"Donald Trump is the President? (II)."

Every so often I'm abstracted, sifting through the clouds, reading bad old numbers of Punisher War Zone by Chuck Dixon, rooting through the garbage for something to eat, watching back to back documentaries about the Manson Family or episodes of Real Housewives of Atlanta, and I'll think –– "What am I doing?" And I also forget momentarily that Donald Trump is the President.

Today I was washing up and reevaluating reality for the thousandth time this year. And I thought, "We take it as a given held self-evident that all those hicks and sourmash addled hayseeds in the Red Zones voted for Trump, but why would a bunch of Kentucky miners vote for a swaggering flabby privileged incompetent New York ( uh –– Queens County ––) rich kid businessman?

(Never mind calling a seventy-year-old man a "kid" –– he still has the natural bearing of a tubby school bully. He is indeed the locus classicus of the ubiquitous type.)

Who can credit the people people vote for?

I remember somebody saying a similar thing once many years ago in a book warehouse in Oval. "Who can explain the people people fall for, especially on the rebound?"

I was watching CNN idly last night and there was a piece about the kerfuffle in Peru. They showed the former Peruvian President, who had been arrested and charged with corruption, now in hospital. He was patently Japanese. Even his name was Japanese.

He has been pardoned by the current President of Peru. Camera cut to a shot of the current President, a white man with a bright red face. His surname is Kuczynski.

A good Peruvian name.

Peruvians seem to prefer to vote for people who are as unlike them as possible to rule over them.

Et cetera
Et cetera

"Trump Versus Tillerson Haircut Competition."

Trump versus Tillerson in a competition over which weirdo's hairdo looks more like a thin cobweb was draped across their shining bald pates.

Whose [sic] gonna win.

Ever walked through a cobweb in the early hours of the morning and looked at yourself in the mirror and you didn't know if you were Trump or Tillerson?

"I felt so lousy I didn't know if I was Trump Tillerson ot a ten tonne turd!"

Trump resents Tillerson because when they stand next to each other neither man looks exactly hirsute.

Tillerson resents Trump for bringing the very idea of hair into disrepute.

Tillerson resents Trump for bringing the very reality of hair into doubt.

Trump resents Tillerson because his hair lacks conviction. It lacks "gumption".

Trump resents Tillerson because he will not partake of the sunbed treatment that gives his hair its signature urine colour.

Think of the strange arachnids that wove the gossamer that was then deposited unceremoniously on these two politicians' heads and then crafted –– by cynical men –– into hollow pompadours.

Think of the number of tunnel spiders required to coat Donald Trump's head each night.

Who would win in a headbutt smackdown between Trump and Tillerson? Neither one –– they'd both be knocked unconscious by the sheer lack of cushioning afforded by their thin layers of hair.

These guys should be outiftted with compulsory cycling helmets to protest their heads, because those illusions of hair they have on now ain't going to cut it in a smackdown or a pile up.

Are these magical Icelandic chefs being paid exorbitant amounts to maintain a thin film of moss on Donald Trump's head?

Are the premiere video installation artists of New York's famed "Soho" zone being paid to craft holograms on top of Tillerson's bald bonce?

_________________________________

I was watching Don Lemon. Don had been trying once again to make the case that Trump is "shithouse batshit crazy". He seemed to hope that if he could say the words in the right order the whole country would finally realise tbis simple golden truth.

Heck, I believe it. But I'm not a shitkicker out of old Kaintuck. My vote doesn't count.

The Matt Lauer story had broken and nobody knew who was going to turn out to be a sex pest monster next. Correspondent Angela, a woman of colour, was complaining about how even on this show she had been interrupted mid-sentence by men and such unchivalrous behaviour had surely had its day. Don and the fat white Trump proxy both nodded soberly and clucked sympathetically.

Five minutes later she couldn't get a word in edgeways as Don and the fat Republican were yelling hoarsely at each other again. Angela was on the video screen but Don had his hand up to stop her from speaking while he bellowed at his adversary.

"Don Lemon gets really angry," I said pensively.

"I think one day he's going to just stop and say, 'That's it, I've had enough, I can't take it anymore'" said my wife.

"You know, Wash Cowie thinks Don Lemon is dumb," I said to my wife, wondering for the first time if Wash Cowie has a point.

Charlie Rose is gone and Don Lemon ain't doing so well.

"George Rastapopoulos."

Great day today. Bad day for Trump is a good day for me and I'll take whatever I can get boy yup.

People were raving with pleasure on CNN. They finally got to say: "No nothingburger, there's a there there."

People struggled with Papadopoulos's name. Wolf Blitzer came right out and called him "George Stephanopoulos." I laughed –– Wolf didn't.

I'm surprised he didn't spazz utterly and blame Tintin's arch enemy, Bob Rastapopoulos.

I said to my wife, "There's never been a precedent for Bob Mueller. Except Superman. He's like Superman. No he's Batman because he has no actual super powers. Half the country –– no half the world –– at least –– is counting on him. And we know nothing about him –– we never see him. He's like The Shadow. There hasn't been an enigmatic folk hero like this in hundreds of years."

Jeffrey Toobin was on every show, giddy with unabashed hope for the first time in months –– years.

On a personal note I was pleased because crusty Richard Quest was bumped so they could show Wolf Blitzer. I first became aware of Richard Quest the night of the Brexit. I was in LA watching CNN and the vote count coming in. I phoned up my mum and said, "Your team won."

English CNN is very strange. It's always talking about the markets in Dubai and Africa. It's always talking about ladies' golf.

"Nothing to Say About Nothing to Say (A Slight Slap At Mobocratic Snobbery)."

Or, "Cockney Ding Dong Don with the Former Clapper."

Don Lemon had Former Director Clapper on last night.
Clapper looks about how I feel.
Don goes, "Director Sir, whatcha got adzackly."
"Nothing," says Clapper. "I got nothing Don. I've officially run out of things to say about Trump."

Meanwhile there was a little sidebar box with a radar shot of the latest Hurricane ("Maria"). I thought it said "Hurricane Mania." It'd be an apt phrase –– everyone's gone hurricane mad!

Too much Hurricane Mania, certainly.
"Too botheration" as Doc Alimantado used to say.

Later on, I was upstairs, and heard the CNN man refer to Hurricane Irma.
I heard it as "Hurricane Enema".

I wish these hurricanes would stop. For the good of the people, of course, but also: What with all these hullaballoos the would-be Prez seems to have got scot-free out of "shtook" again, all on the back of this Hurricane Mania.

The fat shining bright orange nothingburger has sallied out astride the gusts,  like Aeolus, the god of winds, or Storm of the X-Men, that wind–rider, all the way to freedom and redemption. I know he's a black-belt master of expelling hot fetid air, it's been documented extensively –– wonder if the whole "Hurricane Mania" is another Trump 4-D chessmaster conspiracy!

Maybe he's got Russian planes seeding the clouds and nobody knows.

I DON'T KNOW.

"Punisher T-Shirt at Trump Rally." Or, "Sympathy For the Punisher."

Did you see the rogue's gallery of hicks and KKK rejects at the rally? The Legion of Substitute Villains?, behind Trump at his rabble-rousing last night in West Viriginny? Did you see the late Kim Fowley in there –– his celebrated corpse –– or was that Yellowman in a curly black wig.

I saw a guy in a Punisher t-shirt there too, cheering for them to bring back the hangman, the gas chamber and the ducking stool, and for that hangman to be named Robert Eugene Lee, for he rideth on a pale horse with a scimitar between his teeth. Chuck Dixon, was that yeou?

It's a shame about Chuck Dixon, because I like a few (I originally wrote "a lot" but went back flushed with the spirit of accuracy and changed it) of his comics and I actually agree with him to an extent about the late instinctive reimagining of every superhero as a so-called "minority". Not because I'm a virulent racist, sexist, homophobe &c. but because they do it so poorly and blunder so badly at the cost of the fine art of penmanship. Most of those reboots suck.

And I thought, "Poor Punisher."

And I thought,
"Poor Frank Castle.
Guy's misunderstood.
He's not a Trump Republican.
He is a mass-murderer,
he is a serial killer,
but he is not a Trump Republican."

"Tautologies for Kentucky."

                       

When Trump breaks off mid-sentence in a speech to say "a lot of people don't know that," what he means is "I didn't know that."

Another thing he says, written as a formula:

"X, and it certainly is X."

95% of what Trump says is variously empty flummery, bland fudge and vacuous flannel. 

Last year's funnel cake.

Flannel cake. Have you ever had flannel cake? At Musso and Frank on Hollywood Boulevard?

His hair is like what he says –– a lot of  hot flatus with very little integrity or solidity.

A grotesque oddity. A quiddity.

A spider's cobweb with nothing in it ––

      Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

      Kitty Fisher found it.

      Nothing in it, nothing in it

      But the binding round it.

      Donald Trump lost his periwig
      Steve Bannon found it
      Nothing in it, nothing in it
      Nothing whatsoever in it. 

Even when he is talking about North Korea Overcomber says something like, "We shall see what we shall see and then we shall do what we shall do." Always deferring saying anything. Tautologies for the Kentucky shitkickers.  Thank goodness for his acid-trip fuck-head tweets –– that's the only time he says anything, even if it is strictly the cream from the nutfarm. 

That guy's hair is like a wedding cake from the eighteen seventies lovingly preserved in formaldehyde. It tastes awful. Also––

I AM OUT OF AMMO.

"Trump, The Greenpoint Years."

I was recently watching the famous (but not famous enough apparently) "Small Loan of a Million Dollars" interview clip with OVERCOMBER DUMB. Aside from the obvious scene of chronic "tone deafness" that apparently didn't dissuade those dirt-poor bucktooths from Kaintuck back in Octember, there was another detail of particular interest to me.

In his oral testimony of his hard knock life, his sad plaint, Trump doesn't seem sure if he's from Brooklyn or Queens. Maybe, methought, he's from Greenpoint, that strange "liminal threshold" at the North-Western corner of Booklyn [sic] & just shy of the South-Western corner of Queens. I lived there for a hundred years one decade recently.

Still that said I am sure I never saw OVERCOMBER DUMB on the nightly trek back from the 7 at Vernon Boulevard–Jackson Avenue to Greenpoint & the McGuinness Boulevard over the Pulaski Bridge c. 2010–2014.

It was maybe 2010 I started to take that route out of sheer disgust at the other option: the L to the 62.

Forget Bedford man. Bedford's almost as bad as Trump.

I had started walking from the Bedford subway, via backroads, because I was sick of waiting for the 62 with the condo hipster rabble, people younger and richer than me, but then they built pretentious boutique bespoke hotels even in the backstreets, and I couldn't avoid oblivious uncool Manhattanites and bumbling Eurotrash and hipsters out with their parents and grandparents taking up the whole sidewalk rather than walking in a line.

Now I preferred to take the Pulaski Bridge with its working stiff demographic and that funny little man who flouted the rules by riding with great and inapt seriousness on a miniature motorcycle dressed as a cross between a traffic cop and Lee Perry.

I never saw the president there, and I think I'd have noticed if I had because in those years I used to semi-avidly watch The Celebrity Apprentice.

Who'd have guessed––

Guy's a fucking liar.
Guy's got a diamond-shaped mouth and a triangle in the centre of his face clustered around a smushed  patent fat kid nose.

* * * * * * * * * *

I laugh aloud with horrible tears in my eyes whenever Trump takes up the cause of "civilization" with himself quite absurdly as its prime defender. O for a Mencken today! Now he speaks loftily about "Western Civilization" –– like Allan Bloom –– and how it must be upheld at any cost. What civilization does he mean, I wonder, mock–innocently. The wrestling? Reality teevee? Billy Bush and Howard Stern? Sheesh.

Guy's a fucking postmodernist.