Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Well a Hush Fell Over the Pool Room

 

It’s time to return to Jim Crow laws.

Settle down, Trumpanzees. Not the Jim Crow literacy tests for which you yearn to return. Go retrieve the MAGA ball caps you surely tossed in the air at the prospect (when, exactly, was America great; can you give me a year or even era?).

No, we at the HB call for Jim Crow laws for you. But to make it equal between all parties, let’s make it applicable to every American.

Make no mistake: The Jim Crow laws of the 60’s were an abomination. I unearthed a Jim Crow literacy test from  a half century ago, administered to black voters to keep them out of the polls. I challenge any voter, black or white, to ace just the first five questions:

pronely 1965 Alabama Literacy Test
1. Which of the following is a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights?
_____Public Education
_____Employment
_____Trial by Jury
_____Voting
2. The federal census of population is taken every five years.
_____True _____False
3. If a person is indicted for a crime, name two rights which he has.
______________________ ________________________
4. A U.S. senator elected at the general election in November takes office the following year on what date?
_________________________________________________
5. A President elected at the general election in November takes office the following year on what date?
_______________________________________________________

The test went on like that for six pages and 68 questions. I’m not sure your president can even count that high.

No, this test — let’s rename them Jim Croce laws, since the sublime singer appealed to all races and creeds, and loved to skewer dumbasses — would be far fairer.

The Jim Croce test would require to correctly answer just three true-false questions:

  1. Is the Earth round?
  2. Is the Earth getting warmer?
  3. Did dinosaurs live millions of years ago?

I was considering including evolution in there, but realized a Trump base may not know how to pronounce the word, let alone understand it. So we’ll stick to dinosaurs. If you can’t answer those questions, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Consider the questions to get a driver’s license; if that requires a provable level of intelligence, shouldn’t voting?

This, of course, would be assailed by the GOP and Mitch “chicken scrotum” McConnell, who somehow seriously claimed last week that proposing making Election Day a holiday was an attempted power grab by those crafty liberals. He similarly would intuit those three questions alone would spell doom for his party.Image result for mitch mcconnell wrinkly neck

So let’s just stick with something simpler: Slapfacts. And don’t worry; none will be on the test.

  • Chuck Berry had a degree in hairdressing.Image result for Chuck Berry had a degree in hairdressing.
  • Humans share the planet with as many as 8.7 million different forms of life, scientists estimate.
  • John Williams has never seen any of the Star Wars movies he composed the music for.Image result for star wars
  • More people in America own more than 10 guns than there are people in the whole of Denmark.Image result for southerner with many guns
  • Serbia is home to the World Testicle Cooking Championships.Image result for Serbia is home to the World Testicle Cooking Championships.
  • California was named after a fictional island in a 16th-century romance novel, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián).Image result for Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián).
  • Actress Carrie Fisher once delivered a cow tongue inside a Tiffany box to a predatory Hollywood producer who assaulted her friend.Image result for carrie fisher cow tongue buzzfeed
  • Before he became an actor, Clint Eastwood survived a plane crash, avoided jellyfish, and swam to shore.

 

He’s a Poet and Didn’t Even…Realize It?

 

You know Trump is reaching for catch-phrases when his minions can’t echo them.

Earlier this week, he tweeted this doozy — three times:

“BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL! This is the new theme, for two years until the Wall is finished (under construction now), of the Republican Party. Use it and pray!”

 

Later, at an impromptu press conference with Kellyanne Conway, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked about the wall’s dwindling popularity in polls. In response, Kellyanne went Kellykuckoo:Image result for crazy kellyanne conway

“And so why would that be the question, why is that a good question?” Conway asked. “I’m asking you why you’re still saying wall when the president has said, I’m asking why you and the polling questions respectfully are still saying wall when the president said you can call it whatever you want. Call it steel slat barriers…”

“He calls it a wall as well, Kellyanne,” Phillip responded, adding “this morning, he said it as a new slogan when he called it a wall.”

“Yes it’s a great slogan, build a wall and crime will fall, we know that’s true,” Conway said.

“So why can’t we call it a wall when he calls it a wall?” Phillip asked.

“Right, he calls it a wall, steel slat barrier, physical barrier, anything,” Conway said, then asked what Democrats called it when they “voted to renovate the existing wall.”

How about this for a slogan: “Check the borders of your mental disorders?”

And, for something less off-kilter, Slapfacts:

 

  • There is a strip club in Ontario, Canada that doubles as a church on Sunday.Image result for ontario strip club church on sunday
  • Since its creation in 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council has resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined.
  • Shturmovshchina is Russian for working frantically to meet a deadline, having not done anything for the last month.
  • Juries in the U.S. are often 12 in number as that was the number of Christian Apostles.Image result for 12 christian apostles
  • The sign for the female sex (♀) represents the hand mirror of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty.Image result for aphrodite hand mirror
  • In Ancient Rome, women donated their hair for use as military catapult elastic.Image result for In Ancient Rome, women donated their hair for use as military catapult elastic.

This Episode Brought to You by the Letter F

 

Damn you, focalism.

Focalism, as defined by three psychiatrists in the book Misdiagnosis of Cognitive Impairment in Forensic Neuropsychology, is more commonly known as the anchoring bias.

The bias, they explain, is “the tendency to rely too heavily, or ‘anchor,’ on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject).”

Well, the first piece of information I heard on this subject is messing with me. Apparently, a parent was recently watching Sesame Street with his kid when he thought he heard Grover drop the F-bomb. The show’s creators claim that Grover, in discussing camera work with a puppet buddy, is saying “Yes, yes, that sounds like an excellent idea!”

But not daddy instigator. He posted the clip on Reddit. Now, thanks to my damn anchoring bias, I can’t help but hear what that parent heard. Here it is:

Next thing you know, they’ll be telling me that’s not Kermit in the big suit. Stop fudging with my head, man.