Author: SugarFree

  • What Are We Reading – December 2017

    SugarFree

    Read another John Ferris novel, Fiends, a good take on the admittedly small psychic-Iceland-elves-take-over-a-small-Southern-town-and-skin-hippies genre. A shame really. Iceland elves are metal af. Despite the synopsis on Goodreads, the elves, The Unwashed Children of Eve, are not vampires at all, but Huldufólk. (“Elf” is apparently a pejorative, and Huldufólk is the polite term. I assume “elf” gets thrown around a lot on Huldufólk rap albums.)

    Next was A Grin of the Dark, by Ramsey Campbell. It is a clown-based twist on the book/film/book that kills you/drives you mad/compels you to murder idea. Tubby Thackeray’s silent films are almost impossible to find and even his name has been almost completely erased from film history, only a few mentions of a court case where the philosophy professor-turned-grotesque-clown was charged with inciting a riot after a screening of one of his films. Our protagonist, saddled with unemployment and a girlfriend whose parents might actually be from hell, hopes to revive his career by digging up Tubby’s lost body of work. It doesn’t go well. If you have clourophobia, avoid this, it’s all ghostly laughter and greasepaint, IT meets The Ring. But there is an internet troll in the plot that I swear is modeled on Tulpa at his most wound-up and the awful in-laws are hilariously awful indeed.

    And finally, I read The Haunted Vagina, by Carlton Mellick III. This is my second work by Mellick after being drawn in a year or so ago by his prosaically titled Baby Jesus Butt Plug. The Haunted Vagina is, as you might infer from the title, about a girl with a haunted vagina. Steve tries to learn to live with the ghostly voices from Stacy’s vagina because otherwise, she is perfect. But when an epic bout of 69 causes an adult human skeleton to crawl out of Stacy’s vagina and Steve is forced to beat it to pieces with a night table, he decides he has had enough. But the seductive Stacy convinces Steve to explore her haunted vagina, and he finds an entire haunted world. Short, to the point, and surprisingly sweet, I really liked like this novella. With such evocative titles as Satan Burger, The Faggiest Vampire, Zombies and Shit, The Menstruating Mall, and Razor Wire Pubic Hair, I will be reading more Mellick in the near future.

    Riven

    I’ve not made any progress, again, on The Skinner by Neal Asher. I’d make excuses, but I don’t have any that are good. I can’t even promise I’m going to get serious about reading next month, either, now that I have a Zelda game to play again. *And no one ever saw Riven again*

    SP

    I am simultaneously reading three very different biographies of Sir Richard Francis Burton.

    Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography by Edward Rice (1990)

    A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard & Isabel Burton by Mary S Lovell (1998)

    The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton by Fawn M Brodie (1967)

    Since I’m typing this on my phone in the dark so I don’t miss the morning deadline, I will share some commentary below later on. (I’ll also add links to save you having to enact your own book-acquiring labor.)

    Brett L

    I started 3 or 4 trashy urban fantasy “series” on Kindle unlimited. I just have to face the fact that I’ve reached the Sturgeon Limit on LitRPG and Urban Fantasy. The rest are crap. I did read Pianist in a Bordello, a debut novel that is an all-in-good-fun romp about a budding politician discussing his growing up around an often-absent (except as deus ex machina) lefist radical father and California Republican Senator grandfather. Despite the cartoonishness of his politics, a good read.

    Also, I listened to Adm. William McRaven’s Make Your Bed, which is an expansion of the great commencement speech he gave to the University of Texas’ graduating class of 2014. Still a short book, a quick listen, and great for gearing yourself up for the New Years’ resolutions and setting yourself up for the inevitable failure and disappointment.

    Old Man With Candy

    Because I cheerfully flaunt my nerdhood, I will confess to having received an e-book version of the classic Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill and am digging my way through. This is the 3rd edition, and it’s about double the size of my previous copy- and the additions ain’t filler. If you love electronics (and I do), this is the Torah.

    Web Dominatrix

    I’m nose deep in two great but distinctly different books right now. The first is Good Manners for Nice People who Sometimes Say Fuck, which was a delightful Christmas gift that explores how we became so rude and what we can do about it. And, after my usual Christmas Eve tradition of watching Hogfather, I’m back on a Terry Prachett kick that usually lasts til mid- February. I’m also reading his book Making Money.

  • HAT HARD: A Hat and Hair Christmas Special, Pt. 4

     

    It was cold on the White House roof and Donald began to shiver. The hat jostled back and forth on his great pumpkin head.

    “Hey, I’m Tweeting up here. I’m Tweeting up here!’ the hat said, the swoosh of a sent tweet rustling through the hair anyway.

    “Dammit, autocorrect!” the hat screamed. “We’ve got a covfeve situation!”

    “Whoa,” the hair said. “Hold on! Oh, shit.”

    Donald burped loudly and woke up.

    “Where am I?” he demanded. “I’m cold. It’s not too classy up here. Is this the roof? Why are we on the roof?”

    “How was your nap, Donald?” the hat asked drily.

    “What nap?” the President asked. “What nap? I’m not asleep. I don’t fall asleep. When’s the next meeting? Someone read back the minutes and bring me my goddamn Diet Coke!”

    “Terrorists have taken over the White House, Donald,” the hair began.

    “Eurofag terrorists,” the hat clarified.

    “What are their demands?” Donald demanded. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists. I deal with them. I wrote a book about it. The Art of the Deal. Tremendous book. I’ll send you both a copy for Christmas. Or Hannukah or whatever. Kwanzaa. Are either of you black? Black people?”

    “No, Donald,” the hair said. “Neither of us celebrate Kwanzaa.”

    “I’ll jump over a broom. I don’t care. Stomp a glass. Do the rumba. I’ll slap an old lady in the balls if that’s what it takes,” Donald said.

    “I think the food coma is over,” the hair whispered.

    “No shit,” the hat whispered back.

    “Go fuck a sock cap,” the hair replied.

    “What are you doing?” the hair asked. “Don’t fucking Tweet that.”

    “I’m cold,” Donald said, “And my tummy hurts.”

    “The helicopter will be here any minute, Donald,” the hat said.

    “There is no helicopter, Donald,” the hair said.

    “The FBI is coming to rescue us,” the hat said.

    “The FBI?” Donald squawked. “They Tweet mean things. FAKE NEWS! NO RUSSIA!”

    “Now look what you’ve done,” the hair told the hat.

    “What?”

    “You’ve got him all upset.”

    “I need a phone!” Donald screamed.

    “Donald! Be quiet! Someone might hear us up here,” the hair barked.

    “I think I hear the helicopter!” the hat said maliciously.

    “NO FBI! HURT DONALD!” Donald screamed.

    “Find me a firehose, dammit!” the hat roared.

    “I’m cold,” Donald said again and the gun dropped from nerveless fingers.

    “We’ve got to get Donald back inside,” the hair said. “You know his circulation is terrible.”

    “FIREHOSE!” the hat screamed. He began typing on the phone furiously.

    “OK,” the hair said. “So I throw you off the roof and you float down to the lawn, because you’re a hat and weigh nothing, and then what? How do you get back in?”

    “Get back in?” the hat asked confused. “Why would I want to get back in?”

    “Uh, so you can save Melania?”

    “Save Melania? I hate that Slavic harpy.”

    “Melania was some top-shelf pussy. Grade-A Prime pussy,” Donald said numbly. “It was like sticking your dick in a microwaved pudding cup.”

    “Well,” the hair continued, “What about Ivanka? You are always talking about her.”

    “She’s, like, 35 and has three little half-Jew kids. Let her 12-year-old husband save her,” the hat said.

    “Top-shelf,” Donald mumbled.

    “Tiffany’s still young,” the hat tried.

    “Who?”

    “Tiffany. Tiffany Trump.”

    “Who?” the hat asked and made a theatrical yawning noise.

    “Well whiskey,” Donald said through chattering teeth.

    Gros homme est ici!” a cigarette-hoarse voice yelled from across the dark expanse of the White House roof. A long-haired man in a MAKE FRENCH FRANCE AGAIN hat began to run toward them.

    “Donald! Get down!” the hair ordered.

    “Is that my Diet Coke?” Donald asked.

    The hair made the three of them dive behind an HVAC unit.

    “How did they find us up here?” the hair asked.

    “They must have Twitter!” the hat said.

    “You told Twitter we were ON THE ROOF?!?” the hair screamed.

    “Twitter is the only real thing there is, you stupid hairball!” the hat screamed back and he started typing again.

    Bullets began pinging off the HVAC unit all around them.

    “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?” the hair screamed.

    “I’m saving us, asshole!” the hat replied.

     

     

    The hat read the tweet out loud in a smug tone.

    “You fucking idiot!” the hair yelled. “She was fired! Security had to drag her crazy ass out of the fucking building!”

    “I need go pee pee,” Donald said as the gunfire stopped.

    “I vant him ALIVE, you fools!” Angela screamed.

    The hat twisted around awkwardly. “Firehose! There’s one right behind us.”

    “Come out, Donald!’ Angela called, waddling toward them. “I am ze Leader of the Free World now! I promise you fair treatment. Ze Hague is very nice this time of year.”

    “I can’t go back to prison!” the hat screamed and clamped down sharply on the hair and Donald’s headbones. Donald and his hair screamed.

    “OK! Fuck!” the hair said through gritted follicles and force Donald to duckwalk to the firehose and began to unspool it.

    “WHY DID YOU HAVE TO NUKE THE WHOLE BUILDING, ANGELA?” the hat screamed.

    The hair ran Donald to the side of the roof with the firehouse wrapped around his waist. “I promise I will never get on the roof of the White House ever again,” the hat said. “Please don’t let me die.”

    With that, the three of them dove off. And landed painfully on a balcony twenty feet below.

    Through Donald’s pain and his own, the hair heard the hat typing.

     

    “I hate you so much,” the hair whispered.

    “How is Donald?” the hat asked.

    “Nothing’s broken, but he pooped his pants. Like, a whole lot.”

    There was a burst of automatic gunfire from above them, a scream, and a pantsuited body fell past the balcony.

    “Boy, I hope that’s not Hope,” the hat said and giggled.

    “Will you shut up?” the hair asked.

    “Mr. President? Mr. President!” came a loud and deeply male voice from the roof. “Hold on, sir!”

    “Is that my Diet Coke?” Donald whispered.

    “I think it’s the Secret Service, Donald,” the hair said soothingly.

    “Holly McClane!” the hat said in triumph.

    “Can you just, not?” the hair pleaded.

     

     

     

     

     

    The Hat and The Hair will return in… Bringing Up Donny.

  • HAT HARD: A Hat and Hair Christmas Special, Pt. 3

     

    Half-dressed, thirsty, asleep, the hair had Donald staggering down a narrow hallway with a machine pistol in his right hand and the shredded remains of a MAKE BASQUE LEGIBLE AGAIN hat in the other.

    “Where are we going?” the hat asked. He was jammed down on the hair haphazardly and wanted heroin very badly.

    “We are going the safe room on this floor,” the hair said.

    “We could hole up in the wig vault,” the hat said.

    “Donald would never fit in there,” the hair replied.

    “And?”

    “We have to keep Donald safe.”

    “Oh, yeah.”

    The hair had Donald stop and peek around the next corner before proceeding. Three terrorists were in the hallway, smoking cigarettes and looking at their phones.

    After pulling Donald back, the hair whispered, “Shit, they’re right in front of the safe room.”

    “Let’s just kill them,” the hat said.

    “There’s three of them.”

    “They’re just Eurofags. We can take them.”

    “How did they even get in here? The White House has huge security. The best. Like, top-notch.”

    “That doesn’t matter now,” the hair told him. He turned Donald around and walked him back the way we came.

    “No, not that way, they’ve sent someone to check on him by now,” the hat said urgently.

    “Where then?”

    “What about the Kennedy Fuck Tunnels? We could get out that way.”

    “Your solution to everything is always the Kennedy Fuck Tunnels,” the hair said wearily.

    “They lead to, like, ten different side-piece apartments around the city.”

    “They’ve blocked all those off. It was the only way to keep Bill from sneaking back in and pissing on all the toilet paper,” the hair said.

    They only noticed that they had circled back while bickering when Donald tripped over the gunman they had killed and it sent all three of them sprawling. Donald let out a protracted groan and muttered some thick syllables from a dream, “No, Nancy, not there. Not there.”

    “Goddammit,” the hat said. “Learn to fucking drive!”

    “Shut up and let me concentrate,” the hair shot back as he struggled to make Donald stand.

    “No, wait,” the hat said, “There, on the floor.”

    “What?” the hair asked.

    “The gunman’s phone,” the hat said entranced.

    The hair had it picked up and then braced Donald against a wall to finish standing.

    “We’ve gotta get out of here,” the hair said, out of breath in his non-existent lungs.

    “Give me the phone,” the hat demanded.

    “OK, fine, jeez,” the hair replied, tucking the cellphone under the hat.

    “To the roof!” the hat crowed. “To the roof!”

     

     

     

     

    The hair could feel him begin to type on the phone and he drove a sleeping Donald toward the White House roof access port.

    “What are you doing up there?!?” the hair asked.

     

     

    “Just get us to the roof,” the hat replied.

    “Can you stop fucking around on that phone? It’s hard enough to climb a ladder as is.”

    “Mush! Mush!” the hat cried gleefully. “We have to the get to the roof to save the hostages!”

    “They are all still in the ballroom, probably,” the hair said. “What makes you think they are on the roof?”

    “Because when they blow the roof, all the hostages will die and if will be the perfect thing to hide their heist!”

    “Oh, fuck,” the hair moaned. “Do you think we are in Die Hard or something?” He hooked Donald’s arm into a rung so he could rest.

    “HAAAANNNS!” the hat screamed down at him. “HAAAAAANS!”

    “Are we just getting up on the roof so you can jump off?” the hair asked.

    “HAAAAANNS!”

    The hair sighed and started to climb once more.

  • HAT HARD: A Hat and Hair Christmas Special, Pt. 2

     

    “What the fuck it that?” the hair asked loudly.

    “Gunfire,” Hope said as if she had heard the toupee.

    “Gunfire?” Donald asked. “What about my Diet Coke?”

    “Diet Coke?” the hat yelped. “There’s gunfire in the White House! Get me to my safe room!”

    Donald stood up abruptly and his belly knocked Hope over. There was a sickening crunch as her head met the edge of the dresser and she fell to the floor insensate.

    “Where’s my DIET COKE?!?” Donald bellowed, stepping over the supine Hope and opening the dressing room door.

    “Donald! Come back!” the hair called after him.

    The hat had moved to the edge of the desk they were on and was peering over the side. Hope’s skirt had been thrown up around her hips as she fell and her translucent La Perla underwear was on display.

    “Hairless, dude,” the hat told the hair. “I think she’s lasered.”

    “I find that offensive,” the hair said.

    “You would.”

    Donald shuffled back into the room, his socks leaving bloody marks on the white carpet. He had a full erection tenting his boxer shorts.

    “There’s no Diet Coke out in the hall,” he said despondently.

    “Where did that blood come from, Donald?” the hair demanded.

    “Dead guy in the hall, totally Cokeless.”

    “Donald,” the hair ordered, “Put me on.”

    “Me too!” the hat said. “We have to go see what is going on.”

    Donald laboriously stepped over the unconscious Hope again and took the hair off its mannequin head and settled it on his own. The hair sank tendrils into his scalp and arranged himself as best he could.

    “Pick up the hat, Donald,” the hair told him.

    “I don’t want to. I’m sleepy. I want a Diet Coke,” the elderly man complained.

    “Fast food coma,” the hat diagnosed. “All that grease has hit his colon.”

    “Donald!” the hair shouted, rocking back and forth on his head.

    “You’re going to have to drive, dude,” the hat said. “He’s going to be out of it anytime now.”

    “He’s so hard to puppet anymore,” the hair whined.

    “Oh, shut up,” the hat said.

    “It’s like driving a really old broken car with no brake, transmission, steering or wiper fluid. And the car is full of McDonald’s and gout.”

    “Bitch and moan, bitch and moan. Pick me up so we can go check out the carnage.”

    “Shouldn’t we get Donald to the safe room?” the hair asked.

    “Later,” the hat said. “I’m sure it’s all over by now. We’ll just take a peek through one of the gallery windows.”

    The hair put the hat on over himself with Donald’s hand and then bent over to strip off the bloody socks. “They feel really weird and gross,” the hair said, anticipating the hat’s question.

    The hair moved Donald and the hat as quietly as he could through the darkened corridors of the residence. They found four dead Secret Service agents before they got to the small windows that looked down on the ballroom, all shot in the head from behind.

    “This looks bad,” the hat whispered.

    “If they got this far into the residence, why didn’t they find us?” the hair asked.

    “I don’t know,” the hat answered. “I had never been in that room before. Maybe Hope just set it up or something.”

    There was another burst of automatic fire and the hair threw the three of them back against a wall. He slid them toward the window and peeked over the sill.

    “Duck down,” the hat hissed. “I can’t see anything.”

    “Diet Coke,” Donald mumbled and began to snore.

    The hair pushed Donald’s hand against the glass and the bottom swung outward like a transom. The guests in the ballroom were huddled together in a jumbled cluster in the center, mewling and crying, a ring of gunmen in ballcaps ringing them. A squat figure in a power suit and a ballcap waddled toward them, stepping over the bodies of dead Secret Service and DC Police.

    “Oh, shit,” the hat began.

    “Yeah, it’s her,” the hair said.

    “Laydies and genhentleman. Laydies and genhentleman,” Angela said in her thick German accent. “Due to this administration’s legacy of greed around the globe, they are about to be taught a lesson in the real use of power. You will be witnesses.”

    “Whut the fuck are you talkin’ ‘bout, you fat slut?” Jeff demanded, his little elf ears red with rage and shaking with fear.

    Angela pointed at him and one of the gunmen stepped forward and hit him with the butt of his rifle. Jeff fell like an erection at Lilith Fair.

    “Are there any further questions? No? I thought not,” Angela said crisply. When she turned to walk away the hat began to sputter in rage. Her ballcap read “MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN.”

    “Euro trash bitch!” the hat managed to spit out.

    “Look,” the hair said. “They’re all wearing them.”

    Around the arc of the circle of gunman facing them they could see MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN and MAKE FLANDERS GREAT AGAIN and NETHERLANDS and SWEDEN and LUXEMBOURG.

    “Most of those countries have never been great!” the hat gasped. “And what the fuck is a Flanders? Is that Simpsons reference?”

    “Be quiet,” the hair whispered. “Footsteps. I think someone is coming.”

    “Diet Coke,” Donald mumbled in his sleep.

    A walkie-talkie crackled from around the corner and there was a burst of foreign gibberish. The hair got Donald down in a crouch as the person briefly answered and then proceeded around the corner. He was armed with a squat machine pistol and a MAKE BASQUE LEGIBLE AGAIN hat. The hair launched the elderly and overweight body from the shadows under the gallery windows and the four of them went down in a violent tangle of limbs and haberdashery. The hair pummeled the gunman with Donald’s sticky fists and shot tendrils into his eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth. MAGA prime bit into brim of BASQUE hat and stripped its adjustable band away savagely. Finally, in a titanic heave, the hair got Donald’s corpulent bulk on top of the gunman and crushed the life out of his body.

    “Yeah, take that motherfucker!” the hat growled. “MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!”

    Donald’s body was breathing heavily as the hair got him back to his feet.

    “Take gun!” the hat said.

    “I know that,” the hair replied.

    “And the walkie-talkie!”

    “I know that too,” the hair said testily. “I know what I’m doing. I killed the guy, after all.”

    “Hey, I helped!”

    “You molested a hat.”

    “Did not!”

    “I saw what you did with that adjustable band. Christ, you are a sick fuck, you know?”

    “I was fighting for our lives!” the hat said indignantly.

    “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

    The hair had Donald pick up the gun and tuck it into his boxer short waistband. It promptly slid down his gunt and fell out one of the legs and onto the floor.

    “Maybe you better carry that,” the hat said dryly.

    The walkie-talkie crackled again.

    “Mikolaus?” the voice on the other end asked. “Mikolaus? Txostena.”

    “Answer it,” the hat urged.

    “I don’t know Basque. Do you know Basque?” the hair asked.

    “A little.”

    “Bullshit.”

    “Just hold the button down, dingleberry.”

    The hair had Donald hold the walkie up to the hat and pressed the talk button.

    “Zein da neska prezioa?” the hat said and the hair had Donald let go of the button.

    “Who is this?” the voice demanded. “Where is Mikolaus?”

    “Button,” the hat ordered.

    “Olly olly oxen free, cocksucker?” the hat half-asked.

    “Oh, goddammit,” the hair moaned.

  • HAT HARD: A Hat and Hair Christmas Special, Pt. 1

     

    Pulling away from Andrews Air Force Base, Donald pawed at the intercom switch blindly.

    “What do you want, Donald?” the hair murmured.

    “Why didn’t we take the helicopter?” the hat asked.

    “He wanted to drive home,” the hair replied.

    “Where’s the fucking intercom?” Donald asked and farted irritably.

    “Forward a bit,” the hair told him. “No, too far, back a bit.”

    “I never want to go to Florida again,” the hat said mournfully.

    Donald jammed the intercom button down and rumbled “I’m hungry,” to the front of the car.

    “Donald,” the hair said, “There’ll be food at the party and we are late as it is.”

    “I’m hungry, Argyle” he said again, pressing the intercom button so hard that his finger turned white.

    “Yassuh, Mistah Prezident! Yassuh, right away!” the driver said cheerily. He could be heard informing the police escort of the change in route before Donald let go of the intercom.

    “We don’t have time for this,” the hair said.

    “Donald gets what Donald wants, combover,” the hat snapped.

    Donald leaned over slightly as the limo took a left a little too fast and the hair groaned.

    “What’s the matter with you?” the hat asked.

    “He took too much Viagra last night,” the hair said. “I can feel it soaking into my roots. I think I’m turning blue? Do I look blue to you?”

    “No,” the hat said, “Just sort of asshole-colored like always.”

    Donald swayed as the motorcade pulled into the parking lot. Hope’s pale face appeared on the monitor. “What would you like, Mr. President?”

    “Two Big Donalds, hold the buns, extra secret sauce, like extra extra. Three large fires, extra salt, so much salt. A chocolate shake. A large chocolate shake. Huge. Huge chocolate shake. And make the shake chocolate, Hope. And get yourself anything you want. And Argyle. At least get Argyle an apple pie. Argyle loves their apple pies. So American, apple pie. Get me three apple pies. So tremendous.”

    Her maroon lips had compressed into a tight, thin line as he ordered and she seemed to have difficulty prying them apart to speak. “Yes, Mr. President,” she said.

    The monitor went dark as the inside of the limo lit up under the bright lights in the parking lot. Donald scratched his Big Mac and sniffed his fingers. He watched the vague shape of Hope in the front seat through the smoked glass partition as she leaned over the driver to shout into the call box.

    “Where’s her hand?” the hat asked and laughed. “I think Argyle is getting his holiday bonus.”

    “You know his name’s not really ‘Argyle,’ right?” the hair asked.

    “Who gives a shit? He makes Donald happy with his Stepin Fetchit act. And with what we pay him, he should just be happy with whatever he feels like calling him.”

    Donald sighed contentedly as bag after bag of food was passed back to him and the limo began to fill with the odors of grease, low-grade Argentinian beef, agar-thickened dairy and economic desperation.

    “FIGHT FOR 15!” the worker hanging out of the drive-thru window screamed as the limo and D.C. Police escort and Secret Service vehicles pulled away.

    “Loser,” the hat sniffed. “Go back in time and get yourself unknocked-up at 15, ya dumb cunt.”

    “Let them complain,” the hair retorted. “It’s all they have.”

    “Merry fucking Christmas,” Donald said, through a mouthful of half-chewed fries and milkshake.

    He was finishing his last burger as they pulled through the gates to the White House and pulled to a halt by the side entrance. Donald got out quickly and the fast food trash in his lap came out with him and fell to the asphalt. Secret Service goons chased after the blowing wrappers and Donald laughed at them until the distinctive buzz of a sniper round cut the night air and buried itself with a dull thud into the wood pillar beside him.

    “Do your worst, Feminists!” he yelled, brazenly stopping to brush some of the food waste of off his shirt and tie as Hope and Argyle dove for cover.

    “Keep the limo warm for me, Argyle,” he said. I might be going out later.”

    “You are not going to Roy’s Christmas party!” the hat told him again. “The optics are terrible.”

    “No, they aren’t,” Donald groused as he was herded inside. “He always gets the best looking girls.”

    “Emphasis on ‘girls,’ Donald,” the hair told him. “That’s why you aren’t going.”

    “Tiffany is bringing some of her friends,” the hair said, hoping to placate the lumbering man.

    “She’s weird-looking,” Donald muttered.

    “She’s your daughter, Donald,” the hair said.

    “Doesn’t keep her from being weird-looking. Ivanka’s not weird-looking. Donny Jr and that other one’s not weird-looking,” Donald argued.

    “Yeah, nothing weird-looking about the cast from American Psycho,” the hat muttered down into the tangled mass of the hair.

    “Stop it,” the hair hissed back. “If I get to laughing, I’m not going to be able to stop.”

    “Bret Easton Ellis is gonna sue them,” the hat replied and the hair rustled with suppressed laughter.

    Donald lurched into the White House Christmas party and looked around. The usual hangers-on were about. Melania was shooting hateful glares at anyone who got near her. Ivanka was toting one of her children on a cocked hip, her ruined breasts spilling out of her elegant gown that was already stained with chocolate pudding or maybe blood. Jeff was backed into a corner–frightened, angry, making himself small and trying to be overlooked. Paul and Mitch were doing shots and looking miserable. Sarah had her face down in a trough of hors-d’oeuvre set up to keep her away from the rest of the human food.

    Foreign dignitaries milled about in a tight knot out in the middle, with the sullen air of hostages already, and the painfully formal dinner hadn’t even been served yet. The Secret Service and Capitol Police providing security kept an eye on them, barking “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” at them every time one the foreign guests peeled away from the main group to try to go to the bar or the bathroom.

    “Who invited all the beaners and ragheads?” the hat asked.

    Donald burped loudly and then swallowed with some effort. He backed away down a hall when he saw Melania cutting across the ballroom floor toward him.

    “Where have you been?” she hissed, her botox-frozen face attempting to twist in anger.

    “Florida,” he said.

    “You are late. You should have taken the helicopter.” She pronounced “helicopter” as four seemingly unconnected syllables.

    “I’m the President. I can do whatever I fucking want.” Donald burped again and spat a half-digested french fry on the floor.

    She glared at the hat and the hair. “Get him upstairs and clean him up. The guests are waiting.”

    She turned on her heel and stalked away before the hat could think of a good insult. He just mumbled “whore” under his brim as Donald wandered away.

    In the residence, the hair was resting on a mannequin head and the hat was on the table beside him as they watched Hope struggle to get Donald in his tuxedo. She had him down to his boxers, socks, and a stained undershirt and had put the TV on to try and calm him down–an old episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on VHS that was worn from repeated watching, static on the scenes of a young Donald, the soundtrack warped and warbling.

    “I want a Diet Coke,” Donald said distractedly, his eyes fixed on himself gesturing on the screen. Hope kept gingerly removing his hand from his crotch when he tried to masturbate. She tried to wrestle his pallid arms into a tuxedo shirt.

    “Where’s my Diet Coke button?” he demanded, as automatic gunfire began downstairs.

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 63

     

    “Franken fingered my bill once,” the hat says, almost dreamily, in the darkness of the Mar-a-Lago wig vault. They were due back in D.C. soon and the sticky, swamp city always made him think about molestation.

    “How was it?” the hair asks, half asleep. USA hat had brought a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers back with him from Sunday brunch and they had all fallen on it like ravenous wolves, even FLOTUS, who was always watching her weight. “No one loves a fat hat,” as she often says.

    “He has stubby little fingers and smells like quinoa farts,” the hat says. “Ran his fingers all the way around the rim of my bill when I was sticking up out of Donald’s suit pockets. It’s was pretty horrible. I know how those poor women he groped feel.”

    “Al Franken gave you a rimjob?” the hair asks, an edge of mean humor creeping into his reedy voice. USA hat guffaws and FLOTUS hat titters.

    “You know what I mean,” the hat replies wearily. “Besides, remember how upset you were when Fallon grabbed at you?”

    “Hey,” the hat barks, “that’s not funny. That little shit had his hand all up in me. Five fingers jammed right in. And he pulled. Hard. I barely held on.”

    “Yeah, you really took one for the team,” MAGA hat sighs.

    There is a burst of angry syllables from the dark recesses of the vault.

    “Shut the fuck up back there!” MAGA yells back at JAPAN hat. “Pearl Harbor, you buck-toothed fuck!”

    Another long string of Japanese is hurled at them.

    “I’m going to have Donald pack that Nanking-raping jizzhat up until when can ship him to the Presidential Library,” MAGA hat mutters. USA hat slips into a fit of retard giggles at this.

    “Now, boys…” FLOTUS hat coos and then trails off. MAGA thinks about strangling her with her own adjustable strap and fucking her unraveling corpse. The vault could always use another litterbox, as well. MAGA hat counts to ten and the red haze gripping his mind relaxes.

    “Where’s Donald’s phone?” he demands. “I need to tweet something.”

    “Donald kept it for the night,” the hair told him. “Thirteen days until the Alabama special election; he wanted to send out some support to the kiddie-toucher.”

    “Don’t joke about that,” the MAGA hat snaps. “Not even in here!”

    “But the accusers…” the hair began.

    “Fake news. Never happened. People got married at that age all the time in the Bible. Look at the timing. Franken. Conyers. Abortion. 2nd Amendment,” the MAGA hat fires off in quick succession.

    “He signed that one girl’s yearbook…” the hair replies.

    “Fake signature. Fake timing. Conyers. Franken,” the MAGA hat says in a relentless monotone.

    “Is he OK?” FLOTUS hat asks, backing away.

    “FRANKEN. CONYERS. ABORTION. GUN RIGHTS. ALABAMA. SESSIONS,” MAGA hat continues, his voice rising in volume.

    “He’s havin’ some sort of fit,” USA hat says. “My grandpappy Stovepipe used to get those after he got shot!”

    “SESSIONS!” MAGA manages in a strangled cry. “SESSIONS! SESSIONS! SESSIONS!”

    “Somebody call 911!” FLOTUS says through sobs.

    “Somebody call a haberdasher!” the POTUS windbreaker says, muffled, from the spot on the floor where he lays wadded and forgotten, a discarded turkey bone leaking grease into his nylon.

    The hair leaps on coiled tendrils and lands on MAGA hat, spreading to cover him like a blond web, and then anchors himself to the floor.

    “Sessions,” the hat whimpers. “Sessions. Fake news. Fake news.” He begins to weep.

    “That crimson bitch is all fucked up, yo,” JAPAN hat mutters, but no one hears him.

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 62

     

    “Do ya think she will like it?” the USA hat asked anxiously.

    “Uh, yeah. Sure,” the MAGA hat replied, too depressed to savage his hick vaultmate with any enthusiasm.

    “It’s the first I done painted for her,” the USA hat continued, oblivious. “She’s so bootiful and smart and talks real good. I hope she likes it. I surely do.”

    MAGA hat groaned. Donald had taken the hair with him to Japan and left both the hats behind, locked in the White House toupee vault together like a couple of animals. The smell of the paint made him junk sick. He wanted to vomit.

    “I’m gonna paint another,” USA hat said. “And another and another. Sarah is my muse.”

    MAGA hat idly wondered where this truck-stop shower rape of a hat had learned a word like “muse.” He was so bored. Donald had refused to leave him a phone to terrorize Twitter with and when he watched TV, USA hat begged him to turn it to a re-run of Hee-Haw so incessantly, he learned not to turn it on.

    “I’m bored,” he announced. And I want heroin, an ocean of heroin he added just to himself.

    “You could paint a picture iffen you want,” the USA hat. He hummed to himself as he sketched out a rough outline of Sarah in the nude on a fresh canvas, the misshapen lumps of her sweaty flesh coming together in horrible wads.

    “Can I paint a jolly swastika fucking you to death?”

    “You can paint anythin’ you can want,” USA hat said. “Your only limatation is yore imaginations!”

    “Barf. Do you have any barf-colored paint? And despair, what the color of despair?”

    “Ox tongue,” the USA hat said without pause in his sketching, the shard of charcoal grasped firmly in his folded bill.

    “Which? Which is ox tongue?” the MAGA hat demanded. The USA hat hummed tuneless to himself, working on getting the heavy-lidded and utterly dead eyes of his crush just right.

    MAGA hat thought about pressing him but instead scooted over to a blank canvas, picked up a charcoal stick and began to slash at it boldly, just try to ride his feelings of rage and abandonment. A screaming face formed.

    “A brush, a brush,” he demanded. “And red. Fresh blood red and the black-red of old blood.”

    The USA hat slid brushes and paints over to him and noted without a trace of an accent, “Old blood is brown-red or even just brown. Stay vivid.”

    The MAGA hat didn’t hear him as he squeezed the tubes into mounds in front of him and grabbed up a brush. He laid down thick lines on the canvas, almost scooping up paint with the brush for some and scrubbing the bristles to the heel of the ferrule on others.

    “Impasto,” the USA hat whispered. The MAGA hat didn’t hear him in his furious ecstasy. More paint, more paint as the face seemed to push its way out of the canvas. The brush snapped in his bill and MAGA hat dug the broken handle into the canvas, ripping the heavy fabric before dashing to the floor of the vault and snatching up another.

    As he spat rage at the canvas, USA hat turned on the TV behind them and used the TiVo to search through the last half-hour of news coverage that had built up. He found what he wanted and froze the screen. When he turned back, the MAGA let the brush fall from his bill and was breathing in great ragged gasps.

    The painting was a vision of Hell, the skinned, howling face of Sarah, the thick paint running in spots, which only added to the ghastly effect. The center of her mouth was stabbed rent in the canvas, but you couldn’t see the easel or the wall behind. There was nothing, a horrible no-color that went on forever.

    “Donald is bringing you home a new friend,” the USA hat whispered.

    “What do you mean?”

    “Look,” he said. “Look at the TV.”

    MAGA hat whirled around and froze. Two white trucker hats in front of Donald on a table. “Donald & Shinzo, Make Alliance Even Greater,” they read in gold embroidery.

    MAGA hat screamed.

  • Thursday Afternoon Links – Are You Not Linkertained?

    Playboy debuts its first transgender Playmate

    French model Ines Rau has been named Playboy’s first transgender Playmate. Her photo editorial will debut the November/December 2017 issue, which will also feature a substantial tribute to the magazine’s late founder Hugh Hefner, who will also appear on the cover.

    While the first transgender model to earn the coveted title of “Playmate,” Rau is not the first transgender model to appear in Playboy’s pages. In fact, her initial shoot in the magazine three years ago launched her successful modeling career. In May 2014, she was shot nude for a spread called “Evolution.” As Playboy writes, “the accompanying copy surveys humanity’s halting shift toward acceptance of gender identities beyond the male-female binary.”

    What’s is it about straight male sexuality that frightens The Woke Army so much that it has to destroy even its simplest pleasures? There are plenty of transgender porn and erotica in the world… why bring it to Playboy? What even is the point of Playboy in this day and age of genderqueer demisexual otherkins choke-jerking in Anne Frank Halloween costumes?

    I hope Zombie Hefner kills them all.


    Making sense of Russia, uranium and Hillary Clinton

    To hear Sean Hannity tell it, the media is ignoring “what is becoming the biggest scandal — or, at least, one of them — in American history.”

    Hannity is jumping waaay ahead of the facts. So is Breitbart News, which has been running misleading headlines like this: “FBI uncovers confirmation of Hillary Clinton’s corrupt uranium deal with Russia.”

    Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center, claims that there is “another coverup in the making.” And President Trump chimed in Thursday morning on Twitter.

    New reporting this week by the Hill has, indeed, added a layer of intrigue to the sale of a uranium mining company to Russia’s atomic energy agency, which was approved by the Clinton-led State Department and eight other U.S. government agencies. But the latest developments, as they relate to Clinton, are not as explosive as certain news outlets — eager to draw attention away from reporting on President Trump and Russia — would have you believe.

    The Washington Post has gone so far past carrying water for Hillary they are basically just hosing her off in the backyard at this point. It’s not a story about Clinton’s corruption so much as an extending whine that the conservative media is being a big ol’ poopyhead again. The tone suggests that they wouldn’t even be writing about it if it was for those darn kids! Silence is complicity, you toerags.


    The Hat and the Hair have both declared the Fake Melania Meme to be Fake News. When pushed for clarification if Fake News of Fake Melania meant there were Fake Melanias or that there aren’t Fake Melanias, the Hat told this reporter to do something anatomically difficult with a pineapple deep dish pizza and ended the call.

    But Slate wants to believe!

    But there’s also the Trump administration’s long record of ridiculous antics, which have conditioned us to believe that just about anything is possible. The man uses Scotch tape on his ties and owns a fake Renoir. A fake Time magazine with him on the cover as well as a plaque for a Civil War battle that never took place adorn his golf clubs. At this point, we don’t trust anything these people do. The idea of pulling a stunt like having a body double for the first lady and then ostentatiously lying about is just about as Trumpian as it gets.

    And if anybody in the Trump administration had a body double, it would be Melania. The first lady didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic to move to Washington, to accompany her husband as his presidency was beginning, and her slowness to fill out her staff could also indicate a reluctance to participate in official White House activities. On social media, critics of Donald Trump have taken special glee in dissecting the moments when Melania seems to reject her husband’s hand or forget to hide the despair on her face. So the thought that maybe, just maybe, the real Melania is lying in a spa somewhere with cucumbers on her eyes, Barron by her side, binge-watching The Real Housewives of Ljubljana, waiting for 2021? It’s simply too delicious to resist.


    Is it too soon after Weinsteingateghazi for this? And why is the radio edit the only one with the video on YouTube?

  • Tuesday Afternoon Links – Anne Frank Edition

    First, they came for the Anne Frank Halloween costumes, and I said nothing because they didn’t make anything in my size…

    The costume, a blue button-up dress, is accessorized with a green beret and a brown shoulder bag.

    It’s “reminiscent of the kind of clothing” young girls are likely to have worn in the 1930s and 1940s, said a product description below the image of a model — a brown-haired girl with a smile on her face and her hand on her waist.

    For $25 (plus shipping), “your child can play the role of a World War II hero” on Halloween, it promised.

    But the costume portraying Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager whose diary chronicled the horrors of the Nazi regime, was called offensive by numerous critics, including major advocacy groups. So Halloweencostumes.com, an online retailer, removed the item from its website, and its spokesman apologized, saying offending people wasn’t the company’s intention.


    Poet attacked online by enraged high school students after her work appears on exam

    Students have been told to apologise to an award-winning Indigenous writer by the head of the government agency that administers the HSC.

    David de Carvalho, the chief executive of the NSW Education Standards Authority, condemned the treatment of Ellen van Neerven who was subjected to abusive comments and messages from students who had sat the English exam.

    “I am appalled by the abuse of the author,” Mr de Carvalho told Fairfax Media. “This is a completely inappropriate response and I hope those involved see fit to apologise to Ms van Neerven.”

    The controversy was sparked after students sitting the HSC English exam on Monday were asked to analyse Ms van Neerven’s poem Mango – one of three unseen texts included in section 1 of English Paper 1.

    Students were asked to “explain how the poet conveys the delight of discovery”.

    The delight of discovery you hate poetry.

    A weird low-res version of the poem in question.


    Totally Not-Gawker Blames the Irish in this Spicy Take

    Amid the stories of DACA repeal, ICE ambushes at court hearings, and an immigrant snitch line gone haywire, you probably didn’t notice that earlier this month Paul Ryan and members of the Trump cabinet took meetings with an interest group trying to cut a deal for a special subset of America’s 11 million undocumented residents. They’re no SuperPAC, but what they lack in spending power they make up for in charming brogues—it’s the Irish! Every American’s favorite nationality for at least once a year!

    Click through for some extra-special “I’m Irish, so it’s OK for me to be a hate-filled turdato.”

     

  • The Hat and The Hair: Episode 61

     

    “It was really terrible to go through, but I have to admit that I feel better after detox,” the hat admitted. He was sunning himself on the floor in the Oval Office, a bottle of Perrier beside him. He never went anywhere without fancy fizzy water.

    “I’m really glad to hear it,” the hair said from his perch on a napping Donald’s head. “I thought we might lose you there for a little while.”

    “Yup, you was powerful sick there, brother,” the USA hat said from Donald’s crotch, hanging there on an erection driven by erectile dysfunction meds and a filthy dream about Barbara Bach.

    “OH MY GOD, SHUT UP YOU RETARD!” the hat screamed.

    FLOTUS hat giggled from the back of the couch and Windbreaker One laughed hollowly from the coat rack.

    “It’s getting crowded in here,” the hair said. “I liked it better when it was just you and me.”

    “It hasn’t been just you and me in a long time,” the hat snapped. “It didn’t get to go to Puerto Rico, I didn’t get to go to Las Vegas. America is starting to forget all about me.”

    “Nonsense. You’re the hat they love. You’re the hat that triggers college students all across the country.”

    The two other hats and the jacket all made noises of agreement.

    “I just don’t know…” the hat whined.

    “Besides,” the hair said, “You hate Puerto Rico. I tried to get Donald to Agent Orange the whole island back in March.”

    “But I really hated missing throwing paper towels to the downtrodden and destitute,” the hat whined. “It was Donald’s ‘Let them eat cake’ moment and I missed out.”

    “Yours is the name that will go down in herstory, dear,” the FLOTUS hat cooed.

    The USA hat giggled.

    “You have something to add, Cletus the Slackjawed Headgear?” the hat asked.

    “Naw, I was still thinking about whitlin’. And what Donald would do with this here i-rection ifin we had a comely lass of anal virtue true.”

    “We could just order a girl,” Windbreaker One said in his deep, rich tones. “I haven’t been draped over an unconscious whore in what seems like months.”

    FLOTUS hat gasped. “My Donald would never do such a thing!”

    The hair and two other hats and jackets all laughed uproariously.

    Donald stirred in his sleep, sat up and reached for the USA hat as it slid onto the floor. “What’s going on? Are the nig… football players still not standing up? Mike said he’d put those dirty nightfighters straight!”

    The three hats, jacket, and hair said nothing.

    “Answer me, dammit. I heard you all talking about me.” His voice, still bleary from sleep, rang out in the Oval Office.

    “ANSWER ME!”

    In the silence that followed he began to mash the Diet Coke button repeatedly. He was still pushing it when a frightened intern pushed open a door into the office with her foot and ran in carrying a dozen Diet Cokes.

    “Sir,” she said, “I brought all the ones we had cold.”

    Donald pushed the button a few more times, slowly, deliberately, staring at the intern as she squirmed under the baleful glare of his piggish eyes.

    “Set those on the desk,” he said. “And get me some cocaine, a pound of bologna, the Presidential Pimp, my haberdasher, a cordless phone, an overhead projector, three mannequin heads and the Nuclear Football.”

    “Sir?” the pale girl asked.

    “Now! And make it four mannequin heads, goddammit!”