Fuchsl the Dog, Meet Elon the Pig

What the HELL is this? See below.

Hello. We are going to be talking about how the Jews are bankrupting Elon Musk, and how he is getting back at us one at a time. We are also going to be scrutinizing the photo above more carefully than you have already done if you do not know why it deserves scrutiny. But first, as is my wont, two Gene Pool Gene Polls.

I heard a commercial on the radio, and got to thinking. It follows the general script of tens of thousands of radio commercials that we tend not to think about too hard. In the commercial, a woman is saying that her feet hurt for years — it felt like sharp pains were shooting up her legs every time she took a step. Then one day she was hobbling past a certain foot-care store, and decided what the hell, and went right in. In minutes they fixed her up with specialized arch supports and whatnot, and now she is pain free and loving the store.

So here come a poll. Poll one: Let’s say you learned (I do not know this to be true, for this particular company) that the woman speaking was a voice actress hired by the store, and given a script that was written by copywriters in the store’s communications department, and it is is not quoting any particular letter or testimonial they got from any particular customer.

I would love to hear from any knowledgeable readers who know what the FCC rules are for this sort of thing. If there are rules.

The second poll is very different:

So far some of the key planners of the January 6th riots have gotten sentences of:

Twenty-two years for seditious conspiracy (leader of Proud Boys); 18 years (leader of Oath Keepers); 18 years (Proud Boys ground commander); 17 years (Proud boys field commander). More sentences, all for assault on police officers and related crimes: 15 years; 14 years, 12 and a half years.

The sentences reflect society’s justified abhorrence at what these schmucks did. They all deserve prison time. The question is, are these sentences too vindictive, pandering to a public thirst for vengeance?

I know, I know. But consider that minimum mandatory sentences for, say, second-degree murder — intentional murder but not premeditated — can be as low as 5 years, and tends to average around 12 years in states across the U.S. I admit I am advocating for the Devil here. I myself am not sure what to think. But I do think it is a fair question, which is:

Send in questions / observations right here. I will try to answer good ones in real time.

The photo at the top of the page was taken last weekend, in the parking garage beneath the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., where Rachel and I saw “Ink,” a fine play about the start of Rupert Murdoch’s destruction of journalism in 1969. We were there for a Sunday matinee. Have you ever been to a Sunday matinee and scanned the audience? I don’t mean to be cruel, but I brought the average age of the audience down.

As we were walking from our car to the theater, Rachel stopped and stared at a wall that I had just obliviously passed by. “What the hell is that?” she said.

Note the photo. Note the parking spaces to the rear, against the wall. They are labeled as parking spaces, each with its own number for you to remember as you leave your car. But how do you get in there? The horizontal bollards on the ground appear to be permanent, and potentially undercarriage-rattling. You can get into the spot to the left rear (there is no bollard) but if you tried to then tuck into the spot next to it, you’d have to crab - walk your car into it, back-and-forthing, inch by inch, an operation that would take five minutes or more, and then you couldn’t move any further because you would sidle into the giant effing pillar.

What the hell is that? Your explanations encouraged.

Okay, urgent aptonym: The New York Giants have a hard-hitting defensive end named “Boogie Basham.” Also I was recently reminded of one of the great aptonyms of all time, one I did not see right away at the time it was fresh and ripe for the picking, an oversight for which I am embarrassed. The disgraced Oregon U.S. senator who lost his seat in 1995 because of serial sexual assaults on women staffers and lobbyists, assaults involving uninvited tongue kissing, was “Bob Packwood.”

Did you ever realize that “parasol” with it’s anglicized pronunciation, means “for the sun,” in Spanish? Me either, until reprehensibly late in life.

And finally, Elon, who made news this week by blaming Jews for the endless, excruciating, disastrous rollout of his ownership of Twitter, which he later renamed X in one of the most idiotic re-brandings ever, inasmuch as after he took over, the only thing Twitter had going for it was its name. It’s as though, once Trump had established his fabulously lucrative international con, he changed his name, and his brand, to Schlamowitz.

Speaking of Jews, so is Elon. Here is what Elon said and what he has been saying.

In Mr. Musk’s defense, I need to say that he is correct. Jews are responsible for everything bad, and I am quoting a noted authority on the subject, Adolf Hitler. In World War I, Hitler adopted a dog in the trenches and named her Fuchsl. Fuchsl was stolen by an unknown thief whom Hitler, much later, decided must have been a Jew. After Hitler’s brother Edmund died of measles, and Hitler’s mother, Klara, died of breast cancer, Hitler blamed the deaths on their family doctor, Eduard Bloch, because he was Jewish. Hitler also despised Jews because they were all communists, including Lenin and Marx, both of whom did indeed have distant Jewish ancestors. Hitler also despised Jews because they were all capitalists. (He never explained this paradox.)

And this brings us pretty directly to Elon, who has been proven right. (So was Hitler, because of Bernie Madoff and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, who was born to Christians but whose adoptive parents were Jewish, which is close enough.) Where Elon and Hitler differ from me is that they chose to punish the Jews — in my case, me. A few months ago, I was effectively knocked off Twitter, even before it was X. For unrelated reasons I had deleted my cookies, and suddenly Twitter did not recognize me, and wanted me to verify I was me by using a second-step verification, but I had none on file with Twitter, and that was that. Still, I could easily prove I was me, if only I could talk to someone, but Twitter customer service no longer exists because Elon fired all customer service reps because they were Jews. (That last clause is just an assumption.) These days, a person trying to get in touch with Twitter-X customer service is like a sociopath trying to get in touch with his inner feelings.

Is it even worse if you are Jewish? We can’t rule that out. I started a new ID on Twitter-X, and was immediately informed that they suspected me of being a bot and that they would send out my stuff only if I paid $8 or if I established conversations with people on my timeline, which I can’t do because the only people on my timeline are the Yankees. I can’t get to people to establish conversations because I am not yet recognized as legitimate. Elon has given me bupkis.

So. We are now at the real-time portion of The Gene Pool, where you send in questions / observations, and I try to answer them in real time. If you are doing it in real time — roughly noon to one — you will have to keep refreshing your screen to see new posts, and answers.

Most of the questions involve stories about your dreams, and several readers wrote in to complain that nobody wants to hear other people’s dreams — NPR had a whole segment on seven things you must never discuss, and dreams was one of them. It is also the reason I called for them; let’s see how you smart, interesting people do with that challenge. Other questions involve sosumis and Nicklebacks, respectively, things everyone likes and you don’t, and thinks you like and nobody else does.

Q: Dream: I was on a beach and saw a school of sharks attacking a large number of people in the water. I don’t think that sharks usually school, but these were doing so. One of the survivors, missing part of his body, beckoned me to come close to him. When I was up close to him he whispered “kill me”. That woke me up and kept me awake for a while. - HawkRapids

A:  This was the most horrifying and depressing post I got, so naturally I am leading with it.

Q: My husband once shook me awake even though he was sound asleep and when I asked him what was wrong he said "you're tastier than most of the electrical sockets I've been brave enough to stick my tongue into," and then went right back to snoring with zero recollection of the event the next day. 

A: A woman sleeping beside me once nudged me awake and asked, “Are you the keeper of the cheese?”

Q: Strangest dream was where I was being chased down the aisle of a train from car to car by a giant poison blueberry. – Leslie Franson, commenter

A: You must all watch this brilliant Key and Peele routine. It’ll take five minutes. It’s right on subject.

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this in real time on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Fuchsl…“ ) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to roughly 1 p.m. ET today.

Also, subscribe, please. We need to. You do it here:

Q: Old Zeb here... Aptonym hot off the presses:

A: Wow. And look at the name of where he is from.

Q: Gene, in past discussions you've proposed the dilemma of whether to report a factually accurate, very unfavorable story on an otherwise worthy candidate for political office, considering the risk that publishing the story might cause the worth candidate to lose to a scoundrel. It seems that the Post newsroom has encountered a situation that may not offer such a stark contrast in the candidates, but which does have the potential to change legislative power in Virginia. It seems scandalous. I can understand the newsroom's reasoning until I get to the following paragraph: "The Republican operative who alerted The Post to the videos denied any connection to the Owen campaign or other groups active in Virginia elections this year. The operative provided the information on the condition of anonymity to avoid being drawn into the controversy." The above paragraph smells like the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant on a 99 degree July day. If the Post newsroom doesn't thoroughly investigate the Republican operative's story to either corroborate or disprove it, they should go to work for Rupert Murdoch.

A: Don’t know what you mean.  The Post did nothing at all wrong, and this is clearly a story; it reflects on her judgment, during a political campaign..  The Post DID corroborate it.  The candidate admitted it.  The Post saw the videos.   If you’re saying the Post didn’t confirm that the tipster was NOT related to the opponents’ campaign, I assure you they are now checking into it.  But you don’t hold the story for that.  If there is a connection, you expose it when you nail it.  And yes, it helps a Republican, and of course the Post ran it anyway.  It was no “dilemma” for them. What’s your beef?

Q:  I asked Google Bard to write a 666 word essay on you. This is what it says. Is any of it true? 

A: Google Bard is inept.  It claims accuracy, and admits it gets much of its stuff from the Web, but it is as though it asked a 6 year old, who has just learned to read, to do the research.  Below is the essay.  I have boldfaced everything that is factually wrong – not things I might take harrumphing exception to,  but things that are provably and incontestably incorrect.  

Gene Weingarten is an American journalist and humor columnist. He is the only two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Weingarten is known for his witty and insightful writing, which often tackles serious topics with a humorous lens. Weingarten was born in New York City in 1951. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English and creative writing. After graduating, he worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency. In 1985, he joined The Washington Post as a humor columnist. Weingarten's column, "Below the Beltway," is a weekly feature that appears in The Washington Post magazine and is syndicated nationally. His work has also been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other magazines. Weingarten's humor is often dark and ironic. He has a knack for finding the humor in everyday situations, even the most tragic ones. In one column, he wrote about the death of his wife's cat. He described how the cat had died of a heart attack after eating a piece of string. Weingarten then went on to write about the absurdity of the situation, and how it made him laugh even though he was sad. Weingarten's humor is also often self-deprecating. He is not afraid to make fun of himself, and he often uses his own experiences as fodder for his columns. In one column, he wrote about how he had been fired from his job as a copywriter. He described how he had been called into his boss's office and told that he was being let go. Weingarten then went on to write about how he had reacted to the news, and how he had eventually found a new job. Weingarten's humor is not for everyone. Some people find it too dark or too self-deprecating. However, his fans appreciate his unique voice and his ability to find the humor in the world around him. In addition to his humor column, Weingarten also created and edited The Style Invitational, a humor contest for The Washington Post. The contest has been running for over 30 years, and it has produced some of the funniest writing in the country. Weingarten is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. He won the award in 1993 for his column about a man who had won the lottery, and he won again in 2000 for his column about a woman who had been struck by lightning. Weingarten is a respected journalist and humor writer. He is a master of the written word, and he has the ability to make people laugh even when they are feeling down. His work is a testament to the power of humor, and it shows how laughter can be a coping mechanism for even the most difficult situations. Here is a funny quote from Gene Weingarten: "I think the world would be a better place if everyone had a good sense of humor. It's a way of coping with the absurdity of life." I hope you enjoyed this essay on humorist Gene Weingarten.

This is Gene again  This same reader also asked Google Bard for an essay on the Invitational.  It is even less accurate.  I will publish it on Thursday, in the Invitational Gene Pool. 

Q: So I have noticed that WaPo always refers to X as "X, formerly called Twitter," which is a sign of how bad the name is. It reminds me of when Prince chose an inscrutable symbol as his name and became "the artist formerly known as Prince."

A: Exactly.

Q: Apart from the fact that most other mammals (and some birds and reptiles) dream, what I find particularly fascinating are what are called "lucid dreams." These are dreams you consciously know you are dreaming and, in my experience (to be passed on to Dear Leader as a good little Wordie) and that of others, can actually control to some extent, much like directing a play or movie. Neuroscience doesn't know exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but research indicates it might have something to do with the size of the site of the brain involved with decision-making and recalling memories. It's apparently bigger in those who regularly have lucid dreams, who also tend to be self-reflective and ruminative.

A:  My lucid dreams are tactile.  I have dreamed of being attacked by a swarm of bees.  I could feel the stings. The pain woke me up. . 

Q: For context, my wife died suddenly six months ago. In June, around the time of her memorial service, I dreamt that my family (my wife’s two children with spouses and five grandchildren) was together having dinner at an outdoor restaurant with picnic table seating. I realized my wife was sitting next to me. She was grayish-looking with a flat affect and didnot say a word. I was shocked as I knew she was dead. I went to the men’s room, and while at the urinal, a grandson came and stood next to me. I turned and asked, “You can see and hear Mimi, right?” He replied, “Yeah”. I asked, “ What do you think about that?”   Nothing.  The scene shifts and my wife and I are in our kitchen.   I go to kiss her and she tilts her head to kiss me back, but just as our lips were going to meet she is gone and I see her talking with a very tall, haggard-looking man with long hair and a long beard. I cannot hear what they are saying. I look forward for a moment and when I look back again, both of them are gone. I woke up, looked at the corner of my bedroom where my wife died and asked, “What the F— was that all about?”

A: The end made this all worthwhile.

Q: I note that, at least last time I checked, Dark Chocolate was way ahead of milk chocolate in your poll.  And properly so.

A: Yes, interesting demographic fact:   The chocolate industry literature is clear that, nationally, milk chocolate sales far outstrip dark chocolate, 49 to 34 percent. (The rest, sadly, like “white chocolate,” which is not even chocolate.)  And yet the population of Gene Pool readers was the inverse.  I must concede that from this, we can conclude that smarter, funnier people prefer the awful dark, and I bow to you all. 

Q: You'd be surprised to find I voted for Donald Trump--twice. I do not choose to reveal myself as I know that it would make me persona non grata in this group. I have gotten lots of ink in the contest, including many for Trump jokes. I will still enter because I like making fun of the jackass. I voted for the Republican candidate, not for Trump, and will do so again regardless of who that candidate ends up being.

A: So, just to summarize: You would vote for Mr. Putin or Mr. Pinochet or Mr. Mussolini if he were the Republican.  

Q: I was driving around a square town with four roads. The four roads, sides of the square, were each a few blocks long and had strip malls along both sides all the way around. I stopped at a McDonalds and ordered a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. The guy at the drive-thru was surprised by my order and congratulated me for ordering such a wild and wonderful version of a burger - not sarcastically. I was the first to ever order one. I woke up later, still feeling very proud of my ingenuity.

A: This is a very odd dream. My thinking is that your are insecure and need validation. Needy.

Q: Until my late thirties, recurring dreams of walking along, taking a few running steps, and then taking flight. Always awakening while soaring over the world below.

A: Me, too.  This is a common experience, illustrated very well in Rachiar Linklater’s “Waking Life,” which you all should rent. It is beautiful and disturbing. In these floating dreams I felt like Neil Armstrong in the Eagle, drifting, controlling your drift, looking for a calm place to set down.  

Q: I have a recurrent dream that I awaken wherever I had fallen asleep that night therefore this dream’s setting follows me from home to hotel rooms to other settings. The room looks as it should except a menacing shadowy figure is at the foot or side of the bed. I react by throwing the nearest object at the threat but it either travels through the apparition or vanishes before contact is made. At this point, I usually awaken and find that a pillow from my bed has been tossed across the room even though it is claimed muscles are supposed to be inactive during sleep. So, how did I launch the projectile while lying down and supposedly motionless?

A: God made a mistake.  Man, I’d like to know HIS dreams. 

Q: As a student I repeatedly had the “unprepared” dream where I’m called up to do a math problem on the board at the head of the classroom and then discover I’m naked waist down. But once I was treated to a dream where someone else was pants-less: In this dream I was in my college dorm elevator when a young lady, naked from the waist down, got on. It was just the two of us, and, yes, this did become a bit of sex dream. The catcher: she was a lobster from the waist up. I welcome interpretation.

A: I conclude that you secretly want to bang a lobster but can’t quite face that. 

Q: There is a really lovely hotel in Bavaria called the Schloss Fuchsl. It is one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in, and that includes the Gritti Palace in Venice and several Ritz-Carltons. I would weep if I found out Hitler named his dog after it.

A: Probably not. Fuchsl means “little fox.”

Q: My Nickleback: I love peeling wallpaper off a wall. I can do it for hours. I find it both satisfying and meditative. Whenever I hear someone complaining about having to do it, I tell them I enjoy it and offer to help. They never take me up on it because they think I’m joking. 

A: This might be a subset of people who like to pop pimples from pores.  There’s a whole subculture of that.  Obliteration as art.

Q: Sosumi – Circuses: Too noisy, too much going on at once. I understand there is such a thing as fear of clowns. I don't fear them; I despise them. Don't like slapstick. And the only parts of the 'big show' I find interesting are the aerial acts, and I'm always afraid those are gonna, you know, die.

A: Agreed on all counts, particularly the three simultaneous rings part. When Molly was a very little girl – three, I believe – , we passed by an impromptu “circus” in a parking lot.  We stopped to watch.  She was on my shoulders, for a better look.  A troupe of acrobats was performing.  At that moment a guy was doing a handstand atop a stack of chairs, maybe ten chairs high.   The chairs collapsed and he fell face first into the asphalt.   Clearly he was significantly injured.  I whipped around and got out of there.  Molly never asked a single question, and I volunteered nothing.  Just the other I asked her what she remembered about it.  Nothing, she said.  “Sounds horrible.”  

Three is about when memories begin to take hold. 

Q: A little late, but here's my big sosumi: tattoos. I support the right to get one, but I've never seen one that improved someone's looks. To me every tattoo is a defilement.

A: Agreed.  The most bizarre example is when an actor gets one.  Then you see her playing Ophelia with, like, a mermaid at on her neck.

Q: Old Zeb here.. Long ago had a dream where my recently ex-girlfriend and I were walking through a dense jungle environment. As we creep toward a gap in the foliage we see an open area with a small fire in the center. There were many scantily clad indigenous people celebrating and dancing. But, in the center, over the fire was a three-pole pyramidal structure. And suspended from the top of it was a grasshopper slightly larger than a human. It was suspended by its rear legs and kept licking its front legs and rubbing its face. The smoke and heat were obviously not to its liking. As the girlfriend and I  moved closer for a better view I quietly informed her, "The natives call them 'Roastie Boys' " Relating the dream to said GF the next day she replied, "Gee, you mansplain stuff in your sleep -- what a surprise."

A: Excellent.

Q: At around 9-11, I subscribed to Boy's Life, because I was in Cub Scouts. I read an article or piece of fiction that mentioned potash, a substance I had never heard of and had no idea how to pronounce. I didn't understand why it was in the story, although I later gathered it was somehow related to concepts for suppressing libido in pubescent boys. Sometime later, I dreamt I was standing in a wide and relatively shallow flat-bottomed circular pit, encircled by black-clad motorcycle riders, no telling how many, swiftly and endlessly circling the pit, eyes glowing red. Suddenly, I found myself disembodied above the pit, looking down, where I could clearly see the word "Potash", capitalized, written across the bottom in enormous cursive letters, like a fancy brand name. I reacted with the vigorous early-70's prepubescent innocent boy version of WTF? and woke myself up as I tried to figure out what the hell it could mean.

A: I can help out!  It turns out that potash is mostly used as fertilizer.  Your dream is shit.

Q: Is there a way to see poll answers without answering? I was in the "Fine" camp, but am curious what the answers look like in the secondary question. However, I didn't want to poison the well by answering it to see the results.

A: This is a flaw in the system.   Substack’s IT tells me no.   Ordinarily this is not a problem, but it will be annoying every time I have, say, a male-female split.  I will bear this in mind and reveal the results to everyone toward the end of that Gene Pool. 

This is Gene. I say we’re done, and thanks for excellent conversation. Please keep sending in questions / observations. I will address them on Thursday, at The Invitational Gene Pool.

You know what comes last, always. Impolitely begging for alms.