Hello. Today it will be necessary to explain, ontologically and theologically, why it is not only okay, but downright hallowed, to continue to espouse and defend the convincingly discredited yet highly amusing allegation that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance pleasures himself by having sex with sofas.
I asked this very question of readers this past weekend, in a poll, and it pleases me to report that more than half of you find that repeating these rumors, and making cruel jokes about them, is just fine and should be encouraged. The downside is that nearly half of you disagree. You argue that spreading lies is the province of The Perfidious Other Side, and that we good guys despoil ourselves by engaging in their sort of mendacity. I am here today to persuade that large minority to rethink the question. It is important. The sofa teases are slowly approaching the popularity of the Hawk Tuah Girl
The logical underpinning against perpetuating the obvious calumny against Mr. Vance — a man whose provably true history of sickening misogyny requires no further evidence of his unfitness to serve — is the old trope that it is usually impossible to completely prove a negative, a trope that was most invitingly addressed by the “celestial teapot fallacy” propounded by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970.)
The Third Earl of Russell was a British mathematician, logician, philosopher, and globally acclaimed hyperintellectual. His theories had influence on mathematics, rationalism and various areas of analytic metaphysics, plus he smoked a pipe, and had fabulous hair and an appropriate saucily condescending expression.
Seventy-five years ago, Russell argued that it is fatuous to insist that debunking any allegation must involve a proof beyond doubt that the allegation is wrong. Instead, he said, the philosophical burden of proof in an empirically non-falsifiable but extreme claim must be on the allegator — a word that does not exist, but which I enjoy using — and Russell made this point through a colorful analogy. In his famous mini-thesis, he postulated the following scenario: What if he, Russell, asserts as fact, sans proof, that a teapot, too small to be detected by available telescopes or other instrumentation, orbits the Sun somewhere in our solar system. He said it was absurd to expect anyone to believe him merely on the grounds that this contention could not be conclusively proven wrong, and anyone who demanded that would be deemed a madman. Ergo, something can be safely declared not not true even if it cannot be declared true. I think.
You with me so far? Splendid.
The world took heed! This was the great Bertrand Russell, speaking an obvious and commonsense truth. Extrapolating ahead some hundred years, it would seem to place the burden of proof on the anonymous troll who initially posted the unprovable Couch Accusation, someone nicknamed @rickrudescalves who can offer no certain proof of its not falsity.
But then something awkward happened that changed everything. A few years after his celestial teapot brouhaha, Russell extended his analogy to include … religion.
WUH-oh.
Russell wrote that it is equally preposterous — as preposterous as the teapot — to place the burden of proof on the allegatee when the allegator is allegating that Judeo Christianity, and its creation stories, is the truth. Russell, an atheist, said he saw no more provable validity to that claim than to claim the truth is embodied in “The Gods of Olympus, or Valhalla.” (I, personally, would add Ganesha, the Elephant-headed God who rides on a mouse, and Matshishkapeu, the Farting God of the Innus, a native tribe in Labrador and Newfoundland. But that’s just me.)
Anyway, this last bit did not sit well with many influential thinkers of the time, notably highly respected Christian philosophers such as Peter van Inwagen and Alvin Plantinga. Both men had been past presidents of the Society of Christian Philosophers. And both men were pissed. They argued, in effect, that religion gets a pass - that it is exempt from strict rules of logic because it is about faith, which is noble and an equally valid, parallel effort to discern truth. I may be oversimplifying, but that’s the gist of it.
You ask: What does this have to do with couch fornication? I answer: Everything. It is not easy to define what a religion is … it’s a slippery slope. In a sense, any strongly held personal belief can be defined as religion. Like Russell, I am an atheist, but I consider my revulsion at Trump and Vance to be holy and protected by God, should there be one. (I feel the same about vaccine deniers, too. And Second Amendment maniacs.) This sort of slope was driven home to me a few years ago, through the words of an expert. A woman of my acquaintance felt she had a drinking problem, and went to consult with Alcoholics Anonymous. Halfway through the spiel , she interrupted politely, and said that she didn’t think this was for her, because she flatly does not believe in a Higher Power. She is an atheist.
The instructor — a person of the cloth, as I recall, beamed. That’s the beauty of it, he said, and pointed to a radiator. “That can be your Higher Power!” Anything can be your Higher Power!”
So I choose to align myself with this guy …
… over This Guy.
Wouldn’t you?
In short, my God and perhaps yours as well, embodied by revulsion at Trump and J.D. Vance, says we couch-sofa-divan allegators do not have a burden of proof. I conclude our allegation is perforce equally valid to the positions taken by those who doubt and disapprove of the continuation of the couch calumny. We are not liars, we are … satirists.
But that’s not all. Heuristically, for reasons of science, to give this argument greater weight and more mighty pretext, we have to fully examine exactly, in boldface, what calumnies we are talking about. Here are some of the most vicious best ones I have found:
“I heard the sofa is so mad at JD Vance it’s making him sleep on his wife.”
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I wonder if JD Vance ever cheated on his sofa and had a one nightstand.
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The one thing you notice, epistemologically, is that most of these are funny. (Magats do not agree, but they are Magats.). The humor is the very reason it is viral. And that becomes important when we take this intellectual argument one step further with an impertinent question:
Are these even lies? Is this falsehood actually a lie?
We are going there because that is the central issue plaguing you harrumphing candy-asses out there who voted “no” in my poll. To persuade them that is not, nor it should be, an issue, I need to persuade them that these are not lies. For help, I consulted someone smarter than me, and you, maybe even smarter than The Higher Power, or God, or that radiator. I consulted AI. Specifically, I consulted the Web, and asked the question: Is something a lie if everyone knows it is a lie? And the first hit was something by an AI, addressing precisely this general question. It had a perfect logical answer, which I reproduce below, with the emphasis mine:
“No, a lie is not truly a lie if everyone involved knows it is untrue. For a statement to be considered a lie, it must be an intentionally false claim made with the intent to deceive. If all parties are aware that the statement is not factual, then there is no deception taking place, and it would not meet the criteria for a lie. In such cases, the statement may be more accurately described as a joke.”
Exactly my point, Ms. AI Computer! (Her name is Cassandra.). It’s a joke, and jokes are good, and healthy: As I have written before, voluminously, jokes relieve tension and help us cope with the existentially sad and terrifying nature of life.
In short, we may take a page from Ben Franklin, who also faced a similar, if more primitive, philosophical conflict: Is it okay to do something that is generally frowned upon in polite society? He decided it was. He wrote: “Fart proudly!”
Distort proudly, folks. Keep blasting this stuff out.
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Speaking of lies, yesterday Dinesh D’Souza, author, lecturer, vicious political provocateur who was pardoned by Donald Trump after being convicted of violating election laws, the same D’Souza who wrote a thoroughly discredited movie about how the 2020 election was stolen through bogus human ballots, now seems to have fallen so far that he is now a full-time internet troll, featuring lying clickbait. He’s been at it for some time, posting hilariously misleading headlines on X, with links to stories that turn out to have no resemblance to the hyper-heated headline he gave it. Even his own imbecilic conspiracy-hungry “base” has lately begun turning on him, begging him online to stop trying to fool them with absurdly overstated claims. He’s become a sleazy pseudo-intellection shockteaser for them, and they are becoming the shockblockers.
Yesterday, D’Souza he was at it again. His most recent headline: “Leaked memo exposes Kamala Harris and should have her campaign very, very worried! — Harris’s ex-boyfriend makes stunning statement about her candidacy.”
Whoa. Stupid right-wing hearts and groins go pitty-pat. Pants get stretched. Then they follow the line to the article, and roll their eyes and sigh.
The “leaked memo” quotes former daytime TV host Montel Williams asking the media to stop asking him for juicy details about what was apparently a very brief romantic relationship with Harris 20 years ago when both were single. Williams says he finds the inquiries he is getting to be misogynistic, and that he retains a deep admiration for Harris.
“My friends in the media,” he said, “should think twice about wasting time on a 20+-year-old picture —you will find doing so will earn an unpleasant reaction. I have great respect for Sen. Harris. I have to wonder if the same stories about her dating history would have been written if she were a male candidate?”
That was the “leaked memo” that had “a stunning statement” that could torpedo her candidacy.
There have been months of similar stuff by Dinesh. I will give you only one more, which he excreted yesterday as well.
Headline: “The liberal media is hitting the panic button after Trump gets "historic" news.”
Story it linked to: Peter Thiel, a longtime billionaire Trump supporter, still supports Trump after his selection of Vance as running mate. And the quoted word “historic” was not in the story.
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Here is today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.
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Hey, send in your questions / observations right here, to this orange button, which I am labeling in the strategic way Dinesh D’Souza might.
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We have reached the moment in the Gene Pool where we switch to real-time questions and observations, which I hope to answer in real time. So far many of the questions I’ve seen are in response to my call for bad days or weeks you’ve had; but there are responses to older challenges as well. If you are reading this in real time, please remember to keep refreshing the page to get new responses.
Q: My bad day:
I was 30 years old. My father was dying of cancer. I had just separated from my wife of nine years, headed to divorce, and had to leave my 8-year-old daughter behind to move cross country to a new job in Miami.
I drove all night, arrived in the house I’d rented sight unseen with a roommate I’d never met. The bathroom was a horror. The tub was almost entirely black with grime. I spent my first few hours scrubbing the tub. My new roommate, a guy six years younger than me, asked if it was going to be a problem, me being such a neat freak.
The one friend I had in town invited me out on his small sailboat to watch the sunset, which was indeed spectacular. When we pulled anchor to go, we found we were grounded on a sandbar. It was high tide. I had to dive in to set the anchor away from the boat so we could try to winch our way off, knowing if we didn’t get it off in the next 15 minutes the tide would go out and we’d be stranded all night, and I’d miss my first day of work. We just barely made it. I got home still wet, slept poorly, and woke early for Day One at The Miami Herald. My wallet was nowhere. I had no ID, no credit cards, no cash. I spent my first morning wondering which would be worse, going without lunch, or asking my new boss for a loan on my first day.
My new boss, as it turns out, was Gene Weingarten. He handed me a twenty and informed me I had a huge, unprofessional hole in the knee of my pants.
– Tom Shroder
A: Ah yes. What I believe you don’t know – I’m not sure I ever told you – was that I didn’t care about the hole in your pants, but that the executive editor had seen you, called me in, and said you and I both needed to be told that if the new guy continued to dress like that, he’d never get ahead at the paper. I told you this as well, and dared you to make the sartorial decision yourself. So, yes, it was a bad day, but you chose wisely.
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Q: My worst day was January 11th 2003, because it was the day I died.
You said you want funny, right? At home I was not remembering words correctly. It’s not like I couldn’t remember what an aglet was. (It’s the hole in a shoe that the lace goes through.) In my case, I could not remember, literally, the word for a shoe. (It is “shoe.”) Sometimes I was confusing words. I told my partner I wanted a cucumber when what I wanted was a knife to cut the cumber that was right in front of me. My panicked partner drove me to the hospital, where I was put on fluids and hooked up to monitors, and informed that my blood pressure was alarmingly high, and that the doctor would be in in a minute. That is when I flatlined.
My partner told me later that I very primly laid myself down, closed my eyes, snored loudly exactly once, and my heart stopped. He told me that It remained stopped for at least two minutes – maybe as many as three, though time elongates in crisis – before doctors ran into the room and did whatever it is doctors do to bring you back to life.
I never got a diagnosis that satisfied me, but I am fine now, apparently.
You might be thinking, wait a minute — this was not the worst day of my life, it was the best day of my life! I had been brought back from the dead.
It’s not that simple.
I am by no means devout; you can even argue I am not religious. But I do believe in something after death, and always have, even since childhood. Something seemingly mystical but real. It’s comforting and it seems logical to me, though I’m not sure why.
And what did I experience while deceased? Exactly zero, nada. I wasn’t instructed to move toward any light. I didn’t have my life flash in front of my eyes. There was no out-of-body experience. No tease at an afterlife. I was awake, then no time passed in my brain. Then awake again. Bingo, awake. Bango, awake. No dreamlike middle-ground. No reincarnation. No Heaven. No Hell. Just unconsciousness. My brain shut down, minutes past, I was revived, and time began again, as though there had been no interruption. My time in death was just nothingness. I had the state of consciousness exactly like my state of consciousness ten years before I was born. .
And it bothers me. More than you would think.
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A: I understand. This won’t help you, but it summons my favorite quote, from Kafka:
The meaning of life is that it ends.
Kafka was an atheist too.
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TIMELY TIP: If you’re still reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.
Oh, by the way, if you want Trump to lose, please hit this button:
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Q: I wanted to push back against your praise of one-term James K. Polk. While I am a former California resident and love it there, I can't get excited about a war of aggression fought to seize territory (no matter how much I love the Dodgers). Polk also supported the extension of slavery into annexed territory and was personally a slaveowner. So yes he kept his campaign promises, but I don't think it's fair to say that history proved him right and he's on my list of worst presidents (Andrew Johnson, Trump, and W are probably the other 3 in my anti-pantheon, but there's plenty of competition at the bottom).
I am a longtime fan of yours and appreciate your writing. – Matt Metera
A: Thanks. I do not like arguments based on elite testimonials, but the clearest answer is one of those: When judged by historians – left, middle and right – Polk tends to wind up with a grade of 15th or 16th best, with his best grades coming in “foreign policy,” “domestic policy,” and “vision,” which are the three biggie categories. This is in the top third of all presidents, and for the most important reasons. He loses points in the “moral authority” category because of that messy slave thing. Even adjusting for the tenor of the times, he was not a “good” slaveowner. He bought and sold teenagers away from their parents, and was something of a shrewd businessman in this foul marketplace, making decisions for profit, seldom with sensitivity.
Still, his overall points put him solidly at the top of the category “better than average,” which is a darn good place to sit, by review of the historians.
The Mexican American war is debatable, I’ll grant you. It was imperialism and it was a disingenuous provocation to Mexico. It was subtly in support of expanding the number of slave states. But it was also inevitable, if Mexico did not agree to sell the land – a solution Polk attempted, with a fair offer. The diplomat we sent with this offer was humiliated and expelled. Yes, it was a gun-to-the-head offer-you-can’t-refuse, sure, but you know: California and New Mexico And Nevada and Utah and most of Arizona and Colorado and bits of Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming did not make a negligible new property. Under the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny, vomitously depicted here…
. God willed us to spread democracy and capitalism across the land – and it had wild popular support.
Imagine if we had NOT taken it one way or the other. You’d have to be rooting for some team in the Mexican leagues, or the nearest American team, which probably would have been the Seattle Mariners.
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Q: Worst day:
In my case, it boiled down to exactly one day, and it was not the day many years ago that my beloved 3-year-old dog died in an accident I had caused. That day was horrible. It filled me with grief and guilt. I can never forget it, or entirely forgive myself.
I hope this does not sound forced or callous, but I'd still have to say my worst day was November 7, 2016. It was utterly unexpected, shifting from enormous hopes to enormous despair. What had become of the country I thought I loved? Who were these people who enthusiastically voted for a monster, a viper, a stupid, hostile, infantile man over an obviously qualified woman?
I know you said this had to funny. So here goes. It is true:
In the weeks and months after the election, I was drowning in depression. It seemed to supersede everything else. Where do we go from here? I began to take refuge in dark humor, the darker the better. I began to collect jokes that emphasize the absurdity of life and took their power from cruelty. In particular, I revisited and retold a joke I'd heard from a friend years before, which I'd found disturbing. With apologies, here it is.
A woman is involved in a terrible car accident. Her husband is informed, and races to the hospital. A doctor takes him aside and tells him that his wife is alive but will need constant care. She will be insensate. She will never know who or where she is, she will need round the clock care, with crippling costs, some of which will not be covered by insurance.. She will need manual help with all bodily functions, etc.
The husband is stupefied into silence. The doctor stares at him a bit, then bursts out laughing. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you. She's dead."
That had become roaringly funny to me. And other jokes like it. Slowly, this inanity and insanity mostly passed. I think I finally lost the taste for it in 2020.
I can't really explain this.
I understand if you won't use this.
A: Oh, I am using it. And I think I can explain it by referencing a great quote. It is by Dave Barry, after I asked him for a definition of “a sense of humor.” He said, “a sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which you realize we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we release the anxiety we feel about this.”
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Q: I can't make my worst year funny (lost my mom, got downsized out of my journalism career, nearly lost my wife), but here's one of the worst days before then:
It was the start of my senior year of college when I took my '70 VW Beetle to a shop for some work. $125 later, (serious money on a student budget in 1981) I had new brakes and exhaust, and I'm happy to have the car all set for the coming year. Driving home on the Interstate, I hear a scraping noise like something dragging behind me. Just to be safe, I pull off at the next exit.
The car's running fine, nothing obvious. I shut it off. As soon as I do so, a suspicion dawns. With a sinking feeling, I lift the back seat, under which the battery lived in old VWs. Where my two-month old battery HAD lived. Until the floor underneath it rusted out, dropping the battery onto the road, where it dragged along at 60 mph until the cables broke.
I had no choice but to call for help. From a pay phone in those pre-cell days. So I called my mom.
She listened, and was every bit as supportive and empathetic as you might expect. She laughed for a solid five minutes.
A: Well, at least she is dead now.
SORRY JUST KIDDING. She was a fine woman and I miss her, too.
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Q: Not the worst day, but close. I was in the hospital over the weekend because I’d broken my femur and needed a total hip replacement, surgery scheduled for Monday. I was in an isolation unit because I had covid at the time. I had been taking paxlovid at home but the hospital hadn’t kept it up. So by Sunday, my covid symptoms were back, my hip was in excruciating pain, I was all alone, and perhaps worst of all I hadn’t been able to poop because of the hip; that whole part of me was useless weight. Nurses had handed me a bedpan and then just left. After about an hour of painful shifting and positioning, I was able to get it under me, but there was no production. I was miserable.
The epilog is that I was wheeled into the surgery very full and uncomfortable, but when wheeled out, my bowels were perfectly fine. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that as soon as they put me under there was a very large evacuation onto the surgical table and/or floor, but everybody afterwards was too professional to say anything.
A: I knew a woman who at 18 or so had her wisdom teeth removed. Though this was done in a dentist’s office, they gave her strong – mind numbing – anesthesia, and told her to get into a hospital gown, nothing underneath. She found this peculiar, but never asked questions. It fell to me to tell her, 25 years after the incident.
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Q: This quote from the Access Hollywood tape takes on a whole new meaning… “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you where they have some nice furniture." — Paul Nesja
A: Excellent observation.
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Q: Hey, that was some intro.
A: Thank you, unless you are being sarcastic, in which case eff you.
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Q: If Vance came from such a broken, dysfunctional and poor family, Is ANYBODY asking where he got the money to go to Yale? If one dime of it came in the form of a student loan, he needs to shut up about disbanding the Department of Education. And as well, just shut up about everything. (Hey, a man can dream, can't he?) Tom Logan - Sterling, VA
A: Good point. I shall become an investigative reporter, and investigate.
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Q: It's likely I completely missed the point of the intro, but you are aligning yourself with god over Russell, per the order of the images?
A: Yes, but just because it dishonestly suits my forensic point.
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Q: I would love to tell you about the worst couple days I've ever had, but I have no idea how to make them sound funny. Sorry.
A: You should have told me. Absent that, I am simply going to postulate that you drove drunk, killed somebody, and skedaddled and have been haunted by this for all the rest of your life.
*
My husband and I were vacationing in Zion National Park. We’d spotted a dirt road and my husband wanted to drive it to sightsee. He asked the folks at the place we were staying if our rented Chevy Cobalt could handle it, and they thought it could. Now we usually split driving duties except when traveling someplace new. In that case, I usually navigate and he drives. Since he had done most of the driving thus far, I said I would so he could take in the views. We’re driving along, and I find a rut. And a rock. He got out and looked and sure enough, I had dinged the oil pan. He told me to keep driving because we basically had no choice — no cellphone service whatsoever. The car finally seized, and we started walking, having no idea whether it was better to keep going or head back. We kept going.
Thankfully just a few minutes down the road was a man. In camo clothing. Sitting on an ATV. With two rifles slung across his back. With some trepidation, we told him the fix we were in. He said he had to wait for someone who should be there in half an hour. Then he would head back to his house, another half hour away, and call a tow truck from the next town, about 40 minutes away. In my head, I’m calculating that it’ll take 2 hours at least, 4 hours on the outside. And it was sunny and in the 70s, but the overnight temps were going below freezing. We had no coats, no emergency blanket, no food or water. But we thanked him and said we’d walk around a bit just to kill the time. When we got back to where he’d been waiting, he was gone, so we figured that was good news. In more good news, he’d left us granola bars, water, newspaper and matches! Still bored, we decided to lock the bounty in the car and walk a bit more. Rather suddenly, we came upon a bull. Big. With horns. Looking none too pleased to see us. We very slowly walked back to the car. The bull followed. We increased speed a bit. So did the bull. We got in the car, and he stood and stared a while before deciding dinner in a can wasn’t worth the work. After about 2 and a half hours, our tow truck arrives. This thing looks like it’s 50 years old if it’s a day, but beggars can’t be choosers. The driver hooks us up and away we go (opposite direction from our cabin, of course). He’s driving the winding, bumpy road about 50 MPH with zero fear, the Cobalt swinging and swaying behind us. At one point the road narrows to one lane and to our right is a cliff-abyss with no guardrail. I am now squeezing my husband’s hand so hard, I’m cutting off his circulation. We FINALLY get to the repair shop safely and call the rental car agency. Which had closed at 5. So we are resigned to spending the night. I get us a room at a Hampton Inn.
We check in and I use the hotel’s computer to rebook our return flight (we were supposed to leave at 8 a.m. the next morning). I have to rebook it for a full day later. So I call and get us another night at our cabin. In a way, that part was nice — we get another day at Zion! But during the night, I am having terrible breathing problems. I am allergic to cats, and this was a pet friendly hotel. And of course I didn’t have my inhaler on me, because I wasn’t expecting to encounter cats. (Let alone bulls.) Exhausted, and with me still having trouble feeling like I can’t catch my breath, we get back the next day and enjoy bison burgers in the restaurant before collapsing in our cabin. Oh, and the rental agency tries to bill us for the car, which was a total loss, because it turns out you’re not supposed to drive rental cars on dirt roads. Our insurance wouldn’t cover it, BUT the credit card company had a policy that did. —Amy Lago
A: Hey, Amy. (Amy is the best comics editor in the country. )
As a young man I rode in a bus in Mexico the the hills near Taxco, south and west of Mexico City. They would career at high speed on mountain narrow roads with no guardrails. Occasionally a back tire would skid off the road into the air, and the driver would have to yank the wheel to avoid disaster. It was very, very scary. When we got home I found an item in a publication where they carried a regular “bus plunge” feature that consisted of short stories under the almost headlines that all began “BUS PLUNGE KILLS…” About half seem to have occurred in the Mexican mountains. Bus Plunge Kills 17, 9, 42, etc. I have just this moment discovered it was the New York Times.
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Q: That rundown of what is not a lie but indeed HUMOR is so good, I can't even pretend not to suck up to the author. Yes, this, and can we stop trying to pretend "godliness" when really we just want to fart in their general direction?? Yeah, sure, there is fear of "sinking to their level," but they are NEVER FUNNY, so we need rise above being downright hateful. Have you not noticed? They are mean, defensive bullies. We are better than that, even if we make fun of them, because we use sarcasm, satire, and general laughs. Forward, jokesters. There was one good one about "con-sectional activity" that I'm trying to find. :)
— Lynne
Today, as a Retired Guy, there are no unknowns on my key ring. But back in the day, when I worked in a place with many doors and drawers, you bet there were known unknowns. Plus, even today, my virtual Apple keychain has unknown passwords on it. I think. So that makes them unknown unknown keys. — Ken
A: I have one. And I only have five keys total. I have no idea what that fifth key is, but I am afraid to pitch it out in case it turns out to be Important.
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Q: D'Souza has always been a self-satisfied right-wing jerk, but somewhere along the line he tripped over into unhinged territory and discovered he liked it there. Maybe because it's less work? Who knows. I ignore him.
A: I read him for fun. He thinks he is grave and important. This makes me laugh.
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Q: Oh, the horrible indignities that surround having a menstrual cycle. And when you have not received sound, practical advice from your female elders.
Having to remember to include a sweatshirt in your backpack just in case you need cover-up to wrap around your waist to hide your bleeding if the meager "light flow" pad wasn't enough. That happened on the school bus in middle school and I was grateful that I had that trusty grey sweatshirt to cover my shame.
Then there was a particularly awful day -- it's definitely up there in the worst days of my life. It was when I carpooled with a friend and bled all over her car seat and only noticed it when I left the vehicle. It was a brand new SUV. Sorry 'bout that.
You learn as you go, and you suffer while you gather some knowledge on your own. Tampons may make you sick if you forget about removing them, but dammit they do the trick in the short-term.
These bodies of ours...
A: A male actually has a comparable problem, if not quite as viscerally humiliating, and a bit more controllable. I commuted to high school by public bus, on which also rode girls going to St. Nicholas of Tolentine Bronx High School. They all wore identical Catholic school dresses with knee socks. Sometimes I would lose myself in idle contemplation of these young ladies, and find myself thinking something like, “I wonder if their underpants are also plaid…” and if we were close to my stop, I had to miss it until I calmed down to the point I could safely stand.
Q: I find the JD Vance couch humping taunt to be so funny because it’s 100% believable. I figured it was in his book until I found out it was a joke, and I can’t stop laughing about it. People are funny and I’m delighted that there is joy in politics again.
A: Yep.
Q: I have a keychain with five keys. I know the one to my house, and one to my mom's house; I think a third is to a different door to her house, although she may have finally gotten all the doors on the same key so one of the two I have is no longer relevant. I have no clue what the other two are. (My car's key/fob lives separately.)
This is Gene. We are out of here. I am begging you to declare yourself opposed to Donald Trump by pushing these two buttons and doing what they tell you to do.
More questions and observations, please.
My favorite Vance joke thus far is: Trump might regret his choice, but he has to carry Vance to term
An aglet is not the hole; an aglet is the metal or plastic tip on the shoelace that allows you to easily put it through the hole.