InstaPunk Returns

How did we get here from here ? Don’t forget the question. We’ll be answering it by the end of the post, in our usual roundabout way. Today is the last day of May, finally, and therefore the Last Day of May Madness. I don’t pretend to know what June will bring and what epithet it will earn, but this second part of yesterday’s ramble is about showing you that madness takes different people differently, and mine is not so much random infantilism as obsessive curiosity derived from my relationship with the universe. The universe speaks to me in ways both overt and intimational, which is my own word and also the tacit permission I give you to interpret my references to the universe as free-association play with my particular universe, of which I have documented abundant bits and pieces and bigger parts too. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think there was some value to it. Yesterday we started with RINOs in the news and the funny curse they seem to have been brought upon themselves, and we ...

They don’t let me out much anymore. I feel like Uncle Fred . Back on the first of April I rechristened the next 30 days April Fools Month. Turns out I was right to do that, as the Democrat downward spiral into an unhinged opposite of what it once prided itself for became more laughable by the day. Now we are on the 30th day of what I am hopefully about to bury as “May Madness,” a cringe-inducing period of violent Dem fantasies and true-life violence they deplore without seeming able to connect their own rhetoric with mass shootings and assassination attempts. They’re actually proud of themselves. A lot like their Republican counterpart, the RINOs, whose only sign of backbone in many years has been their willingness to defy Trump and conspire openly against the legislative priorities he was elected to implement. And, like the Dems, they're proud of themselves. It’s not a small group. Let me count the stiff-necked feeders at the Wall St/Pharma/Amnesty/Pork/ Antisemite trough who have...

 …and a weird dose of nostalgia, as for something half remembered. What did you do for your Memorial Day remembrances?  We watched the laying off the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns and the President’s speech. The audience was large, and the people there looked amazingly normal. Attentive and respectful. The way our parents taught us to be at solemn events. We heard the fireworks begin after dark and out the Thundershirt on our terrier Tommy, who isn’t entirely sure that fireworks aren’t an approaching thunderstorm. All we needed of that timeless ritual, since we’ve both been to May such occasions, including the field a mile away where the Salem even is always held. It was only at bedtime that I tried something new. In my constant search for background sounds that facilitate the hours of sleep I get before the inevitable wee hours summons to the keyboard, I try different things, usually intended to be monotonous and therefore soporific. British crime documentary series are ...

Father Gaffigan Call this one more thing nobody wants to talk about on either side of the Great Divide in our culture. The question crops up in vague reporting of unexplained disconnects between what people say and what they mean. We had a good example last week, as Stephen Coldert [sic] was celebrating the last show of his record breaking destruction of a once profitable and popular television franchise. He asked for his personally beatified acolytes that night to ask him interview questions from his own hostly throne on the show’s set while he expatiated from the guest lectern. Jim Gaffigan took the bait. As a Cath*lic in good standing himself, he wanted his Archbishop of Politics to share his religious beliefs with the teevee congregation. (Un)surprisingly, Coldert’s answer became something of a story.  That’s not just a claim about life after death. It’s a much more sweeping position than that, particularly in the way it was phrased. Interestingly, the quoted “X’ post was trun...