elementropy

The Scorn Of A Propertarian

Looks like I've earned some attention. Protein Wisdom, which my Dictionary of Slang defines as "the tickly brain-fart a bukkake whore experiences after the final swallow", manages to rise to the level of heavy, witless sarcasm in replying to my previous post.

And... that's about all Goldstein can do before heading out to file his teeth or microwave puppies or whatever he does on a Friday night. So he turns it over to his peanut gallery. I'm in his debt.

Actually, some of the responses aren't too bad, and some of the garden variety wingnuts there seem to be all right. Then there are others. Propertarians who equate a uterus to a warehouse (an especially nice Freudian touch to that one), mini-Krauthammers who diagnose me with Bush Derangement Syndrome. Good stuff.

But I'm really intrigued by this Jeff Goldstein character. What an interesting wingnut! The photos on his blog's left column show him to resemble an early Cat Stevens as shot though heavy gauze. One is also barraged by reminders that he is very funny. "Dinner with Augusto." Bwahahaha stop, you're killin me!

Obviously this schtick can't get him too far, even in the affirmative-action wingnut circles in which he fellow-travels. So, what else? Ahh, he's Literature Wingnut! Don't have many of those!

Here he pilliages the oeuvre of the tragic Richard Brautigan. He starts with banal editing, chop-chop here and there, seemingly at random, sort of like how crazy people cut words from newspapers to manufacture ransom notes. Then he gets really wingnutty:

Part 8

Baudelaire Michael Moore went
to the insane asylum Cannes Film Festival
disguised as a psychiatrist rhino-hipped filmmaker.
He stayed there
for two months days
and when he left,
the insane asylum Cannes Film Festival
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over
California France,
and Baudelaire Michael Moore
laughed when the
insane asylum Cannes Film Festival
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat [...]
[smelling of cheese
and, of course,
surrender.]

Drying our eyes and applying an ice-pack to muscles bruised by such thigh-slapping comedy, let's read another:

Man Michael Moore

With his hat on
he's about five thirty-seven inches taller wider
than a taxicab.

And on and on. I don't know why poor Richard Brautigan's poetry has to be molested to state over and over the incisive observation that Michael Moore is fat, but I'm guessing it has something to do with comedy genius. After all, his site says so. Would that liberals could be so brilliant!

But that's not all. Goldstein's art will not be denied, and so he moves on to mangle more mainstream pieces. How clever. How postmodern. Here's some of the Goldstein-mutated Conan Doyle:

"Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. 'Beyond the obvious facts that he has at no time done manual labor, that he takes drink, that he is a West African-born diplomat of some stature, that he has been bribed by a ruthless and since deposed dictator, and that he has done a considerable amount of lying lately, I can deduce nothing else.'
"Mr. Kofi Annan started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.
"'How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?' he asked.

Teehee. [Golf clap. A tumbleweed blows by.]

Now I'm no comedy genius, much less someone who would presume to equal Goldstein's spectacular level of smary, sophomoric "humor," but I am curious about this particular artform. It seems to me that the most powerful statement would be in manipulating a piece the least amount possible in order to slander a political rival. Perhaps true comedic genius, then, lies in the act of selecting the work to be mangled. I wonder...

"Star Spangled" Nails

You've got
some "Star-Spangled"
nails
in your coffin, kid.
That's what
they've[Wingnuts' Dear Leader] done did for you,
son.

or,

December 30
At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

IJeff Goldstein has to get out of bed to write this down without my glasses on.before changing his Underoos.

Well, that's already boring; and the truth is that I just don't have the heart to mangle any more of Brautigan's work. For Goldstein's readers, though: you might want to read "The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster", and since I know you'll take it literally ("why, that's pro-life!"), you can read "Linear Farewell, Nonlinear Farewell" and recognise your own type figuring very prominently in it.

Maybe I can have more fun with Conan Doyle. Oh, here's one:

There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of the crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glaced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downwards on the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung from the fog. [An Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler] it was, an enormous coal-black [Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler], but not such a [wingnut Rottweiler] as mortal eyes have ever seen. [Bile] burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering [spittle] Never in the delious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.

With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of [an innocent muslim]. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him.

Well, maybe that was too obvious. Let's try another. How about the Adventure of the Five Orange Pips.

"The [information] which [Wilson] carried [is] obviously of vital importance to the person or persons in [wingnuttia]. I think it's quite clear that there must be more than one of them. A single man could not have carried out two [smears] in such a way as to deceive [the public]. There must have been several in it, and they must have been men of resource and determination. Their [war] they mean to have, be the [soldiers] of it who it may. In this way you see K.K.K. ceases to be the initials of [Karl, Krauthammer and Kristol], and becomes the badge of a society."

"But of what society?"

"Have you never --" said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and sinking his voice --"have you never heard of the [Republican Party}?"

Ahh, that was satisfying. I could get the hang of this. How about one more? From the Adventure of the Three Gables*:

The door had flown open and a huge negro had burst into the room. He would have been a comic figure if he had not been terrific, for he was dressed in a very loud grey check suit with a flowing salmon-coloured tie. His broad face and flattened nose were thrust forward, as his sullen dark eyes, with a smouldering gleam of malice in them, turned from one of us to the other.
"Which of you genelmen is Masser [Goldstein]?" he asked.
[Goldstein] raised up his pipe with a languid smile.
"Oh! it's you, is it?" said our visitor, coming with an unpleasant, stealthy step round the angle of the table. "See here, Masser [Goldstein], you keep your hands out of other folks' business. Leave folks to manage their own affairs. Got that, Masser [Goldstein]?"
"Keep on talking," said [Goldstein]. "It's fine."
"Oh! fine is it?" growled the savage. "It won't be so damn fine if I have to trim you up a bit. I've handled your kind before now, and they didn't look fine when I was through with them. Look at that, Masser [Goldstein]!"
He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under [Goldstein's] nose. [Goldstein] examined closely with an air of great interest. "Were you born so?" he asked. "Or did it come by degrees?"
[...]
"Well, I've given you fair warnin'," said he. "I've a friend that's interested out Harrow way -- you know what I'm meaning -- and he don't intend to have no buttin' in by you. Got that? You ain't the law, and I ain't the law either, and if you come in I'll be on hand also. Don't you forget it."
"I've wanted to meet you for some time," said [Goldstein]. "I won't ask you to sit down for I don't like the smell of you, but aren't you Steve Dixie, the bruiser?"
"That's my name, Masser [Goldstein], and you'll get put though it for sure if you give me any lip."
"It is certainly the last thing you need," said [Goldstein], staring at our visitor's hideous mouth. "But [why is it that you can call your own people "niggers" and I can't? Seems like a double standard to me.]"

Hey, this is kinda fun! But that's, alas, all I have time for. I didn't quite manage the side-splitting laff-riot that Goldstein apparently conjures at leisure, but then I have a bit of a tougher crowd.

Seriously, what I quoted was just a tiny sample of the ostentatious displays of stupidity Goldstein offers his readers. Go over there for a laugh or two -- at him not with him, naturally.

*For those curious at the racism in this story, it's alleged by several Sherlockian scholars that it, being of a later collection published as "The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes", was ghost-written. I'd like to think so. Certainly it's uniquely nasty in the Holmes canon -- the Adventure of the Yellow Face, for example, is fairly sensitive on racial matters, adjusted for its era.

PS: Message for Goldstein, since I'm pretty certain he'll be unhinged by this post (Roy's perfect takedown earned two apoplectic trackbacks from Goldstein): I have to leave for two weeks. You have that long to land some punches. Do what you will.

posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 8:50 AM