A Very Special Blogpost

Sitcoms in the 1980's would occasionally do a "very special episode" which was code for "serious," like when Father Mulcahey did a tracheotomy, or when Tom Hanks played Alex P. Keaton's alcoholic uncle, or when Jessie Spano was so excited.

This post is along those lines.  My apologies in advance.

Almost eight years ago I opined that "we stand at the precipice of what's shaping up to be the most transparently corrupt four year stretch of our federal government's history."  We're now at a newer precipice that is simultaneously more transparent and more corrupt.  I could write at length about how crooked it will be when a major government contractor decides how the government will spend money but I have bigger concerns.

One of the key concepts that makes the oldest democracy in the world so great (despite some people saying it needs to be made great again, I think it's great and always has been) is the separation of powers.  Click on that link to the Library of Congress website, they have a nice short summary of the doctrine.  I'll wait for you.

You're back!  You now know that the Founders separated government powers to avoid a monarchy and preserve individual liberty.  You also now know that one of the key separated powers is the appointment of federal officers--the president picks them but the Senate approves them.  This prevents the president from putting unqualified cronies and lickspittles in positions of power.

President-elect Trump recently twat from his fugazi Twitter platform that he wants to avoid Senate approval for his cabinet picks, and that the next Senate majority leader must agree.  Predictably, the three clowns senators vying to be the Senate leader practically tripped over themselves in a rush to acquiesce to Trump's demand.

This is really bad.  It's so bad that National Review's Ed Whelan says it's bad.  We are watching Trump aggregate a separated power of the Senate unto the Presidency before he's even sworn in, and no one plans to stop him.  It's only going to get worse once he's back in the Oval Office.

The worst way it gets worse is Trump's pick of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.  All of Trump's picks so far are stars of the MAGA extended cinematic universe.  I don't know if this is because Trump's Diet-Coke-and-Big-Mac addled brain can only come up with people he sees on Fox News, or if it's red meat for his cult base, or both.  They're all bad in their own unique ways but Gaetz terrifies me.

Gaetz was not selected for his legal experience or acumen.  He apparently practiced for nine or ten years, and six of those years coincided with his time in the Florida House so I doubt he was billing 2000 hours a year.  Wikipedia says that after graduating from Marshall-Wythe he was at AnchorsGordon, a nine person shop in northwestern Florida.  I am not being an elitist when I say this is not the right resume for the person tasked with leading 10,000 lawyers, the FBI, DEA, OIG, ATF, INTERPOL, and lots of other important stuff.

Gaetz got this job because he'll do whatever Trump wants--he's one of the aforementioned unqualified cronies and lickspittles.  And what Trump wants is to use the police power of the federal government to harass and maybe even imprison people who opposed him.  Once that becomes the new norm there will be no opposition because all dissenters will be gagged or too scared to say anything.  Can you think of any reason why Gaetz wouldn't do this?  Why he wouldn't do this gleefully?  You don't think that if all the AUSAs of good conscience resign when asked to corruptly investigate or indict Trump's enemies, a glut of mini-Gaetzes won't rise up to take those jobs?

I can deal with the head of hair at DoD, the doge assassin at DHS and Pat Summerall's kid as CoS.  But I fear that Gaetz as AG is the beginning of the end of the world's oldest democracy.

And now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

zman Bouillabaise

This is the first in what will likely be a series of one post about a few random things in bite-sized format. I've been meaning to write these up as individual posts but haven't been able to because:

1. I fucked up my writing hand, that's my check.

I wrote about my wrist injury previously and TR suggested I post some post-surgery photos. Here's the final layer of bandages covering my bloody gash. TR's reaction: "Ew, hairy arms."

And here's the gash itself without stitches. The puckering is especially choice. So I have a puckered gash.

Finally, here's the screw that went into my gash.

The Ghostface reference to my fucked up writing hand brings me to:

2. Ghostface doesn't pay his legal bills.

It's been a while since I updated you on Ghostface's copyright issues. It doesn't seem like much happened substantively, probably because Ghostdini doesn't pay his legal bills. His lawyer (he of the AOL email address) moved to withdraw from representing Pretty Tone because The Kid hasn't paid for any of the work done to date. The judge complied so the Wallabee Champ doesn't have representation at the moment, at least not that I know of. 10-4 good buddy Tone got his RFP's up!

Speaking of rap-related legal disputes ...

3. Judge Englemayer plays his trill card, dismisses Z-Trip from Beastie Boys v. Monster Energy.

Judge Englemayer must've read a bunch of old GTB comments because he quoted me ... quoting the Beastie Boys. And he did so while granting Z-Trip's motion for summary judgment in the complaint brought against him by Monster Energy. His Honor concluded that "[i]n musical terms, Z-Trip can now, therefore, rest at least 'as cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce,' because Monster's Third-Part Complaint against him has 'got the rhyme and reason but no cause.' Beastie Boys, So Watcha Want (Capitol Records 1992)."



On the subject of trill and law enforcement ...

4. True Detective ended like that?

All that metaphysical psychedelic mumbo-jumbo ended like that? For real dough?!? That's not at all what I expected.

But you know what I did expect ...

5. Tribe hoops breaks your heart again.

You shouldn't let it. Yes, I have a somewhat irrational disdain for all things W&M, but there's something cool about never making the NCAA tournament. First and foremost W&M is an academic school whose athletes are students first and foremost. No one in the history of sports has attended W&M in order to boost their likelihood of becoming a pro athlete. W&M's inability to win a conference championship highlights its academic focus. And as soon as they make the tournament once they're in the same company as Houston Baptist and Prairie View. If Charlie Brown ever kicked the football he'd just be a baldheaded kid who never changes his shirt. Marls jokes aside, no one wants to be that guy?

And while we're talking Tribe,

6. I finally saw the Tribe Called Quest documentary.

It's fantastic, a must-see if you love Tribe, Native Tongues, 90's NY hiphop,or if you ever suffered through the experience of living with me. If none of the foregoing apply to you, the first half of the movie will establish why I've been continuously pumping their music for over 20 years.

Tribe Pride?

rob wanted the dong picture pushed down the page, and what better way to do that then check in on the latest happenings in Colonial Williamsburg fashion. It appears the ole alma mater held a t-shirt design contest...for a new library-themed shirt? Fo' realz?

Recent William & Mary graduate Cory Chapman created the winning design for a new t-shirt for Swem Library. Chapman’s design was chosen from among 33 submissions in the library’s t-shirt design contest. After receiving numerous requests from students for a Swem t-shirt, the library launched the contest in October. A group of staff, students and alumni judged the submissions, choosing five designs to put out for public vote. Over a two-week period 2,000 people voted in the online survey, with Chapman’s design coming out on top.

When the editorial staff was informed of this truly amazing contest, here were the replies:

Clarence:
"What percentage of American universities (a) have a school library t-shirt, (b) would have 33 entries in the contest, and (c) could garner 2000 votes to decide the winner?? 1%? .01%?"

zman:

"What is swem?  Never heard of it." 

rob:
"What's wrong with a dedicated libraryite letting his freak flag fly? Bunch of elitists, you guys are."

Anyway, here is a picture of the winning shirt. It has a certainly Charlie Brown-esque quality to it, no?

Oh yeah. Day Six of Gheorghe-mas is right around the corner, folks...I know you're excited.

A Very Special Fashion is Dumb

All over America, kids are preparing to head back to college, including one of our own. Men's Health, keeping up with the times, offers the fashion-forward young man advice on how to make an impression while rocking your college's colors. And in one case, how to clash like Todd Akin at Lilith Fair:

The summary for this, entitled "The College of William & Mary", reads thusly:

Don't limit yourself to the team's colors; taking the theme so literally is neither stylish nor necessary. With pants like these, everyone will know you're rooting for the Tribe.

They'll also probably guess you're a hipster dipshit who needs a belt and probably should've had Mom put together a few matching outfits before she sent you off to school. On the bright side, the whole ensemble can be yours for $320. Unless you want the jacket, too, in which case you'll need to call Salvatore Ferragamo at 800-628-8916 for pricing.

Get Help, People

When I was in school, there were two pervasive rumors about The College of William & Mary:

1. There is an above-average number of gay students.
2. There is an above-average number of suicides.

Now, living in the same fraternity house as Rob and Dave, I got used to the fact that #1 was pretty true. As for the second rumor, I never knew anyone in my four-plus years at the College that took his or her own life, so I figured it was bunk. Get this unfortunate piece of news, though. The third suicide in a year at W&M occurred last week. I have removed the names out of respect for the deceased, but I will reveal that the most recent student's name was Whitney.

Another William and Mary student commits suicide... Third this year

On Friday morning, the body of William and Mary sophomore ******, was discovered in the Lake Matoaka area.

In a campus-wide email, Vice President for Student Affairs Ginger Ambler said: “****** was a Sharpe Scholar who had tremendous academic talent. Her faculty have described her as having a particular passion for biodiversity and for exploring the relationship between the environment and quality of life issues.”

****** is the third William and Mary student to have committed suicide in 2010. In
April, ****** was found dead inside his car in a Virginia Beach parking lot; and in February, ****** was found dead in her dorm room.

Now, I am posting this neither to sensationalize nor to make light of this tragic pattern; rather, because we are the self-professed purveyors of taking life less seriously, and as there seems to be something rendering the student body of our alma mater unable to do so, perhaps we haven't done enough to market the message of our madness to these undergrads. I mean, in all seriousness . . . what the fuck is going on in Williamsburg these days?

Here's the little I know about William & Mary these days:

- It's harder to get into the school than ever.
- It's harder to stay in the school and graduate than ever.
- W&M professors are as historically cold and tight with grades as they are patently awkward at cocktail parties.
- In-state and out-of-state tuition is rising, so parental pressure to perform is increased.

Meanwhile:

- It's nearly impossible to drink alcohol.
- Greek Life is neutered beyond recognition.
- City ordinances prohibit living situations and gatherings that could be construed as fun.
- The town still offers no distractions -- unless Colonial America and/or archaeology, pancakes, Christmas Mouse, or caddying for crotchety white people (no offense, Danimal) are one's bag.
- Students are brighter and more diligent than ever, ensuring that they are worse athletes with no wild side whatsoever, rendering club sports such as rugby, lacrosse, and Naked Club completely moot.
- The identity of the student body is now affiliated with such things as the homecoming drag queen, Thriller dancing, and, most recently, suicide. School spirit is non-existent.

I guess this is starting to make some sense. Now, with my Sociology degree, of course I am going to mull over the societal factors that are making this continue to happen. As a collective, though, we should be ensuring that if the Gheorghian philosophy isn't making its way to the furthest corners of the world, at the very least it's starting to permeate our old school.


Now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

W&M Students Break Record; Alums Weep

Okay, this is it. This is the final straw.

We hung in there through four, sometimes five years of getting completely stymied both by bitter professors with an inflated sense of self-worth and homely co-eds whose self-worth wasn't the only thing unnecessarily inflated. We dealt with one (1) bar and two (2) Dellys (sic). We tolerated retirees, tourists, and 10,000 tri-cornered hats. We smiled at the rumors of suicides and gay people. We swallowed Katie Koestner. We accepted cans over kegs, statesmen over sports heroes, and big time SAT's over big-time PAT's. Our fraternities were all dorms. Our classmates were all dorks. Our curriculum was straight out of the 50's (1750's), our options for amusement were straight out of witness protection programs, and our friends quickly became some of the closest we would ever have -- on a par with war veterans or cellmates. And we took it. We were made to feel like Blutarsky clichés -- and this diatribe won't do anything to diminish that notion among unfamiliar readers -- but we took it.

We made the best of it. I know I did. Had a ball.

As alumni, we accept that we won't be going to watch our D-I men's basketball team play in one of the biggest annual sporting events in the nation. Ever. The football team is starting to resemble the basketball team in its putridity, even as the Laycock Center (not instructions from the Kama Sutra) still has the "new football complex" smell. But we shrug it off. We know that with each passing year, our alma mater ups its academic standards and lowers its chances of attracting anyone like us to the campus. (Actually, we may even appreciate it, as it unjustly raises our résumés' stock.) Well-rounded -- truly, not just double-major candidates -- students need not apply. The rugby and lacrosse club teams are on their last legs, gasping for air, and we dismiss it as changing with the times. The school makes the news not for something noteworthy and impressive, but because they ran their well-liked -- but only by students and peers, not by Pat Robertson -- president out of town on a rail for the trifling cross thing. We mock it, we write about it condescendingly, and then we forget it. The students are no doubt suffering the constraints of the era and the administration far worse than we did, and anyone of our ilk who squeezes through the gates of admission for some good times and a good education in a state school must certainly find themselves in some sort of intelligence-quotient-arrogance/social-skill-ignorance purgatory, grinding out their days until transfer, graduation, or death. But that's that. Meanwhile, the pleas for alumni donations become more vociferous every year, even as we wonder if it's really the most worthwhile of causes. But we accept it all the way.

And we make the best of it. We come back for Homecomings, but simply resume our pattern of isolation and consumption. We follow the teams, even as they let us down. We look for news items on the school, even as they tend to make us cringe. And many of us write the checks every year. And we enjoy it.

This is it, though. This is beyond what we are expected to take as persons even loosely affiliated with the College of William & Mary. This is a new low in the coolness factor ratings for the College, and I feel a bit lamer just for having been in these Sunken Gardens many a time. (Bangin' chicks and drinkin' brews, undoubtedly.)

Gheorghe: The Blog readers unfamiliar with our alma mater, feast your eyes on this atrocity and please go lightly on us in your future judgments of us.

Meanwhile, for those of us who ever harked upon the gale, or barfed upon the Crim Dell, or overpaid an ungrateful Greek for tepid swill through unclean taps into a cheap plastic cup, or strode the Colonial Mile down DOG Street wondering what it's all about and why we're here and not somewhere else with nickel drafts and beautiful, brainless hallmates with casual morals . . .

. . . well, here's another reason to cringe.