FinermanWorks

Herman Cain Attacked 47 People With a Chainsaw

Responding to charges that he was a serial killer, the Herman Cain explained that the chainsaw was made in China.  “This is the inferior type of product made there.  I was just trying to slice pepperoni for pizza, but that foreign chainsaw kept malfunctioning.”

This admission contradicted his previous statement questioning the word ‘serial.’  “Flash Gordon was a serial; every Saturday matinee, Flash would fight against the socialist liberalism of the Emperor Ming.  If that made Flash a killer, it was standing up for what is right about America. Now, my only serial is singing in the church choir every Sunday.   Do you have something against God?”

But with the evidence that Godfather’s Pizza had settled 47 law suits, candidate Cain explained his memory lapse.  “I thought that you were referring to the survivors of the malfunctioning Chinese chainsaw accidents.” Obviously those 12 people were not killed–despite their clumsiness.  Now why would they put both legs in front of a chainsaw?  You’d think that they did it deliberately to sue a God-fearing, hard-working, self-made businessman.  This country needs tort reform.”

On the news that Herman Cain was a serial killer, polls indicated a surge in his popularity among Republican voters.  Explaining Cain’s 62% approval rating, Republican high priestess Ann Coulter said, “He at least knows what to do to the unemployed.”

It has since been reported that Willard Mitt Romney was shopping for a chainsaw, but he couldn’t find anyone to wait on him.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this week

November 7:  Doctor Zhivago Gets a Plot–https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/07/fool-russians-where-engels-feared-to-tread/

November 10:  Southern Hospitality–https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/11/10/abu-ghraib-is-arabic-for-andersonville/

November 11:  Veterans Day at the Movies https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/11/11/veterans-day-at-the-movies/

Greek Government Threatens Financial Default; European Economy Could Collapse

Willard Romney…the War Years

1966: Headquarters, Temple Square, Classified Location

“Lieutenant Commander Romney reporting for duty.” But, in some ways, he was still in Viet Nam. Yes, he had converted President Diem. Pity he had to kill him first. But there was still more to do. Ho Chi Minh also smoked; that had to be stopped. And Romney knew how to win the war. Outsource the fighting to China. You could buy 20 Chinese infantry for the price of one American. And think of the savings in medical care for the wounded by adopting acupuncture. Then sell the used needles to sweatshops. Actually, his ideas were too good for the U.S. government; he was going to save them for his MBA project at Harvard.

But the sound of General Bishop Elder Young disrupted young Romney’s anticipation of his first billion. “Romney, we are sending you to France. Open your secret dossier. This time, we want you to convert Jean Paul Sartre. Preferably alive. Once Sartre is a Mormon, we will seem so cool. Everyone will want to join us. There won’t be any Episcopalians or Hare Krishnas left.

We also want you to marry Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, and Catherine Deneuve. It doesn’t matter in what order. You may have a problem with Signoret; she won’t think that she’s a Gentile. It seems her folks were using the term long before we started.

There’s a boat waiting for you in Normandy. You’ll sail down the Seine to Paris. You will also be escorting the Osmond family. Our agent in the cellar of the Paris Opera House will teach them how to sing.”

The details of the voyage remain a mystery, but historians can discern hints as to Romney’s odyssey. That year, all along the Seine there was an apparent epidemic of narcolepsy. But we do know from the secret diaries of Simone de Beauvoir of the meeting between Sartre and Romney. Posing as the fashion editor of the Deseret News, Romney had gained entry into the Sartre apartment. The salon had an unique ambience; you couldn’t tell if the cigarette smog covered up the smell of the 47 cats, or if it was the other way around.

Romney: Golly, it is nifty neat being here.

Sartre: Are you being here?

Romney: Yes, it is nifty neat being here. But Heaven is even better.

Sartre: What is Heaven?  A multitude of self-righteous virgins or the soothing void. 

Romney: How about being the head nothing on your planet? 

Sartre: I already am.

Romney:  Really? 

Sartre:  Perhaps I should convert you.  Immerse yourself in the vacuum, embrace the amorphous.  Nothing can stop you when you are nothing.

Romney:  Okey-dokey. But I still have to make my quota.  I’ll just forge your name on the conversion application.

Sartre: Okey-dokey, mon sacre rien.

But Romney never had a chance to publicize his coup. As he was leaving the apartment, French agents arrested him for his marriages to Edith Piaf and Jeanne d’Arc. It seems that the French do have some hygiene standards where necrophilia is concerned. Romney only avoided the guillotine by his promise of silence. He still doesn’t dare talk about l’affaire Sartre; otherwise, we would know the real reason why France left NATO.

October 24, 1648:  The Treaty of Westphalia

If you haven’t already sent a sympathy card to the Hapsburgs, at least offer to buy them lunch.

As you know (but I will belabor), the Treaty of Westphalia ended The Thirty Years War. The War basically was a simple, religious affair: Catholics slaughtered Protestants and Protestants returned the favor. Both sides proved very enthusiastic. Armies were paid by what they could pillage–and it is always easier to rob the dead. Central Europe was reduced to a charnel house. At least one third of the population was killed.

It looked like the Catholics–led by the Hapsburgs–were ahead on points–when France intervened. Cardinal Richelieu did not want to see a triumphant Austria unifying the German states. The brilliant statesman may have had premonitions of 1870, 1914 and 1940. Relegating his religious preferences behind his national interests, Richelieu brought France to the Protestant side, and that led the war to a stalemate.

The Hapsburgs finally realized that there were too many Protestants to kill and who certainly were not cooperating in the effort. So, Catholics and Protestants agreed to stop slaughtering each other. England did not sign the treaty, however, so Catholics were still fair game in Scotland and Ireland.

And Holland was finally granted independence from Spain. Of course, the Dutch hadn’t bothered to wait and had been governing their country for more forty years. It just took that long for Spain to notice the obvious.

The Protestants of Germany were saved. Austria was frustrated and spent. And now the greatest power on continental Europe was France. Richelieu did not live to see his triumph, succumbing to natural causes in 1643.  There has yet to be a proposal to grant him sainthood.

Learning of Richelieu’s death Pope Urban VII concluded, “If there is a God, he will pay dearly for his conduct.  If there is no God, then he was truly an admirable man.”

October 23, 425:  Valentinian III Becomes Emperor of What’s Left of the Roman Empire

He was six years old and would show consistent immaturity in the remaining 30 years of his reign. The Western Roman Empire was disintegrating while he was throwing a tantrum. At the start of his reign, he ruled over Iberia, Gaul and Italia. By the end, he still had Italia but tenuous patches of the rest. His idea of conquests was other men’s wives. Of course, Valentinian was assassinated but–surprisingly–not by any of the husbands.

His incompetence and debauchery were not unique; yet his name denotes a rare distinction among Roman Emperors. He was related to Valentinian I and Valentinan II; in fact, he was the fourth generation of a ruling dynasty.

We all know the stereotype of the Italian male. He can impregnate a woman with just a leer. That may have been true of the Renaissance Popes but not the Roman Emperors. During orgies they evidently were at the buffet table. The imperial sterility probably encouraged assassination. It is easier to seize the throne stepping over one body than an entire dynasty. Of course, the successful usurper was usually just as impotent. Were the Roman baths a little too warm?

However, Valentinian’s family was the second-longest ruling clan on the imperial throne: 91 years. Ironically, the most successful dynasty was the first: Augustus and the kids. They lasted 95 years, and if Nero hadn’t kicked to death his pregnant wife….

And let’s observe the other historic events of this week:

October 25:  The Battle of Agincourt https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/26/historical-and-rhetorical-revisions/

October 27:  The Calvinist Cookbook  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/27/the-calvinist-cookbook-2/

October 28:  Marching on Rome  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/28/marching-on-rome/

John Galliano Named New President of Libya. 

Country to be Renamed Islam Dior

The interim government explained, “This way we won’t have to change our Anti-Semitism or the presidential wardrobe.

ABC Cancels ‘Charlie’s Angels’

Gadhafi Killed in Capture Attempt

No, it was not a coincidence.  Col. Gadhafi was the only known viewer of the remake of Charlie’s Angels and was hoping to appear on the show.  He had left repeated messages for Aaron Spelling at the Hillcrest Country Club.   Mistaking Col. Gadhafi’s pleas for another of Shecky Greene’s pranks, the Club staff played along and never mentioned Mr. Spelling’s funeral.

Learning of the show’s cancellation, the Colonel lost further reason for living and decided to go out in a barrage of bullets, the way “Charlie’s Angels” should have ended.

In a related story, the network stunned by the failure of “Charlie’s Angels” has announced that it will remake “My Little Margie”.  With the assistance of computer graphics and animatronics, Gale Storm will be available.

October 16, 1555:  The Mary Tudor Cookbook

On this day in 1555, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley inspired two-thirds of a nursery rhyme. They were not intentionally whimsical; Bishops are not supposed to be frivolous, Protestant ones seldom are, and being burned at the stake is never fun. As if they needed further martyrdom, they were Cambridge graduates being publicly executed at Oxford.

What had Latimer and Ridley done to earn their kindling? Both men had been vociferously Protestant at a time when the monarch was just as dogmatically Catholic. Latimer had been too Protestant for Henry VIII–and had a few cautionary “timeouts” in the Tower of London; so just imagine the reaction of Queen Mary, the pinup girl of the Counter-Reformation. Worse for Latimer, he had supported the failed Protestant coup to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. So Latimer was already condemned for treason, but Mary preferred to execute him for heresy. Guess which crime had a more painful sentence.

Ridley had risen to royal favor in the 1530s defending the King’s ecclesiastical supremacy, which included the divine right to dump the first wife. For some reason, Queen Mary resented her mother being declared a whore and she being demoted to “bastard.” When the erstwhile bastard became queen in 1553, Ridley went in person to Mary to apologize for any past misunderstandings. But “Spanish whore” is a difficult term to misinterpret; it is rarely synonymous with “martyred saint”, which is how Mary referred to her mother.  If Ridley received any mercy from the vindictive queen, it was his being transferred from the stressful job of Bishop of London to the salubrious simplicity of the Tower.  Latimer was also vacationing there.

After a year in the Tower, the two were sent to Oxford where an inquisition of impeccably Catholic judges awaited them. Latimer and Ridley knew they were condemned; no one ever beats a heresy charge. However, you can grovel your way out of the most permanent sentence. The men simply had to recant every tenet of Protestantism, fully confess their errors and fervently embrace Holy Mother Church. In return for their humiliation and conversion, they probably would have gotten off with a few years in prison. But Latimer and Ridley would not bend, instead debating every religious point with their accusers. Unfortunately, the Inquisition was not known as an ecumenical good sport.

The men were burned alive in a public square. It was said that Latimer’s last words were, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

No, that is not the nursery rhyme… or even two thirds of it. The remaining inspiration was Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was burned alive at Oxford some five months later. Mary showed considerable restraint in not lighting the pyre herself. She really, really, really hated him. Everything about him seemed damning. When he still was supposed to be a Catholic priest, he had been married. He had risen at the recommendation of the Boleyn family, and he had endeared himself to Henry VIII by being the chief advocate for the first divorce. As if to further aggravate Mary, Cranmer did not even prove to be loyal to his Protestant convictions. When confronted by the Oxford tribunal, he recanted. Given his groveling and Church etiquette, his life should have been spared. But Mary had made her feelings known to the judges. (“Do you enjoy your tenured niche at Oxford or would you prefer being a chaplain at a leper colony in Wales?”) So, when Cranmer was condemned to death, he recanted his recantation.

And, with his death, the wags and wits of the time memorialized the three executions with a nursery rhyme. And you know it, this story of heretical bishops destroyed by an irate queen. Heretics are figuratively blind, so you could say “three blind mitres, three blind mitres…”

Or something similar.

October 14, 1066:  Normandy’s Duke William the Bastard improves his nickname.  Furthermore, the imposition of Norwegian-accented French spares the English language from having umlauts and sounding like a summer stock production of “The Student Prince”.

Every word has a story. We might assume that the English language emerged fully developed from a business lunch between William Shakespeare and Noah Webster. In fact, language evolves. Words migrate from one culture to another, and their meanings mutate and deviate over time. French is based on Latin slang, and English is a complete linguistic hodgepodge: the ripe fermentation of barbaric German, Norwegian-accented French, second-hand Greek and punchlines in Yiddish. Our language is an ongoing odyssey.

Two thousand years ago, there was no England or an English language. Britain and the Germanic dialect of the Angle-Saxons had yet to meet. The language of Roman Britain would have sounded like a Welshman singing Verdi. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Angle and Saxons, not wanting to miss out on the fall of the Roman Empire, invaded Britain and imposed themselves and their Germanic language on the Romanised-Celtic populace. The linguistic consequence is called Old English and would sound like a Welshman gargling.

Of course, as everyone should know, in 1066 the Normans conquered England and grafted their smorgasbord French onto English. That hybrid is called Middle English. Its vocabulary was a scramble of French and German, and the language still had that Germanic tendency to elongate words by pronouncing each and every letter as a s-y-l-l-a-b-l-e. Perhaps the Bubonic Plague gave people the incentive to speak quickly; for whatever reason, five hundred years ago, Modern-recognizable-English had evolved. If thou met William Shakespeare, thou could understandeth him. However, his accent might sound like an audition for The Beverly Hillbillies, and he would be just as dumbfounded by the alien syntax from your mouth.

And the evolution continues. Right, dude?

Hello, I’m Charlie Rose, and I welcome you to Dartmouth College.  Please ignore the fluid on the floor.  For the first hour, it probably is just spilt beer.

Tonight we host five presidential candidates, and we are still hoping that someone will let Herman Cain into the hall.  Questions will come from the audience and, in accordance with Dartmouth rules, the candidates will also be required to chug a cup of Big Green punch for each question.  The last candidate standing wins.  Governor Romney, will you have problems with the drinking of alcohol.

Romney:  No, Frank Luntz told me that I am Episcopalian tonight.

Rose:  Our first question comes from Dartmouth senior Bobo Wadsworth IV.

Bobo:  Are you all committed to a pro-life stance or will any of you give me a break about that Colby coed?

Rick Perry:  You know that we need white babies.  But you seem to be good stock.  So she should pay you!

Newt Gingrich:  The Liberals invented promiscuity.  And does she have a roommate?

Michele Bachmann:  My husband can cure you of these wanton desires for women.

Ron Paul:  As a libertarian, I think that your child should be born and then abandoned.  Let the market decide.

Romney:  Your pioneering spirit is what made America great!  The drive, the courage, the vision that animated Christopher Columbus and Daniel Boone, you showed on that roadtrip to Colby Junior College.

Rose:  Our next question is from sophomore Binky Wadsworth IV.

Binky:  What did you name your polo pony?

Perry:  We only had a mule, son, but we named him Dixie Jesus.

Gingrich:  I never could fit on a horse.

Paul:  We let the horse decide.  I gave him a choice of two Ayn Rand novels and the works of Friedrich von Hayek.  He wouldn’t eat any of them.  So we respected his right to anonymity.

Bachmann: My husband chose Wild Oscar.  Will someone explain that to me?

Romney:  I have had 47 polo ponies, and a focus group picks their names.

Rose:  Our next question is from Freshman Buffy Wadsworth IV.

Buffy:  This is for a term paper.  What was America’s involvement in the Seven Years War?

Romney:  Our French and Indian War was an extension of the international conflict between France and England.

Perry:  Oooh, aren’t you smart!  See, I told ya’ll that he was the same as Obama.

Romney:  I mean that is just one opinion but we can’t be sure.

Perry:  I don’t like Seven Years Wars but we had to fight Hitler and the Islamic terrorists.

Gingrich:  Louis XV was your typical European socialist, but Frederick the Great was our beleaguered democratic ally.

Paul:  If we abolished the State Department, we could just ignore foreign countries.  Email can do anything an ambassador can.

Rose:  Where is Congresswoman Bachmann?

Romney:  She went home with the senior stud.

Rose:  No one will blame her.

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