What’s the latest goat-to-camel exchange rate?

Dear Sir: I took your advice and changed my pirate name. I’m now known as Captain Deathy. That single move has really paid off: two Somali pirate gangs started a bidding war to hire me and I eventually landed a gig with this crew from Puntland. The package is awesome: 150K a year guaranteed, 10% of our annual take, flexi time (when we’re not at sea), health benefits (though I’m not sure you’d want to visit a dentist in Somalia), and two new wenches every six months. My issue now has to do with one of the girls I’m kind of “hanging” with. Her name is Awa. She’s pretty hot and though her English is ordinary to non-existent, I think we have a lot in common. The problem is that about twelve year ago (when she was three) her father promised her to this big Somali dude Abdhi, who’s kind of the cool guy in their town. He’s discovered that Awa and I have been seeing each other and has put the word out that he wants me dead. I can handle that: he won’t be the first mean ass Somali mofo I’ve taken on in a gun fight. My question is how I should handle Awa’s father. Her family are big into camels but I have 25 goats I need to offload. What’s the current goat to camel ratio? Please don’t tell me that it’s fallen to 5:1, or I’m screwed. Yours, Captain Deathy

Dear Captain Deathy: Better on the pirate name. And I’m glad to know it’s landed you a new job. Though may I suggest “Captain Death-copter: ye who bring death from above.” Just a thought.

As for the issue of goat to camel conversion … Like all commodities, goat and camel values spiked, then dropped, then rose, then fell again and now no one knows what direction it’s going to go. They’re like John Travolta’s movie career. In favor, out of favor, on the rise, out of favor again, and now with the remake of “The Taking of Pelham 123″ – it’s hard to say whether we have another rise on our hands or a collective shrug.

Your problem is further complicated because this isn’t a deal where you want either party screwed. If you get screwed, then it’s “great, I got the girl, but I’m out a shitload of goats.” If you screw the girl’s father, then it’s war. You have to reach a price level that’s equitable to all and yet still screw the father while you’re screwing the daughter — with care that, one drunken night, you don’t screw the goats in the process, rendering them totally worthless (following the ancient Arab Pottery Barn rule – “You fuck it, you buy it”).

Here’s my suggestion … offer the father three goats to one camel, with the added proviso that if his ugliest daughter isn’t married by a predetermined time or age, you will take her, too, sans dowry. You can always worry about that problem later, or secretly plan for war in the lead up to the “Big Day.”

If that doesn’t do it, add that you will thrown in either a French or Italian hostage (as these are the human equivalent of T-bills, investments guaranteed to pay).

Hopefully, that helps.

As a final note. This blog is moving once more, for the last time to this website right here.

Thanks,
John

 

A call for leditors

Remember, we can’t write, unless you do. So, send your leditors to leditors@yahoo.com.

We’ve tried it the other way, to varying degrees of success. Typically between “none” and “meh.”

 

Should Specter have joined the Democrats?

Dear Leditors to the Editor: What’s your opinion of Arlen Specter switching parties? Will the Republicans ever win again? Yours, George

Dear Sir: Advance me a metaphor for an explanation later (to paraphrase Wimpy) … but I don’t think the Democratic Party’s realized that you don’t screw every woman out there just because you can now. True, I’m sure, Arlen Specter is an attractive candidate for what’s bound to be a memorable short-term fling. But accepting his advances makes me think the Democrats went “Without” for so long they’re not sexually politically mature to handle their new fame.

You see this behavior a lot from the scrawny-kid-turned-Hollywood-player. He’s spent so long masturbating to Cheetah from the Thundercats that now, because he’s got a position that commands a certain gravity, he’s decided to make up for lost time. Physically, he’s 27. Sexually, 11. And perfect prey for old Cougars like Arlen Specter.

Only, quantity and quality can‘t be equal partners. And without quality ahead in the game, you don’t stay on top for very long. Taking this person and that person to political bed is a good remedy for what ails you in the short term. But in the long term, the body politic suffers from indiscriminately knockin’ boots too often. Sometimes, it’s the embarrassing, unmistakable blemishes on that body. Often, though, it’s just people turning up their noses at how déclassé and short-sighted new money can be.

After all, come 2010, one of two things was going to happen before today: either the Democrats probably defeat a politically bruised Specter or they definitely defeat the guy that bruised him, Pat Toomey. They had it in the bag (as much as these things ever are in the bag). They could have waited and used 59 as rallying cry and occasional excuse for the next 1.5 years. But, no, they needed “It” now. Because, even if the notch an Arlen Specter gives you doesn‘t cut that deep on the bedpost, a notch is a notch in their little black playbook.

Meanwhile, the Republicans get a “win” here, because they’ve gone from “no chance” to “slight chance” to win the election. They got out of a bad relationship, have the chance to trade-up now to someone younger and more exciting to the party. Plus they’re a typical “I hate whomever’s president” mid-term election away from a serious chance at reclaiming the seat.

Which means the biggest loser in this whole affair is actually Pat Toomey, who probably sees visions of a diamond ring and short engagement right about now but who’s future probably ends at “bridesmaid”.

Hope that helps. Likely it doesn’t.

Yours,
John, the Editor

 

Is state-sponsored torture a good thing or a bad thing?

Dear Dr. Editor: I’ve heard a lot about torture lately. Does it work? Is it immoral? Is it ever justified? What is your opinion? Because after almost 8 years, I’m still not certain. Yours, GWB43@aol.com

Dear GWB43@aol.com: Two camps are debating the situation now and each has its argument. The first says, “Yes, it’s terrible. Awful, even. But a necessity. If a bomb’s about to go off and no one’s there to diffuse it, does a Democrat make a sound?” No, they say. He doesn’t. The opposing viewpoint calls it evil, immoral, never actually proven to work, and, “Isn’t there something more Rube Goldberg-like that could take its place? Have you ever seen ’The Prisoner’ for instance?”

Back and forth these two go, playing pub darts in the dark with their arguments, forever pointing and shouting and jumping up and down, screaming, “Didja see? Didja see! Bullseye!” While the rest of us lean over, squint and mutter, “Well … I think so. Maybe.” Meanwhile, there are people like you, GWB43@aol.com, who need a simple answer: does it work, and if it does, does that mean it’s OK?

But the problem with torture is not that it does or doesn’t work. It’s that it works just well enough to keep getting funded. A fleeting success here, a silver lining there — a hope, some twine, a few dreams — and suddenly no one wants to be the one caught rocking the boat. “It worked once; maybe it’ll work again.” Who knows, maybe that’s why the boat finally capsized. Because you were there rocking it. After all, the people who proposed the idea in the first place said nothing would happen if we did it, and nothing happened, so …

The GM bailout works off the same premise, incidentally. We’re told that governments only sponsor the bailout as a measure of last resort. That, its a terrible thing. Awful, even. But without it we face dark days indeed. With it, jobs, states, lives, even, are being saved. We may not like it. It may strike the deepest nerve of our moral center. But without a GM bailout, everything would collapse and the skies would darken and sees turn to blood — and locusts, my God, the locusts.

But the one thing they don’t tell you about a GM bailout or torture is that it doesn’t just stop at the one. It requires another. And another. And some stern words. And some unflattering page one stories. Maybe a staff reshuffle along the way. “But it’s working.” Sort of. Not like it was promised. “But you promise it’ll work this time? OK. Sorry, I had to get tough.” And so another bailout. And another. Until, finally, people aren’t so much against torture or the GM bailout as they are the poor return on investment.

And so, to answer your question GWB43@aol.com, I give you another: Who is John Galt?

Hopefully, this helps.

Thank you for writing, and keep in touch.

Yours,
Dr. Editor

 

How do I fight a possible DOJ investigation?

Dear Dr. Editor: I’m a high-ranking government employee who’s getting slammed in the media about something I didn’t do. Namely, that I’d get certain people to lay off a certain investigation if they helped me gain a certain position. The facts aren’t important, but it involves a committee, a chairmanship, some state secrets, a prosecution, a scuttled investigation, yada, yada, yada. The story hit three years ago, then died. Now there’s a new story about a wiretap that caught me saying I’d do it (but I didn’t). No one’s coming to my defense, and the people lobbing the charges are somewhere in the shadows. Worse, the people I’m charged with trying to help may get off scot-free, and now I may be left holding the bag. What am I to do? Yours, “Joan”

Dear “Joan”: What you need to remember is that you’re a government official. And as such, everyone is against you. Just not always at once, which is how you’ve gotten into this trouble. Sometimes it’s the boss. Other times the press. Occasionally, retired GS-11’s with a career-long axe to grind. Regardless, its when, by some gestalt, these three come together that real trouble rears it’s ugly head.

What’s important is that you don’t lose yours. Often, in these situations, a strategist will say, “let’s throw everything on the wall and see what sticks.” But time is of the essence, and you can’t waste it throwing this charge and that charge up there, waiting for someone else with a loud enough voice to piece it together for you. Perhaps, one day, someone will. I’m going to read between the lines here and guess, “Probably not.” In fact, right about now, you’re probably looking forward a few years to a career as a FOX news analyst. Which, no matter your party affiliation, is never how you picture it ending.

Your best bet now is to throw the charges back in your faceless accusers’ face: Take the same facts, flip them on their head, and weave a tale that’s about as difficult to confirm (at least for the next few years) as your current crisis. Think of it as walking up to an ancient Greek, staring at the same heavens and shouting, “That’s not Orion or a belt. It’s a fucking hourglass!” Same points, totally different conclusion.

To do that, we first must catalogue “our” facts.

• We know that you wanted a certain position.
• We know you couldn’t get said certain position.
• We know there was an investigation of some people.
• We know the representatives of ’some people’ came to you for help.
• We know you never got that position.
• There was wiretapping. Things were said.

Those are the facts, as we understand them.

Next, remember that, when obfuscating, it helps to rope in a few totally irrelevant points. Ones that may actually be quite distant from the main set but that in the two-dimensional world of 24-hour news could seem awfully close.

For instance, I know of another gentleman, also indicted on quid-pro-quo charges. People who worked with the people now accusing you were responsible for taking this unctuous fellow to task. The case was certain. And here we even had witnesses. But the friends of your enemies scotched it. The bad man got away. And now he kicks up his heels on the coffee table in the very House That Crime Built (Or Extended, Rather). Even if he’s been “exonerated” in quotation marks, he’s been “exonerated” nonetheless.

A person who knows the facts of this venerable — to use the word loosely — politician’s case and who’s looking to deflect attention might say, “Well, wait a minute. I see people retiring. People charged with policing government corruption. They don’t like politicians they think get away with things — although I certainly never have. But they look at this man, then they look at me — someone who just ‘heard people out,’ let’s say — and figured they’ve found a way to grind their axe.” And so, to quote, ‘The Three Amigos’: ‘Forgive me, El Guapo. I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?’”

A scurrilous argument. But these are scurrilous times. I cannot condone roping an “innocent” man into the picture. But Justice is blind and all She knows is if the scales feel right.

“Joan,” I’ve given you but the basics. Many are the details left to work out. But you now have at least a framework from which to mount your defense.

Thank you for reading, and keep in touch.

Yours,
Dr. Editor

 

Should I switch careers, from journalism to piracy?

Dear Dr. Editor: My wife and I both just lost our jobs and we have three mighty hungry kids. Given that the global recession probably won’t end for a year or two and this journalism caper seems to be imploding, I am seeking your thoughts and advice on a career change. Specifically, I’m thinking of interviewing for a job with the Somali pirates. I could be wrong but it seems piracy is a growth industry right now. My one worry is how it would look on my CV down the line. Yours, Captain Prickly Beard

Dear Captain Prickly Beard: Augustine tells of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great who was summoned before the famed conqueror and made to stand for his crimes. Why, Alexander asked, had he terrorized and plundered his possessions? The pirate replied, I plunder and I am called a pirate. You plunder and you are called an emperor. So impressed was he with this answer that Alexander freed him (and probably gave him some boys to blow or something).

I mention this episode to prove a point. Sometimes legal bullshit and verbal gymnastics work: “I’m like you / You’re like me / Moral equivalence / And everything is everything.” It’s a terrible way to go through life. But, facts are facts, and sometimes that shit works. And in a recession, with bills to pay and kids to shut up through nonviolent means, who can say that stealing that loaf of bread is wrong. Shit, Victor Hugo laid waste to entire forests on that premise.

This is to say that, should you choose a life of piracy, there is always a way to massage your resume. For instance, should a future post-piracy job be with a lefty rag-mag, omit the word “piracy” in favor of descriptions of you, on the high seas, confronting the leviathan Americans and blah, blah, blah (I’m not writing your resume for you) “We were sort of like Greenpeace.” If it’s a righty ‘tard brochure, tell them you and your Tea Party were taking the fight to the illegal immigrants. So what if you missed the border by a few hundred thousand miles? You’re angry. That’s what counts.

Resumes aren’t about what you did. They’re about what you say you did and can reasonably be believed to have done once hired. Stress your small business experience. Mention your ability to work in high-pressure situations while conducting tough negotiations. Explain how through proper planning and quick action you were able to return top dollar to your organization. In other words, change the language, stress the experience, and you’ll be fine.

Remember, you’ll have already done this to make the jump from journalism to piracy: Constant harassment of sources until they give you want you want (or a portion of it) so you leave them alone. They’ll hope that by paying you off and getting rid of you that they’ll be done with you. Of course, their home office might not like so much what they gave up to get rid of you. And no doubt you always go back for more. And, as always, the tougher the nut, the sweeter the prize. “Everything is like everything.”

My one reservation in the piracy endeavor is the name: Captain Prickly Beard is only a step up from Captain Furrowed Brow, which itself is only a step above Captain Quietly Stewing. Choose something with “terror” or “dread” or “tickling,” even, if you want respect on the high seas.

Good luck on the job front, though, and I hope this advice helps.

Thank you for writing and keep reading.

Yours,
Dr. Editor

 

Drop us a line

Remember, we publish when you email. And right now we’re not publishing.

So, take some time this week to figure out what ails ya. Are you having trouble at or finding work? Are geopolitical problems scaring the bejesus out of you? Or, to paraphrase Roxy Music, is love the drug and you need to score (but don’t know how)?

Send your question our way to this email address and expect an hilarious, possibly even helpful, response within a few days.

Thanks,
The Management

 

Which horrible work thing is preferable?

Dear Dr. Editor: Cut the crap, and dish out a direct answer to a direct question: In this deeply troubling economic environment the entire world now faces, is it preferable to walk to work or eat one’s lunch once there? And don’t try and dodge the question. With furrowed brow, M. Whoreobull

Dear M. Whoreobull: First, I take exception to your implicit charge that we do not answer questions directly here. We do not. But you make that fact sound as if a sin — when it’s merely a beautiful primrose to the path of enlightenment. That, and no one seems to trust an answer that’s shorter than the question. Don’t ask me why. They just don’t.

Now, to answer your question directly, Phase 1.

Let us assume something I have always believed true. And that is that more people than not have tried writing a screenplay, with something like 5% having actually finished a draft ready for an agent to read.

The source material for so many screenplays and novels is what I’m interested in here, and it goes by many names. Pain. Defeat. Cleveland during the playoffs. Call it what you like. At the beginning, a character stands on one side of a problem. And by the end he stands on the other side, dumbfounded whether he moved or the story did — but either way, rubbing his ass from the massive outcropping of granite he was forced to scale.

But if the pain is the source of the material, what is the source of the pain?

That brings us to Phase 2.

Simply put, from the bad shit the author himself experienced (or often claims that he did). He shapes his stories a bit, of course. He stretches them, burns them, runs them over with a car, puts them in a microwave — everything you do with a baby when you’re high — so that they make sense to a wider audience than himself. That, and he’s not into sharing his fame. But at the core is something very real that happened to the author (or the person he murdered to have these stories).

The pain can come from childhood or college or — pay attention, now — work. Really, from any place or time that the author feels he can’t nor ever will escape (lectures on “Paradise Lost” come to mind). And these insults pile up, day after day, until finally a bell goes off and said man becomes “author” and sees before him source material for some artistic(-ish) pursuit.

That is how you must think of the question you posed at the beginning, “Is it preferable to walk to work or eat one’s lunch once there?”: Would you rather your artistic(-ish) pursuit manifest from a careful dissection of a long, solemn task, or via a good, ol’ fashioned ball-kicking? You choose. Personally, I prefer a ball-kicking. Puts hair on your chest. But that’s me. You must choose your own path and put hair wherever you see fit.

Hopefully, this helps.

Thanks for waiting, and keep reading.

Yours,
Dr. Editor

 

Why am I so attracted to John McCain’s daughter?

To the Editor: I am a spiritually lapsed half-Jew who has eaten enough couscous in the past month to have begun feeling Muslim tendencies–at least in granular episodes–and who has been entertaining secret self-hating religious fantasies ever since a woman called Madonna started wearing yarn around her scabby limbs. These factors mean I’ve–at the very least–already regressed into a 5/16ths bad-Jew state (though not one to be confused with Israel). You can therefore imagine my consternation as I watched Larry King the other night as he interviewed Meghan McCain and caught myself thinking, “I dunno, if I got a bottle or so of Mogen David in me and could get her to shut up long enough to forget what her voices sounds like, I might do her…” Bestiality, sir, is disgusting enough, but here I was imagining bonking trotting Republican trayf. Is there any hope for me? Yours, with earnest formulaic salutations, Chaim Dov Desmond-Pierre Horriblezstein.

Dear Sir: It sounds as if you already have a bottle of Mogen David in you.

However, to answer your question. Yes, there is hope. Sex, you see, is a wonderful, blessed occurrence. Proof that God doesn’t want us to get religious on Him.

What you are going through has no name. Or it has one and I don’t know it. Having proclaimed myself a learned “advice columnist”, however, we’ll go with the former, and say that what you’re experiencing is “heteropolisexity” — a word we get by combining “hetero-”, “politics” “sex” and “titty.” It is the state of being attracted to someone of the opposite political persuasion. Particularly when blonde and large-breasted.

Whether this is a mere one-time drunken indulgence on your part or proof of a silent, closet majority, only you can answer. Though it should be said that heteropolisexity is a very natural phenomenon. One common to many men and women struggling to define themselves. We see it depicted in films, such as the climactic Soviet-U.S. snow orgy near the end of “Spies Like Us” as well as personal correspondence, such as the secret Maplethorpe-Helms love letters. That you are, on some level, a man who likes to cross the aisle — to vote GOP ladies into the office of your pants and let them gerrymander your nether regions — is not up for question.

What is, is how you will handle this revelation. Such an attraction can be a shock to the system and, if not confronted properly, lead to “-wingism,” a form of political self-gratification that, ultimately, can lead to political blindness. Not that “-wingism” isn’t enjoyable from time to time — after all, who among us hasn’t daydreamed to the point of climax — but overindulgence in such solitude warps your ability to maintain normal, everyday human interactions. Plus, you can usually smell it.

Instead, define your feelings, rather than let them define you. Don’t let that frustration back up like Cuban missiles behind a blockade. Express them. Live them. Seek them out. Trust me, if you explore — even if only occasionally at first — these burning feelings, you’ll find yourself relieved and feeling, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan in 1984, “better off than you were four,” well, in this case, minutes ago.

Hopefully, this has in some way answered your question.

Thank you for writing.

Yours,
The Editor

 

Remember to email

Send us your job questions, your budget questions, your “why does she/he keep calling 6 months later” questions. All will be answered with a grain of truth at the center of each joke.

But only one grain.

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Thanks,
The Publisher