CSotD: Random Crazy

Jimmy Margulies explains today’s lack of any particular theme.  Dear Leader has become so erratic that it’s possible to blend the political with the comical and the only real problem is that he’s got access to the launch codes.

We’ve managed to bring Great Truth to that cynical National Lampoon parody of Desiderata:

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Except it’s more like “in your face,” which brings us to this

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Clay Jones)

(Bill Day)

The Greenland thing won’t go away, in part because just as soon as the laughter dies down, Dear Leader himself manages to bring it up again.

I prefer Day’s cartoon, because he manages to work several proofs of lunacy into it besides the Greenland obsession, including the addition of blasphemy to Trump’s appeal to evangelicals.

(Yes, he was only quoting an insane talk show host who is also a birther and overall nut case. I don’t remember Lincoln or Jefferson going down to the asylums in search of supporters. And, in any case, Dear Leader subsequently said it of himself.)

Cutting through all that, Jones offers a wicked essay along with his cartoon and, while his commentary is always worth a look, this one stands out, with passages such as

Trump is confused that having a little orange snit and temper tantrum is viewed as being strong. It’s not. When a baby screams its head off in the grocery store because the parents won’t buy it a candy bar, nobody sees that baby as being strong. They see it as being a baby and everyone in close proximity really dislikes that baby and the parents spend the rest of their time in the store apologizing for it.

 

Though, to resurrect an old meme, his possession of those launch codes does give one pause, particularly since he has already wished Kelly and Mattis out into the cornfield.

Still, there’s some kind of Failsafe/Strangelove movie in speculating the whatifs around it all.

What if he gave a war and nobody came? What if they did?

Meanwhile, with another on-line meme as illustration, Art Spiegelman pulled his introduction from a Marvel reprint book because the editors insisted he drop an anti-Trump reference to the “Orange Skull.”

It’s still unclear (at least to me) how much change they were specifically requesting, but, with a h/t to Tom Spurgeon, here’s a Vox piece that gives more information and insight than I’d seen so far.

 

And, as long as I’m sending you off to read other things today, I’ll cap Michael Cavna’s tribute to birthday girl Dorothy Parker with a link to her Wikiquote page, which ought to keep you out of trouble for awhile.

It will also (sigh) let you see that there are a couple of “misattributeds” in that illustration, but she’s an easy one to misattribute clever quotes to, and I like his graphics enough that I’ll give him a pass.

There was a lot of Yogi Berra in that lady anyway:

I really didn’t say everything I said. […] Then again, I might have said ’em, but you never know.

 

And, while we’re on the Entertainment Beat, I got more of a laff out of today’s Buckets than I was probably supposed to.

My first thought was, “Nah, because you’d just take’em from a spreadsheet and cut-and-paste …” and the thought was barely formed when I began to figure the odds of it being that simple.

First thing is that whoever designed the credits has some funky program that, when you cut-and-paste text into it, adds random dingbats that you have to go back and eliminate individually.

At which point it defaults all the fonts to something else and you have to scramble to restore them before the credits designer finds out you destroyed everything, which is his fault for choosing some bizarre, off-brand font that isn’t compatible with his bizarre, off-brand program.

Which you then realize won’t let you create columns and you sure as hell can’t list all 4,000 random names in a single column or the credits will be longer than the movie.

At which point you start to think about what you agreed to be paid for this gig, back when you thought it was just a cut-and-paste job.

Greg Cravens has a really sadistic sense of humor.

 

As does Maria Scrivan, to whom I say “Hush! They’ll hear you!”

I noted the other day that “most of these potato chip concoctions are simply a way to shovel salt and artificial flavoring into your mouth,” but Scrivan seems to be working sugar and salt-free options into the mix.

Elder son had the good fortune several years ago to find, in the seatback of an airplane, a trade journal from the folks who make artificial flavoring.

He read about how “grape” doesn’t taste like the fruit.

It tastes like the flavor, which has been used in grape pop and purple Life Savers and suchlike for so many years that we’ve learned to call it “grape.”

The application here being that, when they sprinkled barbecue spices on potato chips, sure, it tasted like barbecue because that’s how you make pork or chicken taste like barbecue.

Now apply what you know about grape flavor to the concept of a Slushee-flavored potato chip.

Has anyone ever been drinking a Slushee and wondered if it were made from real cherries or real oranges or real anything?

We’ve got a whole generation of kids raised on Slushees and Gatorade and Lucky Charms, all based on colors, not flavors.

I think that, if you’re going to sell them Slushee flavored potato chips — and I certainly think you could — you’d have to add artificial coloring, and then come up with three or four different varieties. The flavors could be completely random.

I don’t think the folks who make Lay’s or Ruffles are up to this challenge.

This is clearly a job for Pringles. (Whatever the hell those are.)