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all hail the cage fighter of the sky

Usually my morning commute is a blindingly dull sea of brake lights accompanying the desire to acquire a new occupation, a rocket sky car, or a method by which I might transfer my consciousness to my desk while my corporeal form remains at home with the dogs (telework).

Spring, in all it’s lovely glory, is also an awful time for the radio.  Sports is hard to listen to when it’s not football, my hockey team is out, and I still can’t magically wrap my brain around following 162 baseball games a year.  All of the news, especially NPR, is a sea of insanity as if the universe revolves only around Clinton or Trump even though I’m quite sure my local mayor has more of an impact on my life than they do / ever will.

I’ve been told by folks who have equally insane commutes that the secret is to get into podcasts.  That these are somehow the superior cure for the brake lights.  I’ll admit, I haven’t tried this yet, but might.  But honestly I’m not so sure about this whole podcast or blog thing.  I get the impression that people who write blogs or do podcasts are weird idiots.

Anyways, so there I am this morning when all of a sudden I get a ringside seat as a mockingbird dashes out of the trees to cage fight a crow I can only assume dared get too close to the nest.  This went on for at least a minute.  As the crow continued to flee, the mockingbird pursued for at least a good hundred yards across the sky.  Little dude wouldn’t let up even though the crow was three times his size.

I could write twelve pages on the pros and cons of the film Ender’s Game, but this reminded me of a line in that movie:

“Knocking him down was the first fight.   I wanted to win all the next ones too.”

The mockingbird won all the other fights this morning too.

When I was an enlightened young lad I used to bird watch, for whatever reason.  Now I’m just a moron who reads indoors, watches movies, or plays video games.  But if you have watched birds for any length of time, you’ll know this is typical mockingbird behavior.  They’re aggressive, they don’t take it from anybody.  Luckily for us, they have not acquired the ability to wield firearms.

Cheers my friend, you made my morning.

mockingbird

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you have to live with it

Ponder if you will, this simple scenario.  It takes one hour for a normal cardiologist test to check your heart for the detrimental presence of alien spores.  But your particular cardiologist (we’ll call him Gil) says it’ll take him at least three hours to test you.  And his error rate for the test is north of 90%.  So you’ll just have to take his word for it.  You of course reject all of this, and decide to go to another cardiologist.  Until Gil starts cracking up and delightfully informs you that he’s the only cardiology practice on the planet.  You have no choice.  You have to live with it.

We’re regular TSA haters on this degenerate blog.  Partially because I fly a minimum of a dozen times a year, usually nearly double that.  In that time I’ve seen some real, real anger inducing stuff.  I’ve seen the TSA aggressively frisk a well dressed grandmother, scream at a small child, allow a person without an actual passport past the international checkpoint, and on and on and on.

For what?  Kindly take a moment to gaze upon the latest saga in a 15 year journey of incompetence.   If you’re flying out of Chicago, the TSA needs you there three hours early to do something that traditionally only took one hour.

There are the usual troubling nuggets in this article:

– Apparently after all this time they still can’t process the concept of peak season travel numbers.  This is their business.  This is what they do for a living.  But nobody seemed to bother to write on a napkin the number of booked tickets verses the number of screen personnel and do some simple math.  After all, it’s just your life, so whatever.

– The TSA continues to pound TSA Pre as the solution to all of your problems.  As before though, you’ll still have to pay $85, get fingerprinted, and conduct a formal interview with a TSA bureaucrat who’s undoubtedly fully qualified for the job of determining whether or not you’re a vicious terrorist.  So TSA Pre is the answer to the problem of the TSA’s removal of your time and money.  And thus the solution is for them to take more of your time and money (and your privacy).  So you can get back what they already took from you.  In any other construct not government, that’d be called theft or blackmail.

– All of this might be worth it if the TSA actually did the task assigned to them.  But as the article reminds us, the TSA fails at its mission well over 90% of the time.  In fact, the article actually mentions the raw numbers which I’ve never seen before:

undercover security operatives managed to smuggle 67 illegal weapons or simulated bombs past TSA security on 70 tries last year, that TSA officials were unable to properly vet 73 aviation employees who had links to terrorism, thereby allowing them access to secure areas,  and that senior managers have a long history of bullying whistleblowers who identify potential problems.

In 15 years the TSA has never successfully stopped a single terrorist act.  They’ve never caught a guy at the checkpoint.  But if you play devil’s advocate to try and make the argument about deterrence, all I can say is with a failure rate of 90%, if an actual terrorist had actually tried, he’d probably have succeeded.

So what’s all this been?  For 15 years?  Smoke and mirrors.  Power, money, and the bureaucratic inertia survival of an organization, no matter how incompetent or rude or unfair to you, the citizen.

But don’t worry, Congress is all over this, solving the problem like they typically do:

On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) called on TSA Administrator Peter V. Neffenger to resign if the long wait times at airports such as O’Hare and Midway are not resolved by Memorial Day.

Senator Kirk seems to think wait times are the reason to clean house.  Senator Kirk is thus burning his day sitting under one tree, surrounded by flies, scratching his head, completely unaware that he’s in the middle of a whole forest.  Bravo.

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methods of behavioral change

This morning I observed a woman park in a handicapped spot and then walk away pulling two large suitcases with nary a limp. So unless she was taking that luggage to her husband’s wheelchair office, I’d bet a substantial margin of my limited international gold reserves that’s she’s illegally parked.

I see this all the time, mostly at work. I figure probably a third of those parked in handicapped spots are not actually crippled in any way. I cannot morally comprehend executing such an action. It would legitimately make me uncomfortable, all day, to know I did that. But apparently folks are cool with it, it becomes part of their routine.

Maybe this isn’t a big deal. Or those folks are actually quite nice dudes, and this is just one of their flaws. And if humanity has anything, it’s a whole bunch of flaws. But for whatever reason, any time I see this happen it bothers or even angers me immensely. I nearly said something unfortunate to that woman this morning. I’m glad I kept my mouth shut, for I gather that would not have ended well or accomplished a thing.

Anyways, let’s accept that this is bad behavior requiring correction. But we’ll need help, because humans are flawed weak flesh beings. So we’ll use Enforcement Drone Version 2.09 (ED209) as our assistant in this matter.

1) Guilt

Person wrongly parks in spot. ED209 saunters up and wryly comments to the individual in his stale robot voice.

ED209: YOU ARE NOT HANDICAPPED. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

2) Shame

ED209 walks up, and demands production of identification. ED209 then takes a photo of the person’s face.

ED209: THIS INDICENT HAS NOW BEEN POSTED TO YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE.

3) Fear

ED209 walks up and shoots the individual in the kneecap.

ED209: YOU ARE NOW IN COMPLIANCE WITH ESTABLISHED PARKING REGULATIONS.

4) Punishment

As the person walks away, ED209 combusts their vehicle in a fireball that shatters nearby windows.

ED209: YOU WILL NOW BE ASSESSED THE VARIOUS DAMANGE, CLEANUP, AND ENVIRONMENTAL FEES.

5) Morality

ED209 forces them to sit down for a five hour chat on the various moral considerations involved with improperly parking in the handicapped spot, making a clear case for the values of a balanced ethical society.

6) Apathy

ED209 slowly trots by the person as they walk away from their car but offers no comment or correction, hoping over time the individual in question establishes some type of internal corrective action guided by conscience.

Which ones of these will work? I’ll let you decide.

ed209

Awh, isn’t he cute?

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how do you become champions without playing a championship?

So these Leicester blokes just won the Premier League title. Folks are freaking out. It’s draped the news for days. Apparently the odds were so high that I figure it’s the equivalent of having the Jaguars or the Browns win the Super Bowl next year.

For amusement, my Guests have calculated the chances of the Jaguars or the Browns winning next year’s title as longer than, “…the chance the Sun viciously explodes tomorrow due to a fourth rate intern pressing the wrong button at the Large Hadron Collider.”

Doesn’t that sound super rare? Gee I sure hope so. That Collider thing scares the hells out of me. They be wielding black magic inside that mountain, I assure you. Think workplace violence is bad? Wait till the Black Hole Ghosts they let into our temporal realm warp all those Euro scientists’ heads.

hadron.jpg

Anyways, Leicester didn’t play Manchester United and knock them off in a brutal Duel of the Fates that risked the destruction of multiple stadiums by hooligans drinking too many non-alcoholic beers. Instead, Leicester gets the trophy because Tottenham and Chelsea played to a draw. What?

At first, when I heard Leicester was to play Manchester I thought it was for the championship. To win it all, loser goes home, etc, etc. Apparently not. I guess in EPL the title goes to the best record, or so I’ve been able to gather. There are no playoffs.

That’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. So I embarked upon a quest to read the rules of the EPL to figure out why there is not just a straight Super Bowl like title game that would likely be watched by a billion people across the globe. After twenty minutes of this, I gave up. My head hurt.

You go ahead and try and determine via relegation, EPL rules, the Championship League, UEFA, FIFA, the various regional groups and ruling bodies, what the hell is going on. If you want to understand why the European Union is an unhinged organizational basketcase, kindly go and try to figure out how Euro soccer is organized.

If I’ve got it wrong, one of you seven fringe people who regularly read this blog who knows better please clue me in. I think I’ve got it right, but who knows.

Manchester United v Leicester City - Barclays Premier League - Old Trafford

Leicester City fans cheer on their side in the stands after the match despite not winning the title on the day, during the Barclays Premier League match at Old Trafford, Manchester.

Two other teams just tied. We won!

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Shakespeare’s skull is missing; we’re on the case

In some of Earth’s most ancient cultures, it is said the soul can never fully be at rest if the body is un-whole. Poor Shakespeare is missing his skull, and his soul might thus be trapped in some kind of weird Valhalla purgatory where he is compelled to club fight the same thug over and over again until his skull is reunited with the rest of his bleached skeleton.

We, at The Arcturus Project, are here to help. Based upon our belligerent preliminary research, my Guests and I propose the following unhinged scenario and vicious plan:

1) We build a time machine and fly back to 1794 where we will intercept the grave robbers on site. Rather than liquidate them immediately, as my Guests desire, we will preserve the timeline by sedating them, giving them a fake skull, and returning the original skull to the grave with the thieves none the wiser.

 

Shakespeare.jpg

We’re on it, bro!

 

2) Should we fail in our attempt to fold space and time via a machine, we’ll have to buckle down and search in today’s realm. Naturally our first stop will be Derek Jacobi’s hallowed mansion. As the foremost headman of the Anti-Stratfordian Faction, surely he’ll know the secret whereabouts of the skull as his cult has undoubtedly kept it hidden for centuries to further cloud the memory of the author who they claim is surely a fraud. Should we fail in our brutal interrogation of Jacobi, taken in by his charm, gentlemanly behavior, and delightful ability to star & seriously act in even the most C-grade of hack garbage movies, we’ll have no choice to resort to more ridiculous methods.

 

jacobi.jpg

Derek Jacobi, in the Oscar nominated Underworld: Evolution

 

3) We’ll begin by exhuming Shakespeare’s entire skeleton, a process that might result in the complete destruction of Holy Trinity Church, but whatever, omelets need making. Then we use the DNA from the skeleton to clone Shakespeare. Once the clone reaches the age of 52, we summary put him to death, and harvest his skull. We then rebuild Holy Trinity Church, put the original skeleton back in the tomb, and add the Clone Shakespeare’s skull into the tomb as well.

 

4) As a caveat, we don’t know the rules of Valhalla. We’ve never been there. So it’s possible that because the skull is a clone skull, that this won’t work. And Shakespeare’s soul would still be trapped. So next what we’d have to do is use the most invasive of surveillance methods to catalog the location of every 17th century skull in the British Isles. We’ll be able to tell what skull is from this era by detecting the presence, at the molecular level, of frilly cravat material common in this age, such as that seen gracing the neck and skull of Her Majesty:

elizabeth.jpg

Then we’ll use DNA tracing (see first part of Plan 3) to analyze millions of skulls until we find the right one. Then we’ll but that skull back in the church and (hopefully) manage to put back all the millions of other skulls too.

 

X) In the event Plan 4 becomes logistically impossible, we’ll have to activate Plan X. My Guests & I fly to Stratford-upon-Avon, and descend upon the Hamlet’s Determination Ale House. We drink until we come up with a better plan to solve this most pressing of the planet’s problems.

 

I’m banking on Plan X. However, if you wish to personally assist us in this most noble of quests, specifically Plans 1-4, please kindly provide us a bit of seed money by posting check, cash, or money order to the following address:

 

The Arcturus Project – Shakespeare Reclamation Branch

C/O Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation

1794 Aguiyi Ironsi Street

Abuja 900001, Nigeria

 

Your cooperation, as always, is very truly appreciated.

 

mel hamlet

Mel’s got it.  Mel’s got it!

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all hail the bunny

So let’s say it’s 1673, and you’re guzzling Reinheitsgebot beer at a pub in the Duchy of Westphalia. It’s a few days before Easter. Your buddy Carl leans over, wasted, and he’s like, “Hey, you know what, we should get some eggs and color them.” You don’t say a word, because beer is tasty, and you’re not sure if you just heard Carl correctly. And in any case, beer is tasty, so who cares. But then Carl continues, “but the eggs have to appear from somewhere, so a rabbit should bring them to the kids.”

You have no idea where Carl’s brain is, but seeing as how you can’t say nothing, you start with the simple, “Rabbits don’t lay eggs.”

“Right, right, but they can carry them, right?”

Your head hurts, “Rabbits can’t carry things, they don’t have opposable thumbs, and they hop around.”

Carl’s getting frustrated, he pulls on his stein, he needs you to understand the genius that’s at work here, “Okay, okay, but it’s all for fun, so if I say the rabbit can carry eggs, then he’s carrying the freaking eggs.”

“Okay.”

“But the eggs are colored, see,” Carl drinks again, “so that way they’re neat and colorful and you can find them easier.”

You’re barely listening at this point. You motion to the barkeep that you’d like another. But remember, Carl’s your buddy, so you have to play along to some degree. “What was that, about kids?”

“Well, kids get to find the hidden colored eggs.”

“So the rabbit hides eggs?”

“Right.”

“So that kids can then find them?”

“Exactly!”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t matter, because the rabbit wants to, he’s a hopping happy rabbit, or whatever, doesn’t matter. And all the kids search for the eggs, and they’re happy. Because kids like wonderful bright colors, and they like to run around, and play, and find things,” Carl starts chuckling uncontrollably.

Your next beer arrives, you desperately want to drink it, but you take a moment to furrow your brow in frustration. “Okay, okay Carl, so, uh, why would we do this?”

“Because it’s Easter!” Carl shouts as he raps his fist on the bar.

“WHAT do a rabbit, colored eggs, kids have to do with that Jesus guy rising from the dead?”

“Who cares! Everybody will love this.”

“Okay friend, okay.” And because it’s 1673, you put that next beer back in about 30 seconds, and you’re off. As you depart, Carl’s already shouting his idea to somebody else at the bar, who like you, couldn’t care less. And you’re quite certain Carl should have stopped at five beers.

But then it’s 1698, and eggs, bunnies, and color are everywhere. Kids are playing, everybody’s hiding eggs in bushes and under cobblestones, and it’s become an Easter tradition, full of spring joy and life.

Meanwhile, Carl’s made millions off his egg decorating business. And you’re still a day laborer at the local mill. But at least, every time you’re at the pub, Carl offers to buy all your beers.

bunny.jpg

Oh the joy of irrational youth, where my parents could dismiss us from the room and tell us to come back in ten minutes.  And then we’d get back, and Dad would defiantly state the Easter bunny had just stopped by, and hid a whole bunch of eggs in the backyard that we had to find.  We’d just missed him, honest.  Go get the eggs now.  And so we did.

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Jacques assists my brain decompression, his way

I’ve been horrendously busy lately with no sign of it letting up. So I’ve had to take a step back in planning what I’m going to cook. For quite a good long while, I’ve been on this kick to try ever harder recipes or techniques. I guess just to prove that I could do it. Or also that hanging out in the kitchen for hours with the dogs, cooking, drinking beer, and/or listening to music is my way to decompress from stupid reality.

I don’t have time for that now, but a man’s still got to eat. So lately I’ve transitioned back to some of the early cookbooks I bought, in particular Jacques Pépin’s The Short-Cut Cook and Fast Food My Way. You go buy your stuff, spend less than 30 minutes, and you’re done. This has certainly helped my schedule, but it’s also been a delightful return to basics. Something other than a massive list of ingredients with perhaps needless complexity.

It’s been kind of a return to roots, in the sense that if you’re only involved with a half-dozen items and a half-hour, you’d better get it right. You can’t hide anything if you screw it up. In many ways, this simplicity is better. In this hour long interview with Anthony Bourdain (you should watch the whole thing), go to the ten minute mark to hear Jacques lay this philosophy out, “…take away, take away…”

It’s also given me a chance to mess with things that have been on my mind for years, but just never got around to doing. In this week’s case, it was playing around with chicken livers and sardines, both from Short Cut Cook:

– Chicken livers persillade

Most folks hate these things because they’ve got a weird texture and look terrible when you break them out of the package. So I think I was well north of 20 years age when I first had them in Asia. Since then, I’ve never turned them away and tried them all over the place. But I haven’t ever worked with them in the kitchen. So Jacques steps in, and essentially offers you the opportunity to serve them with some toast and call it a day. Overall kitchen time is less than ten minutes.

Things did not go well at first. As I was trying to get the liver tub open and I ended up spilling liver blood/juice/whatever over a good portion of my counter and floor. My youngest was more than happy to help me clean up, so I had to scramble to contain her happy doggy tongue with one hand while I wiped it all off the floor with the other. Then you’ve got to clean the livers by trimming off all the connecting veins and all those lovely weird black parts that you’d rather pretend don’t actually exist. I’m not sure if this is typical, but I ended up discarding about half the biomass in trimming them down to the cook ready parts. After that, I was a bit demoralized, and wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

Yet all you have to do is roast some baguette slices for ten minutes and sauté the livers. The livers themselves take one minute per side, really high heat, and that’s it. Take your liver, take your bread, eat, and it’s well worth it. It’s probably not for everybody, but it worked for me all right.

 

chicken livers

finished product, they were liver-rific!

did ya get it?  I did a thing there?

[cricket, cricket, cricket]

 

– Sardines in tomato sauce

I don’t know whether this is accurate or not, but I always had the impression that folks tend to turn away sardines or anchovies because they don’t like the little small fishy, and the overall oiliness, fish odor & taste is too much for people. So you don’t really see these two dudes make much of an appearance in typical American cuisine (whatever that is). I’ve always loved them though. So when I came upon Jacques’ instruction to buy a whole freaking 16 ounces of sardines, I was sold. So because I’m a lunatic, I went and bought four tins, just to be safe. All he has you do is throw them on some greens with vinegar, parsley, salt & pepper, and some fresh tomato. So if you don’t care for sardines, this is repulsive because you’re eating them right out of the box as is. But for me this was a win. I took five minutes to make.

I love Jacques’ mentality on food. I guess he’s technically considered a celebrity chef, but in my mind he’s one of the originals alongside Julia Child who is not really a celebrity chef. I mean, sure, Jacques has made a boatload of gold throughout the years, but he’s always carried himself with the same humble simplicity that Child also had. There’s a reason those two were friends. It’s always a breath of fresh air from the current modern machine manufactured chef crowd. Jacques still cooks for public television, folks.

So thanks Jacques, for helping me get through this crazy busy time of my life. While also still eating well. And learning something new every day.

pepin and child.jpg

yep

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i thought i’d met a sorcerer

I made a daring escape from the cubicle yesterday because it was just gorgeous outside.  So I walked around for a while.  Everybody was out, which was nice to see.  As I’m headed back toward the building, this guy emerges from a side door.  He looked like Santa Klaus, that is, if Santa Klaus wore a business suit and overall looked like a sorcerer.

He takes two steps out, throws some crackers on the ground, and starts mumbling a few phrases to himself.  Then after about five seconds he turns around and walks inside.  So I’m like, oh, he’s feeding & talking to the birds or something.  But I look around, and I see no bird or animal or anything in sight.

So I make it a point to walk over, stand over the crackers, and look in every direction for anything that would eat said crackers and I don’t see anything.  Hmm.  So maybe the sorcerer was doing some kind of incantation and the crackers are going to turn into a bird?  Or maybe he just left them there for a bird to get later?  Or maybe he’s a crazy man who throws crackers on the ground and mumbles to himself?  I for one have done far crazier things than that.  But I went back inside because I didn’t have an answer.

I left later that day, via that side door, to check on cracker status.  Sure enough, there was a squirrel right where the crackers were.  And the crackers were gone.  When I opened the door he ran off.  So I guess Santa was feeding the squirrels.  Or, or, just maybe, the crackers turned into a squirrel after all.

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what’s this Irish thing anyways?

Just about a whole bunch of people are wearing green in the office today. I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t get it. Genetics-wise, I’m about 50% Irish, and I still don’t get it.

I mean in the old days you would get pinched if you weren’t wearing green. So you had to wear green. But those were the good old days. Nowadays pinching somebody on Saint Patrick’s Day would speedily result in a sexual assault conviction and/or lawsuit.

Quite randomly, I’ve been on a bit of an Irish haul lately. This last weekend I binge watched (in between working both days) Peaky Blinders. Without ruining the plot, the 1919-1922 pivotal years of Irish history are intrinsically tied to what’s going on throughout the events of this otherwise English gangster saga. This series is pretty good, I thought the first season was just awesome. Unfortunately the second season degenerates into a mix of Godfather, Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire. It’s decent, watchable stuff, but it’s all been done before. They even take certain themes shot-for-shot from these other series. But at least you get Cillian Murphy and Sam Neill, who are so entertaining you could get them on screen watching third tier soccer in a bar and it’d be entertaining.

Sam Neill.jpg

“As a villain, I’m so fucking awesome.”

Cillian Murphy is also in another Irish themed saga of this era called The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Depending on who you ask, this movie made Murphy’s name. As you can tell from its high-minded title, it’s not a lightweight journey. People love this movie, they shout it to the horizons. I however, didn’t quite care for it. It was preachy and predictable. It devalued an incredibly complex civil war into the usual, brother fights brother tale, where one dude is the romantic and the other guy plays it straight. Likely Peaky Blinders, it’s imminently watchable stuff, but it’s all been done before. I know I’m definitely selling this flick short, but as emotional as you’re supposed to be, by the end, I didn’t feel, like, things. I didn’t care what happened to either of these guys. Maybe that says something about me? Anyways, I wonder how many folks wearing green today have even heard of the Irish Civil War though?

cillian-murphy-padraic-delaney.jpg

Hmm, based on how they’re dressed, I wonder which one is going to end up Anti-Treaty and the other Pro-Treaty?

I’m currently reading my Granddad’s copy of A Bridge Too Far, which by some miracle I’ve never read before. The lead element of the Allied ground advance for Market Garden was the Irish Guards. Which despite their name, were recruited only from Northern Ireland. While most of the rest of Ireland essentially sat out World War II, despite the many individuals who volunteered for British units, or the limited clandestine help the Irish government provided. Which, I kind of get, given what the Irish people would have thought about the English. But to which I’ve always found troubling, because it’s like, “Hey, uh, you do know, what Hitler would have done to Ireland, had he won? Right?”

But then you also have to step back and consider that Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t typically about Ireland or the Irish, but rather the Irish diaspora. So unless folks happen to hail from Puerto Rico, or Lebanon, or the Philippines, then I’m not quite sure any similar national concept applies. Except that, by raw numbers, there are probably more German descendants in America, than Irish. But there’s no rough Duestch equivalent to Saint Patrick’s Day, that’s so widespread, so known. The recent Oktoberfest craze is too new, is not just one day, and is in case nowhere near as big.

So what’s this Irish thing anyways? Perhaps it’s simply not enough for some, to just check the American block and call it a day? That they need / want a deeper connection that predates 1607?

Or is to wear green and play crazy, wacky dress up, like Halloween?

Or is to find an excuse to go drink with friends on a weeknight?

Or how about to celebrate and enjoy a non-standard event that still binds people together across all walks of life in an increasingly separated, smartphone divided world?

How about all of the above.

None of these are bad ideas. If they bring people together, and don’t result in people getting too many beer steins cracked over their heads.

So leaving aside the deeper thoughts, I guess I’ll simply say, drink up, have fun. Enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day, folks.  Cheers.

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Obama nominates amorphous lifeform to Court

Let’s face it, nobody knows who this guy is.  It’s like Obama rolled around in a nondescript black van from Peter’s Opulent Tea & Unlimited Shoppe (POTUS), and just grabbed some dude off the street at 3am as he was walking back wasted from the bar.

And the guy’s in the back of the van screaming, pinned to the floor by a half-dozen Secret Service agents.  Then Obama, smoking, leans down and whispers.  And the guy, drunk as he is, knows it’s the Prez, so he quiets down.  Obama: “Howdy.  How’d you like to be my Supreme Court pick, buddy?”  [pulls on cig]

Okay, I guess, if you happen to be a part of the ruling legal / political / media establishment of DC, you knew who Merrick Garland was before this morning.  But the rest of us don’t.  Is this dude qualified?  I have no idea.  Neither do you.  Perhaps the ruling legal / political / media establishment does?  I have no idea.

But it’s like Obama picked the most faceless wonder you could imagine.  Why did he do that?  Who knows, clearly there must have been some political calculation, I guess.  But I’ll tell you what, both sides are going to paint these next few months like Garland’s holding the keys to a vault that possesses the souls of 16K cute kitties and puppies.  It’s going to be absurd.  It’s going to be sad.

garland

Garland: “I uh, promise, to uh, be a good judge.  Yeah, yeah, the best judge.  On that Supreme of all Courts.”  [Obama pulls on cig]