If you have formed any picture of me over the years I’m sure it is of a man eight feet in height with blazing emeralds for eyes, and who blows more genius into his Kleenex than God could squeeze out of a million brains pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

So far, so good.

But you could never be forced to believe, even if you were tortured at Guantanamo Bay like a common goat herder, that I am anything less than the master of any social situation. And yet, despite being armed to the teeth with a well-lined beard and a twenty-round clip of ice-breaking bon mots, dominance of the female race still eludes me.

I learned this lesson afresh at a recent gallery show here in Rochester New York, the Paris of the Rust Belt. The event was called “Get a Grip”, and featured artwork sprayed on or cut from skateboarder’s grip tape. By happenstance, many of my future wives were assembled in one room. And yet one by one they rebuffed my charm offensive (I really need to stress the charm part of that equation more).

My takeaway from the event can benefit you all: Frankenberry does not work as a pickup line.

One of the gritty pieces of gritty art featured a collage of images, including Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein edited to look like Frankenberry. Now there’s a subject I have something to say about! However, the women I attempted to impress with my knowledge repeatedly  scootched away  from me as though it were step “1” in a self defense protocol. And though I naturally radiate 300 rems of creeper waves, I am sure the error was including Frankenberry in the conversation.

I mean, I’ve only met the guy once. Why do I feel the need to name-drop?

…

Speaking of torture–and why shouldn’t we?–how about Filibusterin’ Rand Paul? Not that I would imply that listening to a Libertarian flash his tinfoil on C-Span for 13 hours is torture (though I am, and it is), but since a filibuster is every Republican’s birthright, it is nice to see one do so by actually taking to the floor, exhausting their pipes and having the subject be something that a liberal can only fantasize about a Democrat addressing: death by flying robots.

True, Paul was motivated by a Libertarian gold-monger’s delusion of Obama dropping hellfire missiles on a hypothetical American enjoying an iced coffee at one of America’s many beverage chains, but then again,

WHY

SHOULD

THAT

FUCKING

MATTER?

Are Americans more deserving of a casual afternoon spent at a cafe solving a crossword puzzle than the foreigners that we have been annihilating throughout the millennium for doing pretty much exactly that?

Americans have watched first Bush, then Obama, blast innocent civilians and their children to Spaghetti-O’s in the name of war or getting-out-of-war for too long now. The whole exercise is a blur, the new normal. “Oh, are we effectively in World War III? How interesting. Well, it will have to end sometime.”

Rand’s rant, which garnered some opportunistic support from fellow future presidential candidates like Marco Rubio, has got the Republicans all wet in the crotch. Some , like John McCain, are overflowing their Depends in rage at this smart-ass goosing the establishment. The  Capitalist wing of the GOP, however, is damp with cooze juice. They  think they have finally found a Tea Bagger who can hold the People’s attention long enough to freestyle some bullshit about the moochers and looters without interjecting a treatise on rape.

However, the audience (both left and right) are fooling themselves if they think an ounce of dignity is about to enter the dialogue regarding our martial foreign policy. Obama, after all, has already fooled us twice. Do we honestly think a Republican dove truly exists, much less one who could budge his party when it comes to assassinations, when even bleeding-heart Democrats can scarcely be bothered to notice?