arteejee

A site of satirical musings, commentary and/or rhetorical criticism of the world at large.

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Location: Southeastern, Pennsylvania, United States

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Nuptial Congratulations



We will take a break commenting on the circus of fear now playing in Washington, DC* and celebrate some positive news.  This week our friends and fellow bloggers, Spo and Someone, tied the knot in Palm Springs CA.  As a way to offer our congratulations and wishes of good luck to the happy couple, we present a wedding scene from one of our favorite films**.  


*What the hell, we reason!  The circus could play out its full run until 2021, but our hope is that cooler minds will prevail long before then.

**Alas, it is not the wedding scene from Horsefeathers.  Our editorial board could not find an isolated clip of the scene on YouTube.

(Thank you for reading and watching.  Our normal programming of shaming the current administration will resume next week.)

Friday, February 17, 2017

The Annual Winter Illness



It has happened again for the third straight year: an upper respiratory infection in the depths of winter.  I expected this to happen and took the precaution of saving my paid time off days for these months when there should perpetual cold and frozen liquid covering the lawns with a sheet of white icing. Alas, this winter is proving to be warmer than it should be, and we’ve had perhaps a total of nine inches of snow distributed over three separate meteorological incidences.  And, oh yes, before I forget, the forecast highs for this weekend are 63F and 65F.  

Yes, nice spring like temperatures…IN THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY!

EARTH TO PRESIDENT!  EARTH TO PRESIDENT!  GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT, WE REPEAT, NOT A HOAX!

So I have called in three straight days this week due to this year’s URI.  I am not worried about using up my time off: I have plenty to spare this year.  Unlike last year when the illness hung on for three weeks and just as many courses of antibiotics.  At least I can blame last year’s illness on a miscalculation by the world health community about which flu strains would be dominant and therefore the strain which was put in to production for last year’s flu vaccination WAS NOT THE ONE WHICH ENDED UP BEING THE DOMINANT STRAIN!

EARTH TO WORLD HEALTH SCIENTISTS!  EARTH TO WORLD HEALTH SCIENTISTS! HOPE YOU DID NOT EFF IT UP THIS YEAR!

Today I made an appointment with my primary care physician.  I’m sure he’ll hem and haw about giving me an antibiotic for just a cold, but I do have an alternate plan.   If my PCP does not prescribe Dr. Fleming's Magic Mold (or some unreasonable facsimile thereof), I will go back to my pot of hot tea sweetened with honey and artificial sweetener, and perhaps fortified with lemon juice and brandy (no rubbish).   No, on second thought, there will be no perhaps about the brandy; it will be added.

So, as my annual winter illness waylays my work ethic, I note with some amusement and trepidation that the eventual apocalypse of western civilization continues at a good steady pace.  Yesterday, Herr Orange Furor gave an impromptu press conference to the White House Press Corps which was announced at the last moment.  The result can best be described as a belated case of voter regret, as in, “Oh my God!   What the eff have we done to ourselves?”

Or to quote the film actor Colin Clive in James Whale’s Frankenstein, “IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE!”

Herr Orange started the meeting with an announcement about his latest nominee to be Secretary of Labor.   His original choice bowed out when he realized that he did not have enough support for confirmation in Senate.   This happened because a majority of Senators realized that the first labor nominee lacked a certain empathy for the people he would be allegedly assisting, namely labor.

Herr Orange, you may want to scrutinize your cabinet choices more thoroughly before you nominate them.  MAY WE SUGGEST EXTREME VETTING?

Of course, it was not his fault that his first choice had to bow out.   He blamed the Democrats in Congress for holding up the confirmation of his nominees.  And, of course, the Democrats are aided and abetted by the unfair media who insist on publishing their “fake news” stories, and this is so unfair particularly since this Chief Executive has accomplished so much in his first 30 days in office and he won the Electoral College by a significant margin and…there were so many left turns in his arguments at this point that everyone was desperately searching for a spot to jump off.

The joke, a very bad one, is on all of us.   There will be no good spot to jump out of the way for at least four years.

SAD!

(Thank you for reading.  How long until Herr Orange stops whining about winning the Electoral College?)

Saturday, February 11, 2017

A Tribute to the New Administration



This week we post a musical tribute to the new administration running the United States.  Naturally, there are some members of the administration who seem to be more experienced with the nuances of “alternative facts” or whatever they’re calling falsehoods this week.  Yes, we have our eyes on you Kellyanne!

With this in mind, here is a performance by a Bergen, New Jersey group called the Knickerbockers:


(Thank you for reading and watching.)

Saturday, February 04, 2017

The Bowling Green Massacre: Where, What, and Why It Didn’t Happen



INTRODUCTION

The Massacre at Bowling Green (AKA Bowling Green Massacre) was a seminal event in American media history.  Its citation was used as a reason to justify an executive order banning travel to and from countries with Muslim majority populations in February 2017.

BOWLING GREEN: GEOGRAPHY

Bowling Green, Kentucky is the third most populous city in the state, located in the southwest area of the state.  Wikipedia lists its population as 63,616 as of 2015.  The city is also home to the second largest college in the state, Western Kentucky University, as well as the National Corvette Museum.

Personal note:  I had the pleasure of traveling to Bowling Green to visit friends in 1988.  I found it to be a nice accommodating destination with a lovely, tree-lined square.  I spent an afternoon at the museum at Western Kentucky University, but I didn’t bother going to the National Corvette Museum as I determined that it was filled with nothing but fancy cars.

Sorry, fancy cars are not my “thing”.

So much for where!

THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE

Leading historians from the world over have scoured every depository of knowledge to learn and gain some insight in to this event.   After an exhaustive five minute search of said archives the leading historians have concluded that there is no evidence that the Bowling Green Massacre ever occurred.  Indeed the historians sniffed they could not find any mention of a riot, annihilation, conflagration or “flipping the bird” let alone massacre occurring in Bowling Green.  Furthermore, the historians warn scholars not to bother looking for any such citations in any archives, because these words simply do not coexist with the words Bowling Green.
Three cheers for Bowling Green!

THE MYSTERY AND MYTH OF THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE

Scholars the world over are now focusing on the mystery of the Bowling Green Massacre.  Their focus is not so much on any curious deviation from the facts regarding the event.  No, they believe the greater mystery is why are we still talking about this none event after three days?

First, some context.  The Bowling Green Massacre first came to the public’s attention during an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball show with Chris Matthews on February 2, 2017. In the course of the interview the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway mentioned the massacre as justification for the president’s order to ban travel to Muslim countries.   After a few days in which Facebook howled, Twitter giggled and guffawed, and political pundits fell down laughing, Conway admitted that she had misspoke that a massacre had happened.  She clarified that she was referring to the arrest of two Iranian immigrants living in Bowling Green who were apprehended in the act of soliciting funds for Isis in a FBI sting operation. 

Unfortunately Conway stopped short of further full disclosure about the state of her mind when she made these remarks in her interview.  Missing from her explanation were such statements as, “Wow, that was a real stupid thing to say, even for a blonde like myself,” or “I’m a poopiehead.”

THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE: AFTERMATH

In the wake of this media frenzy about a tragedy which never happened, there is still one theory worthy of discussion.  Okay, so we now know that the remark was a mistake…or was it?   Could the reference to a massacre in a Kentucky city rather have been another carefully crafted faux pas lobbed at the media as a diversion to take its attention away from more important issues?  Issues such as the current administration’s disastrous military operation in Yemen?

Now, that was a massacre!

(Thank you for not reading.)