"Trey Gowdy Vs. Mark E. Smith"

Since returning to England wife and I have been watching CNN (American) and Bravo imports on Hayu almost exclusively. Like millennials, we don't watch TV as it used to be envisaged. We do not crowd around the telly with mum and gran for Corrie or Eastenders or  Holby City or Dancing With the Stars. We do not follow the mad works of Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, and the other people whoever they are. We do not allow the mad works of Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Dan'l Whiddon, Arry Awke and especially Peter Gurney to interfere in our fun.

We illegally streamed CNN America on a channel named after, for reasons that were never clear, the Hulk. One day the Hulk was banished. Did Dr. Strange send him to the crossroads of reality? We scrabbled for replacements. We must watch Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Wolf and Kate Bolduan (on maternity leave and with terrible stand-ins) and we resent it when Amanpour or Richard Quest blunder in on our programming as it is on English CNN.

How to describe it when Don Lemon at the height of one of his ecstasies of spleen is interrupted abruptly by the grey monotone of the interloper Amanpour with her piffling stuff from the postcolonial planet. Take me back to Foggy Bottom –– now.

CNN in Britain and Europe is earnestly capitalistic, rubbing its palms over Dubai and Africa and China like dull economics students from public school. How many times have I seen that advert with the rapper from the Middle East.  Then the story about the nuns who have "donated their brains to the study of dementia". It shows a nun quipping, "What good is it to do me when my brain is six feet under?"

Don't they believe in the eternal resurrection?

The Europeans at Davos, oblivious, barefacedly greedy, giving Trump a "ow you say, a fair shake of the whip".

All this is preamble to the fact that Mark E. Smith died on Wednesday and I didn't even know about it til today, although I had been keenly following stories such as Trey Gowdy backpedalling over Mueller and the ongoing obscure machinations of Devin Nunes, not to mention the minutiae in the lives of Stassi Shroeder, Scheana Shay and that interesting personage James Kennedy, the "white Kanye".

I phoned up my brother today to say, "Uhhh... whatsitcawled... did you see that Peter Wyngarde died?"
"Yes," he said. "And what about Mark E. Smith?"
"What about Mark E. Smith? How is Mark?" I said, quite oblivious. "I am only interested in Trey Gowdy."

I am only interested in Nikki Haley (AKA "Niki Hoeky")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyo_xZnvsA

Nikki Hokey [sic] swears she isn't having an affair with Trump. Says she's only been on Air Force One the wunst. This sort of rhetorical device –– diversion by employing an ancillary factoid –– is suspicious. It's like Trump saying he didn't have Russian prostitutes urinate on him because he's got a hygiene neurosis.

Nikki Hokey should have said, "What I don't know about this scurrilous ugly rumour is: who is more insulted by the allegation? Who comes off worse in the transaction if I snog the Prez?"

Last observation. Wife and I were watching Chris Cuomo's late night show.
He's on in the morning and he's on late at night.
I said, "When does this guy sleep?"

Does he sleep?

Where do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed?

Forget I said that.

"Steve Bannon Looks GREAT!" B/W "Devin Nunes Kit-Kats."

Devin Nunes is the worst.
The WURST.

I'm like Arya Stark with her list of people she doesn't much like. Right at the top of my long list are Stephen Miller, Mike Pence and Devin Nunes.

Journalists are collectively, and quite obviously, trying to get Stephen Miller fired by saying that he is manipulating Trump. They're trying to get Trump angry at him by saying that he's trying to steal the limelight from Trump. But Trump is perverse and he might work out what they're doing and he'll like Stephen Miller even more, because everybody hates Stephen Miller just like everybody hates Trump. Well it is said that "my enemy's enemy is my friend."

Trump likes people who people hate.
Trump hates people who people like.

I was so incensed by Devin Nunes skidding about DC, his latest frantic clowning around Foggy Bottom, that I started trying to draw pictures of his face with a pencil and some post-it notes that were close to hand.

There is a particularly funny picture of him online, the first one that comes up when you Google him indeed, where he is trying (I believe) to smile, but the concept is alien to him and instead he is obviously seething with fury. His lips are a membrane stretched tight across clenched teeth. I used that as a model.

I drew some pictures of his face and then –– unconnected –– I took two chunky Kit Kats out of a biscuit tin. I thought, "I'm going to put them in the fridge."

They were in the biscuit tin, but I needed a knife to cut them into small pieces, and it would be more convenient to put them like I said in the fridge.

I am on a diet so given how many calories there are in a chunky Kit Kat I thought, "I'll be good, I'll only have a third at a time," so I have been cutting them up into three bite-sized treats.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with Devin Nunes.

Well I'll tell you.

I had the Kit Kats and the post-it notes with pencil drawings of Devin Nunes on them both in front of me on the coffee table, and I thought, "What if I could wrap those post-its around the two Kit Kats, I wonder whether they would stay in place. You could have a Devin Nunes Kit Kat."

I did it and you can and I do.

STEVE BANNON UPDATE

"Sloppy" Steve is finally out of the news. When people reach a certain level of suspiciousness and they go on "Bob" Mueller's Arya Stark-like list,  they suddenly disappear from the public eye. You might be forgiven for thinking that they are perhaps inside a maximum-security undersea prison complex like "The Vault" in Marvel Comics, there for their own safety to keep them from black-ops wetworks assassins in the hire of UBERCOMBER DON. Or are they all hiding out with Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK at an Arizona "clinic"? Where for example is "Joseph Mifsud," the enigmatic absent-minded Maltese Professor straight from the pages of Graham Greene?, or that oleaginous toady Rob Goldstone? Where is "Strzok" and his "lover" (––D.J. Trump) Lisa Page? Where oh where in this hour of need is Christopher Steele with his eighties footballer hairstyle? As Boyd Rice would say, "Come back, come back!"

Rob Goldstone is, on inquiry, apparently in Thailand, "writing a book."
Yes Mr. Goldstone I'm sure you went to Thailand to "write a book"! Their famously colorful liberality when it comes to sexual mores just happens to be a coincidence!

About Steve, I was reading the Wolff book and perhaps the most shocking thing of all that I read in it was Bannon's age.

I said to my wife, "How old do you think Steve Bannon is? Go on, have a guess."
"I don't know," she said crisply, tired of my little mind games.

(Another time, I showed her a drawing of a New York street scene that looked like a rather amateurish version of a Saul Steinberg sketch, with little yellow cabs and crappy skyscrapers in a naive outsider hand.
I said, "Whaddaya think of that? Nice, right?"
She said, "Yes, did you do it?"
I was elated that I had caught her so well in my awful sinister trap.
"No I didn't do it," I said. "You see DONALD TRUMP DREW IT. YOU JUST ADMIRED A DRAWING BY TRUMP."

She was sorely miffed.)

Anyway, I said "how old do you think Steve Bannon is?"
She said "55".
I said, "No, he's 63."

63!

Even so even I can't quite believe what I said then:

"63. He looks great for his age."

"Trump's Gonna Live Forever AND YOU AIN'T."

The President's doctor gave testimony after the President's check up. The press pack was baying for blood, or at least enflamed nymph nodes. It was fruitless. They got nothing.

"Do you have a life expectancy range for the President?"
("How much longer do we have to put up with this asshole?")

"He's gonna live forever. He's gonna outlive the lot of you."

"Does the President by any chance have cancer? Please?"

"Is this guy ill? Got haemorrhoids at least?"
"Nope."
"Is his head an actual haemorrhoid?"
"Might be. Science doesn't yet have a name for his head."

"What about his prostate. You check his prostate?"
"His prostate is beautiful."

"Give us something. Is he dying. Say he's dying. Even if he isn't."
"Nope. He's great. Nothing you ask me is going to change the fact that he's in the peak of human condition." [sic]

"Is he ever gonna die?"
"No."

"Are we talking about the same guy you and I? Grimace with the Hamburglar hair?"
"You mean the Ubermensch? Six foot three and he weighs in at one hundred and thirty pounds?"
"You must mean one hundred and thirty stone?"

"Sorry folks, nothing to see here. Any other questions?"

"Yes, doc. What has the President got on you exactly?"

"Salty Talk in the Shithouse Locker Room." Or, "Architectural Critique."

The breaking news is that Ubercomber Don did not say "shithole"–– he said "shithouse".

Is this an architectural critique of Haiti and Nigeria.

Or is the usage of "shithouse"intended here to mean a toilet.

As per the sentence, "The President is as crazy as a shithouse rat."

"The Prez is potty."

Is this more of that "salty talk" we have heard about.

Is this more "locker room" naughtiness.

Is there salt in the locker room.

Is the locker room we are referring to within the building known as the "shithouse".

"My father's shithouse has many locker rooms." –– BARRON TRUMP.

"Idea for a Quiz Show."

We were watching Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Sheree's son "Kairo" was on the screen making a cheeseburger. "Look at that. Two patties and a flitch of bacon," my wife purred. It made me think of the President who curls up in bed at 6:30 PM with a cheeseburger. Then very fluidly, very organically,  my mind moved to another dynamic idea.

I said, "They should have a quiz show where Sheree's son Kairo competes against Barron Trump. Who I wonder would win this contest of the minds."

My wife goes, "Don't be mean to Barron."

I said, "Who's being mean. I just said they should have him compete in a general knowledge quiz show against Sheree's son Kairo."

"Ain't no shade."
"I am not being sarcastic at all."

To get all this it obviously helps if you watch Real Housewives of Atlanta.

It might even be a prerequisite.

"Shithole Is The Word."

                          

Everybody in the news industry was taking the opportunity to swear flagrantly on teevee. It was a swear-fest. They loved to do it. They were collectively going at it like longshoremen. The word "shithole" was bandied around with secret glee, I suspect. They loved the chance to swear. Chris Cuomo's co-anchor in the morning, [INTERN: PLEASE FILL IN HER NAME HERE] was dignified and wouldn't do it, she devised a series of stately pirouettes around the word, she made a stand for decency. Chris Cuomo leant over, pinky raised, and hollered, "I believe the word you are looking for is SHITHOLE." She pulled a pollyannaish moue and squirmed in her seat.

"Thanks Chris."

(Update: my wife pointed out to me that it wasn't Chris Cuomo at all but the guy who stands in for him [INTERN: PLEASE FILL IN HIS NAME HERE]. Talk about your "fake news media.")

Some people were trying to bowdlerize the word by saying "S-hole" which is pointless, because it sounded like they were saying "ASSHOLE" which is almost as rude as "SHITHOLE".

They should have substituted "piehole" for the children, man.

Republicans who called Trump's earlier pro–rape remarks "locker room talk" gathered in a hubbub again and decided to designate this language by the epithet "salty". This atrophied schoolmarm Republican woman was claiming, "I use 'salty' language like that in my home too!"  I tried to picture it. Couldn't.

"Trumpworld" Republicans were trying to spread the message that "Stand-up blue-collar every-day Joe-Blow Americans everywhere use salty language like this in the privacy of their own living rooms." They were blaming it on the people, turning a disgusting picture of Trump on them and claiming it is a horrifying mirror. 

Don Lemon made a whole speech, a good speech, a noble speech, a St. Crispin Crispian speech, and he actually threw one of the fat bulbous-headed Trump proxies off the show. That made the news. What didn't make the news was that Don had the Trump proxy back on about five minutes later when fat bulbous-headed proxy rather insincerely apologised to Don ("You know I love you Don.").

Next Don had on that former CIA man who always gets riled. Phil Mudd. I like Phil, because he's on our "side", but I do wonder privately how successful such a hothead can have been at the CIA. He explodes and vents whenever a camera turns to him. Not a great poker face, Colonel.

This time he made the most of the current taste for profanity. He kept shouting "SHITHOLE" around the room. He said "I'm a vicious shitholer and I'll fight the man what sez I ain't." Then he called himself a "wop," and I said to my wife, "I respect his self-loathing, but 'Mudd' doesn't sound very much like an Italian name."
"Maybe his mother is Italian," my wife said helpfully.
"Maybe," I said. "Good point."

Meanwhile Phil Mudd was calling Don the "N word". He did it twice. The balls on this Italian-Irish-American! I'm surprised he didn't spazz utterly and start calling the other panelists profane epithets. "Hey fuckface." "Hey jizz-licker." et cetera.

SEARCH TERMS:

Mudd Lemon shithole,
Trump Philip Mudd shithole,
Trump shithole,
shit Muddhole,
Shitphil,
Muddphil,
Muddle,
Muddleshit,
Philshit,
Philhole,
Muddshitphilip,
Muddy Lemon.

I was half-expecting Don Lemon, who also had his dander up, to go "Nice segment, Muddle. And by the way, if you ever call me that name ever again I will cram my whole adult fist up yer PHILHOLE."

That would have been a clever and original way to close the segment.

I just looked at Phil Mudd's webpage to see what his actual military title is, if he has one (yes, I actually do cursory research for this page), and only hours later he is openly hawking t-shirts with the slogan "PROUD SHITHOLER" on them. He's trying to copyright it I think. He's making –– and the pun is fully intended –– lemonade out of lemons.

Where will it all end, I wonder? Will anchors now take to calling eachother "dickhead" casually on air? Will the cheery call "fuck you" become as popular on air as it is off?  Is "shit" no longer profane, in the era of the poop emoji?

Trump should have said "piehole" or "cakehole" and a inserted a winking emoji and maybe there wouldn't have been such an outcry. He should have said "poop hatch" and inserted the turd emoji that has become so associated with his presidency and he would have been applauded.

OTHER NEWS.

Thought: Trump is like a character from Judge Dredd.