montalban playing the madman Khan Noonien Singh, Rage Boy will drop into a mask of twisted and vile hatred at the drop of a hat. He’s pretty good too – he looks more upset than a goat on the seventh day of having his scrotum bound up in elastics. According to my count, Rage Boy has also done this at least 14 times. (Be a grump, I mean…I’m not speculating about his scrotum.)

I’ll now quote Hitchens without permission and hopefully get sued (the right lawsuit can make you famous…);

“I have actually seen some of these demonstrations/…/and all I would do if I were a news editor is ask my camera team to take several steps back from the shot. We could then see a few dozen gesticulating men/…/Around them, a two-deep encirclement of camera crews. When the lights are turned off, the little gang disperses/…/you may have noticed that the camera is always steady and in close-up on the flames, which it wouldn’t be if there was a big, surging mob involved.”

Personally, I’m unimpressed with a choreographed riot. It makes about as much sense as wild and uncontrolled revision of the federal tax code. Although I’m told that Alan Greenspan, in a fit of wild animal passion, once sprained his wrist because of demand-pull inflation.

I don’t even know what that means…

To my knowledge I agree with nothing espoused by Islamic extremists, but I always gave them credit for having a certain, spontaneous joie de vivre when it came to showing us the face of unmitigated fury.

Being a veteran of the interweb tubes, I’ve seen some pornography (note to my wife: always by accident) and we all know that these people are putting us on. No one would enjoy doing *that* for so many people on a hay bale. Further, despite wearing the proper hat, none of those women are really nurses.

Is Rage Boy faking it? Is his beard a cheap implant from the San Fernando Valley?

When directing Montalban, Nicholas Meyer advised him to have his character speak quietly for most of his lines. This way, when he erupted into a rage, the effect would be exponentially greater.

Good advice.

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Hump(s) Like a Snow Hill

11 June , 2007

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No, I’m not writing about high-minded, wintry porn devoted to the literary works of Melville – but I should, of course. Instead, I’m writing about an event that has almost as much fake love; the pre, pre, pre-primary season of the 2008 American presidential election.

Although, like a lot of porn, the Democratic side has one woman surrounded by about eight men.

Ewww - sorry. Try not to think about that. Try really hard.

Currently, the process has reached both historic and foolishly epic levels. Both sides are crammed with an unprecedented level of political bio-mass all vying for the right to lose the next election.

The Democrats have a field that is genuinely notable for its historic diversity, and the degree to which I simply do not care. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both serious contenders for the nomination, and neither of them are a white dude (Hillary, thanks to the medical wizardry of the Swiss). Additionally, they still have comic relief in the form of Dennis Kucinich who has a lot more free time since he fell into the lava at the end of The Lord of the Rings. (It occurs to me that I’ve used this joke before – I owe you all a coffee…).

Conversely, the Republicans have a collection of the whitest dudes most notably the blindingly white Mitt “Now with Bleach” Romney. However, the Republicans do have a range of political ideologies that (for them) is pretty broad. Rudolf “Frontrunner?” Giuliani is a New York moderate, Congressman Tom Tancredo is really angry about immigration, and Ron Paul is clearly the candidate who was doing the most talking when I changed the channel to watch Iron Chef.

Maybe the real meaning gets lost in translation but there’s something magical about that wisp of a Japanese actress tasting a dish and saying “These spices make me weep for my ancestors…”

I’m not talking about Iron Chef America either. While a fine show featuring a host of culinary talent (most notably the mountainous and brilliant Mario Batali) and the inimitable commentary of Alton Brown, that show has never – and I mean never – had a baseball manager state that the tempura he’d just eaten “Would inspire his team to victory among the memories of their honored dead”.

(NB – I originally mistyped Iron Chef America as “Iron Hef America” which could make for a lucrative , if nauseating, reality show about Hugh Heifner and the miracles of Viagra.)

As I’m writing this, I just finished listening to the pod cast for This Week with George Stephanopoulos and am moving on to Meet the Press. Either the networks have been implanting more cameras into my wife’s head, or I’m terribly unoriginal, because they are discussing (albeit, while presumably sober) the same topic as I’m clacking on to teh internets right now.

No, George Will is not talking about Iron Chef – although he’d be ideal as a judge;

“While I’m not ready to stand up and applaud, this spiny lobster is proof positive that the entrepreneurial spirit and the free market can make decent cuisine without anyone abusing the constitution, or inflating the welfare state…”

Presumably, he would then be killed by Chen Kenichi. But I digress.

The general wisdom being espoused is that neither party is on love with the current crop of candidates, and so the race is really wide open despite having been statistically unmoved since April. Sure, the Fundies don’t like Giuliani; presumably they’ll jump ship if given a viable alternative (The Angle of Pestilence in ’08!) and the far left has yet to find a candidate who has always been against the war and also has enough of a résumé. But that’s been the case since before everyone agreed that Spiderman 3 sucked hind teat.

In other words, in this super diverse field, neither side can pick a horse. Too many choices? Too many primary voters hesitant to go in such an unconventional direction? Not enough fat guys?

Bingo!

What the world needs now is another Howard Taft, a giant blimp-like political oracle to whom we can look (albeit not all at once). Sadly Taft is constitutionally barred from serving again because he is dead, and might still be serving on the Supreme Court. The Taft Court must have been a blast to serve on – every writ came with a basket of Buffalo wings!

Trivia – After the passage of the Certiorari Act in 1925, Chief Justice Taft celebrated by spending the weekend bathing in 500 gallons of sour cream.

Trivia #2 – That sour cream is still being served by TGI Friday’s.

Sadly, since Taft cannot run, both parties have selected alternative fat guys to get into the race to fill the Saturn-sized void left in Taft’s wake.

Republican Fat Guy; Former Senator, former actor and current potential candidate Fred Thompson. I’d endorse Fred, but only if he dresses up like the Admiral of the Enterprise that he played in The Hunt for Red October.

Democratic Fat Guy; Al Gore. Also from Tennessee, I’d endorse him if he agrees to stop writing books and shuts the hell up.

More fat guy news as it develops…

The Sinister Summer

Given that it’s summer, I have an excuse to be lazy. As such, I’d been updating less as I went places to do things with my wife and broodlings…actually, I’d just been taking more naps, but that’s not important. My premise for The Reasonable Ego has always been that it’s less like a blog and more like a newspaper column (a bad, bad newspaper) so my updates are sparse by interweb standards already.

But just because I’d been posting less for the last few weeks, it doesn’t mean I love you less…no, wait, actually it does.

Sorry.

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From Russia, with Drunk.

2 May , 2007

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Unlike most of you I’ve never met Boris Yeltsin. Now that he’s dead my chances are probably not going to get much better. On one hand, fewer people will be clamoring to see him since, well…he’s dead, so his social schedule should lighten up. On the other hand, well…he’s dead. But if the stories about his drinking are correct he’s not likely going to putrefy until Captain Kirk, in a future all full of socialism and half-nekked green chicks, hits grade-school.

I note the passing of Mr. Yeltsin with more than casual interest since he was a pivotal figure in one of the first truly historic events of my adult life; the end of the Cold War. Also, he reminds me of Uncle Buddy.

I don’t actually have a specific uncle named ‘Buddy’, and I’m guessing that very few of us do. However, if we have more than one uncle, one of them is almost certainly an Uncle Buddy. This is a sliding scale of course, depending on where you fall in the socio-economic scale, but trust me; you have an Uncle Buddy.

Uncle Buddy is the friend or relative who tells inopportune booby jokes at holiday dinners when your mom is listening. Uncle Buddy was the slightly creepy, older friend you had in college; it made you mildly uncomfortable that someone his age was hanging with you, but he always scored the good weed. Uncle Buddy always throws up on furniture when he drinks. If you are a member of a higher and more cosmopolitan set, Uncle Buddy doesn’t get the cartoons in The New Yorker and still insists on putting perfectly good Brie in the damned refrigerator.

Uncle Buddy was the first person you knew who had their own place but he lives there even now and the couch still smells like pickles.

Boris Yeltsin, without question, must have been an Uncle Buddy.

I remember The Great Man Theory of history from school; briefly, it states that history is the collection of facts surrounding great people. You don’t read about World War II generally, you read about Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Tojo, etc… because they were the ones around whom the story unfolded. They were the movers and the shakers from whom the great events of time cannot be divided.

This is not Boris Yeltsin.

If Yeltsin stumbled into greatness, it was because he slipped in squirrel dung while crossing the front lawn of obscurity. This is not to diminish the importance of Yeltsin, mind you, as his singular moment in Russian history was huge. In the August coup attempt of 1991, Russian hardliners sequestered Mikhail Gorbachev and sought to take over the government. Yeltsin, then the mayor of Moscow, gathered a throng of supporters and declared his defiance to the old order upon the hood of a main battle tank – a tank belonging to the opposition. This unmitigated and uncompromising declaration of support for the new Russia was the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union – and the specter has not risen against since.

But clearly, the man had to be fall-off-his-ass drunk to climb up on the other guy’s tank.

After the August Coup, Yeltsin went on to show what an Uncle Buddy could do in office. Clearly out of his depth and with his free Executive hand firmly clenching a lovely cocktail, disaster ensued. His attempts at economic reform created a Russian middle class, but plunged millions into the kind of poverty that leads to people living in Cheez-It boxes and selling their organs for expired chicken loaf. Further, he undertook a war in Chechnya that makes Dubya look like Neville Chamberlain.

And of course, he drank – a lot.

Uncle Boris got drunk and groped at the glasnosts of his female staff. Yeltsin got drunk and danced on stage like a methamphetamine-fueled monkey during folk concerts and Yeltsin even got so wasted that he could not leave his plane during a state visit with the Irish Prime Minister.

You need to be exponentially more hooched-up than the worst day of Orson Welles in order to be too drunk to meet the Irish.

As I’ve mentioned in one other post, I tend not to write about something “until the patient is dead”. I do this mostly because I like to see where the reaction to a thing falls. In this case, while the reviews have been lukewarm, everyone seems to agree that the real legacy of this Uncle Buddy will be when he stood (in my opinion, drunk beyond lucidity) on a Russian tank and refused to break. Chechnyan horrifics and the kleptocratic economy, at least in the western press, seem to have been shuffled behind the curtain.

For some other Uncle Buddys currently flatulating their way through office, Boris may give them hope.

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